Recently I heard a talk radio program where the host said (in reference to what, I cannot remember), “This is not like psychotherapy where they are trying to fix you…” I couldn’t hear the rest because I was in total shock. I knew this point of view existed, but I had never heard it said so succinctly: psychotherapists try to fix people. I could only think in little sound bites: Wait. Time out. FALSE.

It took me a couple of weeks to recover and process. So now let me say in response that I’m not interested in fixing anyone. I don’t believe anyone is broken. At the heart of it, I actually think most people fear they are broken, but are not. It’s this fear that creates a lot of problems.

As a therapist, I do not try to fix things or people. I try to normalize the human experience. I help in another way key way, too: unearthing options that have been previously undiscovered.

It’s a bit difficult to convince people that they haven’t thought of all the possible ways to deal with a thought, feeling, relationship, or situation. But you haven’t. I haven’t. It’s a big problem because people think, “What’s a therapist going to tell me that I don’t already know?” My response is actually, “Quite a bit.”

As a therapist, I’m really just a creative, collaborative generator of possible choices. I listen, reflect, try to make sure I get what’s being said. Then through dialogue and questions, I help find more options than previously considered. Some ideas I bring up, some come up from clients just by talking in a new way about their situation.

It’s not because I’m all awesomely creative that I come up with ideas. It’s really because I talk with a lot of people in a deep and meaningful way all day. I’ve started to hear about lots of ways of doing things. I also try to read and collect ideas from a broad range of sources. I’m excited everyday to learn something new and to figure out how I might apply it to my work.

Out of this desire to collect new viewpoints, I’m starting a guest post series on this blog. I’ve met some very talented people who have interesting things to say about the world of health, wellness, and being human from their own unique perspectives. I’ve asked them to share here on this blog.

Last week, I featured a beautifully-done piece by Portland, Maine writer and musician James Day Leavitt. In the weeks to come I have a great line up for you:

Aaron Bilodeau, co-creator of www.existanew.com, a project that challenges conventional notions on how to foster health, live, and be happy.

Dawn Clancy, creator of Growing Up Chaotic, a blog and radio program for those determined to SURVIVE and THRIVE despite growing up in toxicity – i.e. a childhood immersed in alcohol, drugs and physical, emotional or mental abuse. Her goal? Create a community hell bent on breaking, cracking and demolishing the cycle of dysfunction.

Lynn Shattuck, Portland, Maine writer and mother of two recently featured on Love for Lemons. She writes warm, touching, and often humorous pieces on topics such as perfectionism, parenting, and grief.

I hope you will read, share, and comment. The more we talk together, the more ideas are shared, the more options we see in our world, the easier it is to make choices that work for our own lives.

Being self-assured yields kindness and contentment. This is contrary to what most of us were taught, and yet I’m increasingly sure that it is true. This is why, in my recent post about being self-assured, I questioned the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary about words “related” to self-assured: vain, egotistical, pompous.

In my mind, being self-assured means being on one’s own team, with a commitment to working on the skills and internal resources that help us through new challenges. It means having trust in one’s own ability to show up and figure it out regardless of what life throws our way.

I think there is a real problem when we equate working on things like positive self-talk, emotional regulation, wellness, and self-care with being “vain” “egotistical” and “selfish.” I hear this quite frequently in my office. Many really nice people think it’s selfish to be in therapy or to take time to help themselves feel better. No, I say. Taking time to feel well and gain helpful skills is about the best community service you can do.

Let me explain with an example. Who would you rather spend time with: A.) a person who is generally pretty upbeat who has a fairly predictable range of emotions and reactions and generally understanding and helpful OR B.) a person who does the opposite, who bombards you with negativity, complaining, yelling, the silent treatment, or aggression for reasons that either you don’t understand or are out of proportion to the situation and whom you generously dub “difficult.”

I admit that most of us are probably somewhere in the middle of Person A and Person B. No one is calm and collected all the time, and that’s probably a good thing. But my point is, being more self-assured is something that is quite desirable. It’s the underlying trait that makes people truly kind, steady, and easy to be around.

If we have emotional “stuff” bugging us, as we all will at many points in our lives, it requires attention and work. Otherwise, emotions bubble up and come out in ways that invariably impact others. Always. I get the “I don’t want to be selfish” concern, but taking care of your emotional life is not selfish. Not one little bit. NOT taking care of your emotional life will keep you inching towards being Person B. Don’t be Person B. It’s miserable.

Being on the journey towards increasing self-assurance is kind to yourself and to the world. It is not selfish. Selfishness is the product of unmet emotional needs always coming to the surface. Selfishness is needing to drag down others with your oozing and overwhelming needs, that only you can really learn to fully address. Others are there for validation, encouragement, listening, and even cheerleading. They are not there to manage your feelings. If you are managing your feelings (not denying, pushing away, projecting onto others but really feeling, owning and working through them), you are contributing positively to the world.

I’m no mathematician, but I think more self-assured people=a better world.

What do you think?

Can being self-assured help us to go boldly into unknown life territory? This is a question I’ve been thinking about lately. But what does it mean to be self-assured? To me, it seems like a very desirable quality, something to cultivate in oneself and in our children. In my curiosity, I did some research. According to Merriam-Webster Online, the term means “sure of oneself: self-confident.” It says that related words include: vain, egotistical, pompous.

I partly agree, but I have some issues with this definition and with the “related” words. I guess this begs the questions: Who am I to take issue with the dictionary? Am I self-assured or really pompous after all?!

In my mind, being self-assured means having a sense that one can make it through what life throws our way. It means cultivating helpful self-talk and being on your own team. Life is hard, you don’t always know what to do. You may be scared or unsure. Being self-assured (in my unofficial dictionary), is having some acceptance of this and still trying our best. It means showing up physically and emotionally and being in the driver’s seat of our lives. Even the self-assured need to buckle up because it’s often a bumpy ride.

In my humble (and yet self-assured!) opinion, self-confidence is a little different. I think confidence is the belief that you can accomplish something. Usually we gain confidence through previous life experience. I am confident in my skills as a therapist from roughly 10 years of training and practice. Prior to becoming a parent (where you clearly cannot get the experience until becoming one), I did feel self-assured because I was committed to managing my emotions, accepting things I cannot control, and willing to get help and support whenever or wherever I hit an inevitable bump in the road. These two examples feel really different to me.

It seems to me that confidence is trust on one’s abilities and self-assurance is trust in one’s self. I need previous experience to be confident. I need a rich knowledge of my internal resources (emotional, physical, spiritual) to be self-assured.

Self-confidence is great for preparing in many aspects of life. It’s a positive thing, but I don’t think it goes far enough. I think we need to develop self-assurance for the many situations for which you cannot prepare.

What do you think? Is there a difference between self-confidence and being self-assured? How do you feel about the term?

Next post, I’m going to take on those “closely related” words. If you have thoughts on that, too, I’d be very interested.

Thanks for reading- if you are interested please subscribe to this blog, check out my Facebook where I post interesting links, and feel free to share with friends!

Photo Credit: Dreamstime.com

EMDR is a very interesting, highly effective type of therapy. I’ve been working hard lately to spread the word about its usefulness. If you’d like some background on this well-researched therapy that is effective with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety, phobias and many other issues check out my recent interview on Growing Up Chaotic and my blog posts here and here.

I promised I’d follow up with any questions I received, so here I go (please note that this is for educational purposes only. This information is not a substitute for medical advice. If you believe you are suffering from a mental health disorder, please talk with your health care practitioner for diagnosis and treatment information).

Question: Is EMDR only for big traumas like combat, assault and serious car accidents?

Hannah’s answer: No! While these examples are experiences that are likely to be traumatic, it does not have to be a “major” trauma to use EMDR. Many of my clients are using EMDR to help reprocess early life experiences that reinforced unhelpful messages and negative beliefs about self. Here are examples of the range of issues I am using EMDR to help clients with: body image, care-taking, anger, loneliness, over-eating, co-dependence, and conflict avoidance.

Question: Do I have to do trauma reprocessing to do EMDR?

Hannah’s answer: No, again! EMDR can also be used to help reinforce and strengthen existing positive beliefs about self. It can also be used to gain emotional regulation skills. It can be used to help prepare for difficult experiences you have coming up in your life. There are many applications for EMDR. You can even do some self-help with EMDR, and I recommend Laurel Parnell’s book, Tapping In.

Question: Can I do EMDR wrong?!

Hannah’s answer: No, as long as you are working with a trained EMDR therapist. Your therapist is there to guide you. There is no right or wrong in EMDR. It’s your therapists job to help whenever there is a stuck point. You can’t do it wrong, although most people worry that they will.

Question: How do I know if I need EMDR?

Hannah’s answer: If you discover a pattern that is hard to break, a response that is out of proportion to the situation, a recurring response associated with trauma, or an inability to cope with strong emotions, then EMDR may be helpful to you. To be honest, probably everyone could benefit from EMDR.

Question: How do I know if I’m ready to reprocess my trauma?

Hannah’s answer: Not everyone is ready for trauma processing. In order to process trauma, you need to feel stable, with a strong support network, a variety of emotional regulation skills, and the ability to tolerate strong emotions without self-harming or using substances. Starting therapy to gain these skills is essential work to prepare for the reprocessing phase of EMDR.

Have more questions or want to start EMDR therapy? Feel free to contact me.

Tomorrow I will be a guest on the internet radio program Growing Up Chaotic to discuss EMDR and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s at 7pm EST and I hope you will listen.

As a result, I’ve got EMDR on the brain. I’ve been using this type of therapy with many of my clients for several years now. What I’ve learned is that EMDR can be a tool for change when you have an old pattern that just won’t budge.

EMDR is a comprehensive form of therapy that is well-researched and highly effective. It is an approach that is done by  psychotherapists who have received specific training. “What is EMDR?,” you ask: well my previous post will start to answer that question- click here.

In my practice I tend to use EMDR when clients indicate a history of trauma or a single traumatic event that is related to current problems or distress. I also see a very clear use for EMDR when clients find that they have troublesome feelings or reactions despite previous therapy and even when they intellectually know what to do, but the response is so automatic that they cannot help it.

In my mind, many automatic responses are learned to cope with an early life situation. If you grew up needing a response to cope in your environment (for example, shutting down emotionally, yelling to get attention, avoiding conflict at all cost), these coping mechanisms may become counter-productive when your environment changes. For people who grow up making changes in their lives (which is healthy!), these old coping responses become out-dated. However, they are so well learned in childhood that we can’t always get them to change without help.

EMDR can often help process old patterns and the negative messages about self that go along with them. For someone who grows up not getting much attention, the skills of being emotionally shut down and being ruggedly independent may end up working well. In the child’s perspective, though, the message about the self is something like, “I’m not important” or “I am not worthy of attention.” This is because children can only see the world through their own perspective. Everything that happens is interpreted to be about them. This means that these very old automatic responses are also tied with negative beliefs.

How this plays out is that we grow up with certain coping responses and when we unconsciously sense that we are in a situation that feels like the old situation, we tend to use the same responses. These responses are not just behavioral and emotional, they also are tied with core beliefs about ourselves. So the person who grows up being emotionally neglected may sense danger when another person wants to be connected to them. The old pattern of shutting down and the belief about not being worthy of connection will automatically come into play. This all happens without us really understanding where these thoughts and feelings come from.

There are other ways to work on these automatic responses and negative beliefs, but I find that EMDR works the best for those who have benefited from other forms of therapy but still want to break these old patterns once and for all. If you are thinking of trying EMDR, I recommend looking for a therapist who is fully trained in EMDR, uses EMDR regularly, receives consultation specific to EMDR, as well as actively continues his/her professional development in EMDR.

Have questions about EMDR? I’m going to follow up with another post next week, so please feel free to contact me or leave a comment below.

I believe that failure is an unhelpful concept. I’m not even convinced it’s a real thing. In my mind, it belongs in the category of make-believe creatures along with unicorns, dragons, and the Easter Bunny.

Recently, Seth Godin (marketing genius and writer whose lessons surprisingly generalize to many areas of life), made a very wise point in his post, Just the good parts. He feels that when you hit bumps in the road, like a bad break or rejection, “It means that you’re doing worthwhile, difficult work, not merely amusing yourself.” I would add to this and assert that you can’t have success without so-called failure.

In my assessment, there is no way to “fail.” Life is not graded. You can’t get an F. There is showing up and participating, making choices, being accountable, and doing our best. Or there is not participating, waiting for others to make choices for us, and claiming that we are helpless. And every shade of gray in between. Trying and having it not work out as we predict or would like is not the same as “failure.”

In my mind, every time you choose to participate and give the best you can in that given moment, you are being your very best self. You can’t really go wrong. Maybe your grade isn’t so great, or the guy you like turns you down, or you didn’t get the job you interviewed for. But that is never failure. And usually, in the end, it works out better than you imagined.

At the end of the day, if we’ve done our best, we have a better sense of self and accomplishment. We can better accept our inherent strengths and weaknesses. We can begin to cope with the many areas of life beyond our control. Participating fully in life as our real selves with all we’ve got is the bravest and most rewarding way to live. Just showing up and learning from all that life has to offer will always be a winning experience.

Fearing failure is devastatingly counter-productive. It keeps us from putting our best, most authentic selves out in the world. We all lose when others hide themselves and their talents. It keeps us withered and tight, unable to bloom and open.

What could be different in your life if you stopped fearing failure?

PS: I’m still working on my project of finding ways to make emotional health information exciting and accessible to a wide audience! Can you help me by taking a very brief survey by clicking here? Your feedback WILL make a big difference. Thank you! And, while I’m in the mood for asking for favors, if you like what I’m doing, please feel free to subscribe to this blog, share on social media and encourage your friends to follow along and to take my survey too. (I hope the adorable collage in this post will serve as appropriate compensation for your time!)

There is a grocery item that I buy on a regular basis. It’s in a glass jar and it’s on the top shelf. Now if it were a box of cereal, I could easily give it a little poke and it would likely sway and bounce off the shelf and into my hands. I’m less than eager to try with a glass jar. My strategy instead is to wait for either a taller patron or staff person to come by. I ask politely for their help, thank them kindly, and go about my shopping.

Pop quiz: What does this choice mean about me? Am I a failure because I’ve only grown to be 5’1″? Am I dependent on others? Is my lack of height shameful? Or am a resourceful thinker using the attributes of another to help me solve a problem that is difficult to manage on my own?

My silly (although very real!) example is intended to show that asking for help often makes good sense. In this scenario it would be quite ridiculous for me to go buy a ladder or climb up the shelving just so I could do it on my own. The point is, sometimes it doesn’t make any sense to do it on our own.

What I think is really great about being a modern human is that there are so many of us able to do so many different things. I do think we need a sense of self-sufficiency in some aspects of life, but we are social creatures. We are meant to make it together. With so many others, shouldn’t we be REALLY MAKING IT?!

It is actually a skill to realize that something you want or need to accomplish or understand requires the skills, talents, insights and feedback of other humans. We have so many resources available to us yet, I often witness people believing that because they can’t see the solution, it must not exist. This is problematic. If you don’t think there is a solution, another perspective, or a different philosophy, you won’t seek others to help you find it.

It’s this kind of thinking that stunts our emotional development. We get so stuck in our own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs that we mistake them as the absolute truth – the only way things can be. Feelings, thoughts, and beliefs can be changed, shaped, and challenged over the course of our lives. That’s healthy. Stagnating is not.

I believe that my primary job as a therapist is to help people identify options for their lives around their feelings, thoughts, and actions that they didn’t previously recognize. I believe that the clients who seek me out are skilled at recognizing a need for fresh ways of looking at their situation when the old ways stop working. This is brave, not weak. It is effective and smart, not shameful and foolish.

Are there things in your life that require a new perspective? What things are better done on your own?

I’m always a little surprised when I’m asked, “Can people really change?” Yes, people can really change. And if you’ll excuse the double negative, I’d say people can’t not change.

While I’m not an expert on too many things, my humble observation is that everything changes. All the time. I don’t know about you, but I wake up older everyday. I know about homeostasis but I think it’s to keep us on some even keel as we experience change around us at every moment.

Change happens, whether you believe you are in charge of it or not. If you don’t believe you are driving your own life, then change happens, you just didn’t give it much intention or direction. That’s a waste, because I really think we know what’s best for our own lives.

So it bums me out when people believe that they can’t change. I believe that a lot of distress in the world comes from a fundamental belief that we are primarily victims with little to no ownership of our lives. Here are some problems that I think come from, at least in part, this worldview: hopelessness, feeling stuck, over-focusing on aspects of life that are beyond our control (death, what others choose to do, what might happen in the future), getting overwhelmed by these uncontrollable aspects of life, feeling insignificant, numbing out, and blaming and raging at others.

On the other hand, people who bring intention and awareness to how they want to live feel happier and cope better with what’s out of their control. When we realize what we can control, and make our decisions accordingly, then life feels a whole lot different. We absolutely have a lot of control over our words, our thoughts, our behaviors, our reactions, our emotions, our choices, our preferences, and our priorities. Using our time and resources to learn how to be a skilled operator of these aspects of our being is a worthy investment.

People who are empowered to change, who own their choices, are a happier lot. They don’t look for others to provide the answer, they consult with others in a quest for their own truth. They don’t wait for circumstances to be different, they look for a path to where they want to go no matter what the terrain. They don’t make excuses, they make opportunities.

Our lives will be different in 2013 than in 2012. The question is: Do you want to shape the direction of your life or not?

I hope so. I know it can be daunting, so I hope you’ll check back here for some support and encouragement. You can do this life thing, I know it.

Ever wonder if you are the only one who walks through the door of a family gathering and reverts to behaviors and mannerisms that have been mostly dormant for decades? I can fully assure you that it is extremely common, if not universal. I hear this complaint in my office (okay plenty in my private life too). It usually sounds like this, “I don’t know what it is but when I get together with my family, it’s like I’m a 13-year-old all over again.” Needless to say, this is a huge topic around the holidays when there is a high concentration of extended family togetherness.

Why is this? My observation is that it can be a number of factors that make you prone to this situation. For some people, it is that their families have out-of-date stories about them. Or maybe the family of origin never fully adjusted to having grown children. Often, the dynamic of the personalities together just feels the same, and we start to act like it is an earlier (much, much earlier) time in our lives. And, annoyingly, so do the people around us.

A common trap is to bemoan how our family members treat us. We say to ourselves, “Can’t they just grow up and move on? Don’t they get me? I’m an adult, darn it!” If they were different, surely we would be fine. We could stop playing the role of the spoiled brat, over-reactive drama-queen, shut-down no-fun downer, anxious-worrying-about-everything perfectionist, rabble-rousing antagonist, the carefree don’t give-a-crap-about-anything comedian, or the one trying to mediate all of the above and getting yelled at for it.

The first step to addressing this problem is to realize that the other family members probably will not change. Maybe you’ll get lucky and someone else will step up and act differently, changing the dynamic. Realistically, if you are the one thinking about this topic and reading this post, you are probably the best candidate. Some people will determine that their family is just too toxic or abusive and may need to disengage completely. For the majority of situations, however, it is simply the time to start using new strategies.

If things are going to change you have got to stay, as much as possible, your current adult self even when you go through the space/time wormhole that is the family gathering. It is NOT easy. It WILL take lots of practice. But something tells me that you’re going to get plenty of opportunities. It takes some planning, a strategy, and some reflection after the fact. You can start to see why lots of people want the guidance of a therapist to figure it out.

Here are some ideas for remaining an adult, even when you feel the pull of regressing into the previous version of yourself:

• Suggest environments, activities, and time-frames that are more likely to bring out the best in each other. Perhaps structure the time spent together to bring out positive experiences from the past, or try novel experiences that will help you see each other in a new, updated light. Usually extended periods of idle time bring out the old dynamics.
• If you have a partner or children, try to use them as cues for staying in your everyday way of being. You can also try to imagine how you are in social situations outside of your family and see if you can remain fairly similar.
• Bring up topics of conversation that are mutually interesting, focused on the present, and are non-controversial. It could be sports, hobbies, funny stories, sharing favorite music or television shows. Try to think ahead of some things to bring up, but don’t force the topic if there isn’t the interest-level you expected. Having present-focused conversations can help steer away from bringing up material from the past that has a tendency to bring up those old feelings and behaviors you are trying to avoid.
• Take up a task that gets you out of the fray, especially if you feel yourself slipping back in time. Maybe volunteer to entertain the kids, teach your Grandmother how to use her new Kindle, or bake something for dessert. Just try to avoid being in the same-old same-old role. Choose something a little different than what you usually do, and then focus in on that for a while.
• Keep a light spirit. Involve yourself in the most enjoyable aspects of the gathering for you personally, whether it is joking with the funny cousin or watching your favorite old-school Christmas movie, try to keep it lighthearted for your own sake.

Remember that you do get to go home and return to your normal life. Honestly… you do. When you go back to your adult life, take some time to reflect on what you did well and what you might do differently next time. Remember, it will be a work in progress for quite a long time.

It has been dreary here in Maine this October. It’s easy to feel down when the darkness, cold and rain are present, especially after a bright and beautiful summer. Naturally, we all want to find some comfort and warmth to ease the damp chill outside.

I’ve noticed that many people think comfort is about numbing out or becoming detached. Activities that could promote mindlessness include watching TV, eating, drinking, getting lost in the internet, and looking at things to buy. I’m not saying that these activities are bad. They just aren’t likely to have a lasting positive impact on mood. In other words, they may not provide true comfort.

Comfort really comes from tuning in: being connected to ourselves, our environment, and to others. There is comfort in providing a pleasant experience to our senses, that makes us keenly aware, not checked out. You can feel comforted and connected bundling up to take a walk, where you notice the warmth of your body compared to the cool fall air, all while taking in the scenery around you.

I like to have pleasant smells and warm, hearty foods in the house. Making squash, pumpkins, or apple sauce provides an aroma and healthy, seasonal foods that can be enjoyed.

Great comfort comes from connecting with others. Fall is a great time to hike, have a cup of coffee or tea, pick apples, cook, can, or just sit and talk with friends and family. I personally like to snuggle in and read Brown Bear, Brown Bear with my munchkin.

We all need a plan for weathering the emotional changes that come with the darker, colder seasons. Intentionally find activities that allow you to be mindful, tuned-in and connected with yourself and others. Have a plan ready for the short days ahead. For more ideas, check out my thoughts on SAD Prevention and Depression.

Where do you find comfort?