Resolutions for Emotional Success

     Happy New Year!  Did you make any New Year’s resolutions?  I suggest looking back at this past year and evaluating what went well for you and what did not.  I don’t mean that you like or don’t like how events turned out; for example, this is not about the great job promotion or the terrible vacation.  I mean take a look at how you felt, coped, and behaved this past year.  What moments or events of this past year challenged you?  How did you deal with them?  What thoughts and emotions impacted you the most?  Perhaps start with those questions.  We learn about ourselves when we honestly evaluate and compare both what we consider our successes and what we consider our not-successes.

     Let me get more specific about how I define success.  When you felt sad or emotionally hurt, did you recognize those feelings?  Did you acknowledge their existence?  Did you express them in a healthy way such as crying, talking about them, or journaling them?  Did you answer ‘yes’ to any of those questions?  Success!  We don’t like to feel sad or admit to being emotionally hurt.  The reality

is we do go through these emotions and experiences.  We cannot avoid them.  It’s all part of being human.  You are successful when you recognize, name, and acknowledge your feelings.  You are successful when you express them in a healthy and constructive way.  That’s self-awareness and honesty, and that’s genuine success.

     I’m guessing you answered ‘no’ to at least one of the questions in the previous paragraph.  Here’s where the honest evaluation part becomes essential.  If you answered ‘no’ to one or more of those questions, then . . . Success!  You’re giving yourself an honest evaluation.  That is definitely success.  Honest evaluation is not at all about finding ways to judge ourselves or be hard on ourselves or find fault with ourselves.  Honest evaluation is about looking at where we need to grow or improve, so we can then take the steps to do the growing and improving.  A ‘no’ answer to a question in the previous paragraph means you're ready for the next level of honest evaluation:  how did you react, what emotions did you experience, and what thoughts did you have.  Use the new self-awareness you gain from this honest evaluation to create your resolutions for growth and improvement.  This sets you up for greater success in the New Year. 

     Did you catch all 4 of my challenges to you?  My first challenge to you is to honestly evaluate how you define success.  Success is not about having what we consider a great outcome; we control very little of that.  You are successful when you recognize, name, and acknowledge your feelings.  You are successful when you express them in a healthy and constructive way.  Those are things we can learn and are within our ability to control.  My second challenge to you is to honestly evaluate this past year using this definition of success.  My third challenge to you is to see there is success in simply accomplishing the honest evaluation and that it’s not about judgment or finding fault.  My fourth challenge to you is to use your new self-awareness from the honest evaluation to create your New Year’s resolutions, so you set yourself up for greater success in the New Year.  Success!  You just helped me create one of my New Year’s resolutions:  Blog more.  Happy New Year!

     If your situation seems more complicated, consider contacting a mental health professional, such as me.  You'll be amazed at what a difference it can make.

The ABCs of G-R-I-E-F

I am grieving.  I’m sure you know what that’s like.  You may not have recently experienced the death of a loved one as I did, but you have a sense of what I’m going through.  There are really two parts to any "death", be it the death of a dream, a relationship, a loved one, or anything else of significance.  There’s the "loss", and there’s the "grief".  Loss is an event, or a change, or what’s missing.  Grief is a set of emotional reactions.  Loss is describable; grief … not so much. 

Loss has many forms.  Let’s use the example of a job change.  Even if the job change is desired, there may be loss of income, loss of a nice commute, loss of friendships with coworkers, loss of important benefits, loss of a comfortable routine, loss of a predictable schedule, loss of security, and so on.  The losses are defined by the person experiencing them, and no one else.  Person A who has a job change may not mind at all that the commute to the new job is longer; while Person B hates driving, so a longer commute is a hardship.  It’s personal.  In my case, I feel strongly the loss of the enormous and uplifting presence this patriarch of our family had.  Not everyone in my family feels his death in this same way.  And that’s OK.

Grief is the set of emotions evoked by the losses.  If there’s no sense of loss, then there’s no grief.  Grief is a process and a journey.  It is individual, takes time, is unpredictable, and surprising.  The intensity of one's grief is influenced by the significance, meaning, and importance attached to the loss.  So, just like loss, grief is personal.  Though similar in many ways, mine is different from yours.  And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

To help someone going through this, all you have to do is: 

Listen,

Open up your heart,

Value their perspective, and

Ensure their basic needs are met. 

When someone is grieving, let them grieve, let them feel, let them talk, let them be silent.  Resist the temptation to cheer them up.  That temptation often comes from our own discomfort.  This is the time to be sensitive to their needs, so ask them what they need.  Also, please make sure the grieving are eating and attending to other basic life necessities; and only the basic necessities.  When deeply grieving, we Americans have a tendency to want to do too much and take care of everyone else.  We do this to avoid our painful feelings.  The only way to cope with grief is to let it happen.  Remember, it doesn't last forever.

Here’s what to do when the loss is yours:

Give it time and Go with the flow.  Grief is a process and a journey, not an event.

Rest and Rely on others to assist in the most basic tasks of daily living.  You may find every day tasks to be more challenging; that's normal. 

Identify the specific losses you feel and learn what matters most to you.  This helps the healing process.

Embrace opportunities with safe, non-judging people to pour out your heart; and find one or more you can call in the middle of the night.  You don't have to go through this alone.

Free yourself to Feel whatever comes your way and whenever it comes your way.  It’s your journey, not anyone else’s.  Remember, it doesn't last forever.

If you want to help someone who is grieving, L-O-V-E them.  If it’s you who is on this journey, let the G-R-I-E-F happen.

If your losses seem to keep piling up or your grief seems more complicated, then consider contacting a mental health professional, such as me.  You'll be amazed at what a difference it can make.

Love and Acceptance as Part of the Search for Identity and Purpose

This is the second blog in a series of blogs about the lessons within one of my favorite children’s stories, the fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen.  If you are unfamiliar with this story, you can catch up by reading the first blog in this series, "Testing the Labels and Other Truths about Self Discovery".

Just like all of us, the ugly duckling in our story was looking for love and acceptance.  More profoundly, he was engaging in a very human struggle … he was searching for his identity and purpose.  Love, acceptance, identity, and purpose are interconnected and core to living a fulfilling life. 

What are those concepts, really?  Let’s start with love.  We think we know what love is all about.  The families and others we grow up with do their best to love us.  That love is often flawed and may even change based on someone’s definition of “good” or “bad” behavior.   Movies and broadcast shows are full of romanticized events and emotional connections they call love.  Those usually come with betrayals, insecurity, dishonesty, and unhappiness.  I believe those definitions and examples of love are confused.  What does our story tell us about love?

The ugly duckling’s mother loved him.  What evidence do we have?  She accepted him as her own and nurtured him even though he didn’t look like her other ducklings; he was bigger, taller, and less attractive.  She looked after him and did her best to protect him.  With the bullying, she was outnumbered and outsized.  As an aside, I just had a picture in my head of this mother duck squawking at and scolding a huge cow who is slowly chewing a wad of grass bigger than she is!  But back to the story.

Remember: love, acceptance, identity and purpose are interconnected.  With the mother duck’s love, we also see acceptance because she did not judge her ugly duckling.  She didn’t care that he was bigger or taller or less attractive.  Those are simply comparisons; they are not absolute truths.   In her world, he was hers, and that’s all that mattered.   She was clear on his identity; he’s a duck.  She was clear on his purpose; to do duck things.  Why wasn’t that enough for our ugly duckling?  Because someone else cannot define our identity and purpose; they may shape, influence, or contribute, but they cannot define.  In our story, the mother duck believing an identity and purpose for the ugly duckling did not make it true for him.  My guess is her love and acceptance gave the ugly duckling the courage and strength to venture into the bigger world to look for greater acceptance along with identity and purpose.  That’s what a pure, healthy love does for us. 

What about acceptance?  We look for acceptance for who we are and what we are and everything about us.  Why do we need that?  We long to relax and simply be ourselves.  We don’t want to “walk on eggshells” around others.  (That’s a little joke.  Get it?  Eggshells?  He came from an egg?  I thought it was funny).  When he left the barnyard, the ugly duckling encountered many other situations and animals.  He only found acceptance when he connected with the swans.  Do you remember what happened?   They were excited to see him, and he didn’t know why.  They warmly welcomed him, and he didn’t know why.  It was only after he looked down and saw his reflection in the pond that he finally understood; he is one of them.  He found his acceptance and with that came his identity and purpose.

This story uses the ugly duckling’s physical appearance as a metaphor, not as the point of the story.  True love, acceptance, identity, and purpose have little to do with our physical appearance.  They have to do with our hearts and inner selves.  Also, it’s not quite as clear cut for us as it is for our ugly duckling/beautiful swan.  Still, the lessons apply to us. 

There is a common philosophy that says we have to love ourselves and accept ourselves.  This philosophy advocates we don’t need anyone else for that.  I don’t agree.  We can’t know what truly loving ourselves means until we’ve experienced it through someone else.  We can’t distinguish acceptance from giving up until we’ve felt real acceptance from someone else.  We need others to shape, influence, and contribute to our search for identity and purpose.  None of these significant and core aspects of being human come from only ourselves.

As the ugly duckling learned, we find pure and true love and acceptance as well as identity and purpose through healthy relationships.  We can’t do it on our own.  We are not built to do it on our own.  As our ugly duckling found, this search and journey is worth taking.  The rewards outweigh the risks.

If you'd like help with your search for love, acceptance, identity, and purpose, consider contacting a mental health professional, such as me.  You'll be amazed at what a difference it can make.