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Your “Say Yes to Life” Monday Motivator: the H.O.W. of Recovery (Honesty-Openness-Willingness)

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I first came across this powerful principle many years ago in my own recovery from an eating disorder. Long credited to the Twelve Step communities, H.O.W. nevertheless feels like a universal recovery principle, applicable to any individual at any age and in any stage of their pursuit of recovery, health, and whole-person wellness.

In the course of my professional life, I am always delighted to find a new resource that outlines this fundamental recovery principle. On this week’s reading list is an innovative new book called Beating Ana: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder and Take Your Life Back. The author, Shannon Cutts, is herself a survivor of an eating disorder, and the book is structured to allow the reader glimpses into not just her own day-to-day hard work of recovery, but also into the recovery journeys of others she has mentored and encouraged along the way.

In Beating Ana, this is accomplished by structuring each chapter around a question from one of her mentees, her answer to that question, and then what she calls a “Recovery Workshop” that invites the reader to learn new recovery skills and tools to progress toward their recovery goals. Each chapter ends with a “Life Celebration Affirmation” which strengthens the reader’s awareness of the hard work they are doing and encourages them to continue doing the hard work of recovery.

In the chapter called “The H.O.W. of Recovery”, Ms. Cutts explains how easy it is to be bullied by the fast-moving train of an eating disorder as it progresses. She writes, “We convince ourselves that we are but spectators at our own funeral, powerless to do more than watch as events unfold to their logical conclusion….We do not yet see the truth. We do not yet perceive that, even as our inexplicable, indescribable self-torture escalates, and even when the eating disorder rolls out the big guns, we are still here.”

We accomplish this awareness and regain our inspiration, courage, and strength to keep fighting, she explains, through practicing the H.O.W. of Recovery – often better known as Honesty-Openness-Willingness. Beating Ana explains each of these principles as follows:

  1. Honesty: objectively looking at your life and seeing what is broken and who can fix it
  2. Openness: being open to believing that the way life has been doesn’t dictate the future
  3. Willingness: the “I will do whatever it takes” attitude that sustained recovery requires

Ms. Cutts then encourages readers to journal about each of these three core elements to any successful recovery process – in her words, “[to ask] yourself whether or not you feel that you have each quality and have it in sufficient measure to commit to healing and to your own life.”

It has been my experience as well that when we have the honesty to admit what is no longer working in our lives, the openness to believe that we have the power to change what isn’t working, and the willingness to do whatever it takes, that literally anything is possible. No dream is too unrealistic, no amount of work is too much, and no sacrifice is too great to achieve release and lasting freedom from the prison of an illness that claims body, mind, heart, and spirit without a backward glance.

I encourage all of you to examine H.O.W. you are approaching your own recovery, health, and wellness goals this week and thus far in 2010. If you find that you are struggling to connect with your awareness of your own Honesty-Openness-Willingness, we encourage you to tackle this challenge by being honest, open, and willing to ask for help. At Southlake Counseling, we have more than two decades of expertise and compassion invested in helping individuals just like you to achieve their dreams and realize their full potential. We are excited about sharing your journey as you reach for and even exceed your own potential! Contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com – we look forward to hearing from you!

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Thursday March 25, 2010 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: The Rebel Within

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We all like to think that we are not passive-aggressive. Even if we are not sure what that term means, we are pretty sure it does not apply to us. “Passive-aggressive” doesn’t sound like something a nice person, a loving person, a person like us, would do.

Even as you are thinking this, however, a recent incident weighs on your mind. Last night your mom called asking if you could watch her twin dachshunds while she and your step-dad went on a mini-vacation. The problem is that you know that your mom knows that her dachshunds get along like oil and vinegar with your basset hound.

And you know it too.

So why were the first words that popped out of your mouth, “Of course, Mom – no problem!”

Not to mention that, no sooner had she sweetly thanked you – for the third time this month – than you proceeded to volley off a series of conditions upon which the dogs could stay, including specific times your mom must drop off and pick up her babies, provision of an ample amount of food (because we all know how much dachshunds can eat and your basset Harry doesn’t need to starve all weekend just because your mom doesn’t want to pay to kennel her pets) …. you get the picture.

But you are not, would never act, in passive-aggressive ways towards your mother whom you love. Right?

The trouble with passive-aggressive behaviors is that they signal an uprising within – an inner conflict that is so immediate and unexpected that we do not feel like we have time to stop, investigate, and address the source of the conflict prior to interacting with the instigator of the conflict. To compound matters, since passive-aggressive behaviors most often arise when we are interacting with individuals we are familiar with and know fairly well, the stakes get even higher and cycle becomes more vicious over time.

So how do we change the flow of passive-aggressive language and behaviors?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is one way to begin to uncover hidden motives and messages that are causing us to engage in passive-aggressive interactions. IFS is a unique therapy model that encourages students to think of themselves in terms of aspects of self rather than a single unified personality. IFS teaches us that we have not one single “personality”, but personalities within ourselves. All of these personalities have our best interests at heart, but each perceives that achievement of our best interests can only be obtained through conflicting means. This is why getting to know each of our parts or personalities, and then getting them to dialogue and work together, is the goal of IFS.

To illustrate how this might work, let us revisit the issue of your recent interaction with your mom regarding her dachshunds, Winnie and Sue.

In this example, there are at least two aspects of you interacting with Mom when she makes the request to kennel her dogs at your house. There is the Pleaser (for more on the Pleaser see this previous Monday Motivator), who automatically says “yes” to every request your mom makes. The Pleaser likes – drum roll please – to PLEASE. This aspect of you enjoys making others happy, and fears their displeasure with the same intensity it fears abandonment because of displeasure. The Pleaser has been convinced through past experiences that saying “no” equals displeasure, which equals abandonment. To the Pleaser, a “yes” ensures your social survival.

Underneath the Pleaser, however, there resides another aspect of you. This aspect, the Rebel, idolizes James Dean, the Fonz, and any other character who regularly chooses to go against the flow. The Rebel has her own assessment of the mother-dachshund scenario. In the Rebel’s opinion, your mom is taking advantage of you for free kenneling. The Rebel resents your mom for continuing to ask you to care for her aggressive, whining, bottomless pits when she knows that you know that she knows that you are inconvenienced more than a little by the repeated favors. To make matters worse, the Rebel remembers every single past experience you have had when you have been taken advantage of – only to find out after the fact, to its horror and disillusionment. The Rebel has vowed to do whatever it takes to uphold your integrity and respect by refusing to let those close to you use you as a doormat yet again.

This is why, even as your Pleaser is saying yes, yes, yes, your Rebel is yelling at the Pleaser – and at you – telling you not to be a pushover. Your Pleaser is afraid of social annihilation and your Rebel wants to annihilate your Pleaser, the requester – and Winnie and Sue.

And you are caught in the middle.

Using IFS, you can begin to dialogue with the Pleaser and the Rebel, hearing each part out, commiserating and empathizing and then introducing a third perspective – balancing out each part’s needs so that all three of you together can accomplish your shared goal – to safeguard your own wellbeing even while maintaining valued relationships with others in healthy, self-affirming ways.

If you are frustrated by persistent internal and external conflict in valued relationships, and you are at your wits end for how to handle the interactions of your Pleaser and Rebel, IFS and Southlake Counseling can help. Contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com to find out how to say “no” to passive-aggressive behavior and YES to collaboration, partnership, and positive relationship skills.

Be Well,

Kimberly


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

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: Couples in Conflict

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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?”

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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?

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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: , , .