Say, “Yes” to Life!

Providing inspiration, motivation, and encouragement for doing the hard work of recovery so that you can “Say ‘Yes’ to Life!”

Hello! My name is Kimberly Krueger, MSW, LCSW. I am the Founder/Director of the Southlake Center in Davidson, NC.

I am excited about sharing my experience, strength, hope, and expertise with you through my new “Say Yes to Life” Blog.

I have nearly two decades of experience helping people who struggle with eating disorders, body image disturbance, self injury, trauma, substance abuse, interpersonal relationship challenges, depression and anxiety. Beyond that, I know what it feels like to struggle from the inside out, because I have been in  recovery from an eating disorder, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem – for almost 20 years!

I do this work because I can see past the temporary struggle to the whole, healthy, vibrantly ALIVE human being underneath. I see you – and I know that just as I overcame my own battles, YOU CAN TOO.

This is why I have made it my life’s work to use my professional expertise and personal story to help and inspire as many people as possible who want to learn to say a firm and decisive NO to disordered thoughts and coping behaviors…and say YES to life!

I will look forward to hearing from you as we explore all of the ways you can say YES to recovery, to hope, to help, and to your own life. My colleagues will be blogging along with me on complementary topics – all in an effort to provide you with a comprehensive source of recovery, health, and wellness information!

As we go along, please feel welcome to share your comments, ideas, requests, and suggestions here, and let me know how I can support and encourage you.

Be Well.

Kimberly

Published on Monday October 19, 2009 in Eating Disorders, Mood Disorders and Self-esteem. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: Couples in Conflict

You love me…you love me not. I love you…I love you not.

Whether it’s Valentine’s Day, an anniversary, or any other chance to renew our commitment to our partner, have we ever stopped to wonder why these reminder events are such a marketer’s playground, or why when they come around each year we are suddenly able to find the time, energy, and money to drop whatever we would otherwise be doing to make plans for displays of affection?

Love isn’t easy, period. Love is not easy to come by, and it is not easy to keep.  And it is extraordinarily painful to lose, but couples who once were madly in love with each other fight, split, and divorce on a daily basis. They also spend months and sometimes years after the split still struggling to figure out why it happened and how to pick up the pieces and move on.

If it is not easy to love a deux, it can be traced back to our own difficulties with loving ourselves. We cannot love someone we do not know – and often, each half of a new couple comes into the relationship willing and able to spend more time getting to know the other person than getting to know themselves.  We don’t know why we get angry, or what triggers it. We tell new partners about how past partners have deliberately “pushed our buttons,” and then we blame those past partners for love’s earlier unhappy endings. We tell ourselves we are sure it will be different this time – new partner, new love, new beginning.

Until it starts happening all over again with our new partner, and we suddenly begin to smell a rat. We may then start to wake up and realize that, if the only constant in a recurring pattern is us, then we are the one who holds the power to change that dynamic rather than risk yet another painful loss.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), a powerful and dynamic therapeutic model that explores our inner world interactions in all their many parts, we learn that both in and out of love, we are multi-faceted beings.  We are fascinating, really – we have so many thoughts, so many emotions, so many memories, so many experiences. And within the context of a love relationship the environment is especially ripe for all of those thoughts, emotions, memories, and experiences to collide in our attempt to preserve the love we have while protecting ourselves from more pain.

IFS students soon learn that we have the Hurt Child, who remembers the very first breakup and wants to make sure she never, ever has to go through that again. We have our Inner Critic, who remembers past harsh words from former loves that hit too close to home, and reminds us that we are our own worst enemy and that any pain we have felt in the past is our own fault. We have our inner Champion, who will do battle to ensure that no interloper – even a loving one with good intentions – gets close enough to harm us. And we have the Blamer, who steadfastly maintains that, regardless of whatever repeatedly unfortunate circumstances may befall us, we have no one to blame but somebody else.

Couples in conflict can benefit greatly from becoming students of themselves, and IFS is a model uniquely well-suited to that exploration. In IFS couples therapy, each partner can start to learn how “pushing buttons” actually arises when an inner facet of self that bears past painful memories gets triggered into self-protective action by a partner’s comment or action. IFS’ self-awareness training enables each participant in the relationship to check their reactions against their inner awareness before responding in customary knee-jerk reaction ways to their partner. For instance, is the Blaming part of you judging your partner because it is easier than bearing the self-judgment of your own Inner Critic? Is the Hurt Child going away just when he should come closer because one hurt was enough, and when that original hurt happened he was a child and didn’t know what else to do but flee?

IFS training in the context of couples communication helps each participant to recognize that each of these parts is doing the best they can to protect us. We can then begin to learn new communication skills that start with self-awareness and self-evaluation. We can forestall knee-jerk reactions that may further damage our treasured relationship and create new patterns of interaction that are healthier, more mature, and more self- and love-affirming.

If you are feeling stretched and challenged by the dynamics of a valued love relationship, Internal Family Systems therapy can help. At Southlake Counseling, we have over two decades of expertise with guiding couples to salvage, restore, and rebuild the love they have worked so hard to cultivate. Contact us at www.southlakecounseling.com and experience for yourself just how wonderful saying “no” to unhealthy conflict and YES to love and life can be!

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Monday March 1, 2010 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: Who are you calling a “people pleaser?”

To a certain degree, we all struggle with the desire to please others who are in our life. While usually our eagerness to please aligns more closely with achieving an advantageous compromise that benefits both the other party and ourselves, there are times we may find that, in the choices we make, the benefits to the other party far outweigh our own.

When this happens on a consistent basis, we may be struggling with a common syndrome known as “people pleasing.” “Who me?”, we might catch ourselves thinking…or saying…when the subject arises. Yet while it can be painful to discover that we have been engaged in a habitual focus on others’ wants and needs to the exclusion of our own, what is more important is that we develop that awareness so we can make a different choice going forward.

If you have ever caught yourself worrying about what to wear, how to act, what someone is thinking about you or how you can change what someone is thinking about you, you have a taste of what people pleasing feels like.  

Let’s take a common example – you have just come home from work and you are looking forward to your one free evening of the week to rest, relax, and just take good care of yourself for a change. But when you get home, your daughter asks if her friend can please stay the night. Then your spouse informs you that he is no longer able to take your son to baseball practice because he has scheduled a guys’ night – and he knows you will understand even though this is the first you have heard of it. Your daughter is begging….your husband is looking at you with expectation that you will graciously pick up the ball he dropped.

Appalled at yourself even as the words come out of your mouth, all you hear yourself saying is, “Yes, of course – no problem. I’ll take care of it. Have a good evening, honey!”

This is people-pleasing at its finest. And it probably doesn’t feel very good either while it is happening or after it has occurred.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we would call this the “People Pleaser Pattern.” IFS is a unique and powerful therapeutic model that assigns these different aspects or parts of our being different names and encourages the IFS therapist and student to work together to discern the roles each of these parts play in our lives and how we can work with instead of against them.

So in IFS therapy, we might look at the People Pleaser within and start trying to discern how it works in our lives by asking ourselves, “Does this happen all the time, with everybody, or just with a certain person or just a few folks?” “Or does it perhaps happen only in certain situations under certain conditions?” “What is triggering my desire to say ‘yes’ when I want to say ‘no’, from agreeing when I really disagree?” As we begin to seek and hear our own answers to these questions we are already on our way to understanding and then transforming our people pleasing behaviors into something more self-respectful.

Using the IFS therapy model, you will work to first understand your specific behavior, and then identify the motivation(s) you have for encouraging or at least allowing that behavior to continue. Next, you will begin to trace the behavior backwards to possible origins. Where did you learn that it was not safe to say “no”? Who rejected you because you stood up for yourself or expressed disagreement with their opinion? Did you lose a valuable opportunity because you were too vocal in a team-based setting about an important group decision? Rejection always hurts….and it will continue to hurt until you recognize it, acknowledge it, and begin to heal from it. IFS gives you this chance to identify and heal from past wounds that are still driving current choices and behaviors.

Next you will begin to learn how to work with your People Pleaser part so that you can understand how it is trying to protect you. The People Pleaser is not out to get you – it is simply looking out for what it has come to believe are your best interests. The more you can allay the fears that part of you carries within it and reassure it that whatever the outcome, together you can find another way to deal with life without having to people-please, the less that part will be inclined to go rogue when it feels you are in danger.

Finally, having established a more collaborative relationship with the People Pleaser part, you can begin to finally regain the power of decision in your own life. IFS offers you a powerful way to hear and respect what each part of you is trying to do to help you while still reminding them that in the end, the buck stops not with any one of them, but with YOU.

At Southlake Counseling, we understand that discovering and befriending all of the various parts of yourself can feel like a handful – when attempted alone. We want you to know you are not alone – we are here and we can help. Our caring, experienced and professional staff has more than two decades of experience in guiding individuals in their exciting journey to self-transformation. If you want to learn to say “no” to allowing past pain to overshadow current gain and say “YES” to all the fantastic possibilities that are yet ahead of you, contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com. 

Be Well, 

Kimberly



Published on Monday February 22, 2010 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Your “Say Yes to Life” Monday Motivator: Food is My Friend…or is it?

One of the areas of life that seems the most problematic in today’s society is the issue of food’s role and purpose in our lives. Is food fuel for the body? Is it an emotional warm blanket when we’re feeling down? Is it an expression of celebration that reinforces and even creates relationships? Is it a treat at the end of a long day?

To most of us, food is all of the above – and more. In past Monday Motivators, we have discussed how our attitudes towards and choices around food can and often do fluctuate frequently – sometimes even in the course of a single day – and how confusing and conflicting such fluctuations can be.

In the scientific principle known as Occum’s Razor, the “simplest explanation tends to be the right one.”  In the case of food, this principle would deduce that food is fuel for the body, plain and simple, no more and no less.

But try telling that to the part of us that wants chocolate cake when we’ve just experienced a breakup. Just try to explain that to the part of us that thinks the best way to motivate us to make healthier choices is to yell “good choice as usual, Lardo” when we are enjoying a bag of chips. Or how about when our date suggests sharing a decadent dessert as the perfect end to a romantic evening…how likely are we to explain to him or her, “Well, truffles aren’t an item my body really needs for nutrients so I’ll have to decline, but thanks anyway.”

Not at all likely, right?

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we might instead begin to assign names to these seemingly disagreeing parts of ourselves, and then to decode what their real message, purpose, and role is in our lives.

For instance, the Inner Controller is always going to tell us what we think we need, rather than want, to hear – declining that truffle, using self-disrespecting language, doing whatever it takes to keep us on the dietary straight and narrow.

The Inner Indulger, on the other hand, will eschew discipline for pleasure every time. The Indulger loves romantic truffles, sees nothing wrong with a delicious bag of chips, and wouldn’t think twice about offering its suffering self some chocolate cake in recompense for a bad day.

The small gap or vast expanse that exists between the Indulger and the Controller is what students of IFS learn to call the “Pleasure Polarity.”  Managing the pleasure polarity, and more than that, hearing, affirming, and guiding the Indulger and Controller to learn to (gasp) get along is what a student of IFS will become adept at.

IFS students understand that each voice comes to us with a desire not to harm, not to degrade, but to support and protect us. As we walk the guided path of IFS, we will understand what our parts already understand – that we have needs that food can provide for, and that each part thinks it knows best how to care for us and meet those needs. We will perceive with tremendous clarity and newfound hope how each voice, in its own weird and wonderful way, has our best interests at heart – and is often willing to fight to the death on our behalf against another voice with an opposing opinion.

So how do we help these parts of ourselves stop squabbling and get along as they each seek the same goal – our wellbeing?

We have to first understand that each voice has a point. In between the Indulger and the Controller we find not just the Pleasure Polarity, but the Support Polarity and the Power Polarity. In the Support Polarity, we must balance the Indulger’s neediness and the Controller’s need for denial. In the Power Polarity, we must recognize our tendency to people-please against our desire to rigidly control ourselves and others.

When you become a student of IFS, you begin to walk the path of balance and moderation with wisdom, confidence, and self-compassion. You “get” yourself – in all your various parts – in a new and deeper way. You can make better choices when you understand that all of these parts or facets of you are all you – all valid, all worthy of a voice, all worthy of respect, appreciation, and satisfaction. As this understanding becomes established within, you become better able to evaluate the choices before you and make a fair assessment of each part’s needs, the airtime you will allow each to have, and your need to make sure that one is not over-indulged while one is ostracized.

Or, to once again apply the principle of Occum’s Razor, we could simply say that you will begin to realize that when a part of you hurts, you hurt. And when a part of you heals, you heal.

If you are struggling to balance the competing needs, demands, and desires you feel inside of you when it comes to making healthy food choices, Internal Family Systems can help. At Southlake Counseling, we have more than two decades of experience guiding individuals to meet and exceed their food-related recovery, health, and wellness goals. Whether you are just seeking a tune-up in the New Year or part of your bigger picture for 2010 includes a complete overhaul in your nutritional lifestyle, we look forward to partnering with you to help you say “no” to inner conflict at the table and YES to your own healthy, happy, and whole life! Visit us at www.southlakecounseling.com today!

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Monday February 15, 2010 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your “Say Yes to Life” Monday Motivator: The Critic versus the Champion

Into every day a little criticism must fall.

This could be the motto of the part of us we might label “the inner critic”.

When we are listening to our inner critic, we may not feel much desire to go deeper in our connection with ourselves or go for our goals and dreams. We may hear messages like “I wouldn’t ask for that promotion if I were you – they’re just going to tell you ‘no’”, “He doesn’t like you – that is why he didn’t call you back”, “Nice try with joining a gym, but you know it isn’t going to help with your eating habits because you never change.”

From the outside looking in, the inner critic seems to have one function and one purpose only – to tear us down. The inner critic hates us – or so it seems. We may even catch ourselves wondering why we hate ourselves so much and what we have done to deserve such unkind messages that come to us so frequently from within.

And we probably wonder on an almost daily basis if the voice will EVER go away.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, we dig deeper into the origin and role of our own inner critic. We also look at why our inner critic gets louder at some times than others. And we explore why our inner critic often appears to affect us more than the inner critic of those around us appears to affect them.

Let’s take an example. Imagine that you are a junior in college, and you have excelled in all of your undergraduate coursework. Your professors keep encouraging you to take more challenging classes – they can’t resist reminding you repeatedly of the straight-A’s you achieved in your first two years. They continually tell you that you have far more potential than you are tapping into. Every time one of your professors starts down this line of discussion, you hear a voice inside you that says, “They are only saying that because they don’t know you as well as you do. Remember that time in fifth grade when your teachers convinced your parents to let you try out for that middle school for ‘gifted’ children and you flunked the entrance exam? No need to go down that path again – you’ll just be setting yourself up for failure a second time”.

Here, all of the outside proof seems to show that you have every chance of success. Your professors even point out that some of your fellow classmates who are taking the accelerated program didn’t score as high as you did in their undergraduate work. But you think you know something your professors don’t about your chances for success.

Certainly your inner critic knows that you are afraid to fail again. You were very hurt the first time you were rejected after you stuck your neck and your pride out to go for what you wanted. You will never forget the sting of shame and the disappointment in the eyes of your parents and teachers. Your inner critic reminds you continually of how painful that experience was.

But – just for the sake of argument here – could it be that, rather than tear you down, your inner critic is actually trying to protect you – or at least protect that fifth grade inner child who still resides within you – from even more pain?

Students of IFS learn to re-examine and in time re-frame their relationship with their inner critic. Whereas in other therapeutic approaches, you may have been encouraged to ignore or overpower your inner critic, with IFS you will learn how to befriend it. IFS opens the door to ask questions you may never have considered before, like, “What can I learn from my inner critic?” “What service is my inner critic providing to me?” “What part of me agrees with my inner critic and why?” “How can I let my inner critic know that s/he is heard and respected so rather than standing in my way, we can work together to achieve my dreams and goals?”

In time, using the IFS model, you will be able to introduce your inner critic to its new best friend, your inner champion. The inner champion gives the inner critic a new lease on life – literally. When the inner critic tells you, “You must be crazy to believe you are as smart as Professor So-and-So claims”, your inner champion will say, “You ARE that smart. You just got scared before when you took that entrance exam. So this time we will practice some relaxation exercises before tackling this new challenge before us. It is not how many times you fall down, but how many times you get back up that matters. Together, we can do this!”

IFS offers us a new way of life through giving us the chance to look inside ourselves and see, not a collection of bitter enemies, but a close-knit and loving family that simply uses different communication styles to express their love for us. Each part of ourselves exists for a purpose. Each deserves a voice. Each requires closure for past hurts and disappointments. Each needs and wants love and connection. And each part loves us – in its own way. With IFS we learn to speak the love language of the inner critic, the inner child, and the inner champion, and then we are better equipped to help each part learn how to work together and enjoy life as a team.

If you are struggling with feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, discouragement, fear, anxiety, or depression in the face of the messages you hear inside you, IFS can help. At Southlake Counseling, we understand what it is like to feel like a house divided from the inside out. We have nearly two decades of professional expertise in guiding individuals through change and use the Internal Family Systems model to help achieve comprehensive health and well-being. To find out more about how IFS can transform your relationship with your inner critic and awaken your inner champion, contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com.

Be Well,

Kimberly



Published on Monday February 8, 2010 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your “Say Yes to Life” Monday Motivator: Just who do you think you are?

Ask yourself this deceptively simple-sounding question, “Who am I?” and you may find that questions like these are easier asked than answered.

For instance, who you experience yourself to be may change depending on who you are with. With your parents, you may find yourself dropping into some of the mannerisms, thoughts, and opinions you held as the child-you. With your spouse, you may experience yourself as an odd assortment of relational habits you attribute to either your mom’s or your dad’s influence. With your child, you may struggle to reconcile the deep love and enthusiasm you feel for being a parent with your own all-too-human personal desire for a return to the unscheduled free time and rest that you enjoyed as a single person.

Your sense of yourself may be equally fluid – and elusive – depending on where you are. Facing a schedule that includes a full day of work, a quick after-work visit to the gym, and a later dinner date, you may find yourself keeping company with a completely different you as you move through your day. At work, work-you is task-oriented, focused, forgetting to eat until the hunger in your belly yells “LUNCH!” and you quickly hurry off to check that item off your to-do list. At the gym, gym-you counts calories and berates yourself for your earlier choices as the treadmill spins. And at dinner, over a relaxing glass of wine, you witness how dinner-you casually shoves gym-you aside as you go for your favorite high-calorie dessert – tres leches.

So who are you? Which you is “the” you?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a new therapeutic discipline that provides a roadmap by which the intrapersonally inquisitive student can begin to find his or her own both accurate and self-respectful answer to this question.

Students of IFS recognize and accept that “the you” they are tempted to conceptualize as a single discrete identity is actually a diverse collection of parts called “sub-personalities”. These parts can range from the inner critic to the abandoned child to the people pleaser to the anger-monger to the scapegoat to the loving caretaker and so on. 

As students of IFS, we work to identify and learn from each part. As our investigation unfolds, we begin to perceive how each part relates to each other part within us in helpful and sometimes not-so-helpful ways. As we learn from each part about the memories, associations, assumptions, perceptions, dreams, goals, and aspirations it carries within it, we become more attuned to how that part subtly shapes and drives our conscious behavior. With this awareness, we can work with each part to transform for the better its relationship with the other parts of us, with us-now, and with the world around us.

The true power of IFS, however, comes from the compassion we begin to develop towards each part of ourselves. Once we know that part’s story, past, present, and persistent hopes for the future, we cease to resist or fight its involvement or influence and start instead to seek a common good. IFS promotes a deep inner empathy with and affinity towards not just us-now but towards all our parts, as we recognize that we have each been employing different means to achieve the same shared goals for acceptance, success, love, meaning, and joy in life.

Lest a student of IFS begin to suspect that they suffer from multiple personality disorder, however, there is one more important basic component of IFS work that is worth mentioning.

IFS practitioners recognize that we are at our core spiritual beings, centered in what IFS calls “the Self”. The Self is nurturing, stable, and full of compassion. The Self exemplifies the best us that we can be, and reminds us that as we learn to stay centered in our sense of ourselves as “the Self”, we are then able to begin to repair, restore, and re-energize our tangled relationships with each of our parts. As the Self, we can help our parts to heal, heal ourselves, and develop a relationship with our own life that is both inspiring and empowering.

At Southlake Counseling, we have invested more than two decades in assisting you with your personal growth and development goals. We are strong proponents of Internal Family Systems therapy as a powerful and effective tool to help you learn how to say “no” to self-limiting thoughts, behaviors, and relational patterns and YES to your dream of being the best you that you can be. If you are ready to explore how IFS can help you achieve your personal growth and wellness goals, contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com.

Be Well,

Kimberly


Published on Wednesday February 3, 2010 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .