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.

Testing the Labels and Other Truths about Self Discovery

I love good stories.  Some of the best stories are written for children.  They are wonderfully simple and deeply complex at the same time.  This is the first blog in a series of blogs about the lessons within one of my favorite children’s stories.

Are you familiar with the children’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen?  It’s about a mother duck with several baby ducks who live together on a farm with many other animals.  One of her babies is larger, taller, and isn’t cute like the others.  They call him the “ugly duckling”, and he’s bullied by all the other animals.  The mother duck tries to protect her ugly duckling, but he’s shy and scared so runs away.  Everywhere he goes, the animals he meets don’t know what to do with him.  None ever saw a duckling as large and tall as he or as un-cute.  He ends up far from the farm, lonely, scared, and homeless.  One day, the ugly duckling sees several swans fly by.  He had never seen swans before.  They are beautiful, graceful, large, and strong.  The sight of them makes his heart beat faster, and he can’t take his eyes off them until they are far, far away.

Many long and lonely months go by.  One day, the scared ugly duckling spots several swans nearby on a lovely pond.  He hides in the tall grasses and watches as they gently and gracefully swim through the water as if floating above it.  The ugly duckling builds up all his courage and decides to swim over to them.  He’s eager to see these beautiful creatures up close.  As they see him coming, the swans seem to be thrilled and excited and quickly swim over to meet him!  When they reach the ugly duckling, they happily welcome him and are kind and gentle to him.  The ugly duckling doesn’t understand why these beautiful swans are so nice to him; no one has ever treated him that way before.  Feeling uncomfortable with all the attention, he hangs his head and tries to hide under his wing.  As he’s looking down, he sees his own reflection in the pond.  He can’t believe what he sees!  He doesn’t see an ugly duckling at all.  He sees he is a beautiful, graceful, large and strong swan himself.  He was never an ugly duckling. 

While there are many life lessons woven throughout this wonderful story, this is what I believe to be the most important:  Find the TRUTH about Yourself

The mother duck and baby ducks thought they knew the truth about the large, tall, not so cute creature.  When they labeled him an “ugly duckling”, they were wrong.  They didn’t know what a baby swan looked like so spoke from what they believed about themselves.  Instead of love and compassion, the animals chose the path of bullying to deal with this different creature.  The “ugly duckling” didn’t know he was really a baby swan, so he believed the defeating and limiting labels given him.  We humans do the same thing.  We believe defeating and limiting labels others give us: not good enough, unlovable, never amount to anything, ugly.  Defeating and limiting labels don’t have to define you.  Test those labels. 

• Look at who is labeling you.  If the person doesn’t know much about you, then the defeating and limiting labels are probably more about them.  By definition, bullies want to tear you down in an attempt to feel good about themselves.  It’s not about you at all.  It’s not the truth.
• Surround yourself with people who build you up.  People who spend time with you, laugh with you, and listen to you are people who want the best for you.  Hang onto what they say about you, and put many of these people in your life.
• Reduce your time with people who tear you down.  Sometimes, we can’t avoid people who tear us down:  maybe it’s family, classmates, co-workers, or neighbors.  There are ways to deal with these people.  Choose carefully when to be around them, and learn to kindly say ‘no’.  Decide in advance how to gracefully excuse yourself from their presence; and allow yourself to take a break from them whenever you need to.  The truth is there are people we must exclude from our lives because they are poisonous to us, even if they are family.  Build up the emotional strength to do so with compassion.
• Be aware of believing defeating and limiting labels.  Pay attention to how you talk to and feel about yourself.  Be mindful of any defeating and limiting labels, and correct them.  When you are unsure, talk to the people who really know you and want the best for you.  Ask for honesty and truth.

In our story, sadly, the “ugly duckling” had to remove himself from the only family he knew because they tore him down.  He didn't have my blog to help him, so he didn't know how to test the defeating and limiting labels.  He finally found a group of animals who built him up ... the swans.  Only then, did he realize he was never an ugly duckling, and he is a beautiful swan!

Test the labels.  Find your truth and your inner swan-ness!

If you'd like help with getting rid of defeating and limiting labels or with finding your truth, consider contacting a mental health professional, such as me.  You'll be amazed at what a difference it can make.

The Psychological Relationship Between Apples and Oranges

You know the difference between an apple and an orange, right?  They are nothing alike other than being roundish and fruits.  They are different in color, texture, taste, and aroma. Let’s say I desperately want to eat an orange.  Every time I think about it, my mouth waters.  So I go into the kitchen, and I find ... an apple.  I pick up the apple and eagerly bite into it waiting for the sweet orange juices to fill my mouth.  It doesn’t happen; it’s crunchy!  I suddenly realize this is not an orange.  I’m angry now.  I spit out the bite of apple and start yelling at it.  Why aren’t you an orange!  I told you I wanted an orange!  If you cared about me, you’d be an orange!

That sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?  Why would anyone get mad at an apple for not being an orange?  Guess what ... we do exactly that in our relationships.  We want our special person to be, well, an orange when they’re really an apple.  We expect different behavior, reactions, words than our special person has consistently given and shown.  And then, we get angry at them for not behaving they way we want them to. So how do we deal with apple versus orange issues in our special relationships?  We look at choices that are within our ability to make, such as these: 

• Maybe we accept our apple for the apple they are; love and appreciate them for what they bring to the relationship as an apple.
• Maybe we decide an apple doesn’t fit into our lives right now, and gracefully end the relationship.
• Maybe we lovingly talk to our special apple person about behaving a bit more like an orange.  We don’t know what changes a person may be willing to make for the sake of the relationship until we honestly and compassionately ask them. 
• Maybe we change our own behavior to be a bit more like an apple. 

We can only change ourselves: our expectations, our perceptions, the people we choose to have around us.  

If you'd like some help with your relationships, consider contacting a mental health professional, such as me.  You'll be amazed at what a difference it can make.

Tips to Stress Less

S = Slow Down!  Not everything is top priority.  Drop some things off the list; it’s ok.  On purpose, slow your movements and speech.  You’ll be amazed at how calming that is. 

T = Take a Break!  It’s not selfish; it’s self care.  You are more important than your tasks.  Take that walk, read that book, hold hands with a loved one, go to a movie, go out with friends.  Schedule fun into your life.

R = Refocus onto Relationships!  Tasks aren’t what make life rewarding; relationships are.  Use activities as a way to have fun with those who matter to you.  Take advantage of being in the car with the kids or partner and talk; share the events of each other’s day.  Call a friend just because.

E = Eat Something Healthy!  Stress uses up vital nutrients in our bodies, so make sure you are replacing them daily.  Oh, and a little bit of quality chocolate is not a bad thing.

S = Sleep Well!  Have a regular bedtime and routine. That signals your brain to prepare for sleep.  When you get up, look at the sun; that signals your brain to get ready to work.

S = Seek Help!  Don’t even try to do it all on your own.  Your friends, family, and neighbors would probably love to help out and are waiting for you to ask . . . so ask. 

We all have stress.  It's a part of life.  However, too much stress suffocates and destroys. 

If that’s you or if feeling overwhelmed has become your “normal”, then consider contacting a mental health professional, such as me, to help you find better ways to cope.  You’ll be amazed at what a difference it can make.