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Promises, Promises -part 1

Published May 3, 2010 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: breaking habits, change, habits, making changes, personal change, resolutions

Success in making personal changes means making a commitment to yourself.

Whether you call it a promise, a vow, or a resolution, when you decide to make a change in how you think, feel or act, success requires that you make a serious commitment to your intended change.

Here are 4 tips for keeping your promise to yourself:

Use positive language. Frame your goal so that it states what you will gain rather than what you will lose.
Have a mantra. Help yourself stay motivated by adopting a short statement about why you’re making the change as a mantra to help you through the challenging moments.
Don’t be rigid. Give yourself a short “window” time to start the new behavior. If you choose a fixed date, and miss it, then you may start, and stop, with a feeling of failure.
Focus on the first week. Researchers say it takes 4 days to break a pattern. If you can maintain fidelity to your promise for the first week you improve your chances to maintain it over a longer time.

Being Intentional in your self-change behavior will make the challenge of changing more manageable and more fun too!

Feeling lonely is a common sadness.

Published April 29, 2010 Mental Health Issues , Musings Leave a Comment
Tags: emotional isolation, feeling alone, isolation, loneliness

Loneliness is a difficult, and all to common experience.

If someone you know is feeling alone and disconnected from family and friends, try to make your presence and your caring more apparent. Call, visit, and share this poem by Mary Oliver.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Z-z-z-z-z

Published March 8, 2010 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: anger, anger management, finding happiness, self discovery, self-care, submerged anger

My client, describing herself, told me “There’s an angry girl sleeping inside me, and I’d just as well not wake her up!”

She described herself as “always trying to make other people happy”, and sadly acknowledged that she seldom thought about her own happiness. She had, for as long as she could remember, focused her considerable energy and imagination on her family, friends and lovers. Now having ended the last romantic relationship with more conflict than she’d expected, she wanted to learn how to end a life of resentment and anger, and to be happy for herself. She definitely did not look or sound happy now, with her eyes downcast and clouded with inner pain.

During the initial sessions I came to understand how she’d learned her selflessness: her mom and her dad, separated when she was young, had vied for her attention and affection. She had tried her best to make both of them happy- and neither of them made it easy. It became increasingly difficult when her dad began to experience serious emotional distress and expected even more, and more intensive support from her, and her mother responded with quiet withdrawal. It was never enough, but she tried beyond her capacity and beyond her years to make them happy.

Then had come the lovers, some incessantly demanding and others distracted and neglectful. She heard herself being described with many hurtful words when she fell short, but she’d tried her best to make them happy.

She often softly cried as we talked about how one learns, and can unlearn, long-held beliefs and behaviors by finding and illuminating their anchors and antecedents, and then painfully developing new ways of thinking and acting. She said that she couldn’t believe it was really her we were talking about. It all made her feel silly and weak.

Slowly, as the months passed, she began to sit more comfortably, to relax into the couch, to notice more about my office. I saw her smile as she looked on a side table with a jumble of tulips cascading down from their vase. She asked about a painting that hangs on the wall. Several weeks later she’d had her eyebrows threaded, and she wore a little blush on her cheeks, declaring “I used to know how to be pretty.” And so she was beginning to look at the world around her, to regain awareness of her capacities, to reclaim her emotional strength, and yes, to feel pretty. The growth continued, as did the unfolding of her self-confidence. By the time treatment was ending, she laughed about her inital statement to me and said “cock-a-doodle-doo!” as she looked at me with clear and shining eyes.

If you are experiencing a loss of confidence, a loss of direction, and a growing resentment toward some of the people in your life, consider calling today to make an appointment.

It may be long past time for “someone special” to wake up!

New Year’s Resolutions- by the bootstraps.

Published December 28, 2009 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: asking for help, getting help, giving help, independence, interdependence, limits of self-help, new year resolutions, New Year's resolutions, relying on others, self help, self- reliance

Are you making resolutions for the New Year?

Will you be changing things all on your own?

Then perhaps you believe you should “Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps!”

This advice is so much a part of American culture that to some extent we all believe we could and should “Just Do It” in nearly all circumstances. Clients often begin therapy by expressing the feelings of failure that arise because they have decided to seek professional help. The proliferation of Self-Help books (in themselves a contradiction of the principle) is a clear sign that asking for help from others is often seen as unnecessary, or even undesirable. Yes, some self-help books are, well, helpful. But too often these books convince people to go it alone when that is not a good idea.

If you are struggling with difficult feelings and unwelcome thoughts, and you’ve tried to “snap out of it” or to “just get over it”, and you’re finding it more challenging than you imagined, perhaps it’s time to consider contacting a psychotherapist. Having a helpful therapeutic connection with someone who is interested in – but not involved in your situation may help provide the illumination you need to discover a new path. Asking for help, though much maligned, is really the basis for strength in the real world

Remember, even the Lone Ranger relied on Tonto when he found himself in a tough spot!

Consider letting a qualified therapist help you to put your boots on…

Happy New Year

Thanksgiving Dinner and Dissent

Published November 23, 2009 Mental Health Issues , Relationships Leave a Comment
Tags: conflict, gratitude, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is of course the time when family and friends gather to celebrate their relationships and to give thanks for the good things in life. It sometimes however is also a time of strife. Family members and friends who have not interacted recently sometimes find themselves disturbed by conversations or behaviors that emerge among their dinner companions, especially when alcohol is served and inhibitions are lowered. Old unresolved conflicts may surface or new conflicts may erupt, and dinner partners can unintentionally, or intentionally, antagonize each other. Expectations for having a pleasant or even joyous dinner can be disrupted, creating resentment, disappointment and anger. Finally, the day after can then feel like a “let-down,” leaving some dinner participants with feelings of rejection and alienation.

Therapist who are working with clients who have existing family conflicts can work with the client to “inoculate” them against broken expectations and help them to enter into the social event with an intention of putting conflicts aside for the day. Having realistic expectations and then participating in Thanksgiving events with a clear intention of promoting positive interactions will help to make the day pleasant, even in the face of past or current provocative events.

Lastly, perhaps it’s time for all of us to use Thanksgiving to move beyond “thankfulness.” Being thankful is indeed an honorable feeling, an inner experience of recognition, reconciliation and contentment. What brings thankfulness to life however, making it a shared experience, is when it is expressed towards others as “gratitude.”

leaves01 Gratitude, a behavior, expresses our feelings of thankfulness toward others, and encourages others to do the same.

I hope you all have a day of thankfulness, and find ways to show gratitude toward those who have contributed to you their love, support, time, resources and good will.

Losing the light, losing your lightness.

Published November 16, 2009 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: depression and light; winter and depression, seasonal depression

Are you feeling winter blues? For many people the change from Daylight Savings Time and the resulting darkness when we leave for work and when we return home can begin to cause a slow downward spiral into an inner darkness.

For people who suffer from Major Depression or BiPolar Disorder, there often is a Seasonal Pattern that can be identified and anticipated. For others, even without such a diagnosis, there can still be a seasonal aspect to one’s sense of well-being. If you are experiencing what feels like a seasonal drop in your spirits, consider planning specific activities to help you cope. These could be making outdoor plans on any days when you are not required to be inside; going for hikes, strolling interesting streets where you can window shop and stop for coffee where there is outdoor seating, or doing some winter gardening.

Adding even just a little more sunlight to your week may have more of a positive effect than you think.

Don’t let the season of darkness and soft light steal your inner sunshine.

Got Butterflies?

Published November 5, 2009 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: change through therapy, changing yourself, making changes, personal change

The process known as metamorphosis is one of the most amazing in nature. It’s also the reason that butterflies are a symbol for dramatic and poignant personal change.

We can sometimes feel that making changes is just not worth the bother and so stall and avoid any hint of it… or conversely we may feel that things have changed without our consent and that we can barely endure the results. Still others may be diligently or even desperately searching for changes that can make their lives more fulfilled. No matter which challenge you may be facing, it’s very common that the process of change feels somewhat unsettling and uncertain. Nature constantly shows us that everything around us changes, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly, sometimes for the better and sometimes not. One thing we can learn from watching how it’s done in the natural world is that there is a period of stillness between states… a time of rest between bursts of activity. Witness the butterfly, once a caterpillar, that enters a cocoon between times. Then, having gathered itself to become something new, emerges to dance in the wind and seek sweet nectar.

So too you can accept that between times as you move, and morph, from one way of being to another, there must be a time of rest. And perhaps then you can be patient with yourself and others as you work toward and await the changes you will achieve. Those changes will come with time, with practicing intentional living, and perhaps with help.

Break out of your cocoon, and find the nectar in your life.

Call a qualified therapist today.

You may say I’m a dreamer…

Published October 19, 2009 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: grief, Grief and Loss, loss, lost dreams, mourning

How do our dreams die? Gently, with soft sighs and averted eyes? Or fighting for life, gasping for inner air and tearing at our hearts as they fall?

So often the central issue in therapy is the loss of an enduring dream for ones life. I have sat with many clients as they mourned the loss of a dream for their future, an intent or an aspiration that may have helped to define their life for years, or even decades. And when the dream is lost then a piece of the spirit is lost, even as we go on living.

The particulars are, of course, different for each of us. What is shared is that we feel we may never be the same again. It seems as though we may never so casually, or with such enthusiastic abandon feed our inner self and nourish a dream of things to come. We pause, perhaps stop in our movements, and feel the change in temperature that happens when something shifts deep inside.

It’s important to understand this is this indeed a time of mourning, for someone has been lost to us. That person is Ourselves! – the self that we believed for so long would one day step into the light with soaring satisfaction, heart-thumping joy, or even triumph. That dream of and for ourselves is gone, and we then are left, perhaps somber and perhaps stunned, with a previously unthinkable awakening to a previously unimagined reality. Yes, such losses of a “life-dream” may be worthy of mourning, not just a passing notice of sad “if onlys” — but true mourning. There are normal and expected stages of mourning, and it often takes longer than we would like. The loss of a dream, unlike many other of life’s losses, is invisible to others so we can appear to be strangely disconnected if people who care and notice have no context for our changed behavior.

If you’ve lost a dream, the dream you had for your life’s path, take heart. New dreams may emerge as you lift your eyes to new possibilities. We can be more resilient than we can believe during these difficult moments, and our imagination cannot be suppressed forever. When it’s taking too long, and before you lose hope for a future filled with satisfaction and contentment, contact a qualified therapist and get support in re-discovering dreams worth dreaming.

To see another of my posts on grief issues, see “Griefs by Emily Dickinson” posted on this site on November 16, 2008.

If only… or only if?

Published October 15, 2009 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: change yourself, regret, regrets, reliving the past, remorse, seeking change

Nearly everyone has little regrets that they hold quietly inside. They often sound like this:

If only I hadn’t let that girl go.
If only I’d treated him better.
If only I’d known.
If only I could do it again…

These feeling are normal, and typical of most people. Regrets are a part of Life. But if you feel not only small regrets, but deeper feelings of unshakable remorse or persistent self-blaming, then make today the last day you hold these disturbing thoughts and feeling inside. Seek professional assistance in learning from the past, and moving beyond it to create a different future. You cannot of course change the past, but you can bring it into perspective. You can learn to understand how to make the personal changes that will alter your path and open possibilities to forgive yourself as well as others for the small, and even not so small lapses that are an unavoidable part of living.

By focusing on creating your future rather than re-living the past, you can have a future that contains more of what you want and less of what you don’t want…. but “ONLY IF” you begin to reveal and revise your “if onlys”.

Learn to open your safe- safely.

Published September 21, 2009 Mental Health Issues Leave a Comment
Tags: making changes, personal change, psychotherapy, small changes in therapy, therapy

“The control of our being is not unlike the combination of a safe. One turn of the knob rarely unlocks the safe. Each advance and retreat is a step toward one’s goal.” Eric Hoffer

Clients sometimes ask me, in the first therapy session, how long it will take. How long until they feel better? How long until others feel better about them? It’s also often the beginning of a client’s realization and acceptance that there are things I don’t know about them or about how therapy will work for them – and therefore the very beginning of our authentic relationship.

What comes next is something akin to, though not as simple or expressive as Eric Hoffer’s quote that opened this post. For any reader who is contemplating beginning therapy, or has just begun, there could be no more succinct nor more accurate statement about the process of psychotherapy. There is no scripted easy road to personal transformation. Finding our way to a personal awakening, a new beginning, to self forgiveness, self direction and intentional living, is not simply a movement from step A to step Z. It requires of us, client and therapist alike, that we formulate goals yet understand that not all goals are reached or reachable, that we accept some frailties as a legitimate component of the human condition, and that we have and practice the patience and courage to set a course complete with destination, yet succumb to wandering.

As you engage psychotherapy as a guide and inspiration for your personal change, remember Mr. Hoffer’s quote. Let yourself become comfortable with alternately knowing and not knowing where it will lead. Wander through your life with curiosity and the confidence that your therapist will serve as a guide.

And remember: All those who wander are not lost.

May you have a safe and enlightening journey.

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