Monthly Archive for October, 2009

Your ‘Say Yes to Life’ Monday Motivator: Loving Yourself Unconditionally—If Not Now, Then When, Part I

In her song “If Not Now….” songwriter Tracy Chapman sings,

 If not now then when
If not today then
Why make your promises
A love declared for days to come
Is as good as none

While we may have grown up listening to the adults around us exhorting us to follow the Golden Rule by “loving our neighbor as ourselves,” how many of these adults actually spent time discussing with us or modeling for us how to accomplish the second part of that famous phrase?

 What does “loving yourself” mean? How do you know you are doing it? How do you know you are not doing it? And what do you do if it doesn’t feel okay to love yourself, and you often catch yourself wondering “if I can’t love myself, now, today, then when? When will I finally be able to look in my own eyes and see someone worth loving looking back at me?”

 In this three-part series, we will spend some time tackling the answers to these tough but essential questions. But first, let’s start by discussing what is meant by the term “love.”

 When we think of love, hear the word love, contemplate love in our lives, we seldom dissect for ourselves the many forms love can take, or how many of those forms are not truly love, but are rather some form of outwardly-expressed need, greed, lack, selfishness, manipulation, fear, or pride on the part of the giver.

 Unconditional Love

Love itself is commonly defined as “a deep and enduring emotional regard, usually for another person.” The key word in this definition is “enduring.” The quality of endurance – of being able to maintain and even grow the quality of emotional regard amidst the ups and downs of our own and another human being’s daily life, is what distinguishes true love – what we commonly call “unconditional” love – from the other, lesser kinds of so-called love.

 Conditional Love

“Conditional” love is actually what many of us more often experience – and conditional love does not have the quality of endurance that ensures it will be around when we need it the most. Conditional love will quickly desert us during those times when we are feeling low and showing it, when we are visibly struggling or stumbling, when we are small-minded, closed-hearted, mean-spirited, afraid, judgmental, or otherwise human in our approach to life, experiences, and other human beings. Conditional love will make us doubt, even fear, the presence of love in our lives, even as it leaves us longing for more.

 Recognizing “Real” Love

In contrast with conditional love, real love is always unconditional. Where unconditional love dwells, conditional love is not allowed to enter. And where conditional love lives, unconditional love will decline to go.

 Some real life examples of each that we are all familiar with might include the following: When we watch daytime court drama, soap operas, nasty public divorces, or drawn-out custody battles, we are watching conditional love at play. Conversely, when we watch a wife caring round-the-clock for a husband who is battling cancer, a mother tirelessly supporting a child with a learning disability, a sibling repeatedly sticking up for another sibling who is being bullied AND teaching that sibling how to fight back on her own behalf, we see the quality of endurance that signifies unconditional love.

 Some sure-fire clues to recognize which is which include the following – over time, unconditional love breeds patience, kindness, self-control, a big-picture perspective on small circumstances, empathy, mutual trust, and peace. Conditional love, on the other hand, always and often breeds only one end result – pain.

Please join us next week for Part II as we continue our exploration of developing unconditional self-love.

 How Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy Can Help

At Southlake Counseling, we understand how painful conditional love can be – whether it is experienced through our relationships with others or imposed upon ourselves from within. We know what it feels like to want to connect without knowing how to do so safely and from a place of self-respect.

 IFS Therapy is a uniquely effective approach to restoring loving relationships with self and valued others. Clients of IFS learn to identify patterns of internal dialogue that create conflict and interfere with their ability to pursue healthy, productive change. IFS is a powerful vehicle for restoring your sense of self through promoting self-curiosity, self-compassion, and self-confidence. Southlake Counseling professionals have many years of training and experiencing in guiding clients who wish to experience the full benefits of this powerful therapeutic practice.

Call us today at 704-896-7776 or email me at Kkrueger@centerforselfdisocovery.com to learn more about how IFS Therapy can help you say NO to conditional love and YES to life!

Be Well,

Kimberly


Published on Wednesday October 28, 2009 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

What is IFS?

          The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of therapy has been developed over the past two decades by Richard Schwartz and is based on the concept of self-leadership as the ideal. IFS relies on a client’s own intuitive wisdom and therefore offers a safe, nonpathological, and empowering approach to psychotherapy. Schwartz believes that any client can benefit from the techniques used in IFS therapy, but that it is particularly helpful for the client who has been humiliated and feels worthless, or for those who have suffered loss or been devastated by trauma.

            The basic premise of IFS is that internally, an individual is constantly listening to many different voices and is engaged in various thought patterns and emotions, which are similar to complex external relationships he may have with other people. When a person believes himself to be “thinking,” he is often having an inner dialogue with one or more of his parts. As people develop, their parts develop and form a complex system of interactions among themselves, and the functioning of this internal system can be examined using the systems theory. The IFS model posits that each individual is composed of many internal parts, and that the Self is the true core of each individual. The Self is not only viewed as separate from the other parts, but the goal of IFS is to for the Self to be recognized and respected as the leader of the other parts. Schwartz uses a board room analogy to illustrate the ideal role of the Self at the head of the table and in the position of chairman, with the parts in the chairs around the table. The parts are all respected and important in their roles, but the chairman (Self) does not give up his seat at the head of the table to any of them.

          IFS also contains spiritual components in reference to the Self as being similar to the soul of a human being. Schwartz promotes that all individuals have at their core a true Self that innately possesses qualities such as curiosity, compassion, calmness, confidence, courage, clarity, creativity, and connectedness – natural leadership qualities. As individuals go through life and experience various events which their system perceives as traumatic, or other extreme emotional consequences, their true Selves become obscured by these new emotions and beliefs, which become their parts. IFS assumes that the intention of each part is something positive for the individual, such as protection or motivation, therefore there are no “bad” parts. The goal of IFS therapy is not to eliminate the parts, but to help them find less extreme roles. The goal for the individual is to be able to separate his true Self from the parts, view the parts with compassion and curiosity, and regain his innate sense of calmness, confidence and clarity.

            The parts in the IFS model of therapy are those separate internal characteristics of an individual that are not qualities of his true Self. They could be emotions or beliefs such as anger, fear, shame, or distrust, which have been programmed into a person by external events or messages, and they all have a reason for being there or an ingrained role to play. For instance, if a girl grows up in an abusive environment, she may eventually come to believe that she is worthless and is not deserving of being treated with kindness and acceptance. Through IFS therapy, her worthless part can be separated from her true Self and be seen as only a part of her. Then perhaps her true Self can be curious about how the worthless part came to be, what it is telling her, and how she can develop compassion for it. In this way, her true Self can come to acknowledge and respect the worthless part, and either unburden it of its feelings of worthlessness based on the abuse she suffered, or give it a more helpful role to play in protecting her. Schwartz believes that after an individual’s true Self becomes curious about one of his parts and begins to acknowledge and respect it, he can begin to have compassion for its purpose in his internal world.

            One of the most important aspects of the IFS model of therapy is the safety of its use with the client, and the safety the client feels in referring to any undesirable emotion or characteristic as only a part of him. In IFS parts sessions, the client is in control of which parts to address and to what depth, so the therapeutic process is safely client-driven. Likewise, most clients are more accepting of referring to an undesirable trait as only part of them, and not their true Self. For instance, the woman who was abused as a child may be more comfortable saying, “Part of me is still very angry at the person who hurt me when I was a little girl,” rather than, “I am still very angry at this person.” The difference is that while it is healthy to acknowledge the anger and hurt, it may be liberating to accept that the adult woman is not obligated to carry it around with her and allow it to affect every aspect of her life if it is only a part of her, and not her true Self.

Debbie Parrott, MSW, P-LCSW

Southlake Counseling



Published on Friday October 23, 2009 in Article and Self-esteem. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Dangerous Downside to the DSM-IV

For many who suffer from deadly eating disorders, the Diagnostic Standards Manual (DSM-IV) has become a bible of sorts.

Let me explain.

The DSM-IV is the official diagnostic tool that standardizes how to diagnose and address certain sets of symptoms for healthcare professionals the world over. So, for instance, if you are diagnosed with anorexia nervosa in Nevada, but then travel to Singapore, the healthcare professionals in Singapore will be able to reference your diagnosis and treat you appropriately. And if you then travel on to Canada, the healthcare professionals there will be able to take up where your Singapore team left off.

