It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found. ~D.W. Winnicott

I am reading a wonderful book right now entitled How To Be An Adult In Relationships: The Five Keys To Mindful Loving, by David Richo.  He explains in his book that we all need the "five A's"...attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing... to have a successful and healthy adult relationship.  But what exactly does "successful and healthy" mean in regard to relationships?  It means a lot of different things.  To have boundaries--allowing each other the space to grow and be individuals in the midst of real connection, closeness and togetherness; to accept one another fully--whether or not we understand or agree with the other's feelings or choices; being open to giving and to receiving; knowing what we need to feel loved and learning how to ask for it--not expecting our partners to be mind readers...and on the flip side learning what it is that our partner's need to feel loved and giving this to them; loving someone the way they are--letting go of control and trying to change our partners or getting them to be the way we think they should be; allowing our partners (and feeling the freedom ourselves) to express our feelings or to disagree and to fully be ourselves.  

Richo connects all of these essential elements in intimate adult relationships to our early childhoods-whether or not our parents were able to allow us to separate and individuate to become the unique people we were meant to be.  As one might imagine-this process of separation and individuation does not always go smoothly, or even well.  Our parents might have been overprotective and afraid to let us venture out to explore the world around us, sending us the message that the world was too dangerous and that we could not trust ourselves to know what we needed or wanted; or they might have had difficulty seeing us for who we were, needing us to be what they wanted us to be, presenting us with the challenge of becoming and later being our true selves, so that we became dependent upon other's evaluation/approval/reassurance rather than knowing within ourselves our worth, who we were and what was right for us.

The question always comes back to, so how do we get there?  How do we do it?  How do we create the kind of relationship that allows for individual freedom and continued growth while also fostering true closeness, intimacy and connection?  How do we let go of our need to cling and control or to distance and withdraw to get what we think we need from another?  

The answer might be surprising-but perhaps it will make a lot of sense.  

Richo posits that "in healthy intimate relationships we do not seek more than 25% of our nurturance from a partner; we learn to find the rest within ourselves."  So while we all need another to  feel mirrored, safe and to help define us...to allow us to come out of hiding and to be found...we cannot rely on this "other" to do all of these things for us.  The main source of these experiences needs to come from within ourselves.  The reassurance that we are worthy, special and will be "OK" in light of whatever occurs externally resides most fully inside of us.  For many of us, this is a new concept!  Scary, maybe, but also exciting, as we can have more control over our wellbeing and happiness than we ever thought was possible.  As Richo states, rather than relying on ourselves,  many of us have been looking for the "perfect partner"  to fulfill all of our needs, the oasis that will offer us everything we lack--total happiness and emotional fulfillment.  We have not had the opportunity while growing up to develop this strong inner sense of security, and we have learned to search for or to rely upon someone else to give it to us...often ending up frustrated, dissatisfied or even desperately disappointed that another was not fully capable of filling all of our needs for wellbeing and emotional satisfaction.   

Now, as adults, we have a renewed opportunity to revisit this space within ourselves, and rather than allowing our fear to create distance from ourselves by looking for another to fix us or to fill us up, we can face our fear--by allowing ourselves to feel it--and we can look within for our own wellbeing and comfort.  We do not have to be as reliant on another for how we are going to feel from one moment or one day to the next, but rather look within ourselves for this reassurance.  Instead, we can turn toward our partners for support, love and closeness--which can free us up to do the emotional work that we were meant to do to become fully ourselves.

Calming our anxious minds and bodies

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” ~Mark Twain

Anxiety is necessary.  It helps us to accomplish tasks that need to get done, it often helps to motivate us to make decisions or changes, and it can be very helpful in letting us know that our stress levels are too high or that things are out of balance in some way in our lives.  In the best of circumstances, this can help us to slow down, take time to breathe and reflect on our situation in efforts to understand how we need to proceed.  Anxiety acts as an internal warning sign for us of danger or trouble, and it can prevent us from doing things that may cause us physical or psychological harm.  We need a certain level of anxiety to stay safe, progress and move forward in our lives.  When the level of anxiety gets too high, though, it can get in the way and stop us from living the life we truly want to live.

Anxiety can manifest in many different forms.  It can occur in our thinking, through recurring negative thoughts, a.k.a. worry and/or rumination; it can occur in our bodies in symptoms of stomach upset or pain, headaches, back pain, chest pain, heart palpitations, general restlessness or fatigue.  It can affect our appetite causing us to eat more or less, it can affect our sleep patterns, making it difficult to fall or stay asleep or causing distressing dreams; it can interfere in our relationships and our sex lives and negatively impact our general ability to function at work, school or home.  When anxiety seeps into many or all of these areas in our lives, it can cause other symptoms, as well, such as phobias, panic, irritability and depression.  Anxiety can be extremely uncomfortable, which makes it difficult to let ourselves just feel it and move through it.  It can sometimes leave us not knowing what to do or where to turn for relief, which can lead to quick fixes like food, drugs, alcohol or spending.  Most of us have soothed an anxious mind or relaxed from a stressful day with a drink, some chocolate, a trip to the mall or some combination of all three.  These calming strategies can be helpful in moderation, but if we start to rely on them too heavily or too often, they can become new problems layered upon what was once just an uncomfortable feeling.  They can also rob us of the ability to learn how to handle these challenging feelings in a natural and healthy way.

Here are six proven strategies for relief of anxiety that you can start to practice right now:

1)    Deep, slow diaphragmatic (abdominal or “belly”) breathing (This is the type of breathing taught in yoga or singing, that originates in your belly rather than in your chest.  Inhale slowly through your nose for five counts, hold the breath for five slow counts, exhale through your mouth for five slow counts.)

2)    Mindfulness Meditation (This is simply the process of being present in the moment, and letting go of thoughts of the past or future.  Paying attention to your breathing, noticing your surroundings-sounds/smells/sensations-bringing your awareness back to your breath each time your mind wanders to past or future.)

3)    Regular exercise (aerobic/yoga/dance/running/sports etc)

4)    Identifying your negative, distorted, repetitive thinking habits and learning to challenge them and replace them with more accurate, positive and soothing thoughts.

5)    Learning to identify and express your feelings/needs appropriately and assertively.

6)    Analyze your diet / habits and modify intake of caffeine/alcohol/nicotine/other drugs.  Get help with this if necessary through a support group like AA, NA or MA; or with the help of a physician or therapist.

Recent Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have found that attending theatrical performances, art shows or other cultural events, volunteering or participating actively in the creative process oneself can significantly lower levels of anxiety.  What creative pursuits do you enjoy?

You probably already have quite a few ideas of your own on how you might lower your current level of anxiety.  Identifying and organizing them can help.  Try making a list of activities that help you relax and start doing them.  Here’s my top 10 (other than the one’s named above):

-Taking a hot bath or shower

-Calling a friend or family member

-Collaging in my journal

-Listening to and discovering new music

-Spending time with my dog

-Writing

-Reading

-Watching a movie

-Musical Theater

-Completing a task that I have been putting off, like cleaning my house

The Wisdom of Pema Chödrön

Much of therapy and the therapeutic relationship, as I see it, involves working together to get to a place where we see ourselves more authentically--all parts of ourselves. The process involves moving toward acceptance, understanding, forgiveness and self compassion--whatever is necessary to allow us to be present in the moment with ourselves as we are, and with our true feelings and experiences.  Pema Chödrön , the famous Buddhist scholar is a wonderful guide when it comes to facing our fears--the dark places-- rather than running from them.  Sitting with our most difficult feelings and finding that we can move through them allows us to know and to trust ourselves, to heal, to truly be free and live life to the fullest.  I find her teachings to be both wise and inspiring, and they inform greatly my approach to counseling.  Here is just a taste of her wisdom.


"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity." 
— from The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times


"If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher." 


"Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already."

"There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life."
— from The Wisdom of No Escape: How to love yourself and your world


If you are up for it, you can try Pema Chödrön's "Spiritual Detox," which happens to resemble very closely how therapy works!  Check it out the next time a stressful situation arises and you feel like running for the hills:


1) Think about the outer situation, what just happened to provoke  your reaction-anger/fear/desperation?
2) Ask yourself, what feelings did this situation bring up?
3) Sit with the feelings, try to become aware of the layers of feelings.
4) Now try to become aware of your "strategy," what habit do you use to move away from the rawness of this feeling that you don't want to feel?  Yelling?  Acting out?  Berating yourself?
5) For the next few minutes, let your strategy go.  Try to put that strategy aside and just be with what's there.
6) Observe.  


Insight comes out of being kind to yourself, not out of saying you are broken and need to be fixed, changed or made over.  Staying with your feelings instead of acting them out, repressing them or trying to fix them allows  your own inner wisdom to come forth.



Pema Chödrön is an American-born Buddhist nun and one of today's leading meditation teachers.  She is the director of Gampo Abbey, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America.

To feel or not to feel, that is the question...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." ~Maya Angelou


I'll never forget the butterflies in my stomach and the way my hands ached just after my first kiss in junior high, or the racing of my heart and accompanying surge of electricity when I was recently reunited at the airport with my dear friend from abroad.  These bodily sensations helped me to identify my emotions...nervousness, excitement, warmth, affection.


On the other hand, I am often reminded of the fear and anger that I felt when my parents fought...the tightness in my stomach and shoulders, the headaches...and could never forget--even if I tried--the extreme empty pit of desperation and sadness that I experienced at the age of 8 when my Opa Leo died.


Why is this?  Why is it that feelings are imprinted upon us so totally and completely, to the point that we might never forget how another person or situation made us feel?  Why is it that even when we want to let go of feelings, they seem to follow us, sneaking up on us when we least expect them, catching us off guard and impacting us so deeply?  


Feelings get stored in our bodies and our brains.  This storage process was built into our neurobiology as human beings to keep us on alert and safe in the face of danger.  As new discoveries have been made related to brain chemistry and circuitry, it has become an essential component within the therapeutic process to involve both body and mind in the process of healing for true change to take place.  This process almost inevitably involves learning to feel our feelings from head to toe, and accepting and believing that they will not kill us or make us go crazy.


"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in memory as the wish to forget it." ~Michel de Montaigne


One might say the same of feelings.  A client of mine just recently stated in our session, "it's really difficult being human."  He was referring to the fact that no matter how strong we are, no matter how ready we might be to let go of difficult memories or experiences, we still have to learn to move into rather than run from our feelings when they come up, in order to get to a point where they won't shake us to our core when they arise.  This is hard work, and can seem overwhelming.
Sometimes feelings (especially if imprinted from an earlier time) can feel so big that they are all consuming, taking us over and making it difficult to think or to act rationally.  We develop ways to take care of ourselves when this happens, to protect ourselves from the onslaught.  We learn to run from the feelings, to shield ourselves from the anxiety and the loneliness, the fear and the sadness.  We distract, we consume, we restrict; we reach out or act out, we self medicate or self destruct, we move, we freeze.  


So what, if anything, might we choose to do as an alternative?


Like the stamina and strength building exercises required to train our muscles for a marathon, so must we train our minds and bodies to feel.  Each time we make the choice to identify what we are feeling in our bodies and minds and allow ourselves to move through these feelings, we are building strength and growing the inner endurance necessary to experience our feelings more deeply.  At the same time that we are experiencing our feelings more deeply, we are literally changing our brain chemistry and creating new neural pathways that will open us up to think and function in healthier ways. Feeling intense emotion is often scary, so self care is central to this process...deep breathing, calming self talk and the introduction of self compassion are all components that can help us sit with strong emotions.  Meditation, yoga and other forms of movement and relaxation are also excellent ways to support yourself in this work, along with a trusted therapist as your guide.


So what's the point?  Why bother choosing to take the more challenging path to feel more deeply or change the brain circuitry, especially when we have developed perfectly effective methods of coping?


It's a great question, and the best person to ask is yourself.  

The Power of Listening and Truly Being Heard

"Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people don't know the difference." ~David Augsburger


As it turns out, it's impossible to talk about how we tell our stories without talking about the power of listening and truly being heard.  This dawned on me this past Monday in my consultation group at the Couples Institute, as we discussed how important it is for couples to feel heard by one another, along with the dilemma that listening to one another involves skills that many of us just do not learn along the way.  Misunderstandings, disagreements and conflict happen for many reasons, with one main principle in common--that we are not truly listening.  So many things get in the way of listening--distractions, exhaustion, emotional overwhelm.  We want so deeply to convey our caring to one another, to share with each other our stories, dreams and fears, yet so often we fail.  So what are the essential skills that seem to elude us?

-Begin with a quiet space, bodies facing one another and eye contact--creating an attentive atmosphere.  Slow, deep breathing to feel more relaxed might be a good idea to help get into the right frame of mind.
-A caring, non-judgmental attitude is next.  Listening involves putting aside our own needs, desires and competing thoughts, and completely taking in what the other is saying.
-Noticing the feelings that accompany what is being said-how is my friend/partner/daughter/sister feeling while he/she is telling her story?
-Next and perhaps most importantly is reflecting.  It might seem strange to repeat or summarize what you have heard the other person say, but the satisfaction, comfort and connection that someone experiences when his or her words have been absorbed and deeply understood is staggering.  This involves simply reflecting back to the other person what you have heard them say, and checking in with them to make sure that you have it right.
-Finally, if you want to bring more depth to the listening experience, ask questions that help you understand better what the other person is saying.  Not necessarily questions related to what you want to know, but rather that help the other person tell his or her story.

We are not used to doing this kind of committed listening, and it will involve setting time aside and possibly at first feeling a bit awkward, but it will almost definitely be worth the effort.

The Power of Our Stories, Part I

Maya Angelou, one of my favorite writers, once said: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."  I believe this, which is one reason that I became a therapist--there are few things more important or fascinating than someone's story.  Our stories are formed over time, simmering and bubbling beneath the surface like a rich, flavorful stew.  Stories, like any great stew, have many ingredients.  Our family attitudes and earliest experiences, our relationships, our work, our triumphs and our traumas.  Our stories guide us throughout our lives, informing how we do almost everything...from brushing our teeth to choosing a partner. Good therapy encourages us to tell our stories in a safe, supportive environment, offering us the opportunity to explore and understand them more deeply, to make sense of them and to see how they have influenced how we think, feel and act in everyday life.  

Have you ever taken the time to think about your story, or to tell it to someone else?  What stands out in your story?  What are the themes?
If you like to write, buying a journal (or just finding a notebook lying around that can be used as a journal) might help get you started.  Don't worry about doing it right--there is no right way to do it.  If you are worried about not knowing how to begin, here are some strategies to try:  

-Try asking yourself, what is my earliest memory?  Write as much as you can about the memory, just letting it flow, and seeing where it takes you.  

-Borrowing from the wisdom of Claude Steiner, who wrote Scripts People Live, ask yourself, "what movie most represents my life?" Once you have chosen the movie, write about how it relates to your life, again, just letting it flow.

-Finally, if you have tried this before and/or you are worried that everything you will write will be negative, pessimistic and will make you feel worse, try this.  Try writing your story (you can start with any past event that comes to mind) from a third person perspective, ie. he / she / Helena...  Research has been done in the area of positive psychology proving that when we recall past events or tell our stories in the third person, it helps to create some distance from the situations, allowing for new insights to emerge, and often new optimism.  

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

Part II, The Power of How We Tell Our Stories, coming soon...

Welcome to Emotional Crosstraining®...Doing the Work to Feel Better

The process of healing, growth and change can feel good and be tremendously rewarding, yet it often involves hard work. Much like training one’s body for a marathon--emotional awareness, strength and resilience can be developed through sustained attention to self-care, consistency and dedication to the process. This is sometimes surprising to people. It might even feel unfair or upsetting to realize that it will take concerted effort to make things different in your life. It is important to keep in mind that the more time, intention and commitment you are willing to put into the work of healing and growth, the more positive, fulfilling and lasting the results will be.


So what is this process of healing, growth and change?  It starts by identifying what is working in your life and what's not...which attitudes, which behaviors, which relationships.  It looks a little different for everyone.  For some it involves psychotherapy--sitting with a therapist (with whom you feel comfortable and can imagine having a good relationship) who can guide you in telling your story, help you to link past events to your present every day life and assist you in the development and application of new approaches and strategies to existing patterns and problems.


For some it's more about self help and discovery.  Listening to yourself and learning what feeds your mind, body and soul in a healthy way and pursuing those things.  Being in nature, practicing yoga and/or meditation, exploring your spirituality, playing sports, writing, painting, singing, dancing or acting.


For many of us, it is some combination of the two.  The most important question really is--what will your process of growth/healing/change be?  One way to find out is to brainstorm.  Make a list of everything you enjoy doing, and why you enjoy it.  It can be a list of 20, 50 or even 100 things.  Do you enjoy talking and crave another's input into your experience?  Maybe its time to connect with friends or family members with whom you can share what's going on for you--or to connect with your old therapist, or find a new one. Perhaps you like knitting because it feels peaceful and brings focus and creativity to your experience.  Perhaps you can imagine joining a sports team, offering you the opportunity to meet others with common interests outside for some physical exercise.  
Once you have your list, prioritize it.  What are the top ten things that you enjoy?  Are you pursuing those things presently?  If not, your opportunity to start begins now.  Just one new thing will do, it can be overwhelming to take on too much at once.  Start slowly, or go at the pace that feels right to you.  However you decide to begin, acknowledge that this is your process toward growth, healing and/or change and be open to investing time and effort in its pursuit.


"You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge."  ~Eckhart Tolle