Worry is a common feature of life these days for most of us in the modern world. There’s so much we are attending to each day that it’s hard to imagine how any of us can not struggle with a mind that wanders into the past or future more than we would like. Past this common experience of worry that most people acknowledge, there is a group of people that …
Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia) is an intense anxiety or fear of being judged, negatively evaluated, rejected, or humiliated in a social situation. The feared judgements are often related to being seen by others as incompetent, awkward, weird, stupid or weak. People that struggle with this form of anxiety often are overly focused on themselves and fear acting oddly or appearing visibly anxious (such as blushing, sweating …
Understanding Anxiety
This post covers the following topics: Healthy vs unhealthy anxiety Zero anxiety is not ideal – the need for balance Anxiety is universal & pervasive When anxiety teams up with shame When control doesn’t seem to work Some good news Healthy vs Unhealthy Anxiety Emotions are essential for us to function. Without them we would be completely lost in making choices, protecting ourselves and for understanding our own unique identity. …
Signs of Traumatic Stress
Trauma is typically discussed in terms of an event, such as witnessing a traumatic accident or being the victim of abuse. However there is another, more useful, way to view trauma… Trauma lives in the nervous systems of those who were involved. A traumatic event may have happened in the past but trauma is the stress that lives on in the people who were affected. Two Common Patterns The effect of …
The One You Feed
One evening a grandfather old his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. “One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority. “The other is Good – It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The grandson thought about …
Defining Mindfulness
There are many definitions of mindfulness, some are more practical and some are more poetic. In a podcast interview Jon Kabat-Zinn (the creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course) gave a unique and moving definition that deserved capturing. I went back and transcribed it to share with you… “Mindfulness is not a good idea or a philosophy. It’s a way of being in relationship to your experience. Through that, what …
Upstream/Downstream: A Fable For Our Times
It was many years ago that villagers in Downstream recall spotting the first body in the river. Some old timers remember how spartan were the facilities and procedures for managing that sort of thing. Sometimes, they say, it would take hours to pull 10 people from the river, and even then only a few would survive. Though the number of victims in the river has increased greatly in recent years, …
Embracing the Opposite
The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth. ~Niels Bohr As we age we invest more and more into our strategies for life. In our autopilot way of existence we can perceive of life as happening to us and we take our characteristic ways about how to handle all the stressors, large and small. How we go …
5 Minute Primer on Mindful Meditation
Building the skill of mindful awareness is a very powerful tool. It’s an important piece in the therapy and counseling I do with people struggling with anxiety, depression, relationship issues and all other matters of difficulty as a human. Mindful awareness is also a great aid in living life more fully too, not just when we are struggling or stuck.
Getting Honest with Yourself
I want to take a few minutes to talk about a process that I use with my clients that tends to be pretty helpful that we start really early in the therapeutic relationship. Typically when people are coming to me dealing with things like anxiety, or depression, or low self-esteem, or problems in relationships, or any number of things, they are stuck. They are not stuck because they are stupid …