I know you don't feel like it but......

Avoidance!  It's something we all do now and again, but some of us do it more than others.  Like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, we ignore important things because..... well we just don't want to deal with that right now.  And "that" is feeling overwhelmed or afraid or disappointed in ourselves.  Think about it.  What do we most often avoid?  Exercise?  Looking at our finances?  Talking to our significant others?  Talking to our boss?  That big project at work or school?

We avoid when we feel overwhelmed or when we don't like the potential outcome of a situation.  Or when we feel like we don't have much control of a situation.  Or when we don't feel very prepared.  It's a stall tactic that allows us to push away something big that we are not quite sure how to handle.  It's a coping skill left over from childhood.  If we ignored something we didn't like, it would go away or someone else would take care of it.  But we're adults now right?  And if we ignore things, they don't get better and they rarely just go away.

You see avoidance itself sets us up for future failure.  When we avoid doing something complicated or unpleasant, we lose out on valuable skills we could be learning such a problem solving and negotiation.  We also don't learn how to tolerate discomfort.  Did you know that in recent studies more people would choose death than to sit for an hour alone with themselves?  They're avoiding alone time in order to avoid having to take stock of their lives and who they've become.  And to add injury to insult, that avoidance behavior actually increases our anxiety.  We know way back in the back of our brains that the issue is still there.  That we still haven't had that conversation or taken care of that important task.  The only way to stop the worry is to deal with the situation at hand.  So what to do?

First, break up a big project into smaller pieces.  There's no need to attack it all at once.  In fact, write it down on paper - make a plan for yourself that you can stick with and just start at step one.  You can also visualize a time when you handled other big projects or difficult discussions and things went well.  Get help from someone you trust who can talk you through things or hold you accountable when you can't trust yourself to do that.  There are many ways to face the things that make you uncomfortable and when it's over, you can relax and feel good in knowing you at least learned something new.

When you need to break up with your break-up.

Have you ever been dumped and then found yourself obsessing about your former love?  Break-ups are known to be difficult, but in some cases it can turn a normally reasonable person into a veritable basket case.  What gives?  

Take my friend Paul for instance.  He was dating this girl Sharon for about two years and things were going great - or at least he thought so.  They went out often, shared an apartment together - even had a dog!  Then wham!  Out of the blue, she dumps him.  Paul looks like he’s been hit by a truck.  He’s got dark circles under the eyes from no sleep.  He’s constantly checking his phone and email for messages from Sharon.  He sends her messages daily even though he gets no response.  He stops eating and hanging out with his friends.  It’s almost like she died.  And for Paul, that analogy is not that far off.

You see, no one likes rejection.  It hits that little panic button in all of our brains that make us wonder if we just lost “the one” and will never be happy again.  Turns out, that reaction is hard-wired into our brains.  We’re social creatures after all and the thought that we might get left all alone in the world can be devastating, threatening our very survival.  

On another level, love is like a drug - literally!  A Rutgers University anthropologist, Helen Fisher, took brain scans of people who were recently dumped and found that the same parts of the brain associated with addiction, reward and motivation were lit up like a christmas tree.  This suggests that love itself can be addictive and that losing love can put us into love withdrawal.  And its key symptoms appear to be anxiety and obsession.  And while for most of us, we go through our few weeks long mourning period and get back on the horse, some folks fall into a pit of despair that may require help to climb out of.  

The key seems to lie on our early childhood past.  Particularly our relationships with our parents.  When a child grows up in a home where they feel securely loved by their parents, they tend to have an easier time with break-ups later on.  But for those who had a less secure attachment to their parents, break-ups tend to be fraught with more anxiety and obsessive thoughts.  

Additionally, people who have a lower sense of self-worth may also struggle with getting over a break-up.  A 2011 study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found the more a person’s sense of self-worth was tied to their relationships, the more suffering they felt when the relationship ended.  A person’s sense of self-worth develops over their lifetime based on their life experiences.  When a person has negative experiences that leave behind negative beliefs, great damage can be done to their sense of self-worth.  

So what can you do if you find yourself struggling at the end of a relationship?  First, try to reconnect with yourself.  It may be time to discover (or rediscover) things about yourself such as ‘who am I?’ and ‘What are my goals?’  Next, be sure to break all ties with your former lover.  Stop writing, calling and texting them.  It may be difficult at first, but the longer you can go without contact, the easier it will be to heal in the future.  After that, start forcing yourself to get out and have some fun.  Reconnect with your friends and family or find a new hobby to enjoy!  If those things don’t work, it may be a good idea to seek out professional help, especially if you’re feeling depressed or are finding it too difficult to take care of yourself.  A professional can help you resolve the past experiences that may be at the root of what you are feeling and help you move on.  

Why Talking To Yourself is Good For You

Do you talk to yourself?  Do you talk to yourself out loud or just inside your head?  Have you ever paid attention to the words you use when you do?  Are they words that lift you up or put you down?  It turns out, your self-talk has a great impact on your daily life.  In fact, recent studies have shown that how you talk to yourself has an enormous impact on how successful you are.

When you talk to yourself, do you use pronouns or your own name?  Well, it turns out that talking to yourself in the third person can have major benefits.  Using the third person can free your brain to perform at its best.  It does this by allowing you to put some distance between yourself and the activities you want to perform.  It can even act like a switch to turn off anxiety and fear.

Self-talk starts when we're children.  It's how we learn.  Have you ever watched a 5-year-old playing with a complicated toy?  Have you noticed how the child will talk him or herself through their game? Those are the beginnings of a person's internal voice.  When we hear words of encouragement, we can internalize them and then use them on ourselves.  Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that self-talk "transforms tasks" and "allows us to put to use the knowledge gained from our elders."  The words we learn in childhood influence more than just the language centers of our brains.  Words also influence our emotional development and our memories.

This can be a positive or negative turn of events for us.  When we are encouraged and praised, we incorporate the positive words we hear into our beings and act accordingly.  The same goes for negative experiences.  When a child is put down or insulted, those words are also internalized and can become the seeds for a lifetime of negative self-talk - influencing that child's life for years to come.

The good news is there is an easy work around to that problem.  It turns out that when we replace the pronouns "I" and "me" in our self-talk, our brains respond and become calmer and more efficient - and so do we.  In her article The Voice of Reason in Psychology Today, Pamela Weintraub noted that first-name self-talk shifts the focus away from the self and allows people to transcend their inherent egocentrism.  In other words, it helps us take ourselves out of the problem.  It allows us to see the bigger picture.  In conclusion, change a word and you can change your brain.

For EMDR therapists like myself, this information is not surprising.  It is the reason that when we ask a person to recall a negative memory we also ask them to tell us the negative belief they have that goes with the memory.  In essence, we're asking about your self-talk.  These beliefs are essential to identifying memories that need to undergo reprocessing, because they lead back to those early childhood events that created the negative self-talk in the first place.

And you will notice that after your EMDR therapist requests your negative belief, they follow it up by asking what positive belief you would rather have.  This positive statement is then installed through eye movements so that it will become your positive self-talk in the future.  It primes your brain to access positive statements when a similar event presents itself to you in the future.  So, change your words, and change your brain.

Feel Good About Feeling Bad

     People come into therapy for many reasons, but underlying those reasons is usually an emotion of some sort.  In fact, it's a specific kind of emotion because let's face it, no one sees a therapist because they're feeling happy and well-adjusted.  We come to therapy because we feel depressed or anxious or unworthy or dejected.  We come to therapy to get rid of the emotions we deem to be negative.  But are they really?

    I would say that emotions are just emotions.  They are temporary states that clue us in to what is going on in our lives.  And I would say the reason one emotion is thought of as positive and another negative is a result of our culture.  In America, we're told (or sold) the idea that we are supposed to always be happy.  The fact that we're not allows companies to sell us things to help us achieve happiness.  But happiness, like all other emotions, is a temporary state.

   Our emotions developed over eons of human history.  Their purpose is to provide the motivation and perception needed to interact with others and survive in our environment.  Therefore, all of our emotions, including the negative ones, are essential to our lives.  So it's not that we have these emotions that is the problem, it's what we choose to do with them.

    Take anger for instance.  It can be destructive or productive depending on its user.  It can destroy us or motivate us depending on our perception of ourselves.  Anger tells us that all is not right in our world.  It helps us avoid being exploited or undervalued and it can put power back in our hands.  It calls on us to take some kind of action and prevents stagnation.

    Shame, guilt and embarrassment teach us it may be time to look inward.  Yes, they're uncomfortable feelings because looking clearly at oneself is inherently uncomfortable.  These are feelings that are often the result of us doing something we shouldn't have done.  Without these feelings, who would ever learn from their mistakes?

   So maybe it's time to embrace your emotions and take the time to hear what they're trying to teach you.  Maybe it's time to forgive yourself for feeling what humans are supposed to feel?

It's that celebration time of year again!

It’s that time of year again.  A time of saying good-bye to old experiences and saying hello to the new.  It’s the time of year that embodies all the symbols of springtime that we love - starting something new, rebirth, transformation.  It’s graduation time and will soon be the peak of wedding season.  With that in mind, it’s a good time to talk about the factors that will set us up for success. 

Weddings and graduations are both times of great optimism.  Just think about the speeches given at each event.  They’re full of hope and wishes for greatness.  So much so, that they can leave us feeling like these events are supposed to be the happiest, most important events of our lives.  So how do we make the most of them?

The first thing is to reduce the pressure on yourself.  True, these are some of the biggest milestones of a person’s life, but you are not defined by a single day.  Instead, these events symbolize the hard work you have already put in with graduation representing your scholastic achievements and a wedding symbolizing your ability to commit to a grown up relationship.  Too often, these events get reduced to the “perfect” dress or cake or venue.  Studies show that people who just roll with it and look to enjoy themselves will have more fun and a better longterm outcome.  In fact, one study by two psychologists with the National Marriage Project showed that the most successful couples focused on celebrating their nuptials with the most people, focusing on fun and joining their guests for a good time.   

Associate professor of psychology, Jaime Kurtz of James Madison University believes that focusing on activities that take you out of your own head enhances your enjoyment of these events.  For example, spending the majority of time on the dance floor with your family and friends or telling spontaneous stories about your experiences in school.  

It’s also not about the dough!  In fact, studies by economists have shown that the less a couple spends on a wedding, the higher their chances of a happy marriage.  The study report that those who spend more than $20,000 on their wedding were 32% more likely to get divorced.  

Bottom line, we remember experiences far more than pomp and circumstance.  So perhaps the best way to embody rebirth and transformation is to honor the path you took to get to this moment and share your gratitude with those who helped you get there.      

A Little Bit About Myself

Hi there! Welcome to the Forward Recovery blog. Some people know I’ve been around a while. I started up my practice shortly after beginning my post masters internship almost 3 years ago. Now that I’m fully licensed and completed my training, I have decided to relaunch my practice. I got an awesome new office:

And I’ve rolled out a new website.  And now you can even log into my online portal for scheduling and journaling and all kinds of great stuff.  I am even launching a brand new endeavor – corporate mental health coaching.  I will get into more of that in a minute.

I want to share a little bit of my story first – my journey to becoming a therapist and coach.  It started out several years ago when I was working at a Tampa law office.  What I will say about that is it wasn’t for me.  Perhaps it was the style of the firm, I don’t know, but I felt dirty doing the work.  It seemed our job was to try to prevent people who had gotten hurt from getting the help they needed.  My particular job was to type correspondence.  So imagine daily typing letter after letter of ways our firm could justify keeping a person who was injured from getting medical care or money for daily living.  I realized early into that position that I would rather be helping people.  So, I went back to school and got my mental health counseling degree.

Now becoming a licensed counselor is a long process.  It starts with the degree, which includes a year-long internship.  It took me a while to find a position.  I ended up at a substance abuse clinic working in their court-ordered program.  I remember feeling a bit nervous about working with addicts.  I didn’t know what to expect and I had actually seen myself being more of a marriage counselor or helping out families.  I guess it’s like most people in a medical-type field – the specialty finds you, you don’t find it.  But I worried about this experience.  See, I had a picture in my mind of what my clients would be like and I am still amazed today at how wrong I was.  I thought they would be rough and aggressive and dirty.  I worried about whether I would have to deal with violence.  None of that proved true.  In fact, to this day the people I met and helped have my total admiration and respect.  After the first day, my first group, I knew this is where I was supposed to be.  I learned that people in recovery have a lot of courage and generosity.  I learned that if you show them you expect good things from them and prove to them that you support them, they can change their whole lives around.  But what I also learned early on was I needed better skills.  I learned addiction is not its own disease, but is often a symptom of a traumatic past.

After my internship and graduation, I got to work with an amazing counselor who taught me about EMDR.  For the next two years, I worked to learn how to do this amazing style of therapy.  EMDR helps people get past negative experiences that are preventing them from functioning in a healthy way in the present.  It’s the piece that I feel is often missing in traditional substance abuse treatment.  I have used this therapy to help people in recovery, people who are transitioning out of prison, people who have struggled with low-self esteem for years and years, people who were sexually and physically abused.  Later, I trained in a variation of EMDR that can help reduce or eliminate cravings for addictive substances and behaviors.

My favorite thing about being a counselor and coach is watching people change.  Sometimes the change is small and hardly noticeable by others, but I always see it.  I also believe this journey has helped me grow as a person.  I am more grateful for my family, which has always provided me with support and unconditional love.  I am less judgmental, as I know the stories behind some of the strange and destructive behaviors I have seen in my clients.  I am more at peace with myself, as I have learned that we’re all just trying to survive our lives the best way we can.  Anyway,  Welcome to Forward Recovery and I hope to see you soon!