by currantdesignsllc | May 5, 2016 | Emotional Healing, Growth, Healing, Processing Thoughts and Emotions, Recovery, Self-Help
Taking a break from the “I Have A Question” series to remind you about the power of your mind. Most of us, barring any major mental health disorder, can choose what we want to believe. It seems like we don’t but we do…always.
Be aware of your thoughts and notice how they affect your emotions. Emotions follow thoughts. If the thought is negative, the emotion will be, too. For instance, if you make a mistake, then start thinking of every mistake you’ve made and end up in a depressed tailspin, you have chosen to go down an unnecessarily brutal path. Keep your mind focused on the one mistake you just made and use it as an opportunity to learn something. You can be mad but don’t dwell on it for too long.
The dialogue, either audibly or in your head, might sound like this: I totally screwed up the report. Ugh! I am so mad at myself! This is going to take time I don’t have! Ahhhhh! OK, take a deep breath in and out…in and out. Now, what can I do about this and what went wrong? Oh yeah, I didn’t double check my work. I was in a hurry, rushed through it and skipped proofreading. That’s on me. I don’t need to beat myself up over this, that won’t help. Just recognize it and learn from it. Deep breath in and out again…let go of the anger…and move on. I have other things I need to be doing right now and wallowing in this will not help me at all. I am human. I make mistakes. I can learn from my mistakes. Now, I’m going to work on this next task. You will need to repeat this each time the negative thoughts start creeping back in. They are kind of like cockroaches…hard to get rid of but if you’re persistent you will!
If you veer off the path and start recounting every time you screwed up or start telling yourself you are a loser, STOP! That won’t help you one bit. Literally say stop to yourself. Say it aloud if you can and start the above dialogue to get out of the old way. I can tell you from personal experience this works! Every time I use it, I have success and feel so much better. An added benefit is I usually have more clarity and energy to use on productive, life-giving tasks.
The shift is not easy. Meaning it won’t come naturally. We all have many horribly unhelpful neural pathways that are as strong as the fastest highway you can imagine. When we get on this learned neural pathway it seems like it’s a reflex but it isn’t. We learned it over time from a young age. It was likely modeled for us or it’s just part of how we are wired or it’s both. Knowing the origin and working through it can be helpful but you don’t have to in order to change the pathway. Be super intentional. Take this seriously and you will see results!
by currantdesignsllc | Mar 24, 2016 | Acceptance, Depression, Growth, Healing, Recovery, Self-Help
It snowed 25 inches in my town yesterday. I live in Colorado. We get snow. It doesn’t surprise us. It was 70 degrees and sunny the day before. Even that isn’t a huge surprise. The surprise for me was I thought we were getting about five inches. Five inches of snow is easily manageable. We drive and go about our normal business when it snows five inches. So that’s what I did. I got up, met a friend for coffee at 8 and was preparing to head to my office to see clients. When I walked out to my car, I knew this was not a five inch kind of storm…by 10 am it was already close to a foot deep. Driving home was a challenge. Five inches can be navigated, 12 plus inches is tricky. I didn’t actually make it all the way home. I was four houses away when I got stuck. The snow was too deep to go any further. Sometimes that’s how it is for us in life…we just have to stop.
Sometimes it’s an illness or injury that stops us in our tracks. Sometimes it’s depression or fear. There are no easy ways out. We take a breath in and let that breath out and then we do it again. In and out…just breathing… Sometimes the sun comes out and melts the snow. Sometimes we have to pay someone to plow for us. Eventually the snow goes away and we go back to our usual tasks. Sometimes we heal but sometimes we don’t. When we don’t, we just go back to breathing…slowly in, then out… Not all situations in life are predictable or even manageable at times. We just do the best we can whether it’s five inches or 25. Whether it melts or not…
by currantdesignsllc | Feb 25, 2016 | Emotional Healing, Growth, Healing, Recovery, Relationships, Self-Help
Last week I shared the beauty I experienced with my dad dying. This week is the other side of all that! It wasn’t all sweet and wonderful. I spent about two weeks with my family and that is bound to bring up issues. We have different personalities, tolerances and messiness. Mine floated ever so effortlessly into clear view. I am number 5 out of 6 kids plus I have two foster sisters who take the first and last spots. I sometimes feel unimportant in my family and my dad’s exit process was no different. I just didn’t think I had a place. I wondered where I fit in. Why should I even be here? I decided after a few days to just go home. Why subject myself to misery?
Each of my siblings, in my opinion, had a role: executor, nurse, caretaker, carry on the family business…
But what about me? For a time I kept thinking my dad didn’t even know who I was…he did. That was just a story I created to support my “I don’t matter” theme. Then I thought he looked at me with disdain, like maybe he was seeing me as he did when I was involved in an affair. Shame poured all over me like waste from a port-a-potty extraction.
Our minds are so powerful! We can convince ourselves of almost anything. Mine was doing a fine job of tearing my worth and value into shreds. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I quietly packed and gently left. No one would have known anything was wrong. I am an excellent, Oscar worthy actress! One of my sisters wanted to have lunch with me before I started my drive back home…that changed everything! She had no idea how fragile I had become or how intensely the toxic stench of shame had poisoned me.
I poured out all the gunk inside of me and laid it at her feet. That’s when the hazmat cleanup started. She and my niece stayed in the icky places with me.They let me have my experience and also added truth. They helped me see my role…everyone has a role! Mine was subtle but still important.
The time with my sister and niece changed an entire course of my life! I could have walked away. I would have missed out on the healing I received from them. I would have missed out on being there for my dad, my mom and my sister in ways only I could fill. Not because “I’m all that” but because I am me and the elements I bring into my relationships are uniquely mine. No one else brings what I do, just as I don’t bring what any one else does. It’s this beautiful place of importance that we all have in the entangled messy rootball of life.
by currantdesignsllc | Oct 8, 2015 | Acceptance, Boundaries, Depression, Emotional Healing, Growth, Healing, Recovery
The world of seeking emotional health can be confusing. We are to have solid boundaries and also seek to understand others. We are to be aware of our emotions, feel them and not let them take us down emotional black holes. It’s important to feel authentically and seek contentment. Like the Bible, the healing world should be considered based on all the information available not just one isolated piece of information.
I was thinking about last week’s post on contentment. It is a challenge at times to both feel what you happen to be feeling and find contentment. I remember two years ago when my daughter, Anna and I were waiting in North Carolina for her lung transplant and last year when we walked through cancer and chemo. If someone had told me I just need to be content I might have smacked them! Not really, but I would have thought about it 🙂
Sometimes when we are hurting deeply, we aren’t going to move quickly to contentment. The shift from our misery to contentment is a slow one and no one can make us get there. The shift is part of our journey and it’s important to embrace the journey as much or sometimes even more than the destination.
Anytime I suggest a growth piece, please take everything I say into account. I try to cover all sides in a single post but sometimes that takes too many words! Remember that I encourage a whole picture approach. There are so many ‘ands’ in the emotional health world.
While we can generally focus on one new change at a time, keep in mind there’s a whole book full of them and each should be taken into account, not isolated from the pack.
by currantdesignsllc | Jun 25, 2015 | Acceptance, Emotional Healing, Growth, Processing Thoughts and Emotions
I saw the new Pixar movie, Inside Out with my daughters the other day. They were by far the oldest children with their parents. At 23 and 22 it’s still fun to hang out with them! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie…ok there were a few moments where I thought it was dragging but they had to give us our money’s worth I suppose. So much of what I explain to my clients about the value of all of our emotions was right there on the big screen with color and animation rather than abstractly defined. The movie also clearly displays the importance of sadness in creating healing, connection with others and staying integrated internally.
I think I’ll add watching this movie to my homework assignments! 🙂
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