Perfectionism
I was reading a book the other night that I often read on and off, without any real consistency. Melody Beattie’s “The Language of Letting Go”, is a book of daily meditations on codependency. I hadn’t opened the book in a while, and I was hopping around to read the meditations from random dates, and the thought popped into my head that I should look at the meditation for my birth date. It felt as if my higher power was encouraging me to look at this specific meditation because it was about perfectionism and letting go, allowing our humanness to be a part of the equation.
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What’s On My Horizon?
Anticipatory grief is a term used to describe the emotions we feel when we know a difficult loss may be coming. This can happen when we think a relationship is ending, when a loved one has an illness, when a transition is coming, or there is the possibility of a pandemic returning. This type of grief can be confusing because the event hasn’t occurred, yet we may feel “off” or overwhelmed.
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Am I Enough?
Hey mommas, raise your hand if you’ve ever wondered “Am I enough?”. If your hand is raised, know that you are not alone! I assure you; my hand is also up there- sky high. As a new or expectant parent, it is common for our fear, self-doubt, worry, and anxiety to feel like it is taking over at times.
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Change is scary!
I used to think that I liked change and even said that I was addicted to excitement. Often I would misunderstand chaos and craziness and think it was change and excitement. Whether it’s change in the universe, the world, the climate, or the changes in my own much smaller world; My business, my home, my relationships, my health, I am powerless over most things. Where I grow as a human being is knowing the difference between what I can change and what I cannot change.
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Living Intentionally, Not Intensely
Nature is a wonderful metaphor for life and the heat seems to be intensifying every day. My air conditioner has broken three times in three weeks! When things heat up and intensify around me, it’s my cue for me to come back down to my baseline.
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Connection
What does it mean to feel connected to someone else? How do I know if I have a deep connection with another person? These are questions I have asked myself in the past after recognizing that many of my relationships were positive, and yet I didn’t feel close to anyone. At times, it felt like I could be in a room full of people who loved me and cared about me, and still felt like nobody could really see me.
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Transforming Misery into Pain
I used to live life in pain, almost at all times. I yearned for a when time I was pain free. I told myself if only I could find the right workout regimen, the right supplements or medications, the right therapist, the right self help book, the right relationship, the right employer- I could surely avoid all the pain right?
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Bring the Stillness
Imagine attending a yin yoga class that’s intended to help you connect to your insides and notice all the things that are happening internally rather than externally. When I first started practicing yoga, I needed the group to help hold me accountable. Whenever I tried to practice stillness on my own I would tune out to distractions like the phone, or washing machine or even hearing the mailman pull up to our mailbox as a reason to stop focusing inward. Attending the class where the mat was laid out for me I was invited to sit or lay down and find a position where I could be still for a few minutes was incredibly helpful.
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Inner Child
When I introduce Inner Child work to my clients, I often get a puzzled look as if to say “I think you might be crazy”. Or sometimes my clients initially respond with something like “it sounds like you’re saying I have multiple personalities”. This is not true of course, and the concept can be hard to understand at first.
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Religiosity: A Response to Trauma
Religiosity: according to Wikipedia, Religiosity is difficult to define, but different scholars have seen this concept as broadly about religious orientations and involvement. It includes ritualistic, ideological, intellectual, consequential, creedal, communal, doctrinal, moral, and cultural dimensions. When I’ve seen it or heard about it in my office, it is often a form of spiritual bypass. I believe that Religiosity is a response to Trauma, much like medicating feelings with substances.
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Trauma and the Nervous System
There are hundreds of books written about trauma and the many different aspects of trauma, and I would love to touch on it all; however, I am going to focus on how our nervous system is impacted by trauma and how this impacts our behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs about self. Simply defined, trauma is defined as any experience that creates feelings of overwhelmingness and/or an event that is perceived as life-threatening
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What’s My Recipe for Feeling Good?
Self-care and finding the right “recipe” for feeling good is vital for one’s wellbeing. Like a cooking recipe, there is not one ingredient that makes me feel good, fulfilled, healthy, safe, etc. My self-care recipe is made up of many ingredients. This recipe works best when I use regularly, if not daily, instead of something that is done after I already feel bad.
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Talking to: Your children about mental health
Children learn about themselves and the world around them by observing and imitating the adults they are surrounded by. When parents talk openly and honestly about their own mental health and normalize this conversation, children can learn from a very young age that it is okay to talk about their mental health and well being without feeling ashamed of themselves. It is important, then, for parents to model what it means to talk about mental health in order to normalize this conversation.
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Talking to: A friend about their mental health
Friendships can be tricky. For some of us, it can feel like an extension of family. If that’s the case, we might also then treat these relationships the same way we treat family and re-enact unhelpful ways of communication we learned growing up. We might avoid hard conversations, medicate together, let people cross our boundaries, or keep things “light.” When it comes to bringing up mental health with our friends it can feel uncomfortable, and one might think “it’s not my place.” However, the biggest mistake I see people make is just pretending their friend isn’t struggling, and perhaps talking about their friend’s behavior behind their backs, hoping it will go away, or they slowly just talk to their friend less and less.
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Talking to: Your Partner About Mental Health
In an effort to demystify and break down some of the barriers of mental illness and how to talk about it, I first want to share some examples that don’t work.
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Meditation
When I was first introduced to meditation, I was not a believer in its benefits. I thought the only form of meditation was sitting cross-legged in silence or with some soft music playing in the background while muttering “hummm” every few seconds. When I reflect back on this, I realize that I didn’t “believe” in it because I didn’t understand what it really was and how it helps the body.
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What is Recovery?
When people used to ask me “What does being in recovery mean?” I would answer “it means you’re sober.” But after much more life experience and years in the field, I learned that recovery is not the same as stopping a substance or behavior that’s causing some interference in your life. That’s abstinence. Abstinence is amazing, hard, and sometimes 100% necessary for recovery. But one can be in recovery from many things that don’t allow for 100% abstinence, and recovery means so much more than abstinence.
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What Exactly Is An Intensive?
I try and share this with my clients using a metaphor. If one has never been to the ocean and I show pictures of it, or share the sound of it, or if one flies over it in an airplane, all of these things are helpful and yet not the same as experiencing it for oneself. When one goes to the ocean and feels the vastness, or experiences what the undertow feels like, they have their own experience of the ocean. I haven’t been able to do the ocean justice because it’s so personal and powerful. I would say that’s true about intensives as well.
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Addiction Myths
April is Alcohol Awareness Month and I think it could be helpful to address some myths when it comes to substance use treatment and addiction. The most common myth I have seen is that someone’s use needs to be “really bad” in order to stop or get support. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
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Managing Stress
April is Stress Awareness Month! When I learned that this month is dedicated to bringing awareness to stress I thought, “Wow, this is coming at a very good time in my life!” Between the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the uncertainty, changes, and challenges present in the world over the past year and recently selling my home and moving to accommodate a two week closing period, I have experienced a great deal of stress.
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