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Tuesday, April 10, 2012
New York Times Article on Marriage: Follow this link to read a wonderful article on how to survive what you fear the most in your relationship.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
New Research on Emotions and the Heart from HeartMath
The Institute of HeartMath is at the leading edge of research on the electromagnetic field of the human heart and emotional energetics. Follow this link to get an understanding of how the electromagnetic field of our hearts affects our environment and how our thoughts and emotions affect that field. What does this mean for you: for your life, health, and relationships? What does it mean for the world?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyfm5_LLxow&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyfm5_LLxow&feature=youtu.be
Saturday, January 14, 2012
What Holds Us Back in Therapy and Personal Growth and How to Overcome it.
As a contemplative psychotherapist, I know that within each of us there is a brilliant sanity that exists unconditionally and that everything can be turned around. Not one of us is beyond hope. Yet most of us have been conditioned by society and our culture in such a way that we develop some pretty thick armor that can make us resistant to change in certain predictable ways. Here is my current list.
- Identifying with the problem or with your history. Perhaps you are a survivor of a particular type of trauma. To what degree do you now think of yourself as being a survivor of trauma? Do you feel obliged to tell new acquaintances that this is who you are? Perhaps you have been experiencing depression or anxiety. Do you label yourself as a ‘depressed person’? Overcome by: Getting clear about who you are. You are vastly more than your problem or your history. You may have been affected by trauma or depression or addiction, but it does not define your essence.
- Holding on to rigid beliefs and unexamined thoughts. Sometimes I hear someone say “well it runs in my family, this is how we are.” Of course, we are all products of our conditioning. This is a good reason to come to therapy: to get free of conditioning. Don’t let anyone tell you change is not possible. Or someone might be absolutely convinced he/she is unworthy of success, or love, or happiness. Overcome by: Questioning your thoughts, beliefs, judgments. Cognitive therapy and the work of Byron Katie offer valuable skills.
- Being afraid to feel. We have all been conditioned to hide, deny, and get rid of our tender feelings. Perhaps you have the fear of appearing weak or helpless if you show feelings to others. Many of us are terrified of feeling emotions so strong that we might loose control and be carried away in the torrent. As children we were often made wrong or even punished when we were angry or scared. Overcome by: Learning how to mindfully experience emotions: Just notice them, let them be there, gently dialogue with them, feel their presence in your body. Resist the desire to explain them or push them away.
- Holding unrealistic expectations of yourself, others, or of life. In Buddhist philosophy there are three marks of existence: suffering, impermanence, and egolessness. Yet most of us have been conditioned to expect a happy ever after life and relationships with the perfect man or woman of our dreams (who will always be that way). We are convinced that others are living this happy dream that somehow eludes us. Overcome by: Get real! Obviously we are not here to have perfect pain-free lives. Life is messy. This does not mean we can’t be happy. Happiness comes when we fall in love with life just as it IS (not as it isn’t); and with ourselves and others just as we are.
Is Solution-Focused Brief Therapy for You?
You have probably heard the expression "What we focus on becomes stronger." The theory behind Solution Based Therapy (SBT) is that focusing on what we want, rather than what we don't want, can help change old patterns of behavior and free-up energy for our full participation in life. When working with SBT, psychotherapy clients focus on strengths rather than on weaknesses; the present rather than the past.
As a mindfulness-based psychotherapist, I have noticed that solution based therapy cuts through the negative 'stories' clients create about their histories and current situations. These stories are usually strongly rooted in old conditioning and do not reflect our deeper truths. In SBT, the focus is on the positives, the successes that are always present, even in the midst of our greatest challenges.
Typically, I see a client for SBT for 3-4 sessions with a follow-up after a month. For many this may be a relief from long-term therapies that often go on for months and sometimes years of picking through past histories. Sessions are up-beat, fast paced, and fun. SBT can be done individually, as a couple or in a family group.
How can this work so fast? Perhaps spending an hour focusing the mind solely on the positives--the sheer possibilities of our heart's hopes and dreams--has the effect of reversing negative feedback loops in our brains. Then, after 3-4 weeks of noticing the positive changes, the negative frame of reference we have been living out of gets traded-in for one of vitality and hope.
SBT can lead to dramatic reversals of behavior and thought patterns. For many it is as though someone has turned on a light in a darkened room. The techniques of SBT seem to be upheld by a strong belief in the creative power of the human mind to heal itself.
I enjoy seeing clients create more happiness and fulfillment in their lives. I am always inspired to see the level of commitment to themselves and to life that clients bring to their sessions. We are amazing!
"Tender and Squishy," Jeannie Zandi on Getting in Touch with Your Creature Self
It's sweet to be tender with yourself at the start of something new - a new activity, a new place. When our sweet creaturey beings leave their circles of habit and enter into a new place, sometimes some of the most fundamental of our coping strategies get thrown off a bit. This is a great opportunity to see and meet what's under our comfort-seeking habits. Up comes a feeling, an instability in the form of a question: "Do I belong?" or "Am I in danger" or "Will I be liked?" Don’t rush to skip over it, don’t rush to distract from it, don't rush to do something to "get comfortable" or establish a reference point. Stay at sea, find that raw one or that aching one and let your attention go right into the heart of that place. Excruciate. Because that pain is unconsciously what you are living out of instead of freedom and love in that place. We work really hard below our awareness to keep ourselves from letting these ones surface, so if one does surface, what good fortune! Let it be here, it gets to be here too, not banished. This is how we grow solid legs under us, embodying freedom in the unknown, by staying right with the places that are wobbly. Because we are really meant to live here wide open! Softy, soft-hearted. Not sophisticated well-oiled steel machinery, but dorky, squishy and wide open. So open and softened that every nuance of living is felt all the way through the system, not paved over with asphalt.
Important Article on Teen Brains
The Teen Brain: It's Just Not Grown Up Yet
Enlarge Richard Knox/NPR Neurologist Francis Jensen examining a teenage patient. Jensen decided to study the teenage brain when her own sons became teenagers. Now Jensen lectures to teens and parents about how teenagers' brains are different.
"It's a resounding mantra of parents and teachers," says Jensen, who's a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital in Boston.
Like when son number one, Andrew, turned 16, dyed his hair black with red stripes and went off to school wearing studded leather and platform shoes. And his grades went south.
"I watched my child morph into another being, and yet I knew deep down inside it was the same Andrew," Jensen says. Suddenly her own children seemed like an alien species.
Jensen is a Harvard expert on epilepsy, not adolescent brain development. As she coped with her boys' sour moods and their exasperating assumption that somebody else will pick up their dirty clothes, she decided to investigate what neuroscientists are discovering about teenagers' brains that makes them behave that way.
Enlarge Richard Knox/NPR Jensen's older son Andrew Murphy, now a physics major at Wesleyan, is the reason his mother first started studying the teenage brain. She wanted to find out what was causing his maddening teenage behavior.
She learned that that it's not so much what teens are thinking — it's how.
Jensen says scientists used to think human brain development was pretty complete by age 10. Or as she puts it, that "a teenage brain is just an adult brain with fewer miles on it."
But it's not. To begin with, she says, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected. Really.
"It's the part of the brain that says: 'Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?' " Jensen says. "It's not that they don't have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they're going to access it more slowly."
That's because the nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don't have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or "white matter," that adults have in this area.
Think of it as insulation on an electrical wire. Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another.
Enlarge Kathryn C Reed Jensen's younger son Will Murphy is now a Harvard student. He says he learned a lot about his teenage brain from his mother.
Jensen thinks this explains what was going on inside the brain of her younger son, Will, when he turned 16. Like Andrew, he'd been a good student, a straight arrow, with good grades and high SAT scores. But one morning on the way to school, he turned left in front of an oncoming vehicle. He and the other driver were OK, but there was serious damage to the car.
"It was, uh, totaled," Will says. "Down and out. And it was about 10 minutes before morning assembly. So most of the school passed by my wrecked car with me standing next to it."
"And lo and behold," his mother adds, "who was the other driver? It was a 21-year-old — also probably not with a completely connected frontal lobe." Recent studies show that neural insulation isn't complete until the mid-20s.
This also may explain why teenagers often seem so maddeningly self-centered. "You think of them as these surly, rude, selfish people," Jensen says. "Well, actually, that's the developmental stage they're at. They aren't yet at that place where they're thinking about — or capable, necessarily, of thinking about the effects of their behavior on other people. That requires insight."
And insight requires — that's right — a fully connected frontal lobe.
Teen Brains Are Not Fully Connected
The brain's "white matter" enables nerve signals to flow freely between different parts of the brain. In teenagers, the part that governs judgment is the last to be fully connected.
But that's not the only big difference in teenagers' brains. Nature made the brains of children and adolescents excitable. Their brain chemistry is tuned to be responsive to everything in their environment. After all, that's what makes kids learn so easily.
But this can work in ways that are not so good. Take alcohol, for example. Or nicotine, cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy ...
"Addiction has been shown to be essentially a form of 'learning,' " Jensen says. After all, if the brain is wired to form new connections in response to the environment, and potent psychoactive drugs suddenly enter that environment, those substances are "tapping into a much more robust habit-forming ability that adolescents have, compared to adults."
So studies have shown that a teenager who smokes pot will still show cognitive deficits days later. An adult who smokes the same dose will return to cognitive baseline much faster.
This bit of knowledge came in handy in Jensen's own household.
"Most parents, they'll say, 'Don't drink, don't do drugs,'" says Will, son number two. "And I'm the type of kid who'd say 'why?' "
When Will asked why, his mom could give him chapter and verse on drugs and teen brains. So they would know, she says, "that if I smoke pot tonight and I have an exam in two days' time, I'm going to do worse. It's a fact."
There were other advantages to having a neuroscientist mom, Will says. Like when he was tempted to pull an all-nighter.
"She would say, 'read it tonight and then go to sleep,'" he says. "And what she explained to me is that it will take [what you've been reading] from your short-term memory and while you sleep you will consolidate it. And actually you will know it better in the morning than right before you went to sleep."
It worked every time, he says.
It also worked for Andrew, the former Goth. He's now a senior at Wesleyan University, majoring in physics.
"I think she's great! I would not be where I am without her in my life!" Andrew says of his mom.
For any parent who has survived teenagers, there are no sweeter words.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Are you the product of your childhood?
Here is a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal article which states "The most prominent conclusion of twin research is that practically everything—health, intelligence, happiness, success, personality, values, interests—is partly genetic. The evidence is straightforward: Identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins in almost every way—even when the twins are separated at birth. But twin research has another far more amazing lesson: With a few exceptions, the effect of parenting on adult outcomes ranges from small to zero."
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/11/twin-lessons-have-more-kids-pay-less-attention-to-them/?blog_id=182&post_id=2067
Might this mean that you are, in fact, just who you are meant to be? How much of our lives do we spend trying to cover up who we are in the belief that we should be different than we are, or exhausting ourselves trying to reach unreachable goals of perfection?
How might you live your life if you really believed there is nothing wrong with you? Think this through and you will no longer be looking for a therapist!
This is not to discount the effect of childhood abuse and trauma, however. See The Symptoms of Traumatic Stress articles on this blog. The beliefs and thought patterns associated with such trauma often keeps us from being who we really are. The resulting negative thought patterns and fear related behaviors are not reflective of true self.
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/11/twin-lessons-have-more-kids-pay-less-attention-to-them/?blog_id=182&post_id=2067
Might this mean that you are, in fact, just who you are meant to be? How much of our lives do we spend trying to cover up who we are in the belief that we should be different than we are, or exhausting ourselves trying to reach unreachable goals of perfection?
How might you live your life if you really believed there is nothing wrong with you? Think this through and you will no longer be looking for a therapist!
This is not to discount the effect of childhood abuse and trauma, however. See The Symptoms of Traumatic Stress articles on this blog. The beliefs and thought patterns associated with such trauma often keeps us from being who we really are. The resulting negative thought patterns and fear related behaviors are not reflective of true self.
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