This is the upside to the DSM-IV.

However, as I write this post, the DSM-IV is once again undergoing scrutiny and tremendous revision, and a new version is anticipated by May 2012. While revision to the DSM is normal and does happen every so often when new information becomes available and our knowledge of mental illness increases, for those of us with eating disorders, and those of us who treat eating disorders, the revisions simply cannot come fast enough.

If you have an eating disorder, or suspect you have an eating disorder, you are likely all too familiar already with the stringent diagnostic criteria the DSM-IV outlines to categorize the severity of your illness and the impact it is likely to have on your overall health and wellbeing. For instance, a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa comes only when the individual can meet the following criteria:

Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height (weight drops beneath 85% of ideal or fails to achieve expected body weight for age and growth rate)
Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight
Undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight
Amenorrhea (the absence of at least three consecutive cycles), with periods reappearing only with hormone administration

From the very first bullet point we can see where the problems begin. Insurance companies look to the DSM-IV to determine whether they are required to pay for care, and how much care they must pay for. Doctors cannot provide care (for the most part) without the promise of reimbursement, and they frequently must rely on insurance coverage for that reimbursement. So an individual suffering from restricting-type disordered eating is literally forced to lose 15% of his or her body weight before being eligible for care! Furthermore, it is very common for individuals suffering from restricting-type to label themselves as “not sick enough” to even reach out for help or support until they can meet all four of these diagnostic criteria.

After my own eight-year battle against an eating disorder and almost two decades treating individuals for disordered eating and eating disorders, I can assert with utmost authority that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, and that eating disorders can be deadly at any stage of illness…and the dangerous downside to the DSM-IV is that current standards do not reflect that*.

I will give you just one final example to prove my point. The DSM-IV currently lists the following criteria as a prerequisite for a medical diagnosis of bulimia nervosa:

Recurrent episodes of binge eating: Eating, within any 2-hour period, an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat under similar circumstances; A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode; Inappropriate compensatory behavior in order to prevent weight gain (vomiting, laxatives, diuretics, enemas, fasting, excessive exercise, etc.)
The binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviors both occur, on average, at least twice a week for 3 months
Self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape and weight
The disturbance does not occur exclusively during episodes of anorexia

Yet there have been documented instances of death due to cardiac arrest after only three purge incidents. The DSM-IV criteria gives individuals who suffer from purging – and their insurance companies – free rein to assume that they are not in need of critical care until they have been purging at least twice a week for 3 months.

Some individuals who suffer won’t make it that long.

If you are suffering from any level of disordered eating, if food has taken a place in your life beyond simply giving your body the nutrition it needs to function, if you feel trapped or imprisoned by your food-related thoughts and behaviors, and if you know, deep down on the inside where no one else but you can see or hear that you are struggling regardless of what the DSM-IV criteria are, then you need to get help.

You deserve help. Life is too short to live with an eating disorder as your constant companion. And life is too precious to lose it to an eating disorder when help and hope is available.

Here at The Southlake Center, we know what it feels like to live through an eating disorder. We know how dangerous eating disorders are, and how deadly they can be. If you will let us, we can help you say a permanent “no” to your eating disorder, and say YES to your own unique and precious life!

Be Well.

Kimberly

* There is a diagnostic category in the DSM-IV called “eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS)” that allows for less severe symptoms that do not fit into the three major categories of eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating disorder). However, many insurance companies have been slow to recognize this category and incorporate it into coverage provided to policy-holders.

Published on Monday October 19, 2009 in Article and Eating Disorders. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Power of Self-Respect

Over the years, I have thought long and hard about why I “do what I do”. First, I fought through my own eight-year battle with an eating disorder, and the anxiety, depression, body image disturbance, and low self-esteem that came along for the ride. Next, I committed many years of my life to earning the professional education and clinical experience required to help others recover from their personal battles with mental illness and emotional disturbance.

As of today, I have eighteen years of  personal recovery history and almost two decades of professional clinical experience under my belt.  And today, I still feel just as passionate and committed to the work I do as I did on the day I first opened my practice.

Why?

For this one simple reason – I know that if I could heal, if I could overcome what held me back from saying YES to life, then I know that you can too!

