Tag Archive for 'stress'

Page 2 of 3

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: Turning Holiday Woes into Holiday Wonders

No Gravatar

Oh boy. The holidays are here.

Again.

You are not sure whether you have been anticipating this moment all year, or dreading it.

Or maybe a bit of both.

Nevertheless, here they are again – upon us for yet another season, and once again before we are ready for them to come. So now the question becomes not “where can I hide?” but rather “what am I going to do differently this year?”

That is what we are going to discuss in this month’s blog series “Turning Holiday Woes into Holiday Wonders.”

For our series, you have been my inspiration, because each one of the woes I have selected is one I have heard you share with me in private session year after year, right around this time.

For instance, you have shared with me how hard you find it to carve out time for self-care while feeling called to take extra special good care of others as well.

You have told me that sometimes it feels simply impossible to locate the fine line between treating yourself to holiday goodies and maintaining your physical health and nutrition.

And you have confided that you sometimes – often – find it incredibly difficult to release a whole past year’s worth of errors and triumphs only to discover an entirely new, sparkling fresh year sweeping down on you before you have had any time to prepare for its arrival.

So this month, we will examine strategies to turn each of these woes into wonders, one week at a time. To do this, we will revisit one of my favorite therapeutic approaches for recovery and life – Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or DBT for short.

DBT is a wonderful pathway to effective daily living authored by Dr. Marsha Linehan. The focus and goal of DBT work is to stay centered, present, open, and willing to do our best in every moment.

The teaching tools that DBT uses include mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. Each tool builds upon and integrates with the others, and when used together can produce a centered, balanced, present-focused approach to daily life during the holidays and at every moment of the year.

So before we begin our “woes to wonders” adventure together, let’s just take a quick review of each of the four key DBT tools we will be using:

  • Mindfulness training equips us to take back control over our mind’s thoughts and our reactions to those thoughts
  • Emotion Regulation teaches us to name and experience our emotions without allowing them to overtake us
  • Distress Tolerance cultivates our ability to stay present and focused for each moment of our lives regardless of what the day may bring
  • Interpersonal Effectiveness helps us to develop assertiveness skills to ask for what we want and need in safe, healthy, and affirming ways

It is easy to see how each of these tools becomes particularly essential during the heightened energy and emotion the holiday season ushers in. During the next few weeks, we will look at how to apply each of these skills to transform a traditional holiday woe into a true source of delight and wonder.

If you are finding that you are struggling this holiday season to find the wonder in the midst of the woes, Southlake Counseling can help. Our compassionate and skilled staff has more than two decades of experience with guiding individuals in how to effectively use the DBT principles of mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. Learn more by visiting us at www.southlakecounseling.com.

Be Well – and happy holidays!

Kimberly

Published on Monday December 6, 2010 in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: How to Ask for Help

No Gravatar

In the last blog post, we discussed how we can re-activate our felt sense of needing help, and from there begin to identify what kind of help is needed. In this second blog post in our “asking for help” series, we will discuss the actual process of how to ask for help.

Asking for help can be problematic. Should we ask? Who should we ask? How should we ask? When should we ask? All of these questions and more jump in line ahead of the actual action of asking for the help we need. Each question demands our attention and detailed consideration before we can move a muscle or utter a word to say, “Help me.” Understandably, by the time we wade through the emotional and mental clutter these complicated questions cause, we are often too weary or discouraged to actually do anything about trying to locate the help we know we need.

I have lost count of the number of times I have discussed with someone at Southlake Counseling about their need for help, and after explaining the whole issue, analyzing it from every angle, and even working together to come up with a plan to address it, the person says, “but it would probably just be easier to take care of it myself after all.”

My question then becomes – easier on WHO?

Definitely, it would be easier on the recipient of the request for help…at least in the short run. But when we factor in resentment on the part of the party who has decided asking for help is not worth the hassle, and confusion on the part of the party who is aware of resentment building but not of its causes, it is clear that un-asked for help has a limited shelf life, and the fall-out later on can be disastrous for any relationship, whether it is romantic, family, friendship, career, or community-related.

So let’s spend a few moments right now simplifying the complex web of questions lying in wait just around every bend where genuine help might also be found.

Should we ask? I have observed that those who wrestle with the question of whether or not to ask for help are rarely the ones who will ever be guilty of not taking enough personal responsibility to do with they can on their own, the answer to this question is almost always a resounding YES.

Who should we ask? This question is best answered once we have identified exactly what type of help we need. Once we know what type of help is needed, the right person for the job becomes much clearer as well. So the answer here is – we should ask the person who can offer the type of help we are seeking.

How should we ask? Rejection is always a potential risk factor in any request for help. However, again in my own years of working with individuals who have been struggling with asking for help, I have also noticed how rarely the person they eventually work up the courage to ask actually rejects them. It seems we all like to feel needed, useful, and valuable, and it is harder than we might assume to turn down someone who sincerely approaches and says, “I need your help.” (NOTE: If you are still doubtful, think of how you would respond if someone walked up to your right now and said to you, “I need your help.” What would you say? Probably, “how can I help you?”!)

When should we ask? Ideally, within a few moments of becoming aware of the help is needed and identifying the appropriate party who can help. However, it is also important to be aware of our own inner state as well as the situation of the other party when we ask. Are they in the middle of a meeting? Did they come home announcing they’ve just had the worst day ever? We should approach the other person when they are free to talk, and ideally when they are calm enough to be attentive to our request. There is no reason to set ourselves up for reinforcement of the belief that no one will help us by choosing to ask at a moment when the other party cannot give any time or attention to our request.

So take some time this week and try these ideas on for size – don’t tackle all the areas where you need help at once. Just pick one area where you’ve been trying to deal with an issue or situation on your own and it is not yielding the desired results. Think of who you can ask for help. Journal about how you want to ask. Then pick a moment when the other person can talk, simply say, “I need your help” and describe the issue you need help with.

If you find that you are having a hard time with the process of asking for help, we invite you to contact Southlake Counseling. Our compassionate, knowledgeable, and experienced staff can support you as you practice asking for, and accepting, the help you need and deserve. If you are ready to say “no” to wearing the weight of your world on your shoulders and “YES” to sharing your burdens with others who can and want to help and support you, then contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Monday November 1, 2010 in Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: How to Know When We Need Help

No Gravatar

In the more than two decades I have spent assisting courageous individuals who come to me seeking help for how to transcend challenges and embrace opportunities, I have noticed over and over again how hard our culture makes it for us to ask for help.

We may think that it is hard to accept help when it is offered, and that is often true as well. But that difficulty is nothing compared to how hard many of us find it to reach out and ask for help when we need it.

In fact, I have also noticed that the difficulty only sometimes lies with an actual inability to ask for help. For many of those I have met in the course of my life and work, the true challenge seems to be even knowing for sure when help is needed!

So I thought we would spend some time this month discussing how we know when we need help and how we can ask for help when we need it.

When we were little, we probably asked for help by crying. We had a limited emotional vocabulary, and tears were one of the few reliable ways we could communicate a felt need – even if we did not have a clear understanding of what that need was. We just knew we needed….something….we cried….and someone noticed and offered assistance. If necessary, we figured out what kind of assistance was needed together, but the presence of the tears was enough evidence in and of themselves that help was in order, and enough to send it running our way.

As we got older, however, it became less socially acceptable to literally “cry out” our need for help. As our tears went underground, our ability to sense our felt need for help went with it.  We learned that there was a cutoff age by which we could unselfconsciously ask for help without fear of ridicule, rejection, or censure. Once that cutoff age had been reached, we were deemed “old enough” to figure out how to help ourselves and we were on our own.

It was at this point that we most likely withdrew permission from ourselves to ask for help, or accept it when it was offered, or both.

However, even if it has been awhile since we have used it, we have never lost this ability to sense when we need help. Rather, we are just out of practice with tuning in.

This week, spend some time tuning in again to that innate felt sense of when you need help. As you do this, suspend any learned adult requirement that you must question your own felt sense of needing help, regardless of whether your need is small (lifting a heavy bag out of the car) or big (addressing a difficult relationship or work situation).

If necessary, pretend you are small again, and your felt sense of needing help is pure and trusted. Allow it to come up. Notice if it is preceded by a sudden feeling of sadness, anger, fear, or other emotion. Notice how you feel as you begin to translate a wave of previously inexplicable sudden feeling into a need for help. Do you feel fear? Resistance? Reluctance? Relief?

Being able to tune in to when you need help is the first step to being able to ask for help – we simply cannot ask for what we do not know we need. Knowing we need help is also the first step towards trusting ourselves enough to ask for it – if we cannot admit to ourselves that we need help, then we cannot allow ourselves to accept it, even when it is freely offered!

If you notice you are struggling to tune back in to your felt sense of needing help, or you are struggling against admitting to yourself that you are worth receiving the help you know you need, Southlake Counseling can help. Our professional staff is compassionate and experienced in helping individuals of every age and from every walk of life to relearn how to ask for and accept help. To find out more about how you can begin to say no to “going it alone” and YES to accepting and embracing help, visit us at today at www.southlakecounseling.com.

Be Well,

Kimberly


Published on Monday October 25, 2010 in Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Are You Willing To Do What It Takes?

No Gravatar

I had an interesting conversation with a guy I know at a bicycle shop the other day. We started talking about my bicycle seat options and what might be more comfortable for me, so I asked him if it makes a difference that my pelvis healed into an uneven position after a car accident about 20 years ago. This led to a further discussion of lower back issues…neck and shoulder tightness, and he asked me if I have any chronic pain as a result of my injuries. I hadn’t really considered this in a while, so I shared with him that I had been a chiropractic patient for nearly two decades, visiting several times a year, anytime I felt a flare-up in my back, neck, or shoulders. However, I have been able to stay out of the chiropractor’s office for about the past two years, despite doing more physical activity such as cycling, which can exacerbate back problems.

“How do you explain that?” he asked. The answer was easy, “I practice yoga.”  He agreed that yoga is extremely helpful in developing what people need to stay active – balance, strength, and flexibility – and as a trainer he recommends it to nearly all his serious cyclists, but added that most people just won’t take the time to practice it. Hmmm…so this made me think.

In my work with clients, we quite often discuss ways that they can feel better – coping skills that they can use when they feel distressed, instead of returning to their old patterns of using food, alcohol, sex, self-injury, isolation, purging, or any other maladaptive trick that they have tried. The problem with these patterns is that, although they may temporarily “numb” us from feeling what is causing emotional pain, they end up causing harm and making things worse. So, like I tell my clients, when you take what you have been using away, you must learn to replace it with something that works…and here is where many people have a problem. Although we make a list of many other ideas that they can try when they start to feel uncomfortable, and they even admit that the new coping skills actually work, they fail to practice the willingness to continue to do what they know will help them…so why is that?

In our DBT groups, we learn about willingness vs. willfulness, and specifically how these concepts help or hurt us. Willingness is when we know what will help us feel and function better without making things worse in the long run, and we actually put those skills into practice in our daily lives. Willfulness, on the other hand, is when we know what would be the most effective way to handle a situation, what would work the best for us, and we choose not to do it.

There are many reasons why a person willfully chooses not to do what he knows will work. Sometimes people are familiar with and comfortable being in a constant state of chaos, and don’t believe they deserve anything better or different. Other times the pain of the harm they are doing is not enough to motivate them to change. Until that balance shifts and their suffering becomes worse than the discomfort associated with doing something new, many people won’t make the effort to help themselves.

In my own life, self-care is something I must stay willing to practice in order to be the best mom, daughter, friend, and therapist that I can be. It’s often difficult for me to carve out time to practice yoga, ride my bike, spend time with friends, read, and pray/meditate, on top of all my other responsibilities. But I have found that the more demanding my schedule is, or the more stressors I am experiencing, the more imperative it is that I take care of myself by doing all those things. It requires willingness on my part to make the effort, and the results are worth it in my happiness, stability, and peace of mind. I know what makes me feel better, so it’s my fault if I choose not to do those things.

Ask yourself today, “If I am unhappy with the way things are in my life, am I willing to do what it takes for me to feel better?” If your answer is Yes, and you need some guidance in figuring out what might work for you, schedule an appointment at Southlake Counseling and take the first step toward being in charge of your own happiness.

In good health,

Debbie





Published on Friday September 24, 2010 in Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Wednesday’s Weekly Inspiration: Are You Choosy About Offering Your Support?

No Gravatar

As women, we often assume that we must bear the relational weight of the world on our shoulders. We are so accustomed to supporting everyone – from kids to pets to neighbors to colleagues to spouses to friends to family – that sometimes we forget we never gave up our right to say “yes” or “no”!

As you go about your day today, make a mental list of everyone you offer your support to. Then make another little note beside each person’s name about why you offered your support. Did you want to? Did you instead do it because you felt obligated? Did you offer support just because you were worried about what they would think or say about you if you said no? Or was it a joy to reach out a hand, speak a kind word, offer a hug?

Today, remind yourself that you have the right to be choosy about whom you offer your time, your energy, your strength, and your heart to.

Today’s affirmation: Today, I will be choosy about saying “yes” and “no” to requests for support

© Kimberly Krueger- Meditations for Recovery

 

Published on Thursday September 9, 2010 in Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .