Therapy Is Not Punitive
Therapy Is Not a Punishment: Why Parents Should Avoid Using Therapy as a Consequence
As therapists, we often hear children say things like, "My mom told me to tell you what I did," or "I'm here because I got in trouble." While these statements may seem harmless, they can reveal a misunderstanding about the purpose of therapy that can unintentionally undermine the therapeutic process.
Parents naturally want to address challenging behaviors, improve communication, and help their children make better choices. Therapy can absolutely support those goals. However, when therapy is framed as a punishment or a place where adults report a child's misbehavior, it can create barriers that make meaningful growth much more difficult.
Therapy Is a Relationship, Not a Consequence
When a child is sent to therapy because they broke a rule, acted out, or made a poor decision, they may begin to view the therapist as an extension of discipline rather than a source of support.
Children need to experience therapy as a safe place where they can explore their thoughts, emotions, fears, and mistakes without feeling judged. If therapy becomes associated with punishment, the child may enter sessions feeling defensive, guarded, or resistant.
Imagine if every time you made a mistake at work, someone required you to attend therapy as a consequence. Most adults would approach those sessions with skepticism rather than openness. Children are no different.
Therapy Is Not a Courtroom
Many parents understandably want therapists to know what happened at home or school. Sharing relevant information is important and often necessary. However, there is a difference between providing context and using therapy as a venue to prosecute a case.
Children quickly recognize when a session becomes an opportunity for adults to list their failures, mistakes, or poor choices. When this happens, therapy can feel less like a supportive environment and more like a courtroom where evidence is being presented against them.
Children Need a Place Where They Are More Than Their Behavior
Behavior is information. It tells us that something is happening beneath the surface.
An angry child may be scared.
A defiant child may feel powerless.
A disrespectful child may be carrying hurt, embarrassment, or frustration.
When therapy focuses exclusively on correcting behavior, we miss the opportunity to understand what is driving it.
The goal is not to excuse inappropriate actions. Accountability and responsibility remain important. Rather, therapy seeks to understand the underlying emotions, experiences, and patterns that contribute to those actions.
Children are more likely to change when they feel understood than when they feel condemned.
Trust Is the Foundation of Effective Therapy
Research consistently shows that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is one of the strongest predictors of positive outcomes.
For therapy to work, children must believe that the therapist is someone who is genuinely interested in understanding them. If they perceive the therapist as another adult whose job is to monitor, report, or punish them, trust becomes much harder to establish.
This does not mean therapists keep secrets from parents or ignore safety concerns. It means the therapist's primary role is to help the child understand themselves, develop coping skills, and strengthen their ability to navigate life's challenges.
What Parents Can Say Instead
Rather than saying:
"You're going to therapy because of your behavior."
"Wait until you tell your therapist what you did."
"I'm going to tell your therapist everything."
Consider saying:
"Therapy is a place where you can talk about what's going on."
"Your therapist is there to help you understand your feelings and learn new skills."
"Everyone needs support sometimes."
"We're doing this because we care about you, not because you're in trouble."
These messages help position therapy as a resource rather than a punishment.
The Bigger Picture
Every child will make mistakes. That is part of growing up. Therapy works best when it becomes a place where children can safely explore those mistakes, learn from them, and develop healthier ways of coping and communicating.
When therapy is used as a punishment, children may learn to fear it.
When therapy is used as a partnership, children learn that asking for help is a strength.
As parents, one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is the understanding that support is not something you earn by being perfect. Support is something available to you precisely because you are human.
The Quiet Power of Platonic Love
The Quiet Power of Platonic Love
When we think about love, our culture tends to place romantic partnership at the top of the hierarchy. We celebrate engagements, weddings, anniversaries, and grand romantic gestures. Yet some of the most meaningful, sustaining, and transformative relationships in our lives are often our friendships.
Platonic love deserves more recognition than it gets.
Friendships hold a unique kind of intimacy. They are often built over years, sometimes decades, of shared experiences, inside jokes, life transitions, heartbreaks, reinventions, and celebrations. They witness who we have been and who we are becoming. Good friends remember our stories, reflect our strengths back to us when we've forgotten them, and sit beside us during seasons that feel too heavy to carry alone.
There is something deeply healing about being known by peers.
Unlike family relationships, which we inherit, or romantic relationships, which often carry expectations around partnership, finances, parenting, and daily logistics, friendships are chosen. We continue showing up because we want to, not because we have to. That choice creates a particular kind of freedom.
In many friendships, our lives are not completely intertwined. We don't share mortgages, parenting responsibilities, household management, or major financial decisions. While these shared responsibilities can create deep bonds within romantic partnerships, they can also introduce stress, conflict, and competing needs.
Friendships often operate differently.
Because our lives are less entangled, there is frequently more room for acceptance. A friend can disagree with our choices without those choices directly impacting their daily life. They can support our growth without needing us to grow in a specific direction that benefits them. They can celebrate our dreams without those dreams requiring sacrifice from them.
This distance isn't a weakness of friendship. It is often one of its greatest strengths.
Friends can sometimes offer a wider lens, more curiosity, and less agenda. They can hold space for complexity. They can remind us who we are when we have become lost in the demands of work, parenting, caregiving, or partnership.
Friendships also create opportunities for something we all need but rarely talk about: shared dreaming.
Some of my favorite conversations with friends have very little to do with solving problems. They are conversations about possibilities. What do we want next? What are we creating? What lights us up? What kind of life are we trying to build?
Friends often become witnesses to our becoming.
They encourage the business idea. They read the first draft. They listen to the wild dream. They remind us of our courage when fear starts getting loud.
And then there is the simple gift of fun.
As adults, many of us become so focused on responsibilities that play quietly disappears. Friendships invite us back into laughter, spontaneity, creativity, and joy. They remind us that life is not only about productivity and caretaking. It is also about connection.
For many people, especially those who have experienced trauma, friendship can be an important place to practice healthy intimacy. Healthy friendships teach us that closeness does not require self-abandonment. They allow us to experience mutual care, reciprocity, honesty, and support while remaining fully ourselves.
Perhaps this is why friendships can feel so nourishing. They offer love without ownership. Connection without obligation. Support without control.
Platonic love may not receive the same cultural attention as romantic love, but it is no less significant.
The friends who answer the phone, send the text, celebrate the win, sit with the grief, remember the dream, and stay present across the years are participating in one of the most beautiful forms of love available to us.
If you're fortunate enough to have those people in your life, tell them.
Friendship is not a consolation prize for romantic love.
It is a profound and valuable form of love all its own.
The Case for Stillness
Go, go, go. Do, do, do. Get, get, get.
That’s the energy most of us are conditioned in from birth.
Worth becomes productivity, and productivity becomes the measure of your value. If you do more, you are more. And if you aren’t striving… well, what are you even doing? Rest is something you earn, and only after you’ve done “all the work,” whatever that means.
This mindset was especially prevalent in my generation (Gen X) and remains a cornerstone of Western culture. At the same time, I’m beginning to notice small signs of a cultural shift, an increasing awareness of the cost of chronic hustle. The quiet but important questions: For what? For who? Who is actually benefiting from all this grinding and striving?
One of the many problems with this framework is that it’s deeply reductive, profoundly disembodied, and fundamentally misaligned with our wholeness. Over time, it leads to burnout, depression, and habits that numb us to the very disconnection we’re trying to outrun.
And perhaps most strikingly, this approach rarely delivers on what it promises.
Our mind–body systems are designed to move in rhythms and cycles. Sometimes that rhythm calls for effort, productivity, and forward motion. And sometimes it calls for slowing down, resting, reflecting—simply being. When we habitually override rest and slowness, we dysregulate our entire system. We lose access to meaning-making, emotional depth, and our capacity for connection, joy, wonder, and love.
This is where the magic of stillness lives.
Stillness asks nothing of you. There’s no striving, no destination, no achievement. There is only being here, now, noticing what is. That can feel deeply uncomfortable, threatening; especially if staying busy has been how you’ve survived.
The initial discomfort of stillness understandably sends many people rushing back into action.
But when stillness is practiced consistently, something shifts. Over time, your system recognizes it as a natural state. Relief emerges. You begin to feel into the fuller dimensions of who you are; separate from what you produce or accomplish. This is how we start to reclaim wholeness.
Winter, as a natural cycle, is an incredible teacher in developing a relationship with stillness. Winter embodies being rather than performing. It models quiet deepening, and restoration—not expansion, acceleration, or bloom. And perhaps most powerfully, winter reminds us how essential this rhythm is for growth itself.
Rest and reflection, when held in harmony with action and productivity, is the cycle that fuels inspiration, motivation, and meaningful engagement with the world.
So how do you begin a relationship with stillness?
Start by making peace with the fact that it will likely feel uncomfortable and maybe even pointless, at first. If you can stay with that discomfort and allow it to move through you (and it will), you’ll begin to sense the steady calm beneath all the noise.
Practically speaking, carve out 10–15 minutes a day to do nothing. (You already spend more time than that scrolling, so this isn’t about time.)
You might:
Sit and look out a window, just being.
Lie on the floor and follow the rhythm of your breath.
Stand outside and simply notice what it feels like to be in your body and with your surroundings.
Daily connection with stillness helps you recognize the cues your body is always offering. You begin to notice when you need rest, when you need a pause, and—just as importantly—when you feel genuinely ready to take action.
And yes, I hear you. The demands of life are real. Being overwhelmed and under-resourced is real.
And also, there are ways to honor your inner rhythm within the chaos of your current situation, even if it’s only 5 minutes.
It may not be perfect. It may not be ideal.
But it can be enough to reconnect you with more of who you truly are.
Year End Reflections - Emotional Agility Is The Move
So often we decide, “If I get it right, if I make the right choices, then I can lock in and ride out a good life”. If you sit back to reflect on that notion, there are so many issues with it…
First off, what does get it right mean?
Who determines what right choices are, and how are those right choices measured?
Is it determined by how comfortable we are?
Then there’s the issue with locking in and riding out; those states of being that don't really even exist. Life changes, we change, unexpected events happen, so there's no viable pathway to lock anything in.
And then finally, a good life, what the heck is that?
What your parents told you was a good life?
What the culture, your friends, the media told you was a good life?
And how is that even determined?
It’s understandable that we do this, our brains want certainty, thinking that translates to security. Who doesn’t want security? Security in your life is absolutely possible, but not by creating some external picture that you then try to control. Security develops on the inside, it’s a deep rootedness in knowing that however life twists and turns, whatever unexpected experiences or hoped for outcomes occur or don’t come to pass, you can trust in your ability to take care of yourself, your heart and to live into your values. That type of grounded relationship to your life and yourself is the cornerstone of security.
How do you begin to build that internal sense of security?
Two words, emotional agility.
This concept was developed by Dr. Susan David, a leading expert on emotional intelligence. She defines emotional agility as “The ability to navigate one’s emotions with flexibility, without ignoring them or letting them control you”. It is a practice of using your emotions as information to help guide you. When you develop skill in emotional agility you become able to adapt, to be curious, to be open to change; all skills that over time support you in living a life RICH and MEANINGFUL to YOU. You become less reactive, less rigid, less braced for the inevitable shoe to drop.
At year's end, I usually reflect on what I noticed, what I learned, what I unlearned, and how that matters to me and to the people around me both at work and at home. This year, I’ve witnessed myself make several decisions based on emotional agility both in my business and personal life. I moved offices and entered into a new type of business collaboration, I hired more clinicians, I began remodeling my outbuilding to move the practice to, I’ve expanded the services I offer to include retreats and held several of these groups at my home.
Each of these choices were connected to emotional agility. Most of them were never in “the plan”. I changed course because circumstances changed, and although several of these decisions were a bit scary, I am finding security inside myself, rather than trying to control the outcomes of these decisions. I’ve witnessed countless clients connect with deep meaning, deep joy and deep forgiveness through the practice of emotional agility. I’ve felt the freedom of the practice and I’ve watched others connect to freedom by letting go of what they were supposed to do and instead learned how to choose themselves through their values in whatever situation they found themselves in.
Emotional agility releases you from the nagging fear and anxiety centered in things needing to be a certain way, instead inviting you to explore what is happening, using curiosity to guide you through the situation. I don’t think we ever arrive at PERFECT emotional agility, nor do I think that’s the point. Developing this practice will, however, bring much more internal peace and security without resorting to avoidance, numbing, blame or control to gain what I like to call faux peace. It will bring excitement into your experience and it will reconnect you with mystery and possibility, all of which enriches your experience of this one beautiful life you are living and we are living alongside each other.
If you want to learn more about emotional agility, check out Dr. David’s book, titled unsurprisingly… Emotional Agility.
And if you are looking for a practical way to build a relationship with yourself and your life consider our month long Introduction to Journaling, an online experience that will support you in exploring several different approaches to journaling and guide you through exploring those approaches. We’ll also meet on zoom each week to process your experiences with the material. We start January 1, I sure hope to see you there.
Thank you for spending your valuable time reading these blogs I write and engaging with our social media, workshops and courses. I love my work and I hope it brings a little more clarity, support and hope to anyone who connects with it. I wish each of you a year that surprises you, delights you and opens you to the awareness that you are held in love exactly as you are.
This Is What I Discovered About Love This Year
We often talk about aspects of love when we say things like, “Love is kind, they did that for me because they love me, or even, if they loved me they wouldn’t… or shoudn’t… do something.” We talk about love in terms of patience, generosity, support, commitment, quality time, and understanding as much as we label behaviors and traits that we believe aren’t loving. Things like selfishness, dismissiveness, abrasiveness are commonly labeled as such.
This is what I discovered about love this year:
Love is so much more than any one aspect of it and so much more than the sum of all its parts.
It’s the life force that makes everything possible. And while those traits I mentioned are aspects of love, they aren’t synonyms for love. Love is ALL of these qualities and MORE, also existing in choices and decisions often perceived as unloving.
Every year on my birthday I pick a word to center on throughout the year, last year it was love. I spent the year noticing love, reflecting on love, getting curious about my own relationship with love and examining the impact of love in my life as well as the impact of love on others.
When I noticed loving behavior like courtesy, kindness, attentiveness, comfort, even acts involving uncomfortable honesty and fierce boundary setting, either demonstrated by me or others, I watched the impact. I noticed what happened inside me when I practiced those qualities or was on the receiving end of actions that seemed to be motivated by those traits.
The gentler expressions of love as you might imagine, left me with a felt sense of feeling seen, and valued. Acting in those ways toward others seemed to produce an inner calm, a quiet resonance. When those expressions were more fierce, more uncomfortable, I still witnessed and felt that quiet resonance underneath the discomfort.
As I continued to reflect on what I was noticing it seemed to me that those instances of loving action connected people to a knowing about love, almost like breadcrumbs along a path. Reminders of the power of love whether gentle or fierce.
But when I reflected on love as an energy that contained all of those qualities and more and looked at the impact on my life, I became acutely aware that when people showed up embodying love, not just expressing it, at various times in my life, it transformed me. It either changed the direction of my life, expanded my life exponentially or helped me discover myself on levels I know I wouldn’t have gone to, were it not for love inspiring me.
I discovered the practice of love is alchemical.
It made me think about a philosophical principle I read decades ago and wrestled with over many years before getting it, “what is TRULY loving for one in a situation is TRULY loving for all in that situation”.
When I first encountered that principle, it seemed ridiculously privileged. I kept turning it over and over in my mind, continuing to come back to the word TRULY… I began to believe that word is the most important in this principle.
We can say all kinds of things are loving, they may even be a part of love, or we may have rationalized that they are, but that doesn’t mean those actions are TRULY loving. I think the alchemical aspect of TRULY loving is an energy that comes from a deep knowing that no matter how uncomfortable I am in this situation I will live into my values as deeply as I can for myself and for the others involved.
When we do that we are often asked to stretch in uncomfortable ways. Sometimes we’re asked to inconvenience ourselves repeatedly, sometimes it asks us to say hard truths and make hard choices. Sometimes it means not saying what we really want to say or even saying something that we are uncomfortable saying, letting all the pieces of the puzzle go where they may. That’s when the alchemy happens, that's when you truly see love as a force that can’t help but transform, regardless of our opinions about the transformation.
Discovering that this year and understanding more deeply the impact of love as the most powerful force there is, has opened me to release more, to trust more, and to notice more, especially when I want to turn away. What a gift.
This year, I'll uphold this new tradition, eager to see how these insights into love shape my outlook and deepen my grasp of my chosen word for the year: connection.
Scrolling, The Near Enemy of Connection
In Buddhism there is the concept of near and far enemies related to what are considered the immeasurable qualities of a wise, open heart. These four immeasurable qualities are:
loving kindness
compassion
appreciative joy
and equanimity
As you might assume far enemies are the opposites of these qualities, cruelty is the far enemy of compassion and ill will is the far enemy of loving kindness. Near enemies however, are more nuanced, more challenging to recognize. They share some similarities with the quality but also key differences. So you can easily think you are possessing the quality, when in fact you are actually working against yourself in developing that specific quality.
For example, the near enemy of compassion is pity. Pity and compassion definitely include an acknowledgement of suffering and is often expressed in verbally similar ways with statements like "I'm really sorry that is happening to you.” The key difference is that in compassion there is no separateness, there is a recognition that we all suffer and we can find ourselves within the other’s suffering.
Pity is underpinned with separateness, and a sort of hierarchy that contains the idea that it may be happening to them but it couldn’t happen to me because _________.
Oftentimes people can confuse pity as compassion, when it is in fact an obstacle to true compassion which acknowledges suffering with empathy, a connection to the suffering and a desire to relieve it from a place of shared humanity. Pity, inferring separateness actually prevents the expression of compassion.
Although a profoundly useful lens in and of itself to apply to any self reflection practice, I started thinking about it in terms of our relationship with devices, the internet and social media…
Clearly, we can make a case that our relationship with it works against equanimity, a calmness of being, because it involves the near enemy of craving and aversion. We are often either craving it as a distraction or trying to avoid it because it is a distraction. I started thinking about it in terms of acting as a near enemy to well rounded living, to being, to connection.
How does it do that?
If I think about trends in my own algorithm, some frequent themes are funny dog videos, art, flower growing, yoga/meditation and psychology/philosophy centered content.
Umm, that seems pretty aligned with many of my professional and personal interests... So how is an aligned algorithm a potential near enemy to my actual relationship with these interests in my life?
If I’m watching tons of flower growing and arranging videos, my brain gets tricked into thinking I’m engaging in those activities, and although I may be learning, I’m not fully experiencing a relationship with the interest and that is the key difference. I can’t think of a single time when I’ve finished scrolling and felt satisfaction, contentment or fulfillment; I have often felt like I’ve eaten too much junk food.
When I am outside digging, planting, fertilizing or at the store buying varieties of seeds, I’m engaging with the whole experience AND the felt sense of the experience, the overwhelm, when I’m trying something new, the uncertainty when I’m making decisions, the excitement connected to both the process and the outcome and these are the dimensions of experience that our entire mind body system needs to feel alive and embodied.
Those full experiences are what allows us to derive meaning from the relationship to the interest, widening our world, deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us in a way that scrolling through videos can’t; because there's no application, no true connection.
Does that mean I can’t ever scroll? No, that would be aversion, another near enemy.
It means that the more I support myself in applying what I watch in connection to the experience or the hobby the more I’m in balance with both with my devices and in the practice of equanimity. I’m not craving or avoiding digital content, I’m mindfully engaging with it but investing most of my energy into the application and practice of those interests in my life.
I believe that using this lens to reflect on your relationship with digital content will also decrease the often accompanying self criticism about the overuse of your devices. Instead it can help you understand more about your interests, about what you may need more of in your life and a place to start engaging with those needs and experiences in your day to day life. Will that feel more uncomfortable and less pleasurable at first? Absolutely. Over time however, you will begin to notice that maybe you’re thinking about the interest more, maybe even looking forward to more engagement with it. That’s when you’ll feel it, the satisfaction and fulfillment of whole connection.
The Yin & Yang of Connection & Alonenss
I’m thrilled to notice the attention that connection is garnering, related to our mental health. It is true. We are relational beings and we need healthy consistent connections to not only survive but to also thrive. These connections feed our souls, hold our hearts and challenge our minds. A poverty of safe connections, especially over time, has an immense negative impact on a person’s sense of self and their ability to form and maintain safe relationships.
Yet, it is also true that we are living our lives alone, even if we are among others. Even when we feel seen and heard, valued and supported, we are the only ones inside our skin, having the experiences that we call our life. Existential philosophers like Kierkagaard and Sartre wrote extensively about these ideas in their works, generally saying that grappling with aloneness is an existential crisis all humans encounter.
Developing a strong conscious relationship with connection and aloneness cultivates a deeper awareness and trust in both ourselves and others; it becomes a guardrail to prevent veering off a cliff into hyper independence or faulty dependencies on other people or other things.
A few years ago, I experienced a family crisis and within 24 hours, a dear friend flew halfway across the country to be with me. She stood alongside me as I began to process the event and help my children absorb and process the event. She was with me at the start and end of each day for over a week. Her presence steadied me, comforted me and reminded me how we truly heal in relationship.
The day after she left, one of my sons had a sudden medical issue that necessitated immediate surgery. And I was alone. Not in every sense alone, there was hospital staff, and friends I was connecting with through text, but in the surgical waiting area at 1am, it was me and a sea of empty chairs. It was a sobering moment that felt like an opportunity to explore the hidden potential of aloneness in part, because of the stark contrast from the week before, when I felt seen, supported and held. So I sat with it, just like I invite my clients to do. I found it within my body; where that aloneness lived and how it communicated with me. I got curious about it and asked what it wanted me to know.
The answers weren’t deeply profound, or surprising. Instead, they were more intimate and grounding. Intimate because in my aloneness, I reconnected with the felt sense awareness that being alone, experiencing my unique life from my perspective, in that moment, felt sacred, like something to privately honor. Even though I was there physically with my son, he was experiencing the surgery alone and even though I had friends checking in; I was physically alone experiencing this event as his parent.
It felt grounding because even in the physical absence of people that love me and can support me, I felt their emotional presence, I felt all the love and support that they have poured into me. Also connecting to those truths, opened me to the sacred space available to me in that moment. The aloneness became centering; I could hear myself and I could listen. I could stay focused on his needs and I could trust the staff to do their jobs while I advocated for him.
I wonder how that experience may have been different if I had “gone into my head” and spun a narrative of isolation as opposed to being curious about the aloneness? I wonder what other choices I may have made if I needed to “get away” from the discomfort, if I had in various ways either abandoned myself or him or both of us in the experience?
What I do know is that the choices I did make, connected me more deeply to myself, more deeply to him (he recovered well) and more deeply to other relationships in my life. That feels like a conscious harmonizing of connection and aloneness, like the perfect salty and sweet snack.
Honoring the importance of safe connection while also honoring the sacred reality of aloneness feels like the harmonizing balance of yin and yang. Both are important - distinct in their value, yet together creating a grounding, steadying foundation. May each of you reclaim and reconnect to the beauty of safe connection and the hallowed ground of conscious aloneness in your own life.
2023 In Review Using GLAD
Arriving at the end of another year invites us to focus on introspection and self reflection.
Rhythms and cycles are woven into every aspect of our lives, from the automatic rhythm of our breath as we inhale and exhale, to the continuous cycles of the sun, the moon and the seasons. We spend our lives entwined in these patterns, many times not exploring the power of consciously partnering with them. (And yes, this might be a teaser of a project I’m working on).
Using the end of a calendar year to reflect on your experiences of yourself and your life, the patterns, structure, choices and results, is a powerful tool for partnering with the ending and beginning of a new yearly cycle. It can also be an overwhelming exercise to consider, with thoughts similar to, “How do I review a whole year? I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning.” Finding a manageable and meaningful way to begin a self reflection process can be challenging.
2023 was a transformational year for me, and even though I have developed introspective and self reflective practices for decades, I was finding that reflecting on my year in a meaningful way felt TOUGH. I kept listing events and experiences, which was helpful in acknowledging the content of the year but it wasn’t supporting my goal to find meaning.
So I pulled out an OLD mindfulness tool; one I included in the first workshop I created years ago, Mindfulness 101. The exercise is called GLAD and is significantly beneficial for general mood management and specifically depressive tendencies. The exercise as originally intended suggests that you acknowledge;
One small experience you are GRATEFUL for that day
One small thing that you LEARNED that day
One small ACCOMPLISHMENT for that day
And one small DELIGHT you experienced that day.
It’s effective when practiced consistently because it broadens your perception of your experience and opens you to notice daily experiences that bring meaning and purpose to your life. I decided to adapt it as a way to reflect on my year. I stayed with the basic approach and allowed myself to be flexible about how I described each category. If I wanted to add it more for each or wanted to summarize a category by describing a theme, then I did that. Here’s a bit of what I came up with.
This year, what I am grateful for is the grounded awareness that I can trust myself to live within my values, even when it is painful to do so. That doesn't mean I make “right” decisions, rather it means that I can trust myself to both be responsible for the decisions I make and change course when my values indicate that I need to. The grounded awareness of that trust has liberated me to take more risks and to be more vulnerable, trusting myself to care for myself no matter what the outcome.
This year, I learned that the love we offer ourselves and others as well as the love that is offered to us, is what can make the difference between surviving unexpected challenges and losses and learning, growing and thriving through those same difficulties. Love as a force, filled in the gaps when I reached my capacity, it lightened my load when I could hold no more, it witnessed with kind compassion, my grief and it preserved my connection to hope.
This year I accomplished a business restructuring to align with my current needs and I was able to make real progress on a decades long whisper in my heart, what I’ve come to refer to as a heart seed, this seed was planted during 2023 and is currently growing. It has stretched me and unsettled me and excited me. As all heart centered pursuits tend to do.
This year I delighted in gathering my first crop of dahlia seeds from my own harvest. I delighted in a few spontaneous and fun trips that made my belly ache from laughing and my feet hurt from dancing. And I delighted in a few new relationships I cultivated this year that reawakened some dormant, neglected aspects of myself that I deeply love.
If you are looking to start a relationship or perhaps deepen your relationship with New Year’s reflection, using GLAD can support you in both broadening your perspective on your year while also helping you to find meaning in your experiences this year.
Looking ahead to what is beginning; in 2024 I’m looking forward to offering a 4 part talk series aligned with each season, the first, Harnessing the Power of Winter Stillness will be offered sometime in late January. Details about the event and how to sign up are on the way!
I’m also looking forward to so many additional creative projects both within the practice and in my personal life, and as always, I’m looking forward to walking alongside many of you as you rediscover your voice and reclaim the power of using it in support of all your selves, past, present and future.
I wish each of you a new year filled with deep authentic connection to yourself and others and real moments of joy as you continue discovering and rediscovering how beautiful you are in mind body and spirit.
Relay Race Wisdom, a metaphor for intergenerational family patterns
One of my favorite activities growing up, in track and field as well as competitive swimming was the relay race.
I loved it because I had an individual stake in how our team performed AND it wasn’t just on me, there were three other team members that were also stakeholders in our overall performance; shared risk and shared victory or sometimes defeat. I can still feel the jittery excitement of that baton hitting my hand as I was starting to run and the momentum of diving off the starting block when my teammate touched the pool wall.
Because of the running and swimming events I participated in, I was often third or fourth in the lineup, so by the time it was my turn, I had some information about how we were doing and what I needed to do in my leg of the race for our team. Sometimes that meant I needed to dig deep and run/swim at the top of my skill level, sometimes that meant I had the opportunity to run/swim in my comfort zone and sometimes it meant I needed to run/swim beyond what I was consciously aware that I could do.
Family patterns across generations can be explored from a similar lens.
We are each responsible for our unique adult life AND how we experience our unique life is also connected to the folks that came before us, how they were raised, the social conditioning that influenced them, the specific aspects of identity that marginalized them and privileged them and the trauma they experienced, witnessed or were raised with.
Those factors impact not only what we each see as possible for our lives; they also impact how we see ourselves, how we think about ourselves and how we process our challenges, our opportunities and our environment in general. We can’t truly experience ourselves and our life in isolation and those folks who raised us and the folks that raised and influenced them aren’t totally responsible for our lives either.
It’s a team effort, another both/and. We both have the responsibility of creating a life that makes sense to us AND that life is influenced by those that came before us and are around us.
Doing the work to understand that shared responsibility supports us in consciously creating our lives which involves making decisions that align with our values, our hope and our dreams.
I’m at the point in my family’s evolution where I can start to evaluate how I’ve shown up “in my leg of the race”. I can see where I’ve made up some ground from the team mates before me and I’m starting to see the challenges and opportunities my children have in their own “legs of the race” because of who they are and because of how they’ve been influenced by me and other family members.
Taking responsibility in this way, I believe, continues to hold us accountable for our decisions and invites us to stay in relationship with ourselves gently and compassionately; we aren’t in charge of the whole team, just our part.
We're Moving!
We’re moving!
It’s true… after 9 years in our current location, we’ve decided it’s time to move.
Change can be exciting and scary. Leaving behind the memories we’ve built with each of you in this beautiful space, feels sad and yet, I’m also grateful to be able to hold those memories in my heart no matter where the practice moves. Because at its core, the healing community AS&A has built over the last 9 years here, is created and sustained, not so much by our physical location, but more from the energy and shared healing intentions of us as your providers and each of you as our clients.
So… the details!
We are still going to be downtown, I’m a downtown girl at heart so we’re staying in The Burg.
We’re moving to 826A Caroline St. on the third floor, above Juan More Taco and beside Fredericksburg Cupcake. Y’all have been telling me for years you often go to Carl’s after therapy, now you’ve got cupcakes and tacos right next door! The move is scheduled for October 8, so your appointments scheduled the week of October 11-14 will be at the new location.
We’ll be sure to send reminders to you in your client portal as the move approaches.
I look forward to creating new healing memories together in our new space!
The Process of Change
The process of change.
February 4th marks my 33rd sobriety anniversary, so I’ve been thinking about the concept and process of change in our lives. When I stopped drinking, a relationship that simultaneously functioned as a lifeline and a nuclear bomb in my life; I began the process of one of the most monumental changes in my life. That decision to change and the process of implementing that change has shaped the rest of my life, arguably more than any other single decision or change has, since then. Sobriety has transformed my relationship with myself and my relationships with others, as well as my world view, my aspirations, my values and my actions.
And WOW, so often, learning how to live sober felt overwhelming, uncertain, confusing, sad and yet other times the process felt exhilarating, relieving, hope filled and adventurous. Which I’ve come to understand through my work and my life is the true gift change can sometimes offer us. It can invite us into the unknown to fuel hope and possibility, to learn new ways of understanding ourselves and our lives and to unlearn what isn’t helpful to us or isn’t in alignment with our values and beliefs (both of which evolve across our lives).
If change can do all this wonderful stuff for us, why do we resist it so much? And is there anything we can practice to reduce the resistance to change so we can learn to partner with it?
The reasons we resist change are many and varied, and definitely a topic to be covered in future blogs. For this blog, to understand the process of change, it's useful enough to accept the notion that we tend to resist change. And yes, there are plenty of tools we can use to reduce the resistance to change in our lives. Below are 5 tools for you to use and get you started:
For additional tools you can use to reduce the resistance to change check out our Mindfulness 101 Online Course.
Notice when the resistance shows up, with curiosity.
Often, resistance shows up as limited or fear based thinking, in the present, future based or both.
Validate whatever you are feeling with statements like, “it makes sense I’m confused, change can be disruptive”. Or “It’s ok to not have all the answers, I can just do what's in front of me right now”.
Find support beams.
This consists of people who CAN BE emotionally supportive and people who demonstrate they can give you support. If you don’t have those relationships in your life right now, that’s ok too. I’ve been there. That’s when books, podcasts, videos, creativity, nature and spiritual practices can function as support beams.
Use beginner's mind.
Beginner’s mind is one of the most powerful mindfulness attitudes you can cultivate. By allowing yourself to be in a present moment without rushing to “know what’s going to happen”, you open up to what Dr. Dan Siegal calls the Plane of Possibility, a perspective that allows new insights, new outcomes and innovative problem solving.
Offer yourself compassion.
Especially when you’re in the messy middle of the change process. Insta snaps are just that, they aren’t reflective of the awkward, clumsy experience of change.
Are you looking for additional tools to reduce the resistance to change in your life?
Mindfulness 101 Online Course equips you with additional mindfulness based tools to help you reduce your resistance to change.
You can start using these mindfulness based tools today to empower you as you embrace the change in your life. Get the Mindfulness 101 Online Course below:
Do you want to be more present in your daily life, be able to shake off the distractions that weigh you down? Unlearn anxious patterns that restrict your connection to yourself and others?
Mindfulness 101 Online Course is designed to empower you with mindfulness tools and practices to increase your presence in your daily life, to support more focus, and to successfully shake off distractions and anxious thoughts patterns that weigh you down.
Filled with video lessons, audio meditations, an eBook FULL of reflection prompts and weekly mindfulness practices. PLUS bonus info… You are able to complete this online course from the comfort of your own home, your favorite coffee shop, or even as you are traveling!
In this course, you’ll receive:
Over 90 minutes of video instruction from me
Over 80 minutes of guided meditations to deepen the learning in each module
4 shorter guided mindful meditation practices
Several mindfulness based practices
Reflection questions and weekly ideas to make mindfulness a daily part of your mental health toolkit
With this course, you are given an eBook that gives you access to all of the modules, videos, and audio meditations, enabling you to set your own schedule with this course and complete it at your pace.
Start living your life more Mindfully today with the Mindfulness 101 Online Course.
Mindful Movement
This week I wanted to take some time to talk with you all about one of the most important things in my life: mindful movement. In order to fully understand mindful movement it's important to first reflect on your own life and needs, and how you can first begin to incorporate movement from there. Many of us at some point in our lives have heard about the positive benefits of incorporating exercise or physical activity into your routine. These positive benefits include things such as improving your sleep, giving you more energy, maintaining a healthy weight, strengthening your muscles, and keeping your heart healthy. But beyond these physical benefits, regular activity can also have an immediate positive impact on your brain health in a multitude of ways.
Reduces Anxiety
Each time you engage your body in physical movement you are releasing several beneficial neurotransmitters into your brain including dopamine (increases feelings of pleasure), norepinephrine (increases blood flow and provides energy), serotonin (stabilizes mood and promotes feelings of wellbeing and happiness), and acetylcholine (plays an essential role in alertness, attention, learning, and memory). Together all of these chemicals have been proven to work together to decrease feelings of anxiety and depression.
Improves Focus and Concentration
Julia Basso and Wendy Suzuki conducted a recent study which showed that a single workout can have an immediate benefit of an improved ability to shift and focus attention as well as improving your reaction speed. They recommended the best exercises to create this effect are cardiovascular exercises that elevate your heart rate such as taking a long walk, running, swimming, cycling, or jumping rope.
Promotes Brain Cell Growth
One of the most significant benefits of exercise is the promotion of neurogenesis, or the birth of new brain cells. More specifically physical activity has been shown to catalyze the creation of new brain cells in your hippocampus, the part of your brain which works towards memory formation and storage. This is essential to improving cognitive function. Physical exercise has also been shown to improve the health and function of the synapses between neurons in your hippocampus, which allows your brain cells to communicate more effectively and efficiently.
Protects Your Brain Against Neurodegenerative Disease
In addition to aiding in the growth of brain cells within your hippocampus, regular exercise can also promote the growth of your prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain which is implicated in a variety of complex behaviors, including planning, and greatly contributes to personality development. Both your prefrontal cortex and your hippocampus are the parts of your brain which are susceptible to neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. So, similarly to muscles in your body the bigger it becomes, the stronger it gets. Now by no means will exercise cure or prevent the onset of a neurodegenerative disease, but consistent physical activity has been shown to reduce or delay its onset. Think of it like an insurance policy for your brain!
All of these things are great reasons to start working towards incorporating physical activity into your daily life. However, exercise also creates a unique opportunity to practice mindfulness. For me exercise is a great outlet to release pent up stress or frustrations, but even more important for me is it creates an opportunity to feel connected with my own body. Each day that I go to the gym I focus on a specific group of muscles and while working out I pay particular attention to how those muscles are feeling. I may notice small pains in certain areas which gives me a sign that that spot may need more of a rest or focused stretching. Or maybe I notice certain muscles are not struggling with certain exercises as they did a couple of weeks prior, which provides me with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Ultimately, being mindful of the way my body is moving and feeling during exercise helps provide me with a sense of overall holistic peace.
If going to the gym and lifting weights isn’t your thing, Tai Chi, Yoga, and Qiong are great alternatives to help introduce mindful movement into your life. Tai Chi is a healing and meditative practice that combines martial art movement with Qi (energy circulation), breathing, and stretching techniques. This practice consists of a series of graceful movements with deep and slow diaphragmatic breathings performed while standing. Practicing Tai Chi has been shown to have both physical and psychosocial benefits for many different populations. Yoga, a mind-body exercise, involves a combination of muscular activity and an internally directed mindful focus on awareness of the self, the breath, and energy. This practice integrates an individual's physical, mental, and spiritual components to improve physical and mental health, particularly stress related illnesses. Yoga provides a unique opportunity for people to practice grounded mindfulness by fostering a deep connection with your breathing while also improving your vagal tone, an unconscious activity in your brain which regulates your calming and connecting response. Qigong exercise, similar to Tai Chi, consists of a series of breath practices with body movement and meditation to attain deep focus and relaxed state. Simply speaking, Qigong exercise is practiced/used to cultivate the balance and harmony of vital energy in the human body.
Another form of mindfulness that you can do during physical activity can be thought examination. When doing a long-form or repetitive exercise like walking, running, swimming, or riding a stationary bike, something where you can allow your physical awareness to take a bit of a back seat, pay close attention to the thoughts or feelings that arise during this. A mentor of mine in grad school spoke on how she would start each of her days with mindful movement journaling. At the start of each day, she would go for a brisk walk and allow her mind to wander towards whatever it was naturally drawn to. Then once she returned home, she would journal about those thoughts and emotions, which helped her start each day with a feeling of mental clarity.
Exercise can be a daunting thing to incorporate in your life’s schedule, especially if it is something that is new to you, so remember not to be too hard on yourself or create too much pressure. Additionally, it is important to mention that exercise can be potentially triggering for some folks, so make sure to check in any professional you may be seeing before making any lifestyle changes. You don’t have to adopt a professional athlete’s regimen to achieve the benefits from this blog. Any consistent movement that is an outlet for your energy and makes you feel good at the end of the day will only provide positive benefits for you!
Appreciation & Gratitude
As the practice’s theme this month is appreciation, I want to take this opportunity to dive deeper into the concept of appreciation, as well as how it intersects with gratitude. Appreciation involves the awareness, recognition, enjoyment, and full sensory understanding of the positive value of something or someone. This definition shows how important mindfulness is when practicing appreciation, because in order to have a full sensory understanding of why you appreciate the value of something, you need to be mindfully present. Appreciation is a skill set that is developed with practice.
Although gratitude and appreciation are often used synonymously, there are differences between the two terms. One of the most defining characteristics of appreciation is that it is a mindful action, felt in your body with sensory awareness. Appreciation is connected to sounds, smells, things we see that we find pleasurable, and the practice of appreciation connects us with this sensory data in our body. Gratitude is a perceptual habit built on the felt sense of appreciation, when practicing gratitude, you are connecting with the felt sense awareness of appreciation in your body and utilizing that to “think” about how to perceive your experience with a grateful lens.
When beginning to develop a conscious relationship with appreciation a great place to start is self-appreciation. If you find that it can be difficult to cultivate appreciation for others, part of that may be due to the need for cultivating self-appreciation. So often appreciation and gratitude are talked about in the context of feeling positive in regard to someone else, or something someone does for you, but those same principles can be applied to yourself. An exercise that can help begin the path of self-appreciation is when you find yourself with a moment to think at the end of the day, ask yourself, “What do I feel proud of today?” and “How do I experience the felt sense of that pride in my body? Is it warm? Tingly? Where is the warmth?”. Just like self-appreciation, appreciation of others is practiced similarly. Allow yourself some time to think of an event that day involving someone else like, a family member helping with the cooking that day, a friend buying you coffee, or even the bus arriving on time. These are all great calls to cultivate a sense of appreciation. Focus on the sensations of the appreciation, using sight, sound, smell, taste and touch as your guide. Appreciation of others can also be practiced by making it a priority to acknowledge when you feel appreciative of someone in the moment. It is important to remember that this action is a parallel to the personal appreciation exercises in that, highlighting specifics of why you are feeling that appreciation will help foster a deeper and more meaningful relationship with that person.
By regularly practicing appreciation you are allowing yourself to become more connected with what fuels gratitude. Because, once you have a felt sense of appreciation in your body, you can use that to consciously develop the mental habit of using a gratitude framework to pair appreciation with your perception of your experiences, both positive and challenging. Improved understanding of mindful appreciation also benefits your ability to stay connected in the present moment, even in discomfort. When you practice maintaining awareness of what you appreciate in your life you are also building a framework for your brain to stay in the moment and increasing your distress tolerance skills, which can also foster gratitude. Practicing appreciation and developing your understanding of gratitude not only yields benefits of positive feelings and increased optimism within yourself and others, but also has several health enhancing impacts on your mental health as well. Additional benefits related to practicing appreciation include reduced stress levels, increased life satisfaction, lowers the chance of experiencing burnout, improved sleep, lowers levels of cellular inflammation, improves resiliency, increased prosocial behaviors, strengthens relationships, and encourages the development of patience, humility, and wisdom. Ultimately, continuing to develop a conscious connection with appreciation will build a bridge to the practice of gratitude; which can measurably improve your relationship with yourself, your life and with other people.
Morning & Night Routines; A Support Beam for Mental Health & Wellness
Although we are all still living within a worldwide pandemic filled with uncertainty, many of us are starting to take those first steps towards regaining a new sense of “normalcy” in our lives again. Developing a predictable rhythm while also living within fluid and ambiguous circumstances can help you find solace, comfort, and structure. A great starting point for you in establishing this predictable rhythm is developing a morning routine.
Creating a consistent morning routine may sound daunting, but it does not need to be over complicated and can be as simple as waking up with your alarm, making some breakfast and coffee, brushing your teeth, and maybe going on a morning walk. If you feel able to include more activities in your morning routine, other pieces to consider can include going to the gym, meditating, making your bed, prayer, journaling, or cleaning around the house. Any task or action that will make you feel in the driver’s seat of the day is a great addition to a morning routine.
One of the best parts about developing a morning routine for yourself is that there are no guidelines to follow or expectations to meet, you can tailor it to fit whatever your needs and lifestyle preferences are. The only essential factors to consider are having a routine which will benefit you for the rest of the day and maintaining consistency in that chosen routine.
If this is an unfamiliar process to you, it is important to be kind to yourself while developing and fine tuning this rhythm. Everyone stumbles when trying to create change in their life, what’s important to remember is that you are doing what you can to create positive change and structure in your life. An easy trick that I like to use is writing down what your morning routine will be so after each action you take you can cross that piece off the list. Even if it is for something as simple as waking up on time, crossing it off a to do list will help reinforce that you're taking positive steps in the right direction.
Once you are able to develop and enact a plan that works for you, you will begin to experience the many benefits that come alongside a morning routine, such as:
Improved physical and mental wellbeing
Enhanced levels of productivity
A more positive mood throughout the day
Elevated sense of self-belief
Reduced mental fatigue and stress
It’s important to consider that the morning isn’t the only time of day where you can establish structure and predictability; an evening schedule is equally beneficial for your wellbeing. If you think of your morning routine as a set of actions to set you up for success throughout the day, an evening routine is a set of actions to help you unwind from the stress or effort the day may have exacted from you; the front and back covers of the book of self-care.
Similarly, to the morning routine, your evening routine can be whatever you make of it. Anything that will help you unwind or feel at ease are great things to include in your nighttime rituals. For me personally, I start my evening routine after I finish dinner at around 8pm or so. After this I start with a pleasure activity such as watching some television, practicing music, playing some video games, or cooking some tasty food if I need to prep some meals for later in the week. Once I’ve set aside some time for a little bit of fun, I may do some light cleaning around the house to make sure that my environment has the right structure to begin the next day while also reflecting on my day as a whole to create a sense of pride in my personal accomplishments. Then to close out the day I’ll go through my skin care routine, brush my teeth, and listen to a podcast or some relaxing music before hitting the lights and going to bed.
Although that routine is more specific to my life and needs, you can take what pieces of that structure resonate with you and apply them to your own life as a starting point. As I said before there aren’t any exact rules you have to follow when making your routine, it's just a collection of actions to help you unwind and ease into the end of the day.
While it may be difficult to explore, one potential part of an evening routine that is worth consideration is making sure you avoid screen time on your phone, laptop, etc. One immediate benefit of this is that it will help your eyes and brain unwind and promote a healthier night’s sleep. Another important aspect of this is that for many of us (myself included) our electronics are tethers to our work and the outside world around us. Allowing yourself time to feel removed from those pressures and expectations can help you recharge and mindfully connect to your work, family or friends the next day.
Beyond helping you relax at the end of the day; an evening routine can help you with:
Creating an improved sense of achievement throughout the day
Setting a goal to look forward to after a hard day’s work
Lowered stress
Improved sleep
Feeling more well-rested
Remember, if you feel that your new routine is starting to become overwhelming or too much to consistently do, you have the power to dial it back and change it up to reflect your needs. The purpose is to consciously invest in yourself first thing and last thing every day. Over time this investment will increase your sense of trust, your confidence and your ability to access joy, even in uncertainty.
- Eli Mick, MSW
Mindset Obstacles to Rest & Play
When I was in graduate school pursuing my masters degree in clinical social work, I was also working, doing a field placement for my degree and raising two small kids on my own. Needless to say, my plate was OVER FULL. Many times I would find myself overwhelmed with papers due and exhausted.
At those intersections, I'd often share with my then partner about how tired I was and how I “needed to just pull another all nighter and get through it,” that I “couldn’t afford the time to sleep.” He’d very kindly and gently remind me in those moments that when I supported myself in getting a full, restful night’s sleep I’d often wake up with an intuitive approach to a paper or project and more energy and focus to get it done.
Even though there was a part of me that knew this was true, that understood why it was true, I still often resisted his suggestion. My resistant thoughts usually took the form of “I’m behind where I should be in my life, so I can’t” or “As long as I have papers and projects due, I shouldn’t rest or play.” I could only consider those as options when all “my stuff” was done.
Of course, none of that is rational or reasonable, but it sure did feel challenging to choose to care for myself, to choose a good night’s sleep, to choose an afternoon of fun when my kids were gone and I was off work, because well, that was prime no distraction time. Inevitably, I regretted the times I pushed myself too hard and appreciated when I allowed moments and pockets of rest and enjoyment because they replenished my spirit and restored my focus.
As I dug deeper into that mindset I realized it was based in worth, and specifically a hierarchy of worth. If I could demonstrate that I was worthy, ie, I had all my ducks in a straight row, then I deserved rest and fun, if I didn’t have those ducks lined up, no rest or fun for me. It was a sophisticated system of denying my humanity and fusing my worth with productivity, which is a recipe for loneliness and burnout. At the core, it was a conditional relationship with worthiness, or what Brene Brown means when she says, “We are hustling for our worthiness.”
Rest and play are essential aspects of our lives. When we rest, our minds and bodies detox and refuel, our body literally takes out the cellular “trash” and works to optimize our system for the next day. Similarly, our brains consolidate memories and learning, offload stress and repair important structures and functions.
When we allow ourselves to have fun, we diminish our allostatic load, a fancy way of saying we reduce our stress quite a bit. When we are laughing and doing activities we enjoy, alone and with others, we connect to our creativity, we broaden our lens of possibility and we reinforce hope.
So how can you begin to open up to a deeper relationship with rest and play?
Start by noticing and identifying the resistant thoughts about rest and enjoyment in your life. As you begin to notice them, a theme will likely emerge. Common themes are worthiness and belonging. We aren’t worthy so we don’t deserve a break or we are inherently damaged so we don’t belong to the group who can rest and enjoy life. Sometimes both themes appear, or other themes similar in nature arise.
Once you have insight into the theme of resistance you can mindfully reframe your thoughts and develop baby step action plans. For example, if the theme is centered in your unworthiness a resistant thought may be something like; I still have important work on my to-do list so I can’t take a break. In that moment, breathe and kindly shift that thought to something like; resting is important and allows me to replenish my energy, there will always be important things on my to-do list. This type of reframe works because it doesn’t ignore that you have competing priorities to manage. It acknowledges the importance of prioritizing rest to SUPPORT you in navigating your other priorities.
Additionally, taking a baby step approach toward rest and play helps you to manage the inherent discomfort involved in changing patterns. We feel comfort in the familiar so small incremental changes can often feel more manageable.
Allowing yourself 30 minutes to chat with a treasured friend, choosing a 15 minute break for some herbal tea, watching the movie you’ve been wanting to see for “awhile now”, are steps that allow you to practice choosing rest and play without experiencing overwhelming stress and anxiety. Over time you can build your rest and play muscles up to increase the time and opportunities to benefit from these restorative practices until they become a part of each day and a consistent practice that affirms you are enough exactly as you are, you are worthy of fun and rest and you belong.
Emotional Intelligence, Change, & Staying The Same Walked Into A Bar...
What a difference a year (or TEN) makes…
AND, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
This month marks just over one year's time frame of the COVID global pandemic’s devastating impact on our country and local community. It also marks the 10 year anniversary of Alison Sullivan and Associates. This past year has been, by far the most challenging in our 10 year history, from EVERY perspective, as a small business owner, as a mental health clinician, and as a person. I’ve learned more about how to pivot, to innovate, to let go, to surrender, to grieve, to rest, to dig deep, to protect and to heal in this past year than probably the last 10 combined. As I’m sure many of you have.
So, yes indeed, what a difference a year makes.
I feel like, as a business, in relationship to COVID, we are restabilizing, restoring, recreating and expanding. I know that I am really aware of applying all that I’ve transformed in the past year to bring more knowledge, understanding, discernment and love to what I do moving forward in this new world we live in.
At the same time, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Specifically, what I mean, is that the more seemingly unique challenges I face, as a person or business owner, the more I understand that emotional intelligence is a HUGE factor in whether I develop more resiliency in the face of the challenges.
Research continues to show that Emotional intelligence (EQ) helps you to acknowledge and process emotions without allowing them to hijack your life and your other relationships. EQ helps you to navigate conflict in ways that actually improve relationships and enables you to understand others’ feelings while you set boundaries with empathy to create a space for healing safe connection. It releases you from the pain of trauma bonds, codependency and the drama cycle, all of which impair your ability to truly connect with yourself and others.
Sounds great right?
There are 5 primary domains of EQ; self awareness, self regulation, self motivation, empathy and managing conflict.
Self awareness comprises three aspects. Emotional awareness is knowing what you are feeling and being able to label it accurately. Self assessment is being able to understand your strengths, weaknesses and how you are showing up in interactions. Confidence is the attitude of believing in your ability to learn, grow, understand and master.
Self regulation, as its name implies is about the ability to notice what you are feeling AND managing the flow of that energy reducing the likelihood of impulsivity, blaming and deflecting. This skill is particularly powerful in helping us develop shame resilience.
Self motivation is harnessing the force that influences you to take action. For many people external factors such as approval from others, acceptance, acknowledgement, form the bulk of motivation. Self motivation includes intrinsic motivation, the ability to understand and know who you are so that your choices align with your beliefs, values and goals. Of course we need belonging with others, but often we sacrifice internal belonging for external acceptance and that pattern can cause a lot of difficulties.
Empathy, the fourth EQ domain, is an actual magic wand in life. When we view ourselves through a compassionate, non judgemental lens and offer that same lens to others it fosters a deep sense of being seen, heard and valued both within yourself and in your relationships with others.
Lastly, managing conflict, is about being able to navigate your interpersonal interactions with others in an attuned manner (based on the other 4 skills) to honor diversity, utilize flexibility and adaptability to evolve and solve the issues that arise when we try to live alongside other people.
All this month we are highlighting each of these domains throughout our social media and on our podcast. If EQ is something you are looking to develop in your life then we’ve got you. Give us a follow on our social media and we look forward to meeting you along the way of our shared journey to more connection and deeper belonging to ourselves and others.
10 Thoughts About 10 Years As A Psychotherapist
1. There is NO fixed destination.
People often look for a final destination, an ultimate arrival, as a business owner, a professional, an adult or in any perceptual lens or role you use to examine your life. Instead of a fixed destination, there is a never ending unfolding that happens, each milestone, accomplishment or insight opens you up to more. More learning, more opportunities for understanding, creating and experiencing.
2. Trust the process.
This is especially relevant when it seems most risky to do just that. Growth requires you to let go of who you were and open toward what you are not yet. When that process is gaining momentum, it often feels like “everything is going wrong” and this “change process was a bad idea”. If you stay the course, instead what happens is you awaken to new energy, new hope and new opportunities that were never possible before.
3. The things that pull at your heart are important and you need to listen to the wisdom of their messages.
When you turn away from those heartfelt questions and yearnings it disconnects you from joy; when you open to them you develop an abiding intimacy within yourself that fosters adventure and meaning.
4. Shame has the most destructive potential I’ve ever witnessed.
It hijacks connection. It can destroy love. It can justify violence. And it can actively harm everyone in its wake. The antidote to that destructive potential is;
5. Honoring your story, every bit of it, with compassion and acceptance.
That is the closest thing to a magic wand of healing there is. It disarms the power of shame by affirming your inherent worth and dignity.
6. There is NO ONE RIGHT WAY to build a life.
That notion is a powerful root of anxiety because the uncertainty involved in making a decision and plotting a course is difficult to tolerate. So, we look for a “right” way, we foster unhealthy dependencies on parents, on friends, on partners. We stay too long where we no longer fit and we shrink from where we can expand into, all in an effort to avoid the distress of uncertainty.
7. When you continue pursuing the calls of your heart, it all is worthwhile.
You do that by leaning into the limitless possibilities and tolerating the risks with making decisions. That process IS the gateway to understanding that all choices have meaning, all twists and turns have value.
8. Bad things happen to good people because life isn’t fair.
Pressuring yourself and others to subscribe to harmful platitudes like “everything happens for a reason” or “God never gives you more than you can handle” is an attempt to avert grief. Many beautiful souls have been hindered and held back by trauma, their resiliency is awe inspiring but THE TRAUMA DID NOT make them stronger or better. Their spirit, their support and often privileges inherent in our institutions and cultural norms have helped people to overcome trauma.
9. None of us are truly free to live our “best” lives until all of us are free to equitably pursue our “best” lives.
This is a concept Americans are deeply at odds with. Our rugged individualism often used as a means of masking inequitable systems, interferes with the universal truth that none of us are truly independent. We are interdependent, and when we can understand the importance of that without it threatening our individual identities, we will transform our systems so that all of us can be free.
10. You are enough. You are worth the effort. You matter.
What Does Support Look Like, Sound Like, Smell Like & Feel Like?
What does support look like, sound like, smell like and feel like?
This is a sensory based question I often ask my clients, because it moves them out of their head and into their body, into the felt sense of support. Typically, it takes them a minute or two, and even some additional guided inquiry by me to begin to open up to that part of knowing. It’s usually there, within them, they just haven’t yet acquainted themselves with it. Uncovering a felt sense of support is powerful because it can help you to recognize care, help and protection in your body before your mind catches up and creates a thought about your experience. The sensory data arrives first and when you que yourself to consciously connect with the sensory data you calibrate your guidance system in accessing support more attuned to your real time needs.
Here is a guided visualization exercise to assist you in developing a connection to your felt sense of support. All you need to begin is a quiet comfortable place where you can be undisturbed for 15 minutes and a little bit of willingness.
1. Find a comfortable seated or lying down position and begin to connect with your body by noticing your breath. Notice each inhalation and each exhalation. Notice the rhythm and process of how your breath moves and lives within you.
2. After a few moments of noticing, allow yourself to remember a time you felt support, support you offered yourself, or maybe support offered to you by someone else. The picture may even be an imagined experience of support, whatever arrives is enough and even just right to use for this exercise.
3. Now drop into your senses; what is the smell or smells in this experience of support? Is it related to food? A place? How does the support in this experience sound? Does it sound like music? A comforting voice? Sounds of nature? Really open to whatever those smells and sounds are and where you experience the sensations associated with those sounds and smells in your body. Next notice what you see? Notice the colors, textures and sizes of the scenery. What is touching you? Even what are you tasting? Follow the same process as above, not only noticing those aspects of sensory information but also noticing how you feel and where you feel that in your body.
4. Next allow yourself to use your breath to breathe in the felt sense of support, expand it as you deepen your inhalation and release any resistance to it with each exhalation. Spend at least a few minutes practicing this, until it feels less awkward and more natural to expand the sense of receiving support throughout your body.
5. Wrap up the visualization exercise by spending a moment in appreciation of the time and effort you just spent in embodying an experience of support. Affirm your intention to remain open to noticing the felt sense of support in your daily life.
Practicing simple visualization exercises like the one above, expands your ability to learn, how you respond to support, what support you may need in various situations and how to benefit more deeply from the felt sense of support.
Do You Have A Generous Mindset?
Do you have a generous mindset?
And really, does it even matter if you do?
Typically, generosity is thought of as how much are you directly giving to others in money and time. Are you donating to causes that you care about? Are you helping a friend by offering your time to listen or to help out with a specific task? If you answered yes to those, then you probably consider yourself to be generous.
...Is that the same as having a generous mindset though?
What I’m referencing as a generous mindset is a little deeper and less concrete (surprising coming from me, right?!) While a generous mindset may include giving financial assistance or giving your time to someone you care about, it's also about the lens or perspective you are applying to yourself and others’ in the experiences you find yourself in. A generous mindset is the framing you place around something or someone. This framing can take the shape of judgement, criticism, opposition, generosity, acceptance, understanding and empathy. It can also vary depending on who’s involved and what the circumstance is at the moment.
A generous mindset matters because it assists you in cultivating safe connection with yourself and others. Giving yourself and others the benefit of the doubt or generosity of intent allows you to stay present, reducing a fight or flight response and increasing empathy, compassion and curiosity, all of which are correlated with resiliency and general satisfaction levels in relationships. So in short, we want a generous mindset; it’s a valuable approach to life and relationships.
How exactly can you figure out what mindset is your default and how to develop more of a generous mindset. I’m going to outline a few key strategies to start you on your way to more generosity for yourself and those around you so you can begin experiencing a deeper connection both with yourself and with others:
Notice key internal dialogue phrases in response to unexpected outcomes? These may be phrases like “Of course she didn't follow through”(insert an eye roll with this one) or “Something probably came up, I’ll check in with her about my offer later”. These thoughts, when approached with curiosity can reveal habits of mindset.
Notice the stories you tell yourself to fill in the blanks as a situation is unfolding. These take the form of “He did that because he doesn’t care about me” or “I’m not sure why he did that but wow, that hurt” Noticing how you fill in the blanks, assigning intent to others actions is a wellspring of important information about your perceptual habits.
Notice if your internal dialogue and the stories you create disconnect you from yourself and others or help you to stay present and curious?
If you notice that your mindset tends toward judgement and criticism you can move toward a more generous mindset by:
Practicing acceptance and compassion. When you notice a mistake or misstep by you or someone else, substitute the fault finding and judgement “Everyone makes mistakes, how can I support myself or them in managing this”.
Responding with open curiosity, as opposed to assigning malicious intent when you notice you are offended by someone's words or actions, for example “I wonder what they are trying to communicate, let me follow up with them so we don’t create a misunderstanding.”
Considering how good you feel when you show up for others that matter to you and extend that opportunity to those around you that are emotionally available. If you are the type of person that instead finds themselves thinking thoughts like, “No one can help me, they don’t care” or “I don’t want to bother them with my needs”.
Learning to cultivate a generous mindset toward yourself and others allows you to deepen the joy you experience in connection not only with yourself but within ALL of your relationships. A generous mindset supports healthy communication, it helps to resolve conflicts and it improves our sense of deep belonging, all of which serve as protective factors for our mental and physical health.