As long as I have legs to stand, eyes to see, ears to listen, and hands to help, I will be honored and humbled each time I watch a new person walk into The Southlake Center with their head hung low, shoulders stooped, face dim, and heart heavy with hopelessness… because I know it is just a matter of time before I then get the privilege and joy of watching them walk OUT again with their head held high, shoulders squared confidently, face open to the joy of good days ahead, and heart light with hopefulness and excitement.

How do I know this will happen?

Because my own recovery journey has taught me about the power of self-respect.

Self-respect is only possible when we are able to look ourselves in our own eyes and say, “I am going to get through this, but I can’t do it alone. I need help, and I deserve help, and I will ask for the help I need so that one day I can turn around and help someone else who needs to know that they aren’t alone and that recovery is possible.”

Saying yes to getting the help you need is the first step to saying yes to your own self-respect. And saying yes to self-respect is the first step to saying YES to life!

Here at The Southlake Center, we celebrate the power of self-respect.

And we celebrate YOU.

Be Well.

Kimberly

Published on Monday October 19, 2009 in Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The Shame About Shame in Mental Health Recovery

Shame. Just thinking the word brings a powerful experience of shame into our awareness.

We don’t even need to read the definition to know that shame is “a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace” because we can feel it….feel its effects instantly. Like kryptonite, shame seeps into our being, sapping our sense of personal empowerment, our enthusiasm for life, our zest for self-discovery….and our dreams of recovery. In the wake of shame, we are left in the grips of a profound and enervating hopelessness that erases any recollection of why we ever thought we were worth recovering for in the first place.  

If you have personal mental health recovery experience, you have felt shame. You have most likely also been shamed by others who, in their ignorant but well-meaning attempts to motivate you to get better, have issued un-helpful advice like “just eat more!” and “snap out of it!”, and berated you for your seeming inability to “just get over” your issues with food, weight, body image, self-esteem, anxiety, depression……

This is exactly why it is so critical to say no to shame and say yes to knowledge as the first step to making real, lasting progress towards your recovery goals.

The more you learn, the less shame you feel. The more you learn, the less shaming you will tolerate from others, and the more you will be willing to educate yourself and others on the truth of mental illness. Most importantly, the more you learn, the more you can do to work towards your own recovery. Knowledge is a win-win for you and for everyone who cares about you – and where shame, like mental illness, kills, knowledge saves lives.

So here is what you need to know NOW to begin to replace shame with the factual knowledge that leads to lasting recovery.

Mental illnesses (including but not limited to eating disorders, anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and body dysmorphic disorder) are at their core biological brain disorders.

These illnesses arise in large part due to genetic predisposition, and become greatly exacerbated in the presence of environmental triggers including but not limited to innate emotional vulnerability, experiences with personal trauma, grief, loss, unavoidable sudden change, and repeated exposure to our media’s focus on finding perfection in body image, career, love relationships, material possessions, and lifestyle.

Mental illness affects females and males of all ages, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds – which is why there is no place in recovery work for the presence of shame. With the statistics* we have, chances are there is someone in your life who also struggles with mental illness…and the only reason you do not know of their battles, or they of yours, is due to shame.

Consider this example. We know so much more today than we did even five years ago about treating cancer, diabetes, and ADHD. Today, we would not dream of shaming a cancer patient for not being able to “just get rid of” the presence of cancerous cells in his body. We wouldn’t even think of shaming a diabetic for her inability to “just regulate” her insulin levels. Not a one of us would consider refusing further help or support or compassion to a child with ADHD because he can’t “just sit still already”!

So why do we persist in shaming ourselves – or in allowing ourselves to be shamed – for needing help and expert medical guidance to overcome the effects of the biological brain disregulation that is at the root of mental illness?

It is time to get smart about our disease. It is time to say yes to knowledge…so we can say no to shame, and yes to life!

Be Well.

Kimberly

*Eating disorders are responsible for the deaths of twelve times more females between the ages of 11 and 25 than any other mental illness-related disorder
*Depression affects an estimated 9% of the population in the United States
*Approximately 18% of adults suffer from anxiety; anxiety is the most common mental disorder in teens

Published on Monday October 19, 2009 in Mood Disorders. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .