Last weekend I went to a fantastic concert, right here in Portland. Enjoying the music, I realized I was not just hearing it, but feeling it as well. There were thirteen musicians on stage, so there was a lot to watch. I felt more deeply relaxed than I had in quite some time. I felt alert but calm, my body let go of tension. My mind was focused and engaged. It seemed like an optimal state of being. Needless to say, it was highly enjoyable.

This experience got me thinking about Aaron Bilodeau of Exist Anew, and the fantastic piece he wrote last week, as part of the New Perspectives Series on this blog. He explains how he was able to use an evolutionary perspective to make life changes that helped improve his mental health. His perspective is that if we consider the types of foods, activities, and environments we were evolved to thrive in, we can start to understand why the modern world is stressful to our minds and bodies.

Aaron suggested some key ways that we can help our bodies and minds function more optimally in our modern environment: eating food that at least resembles the food our ancestors ate, moving our bodies, and being outside more often. I have also observed that these changes do promote well-being. At the concert, I began to think about what else might help promote well-being from an ancestral perspective? I came up with some more ideas, but first let me explain more about the “problem”…

It seems to me that the majority of Americans are stressed out much of the time. When I ask people in the office how often they feel relaxed, most say they are NEVER relaxed. This is a big problem.

I think using an evolutionary perspective is helpful in understanding why we are stressed and why we seldom have relaxation. I think it has to do, at least in part, with our primitive fear response. The oldest part of the brain is the region that is responsible for responding to threats from the environment by increasing heart rate, allowing blood to rush to the limbs, directing oxygen to fill the lungs, tensing muscles, elevating emotions and disabling reasoning skills. We are ready to take on the predator by fighting or fleeing, and hopefully surviving the outcome. This system probably worked well for our ancestors, since here we are today!

This fear-driven fight or flight response was optimal in an environment where big predators lived and we needed a fast and effective way to survive. Our current environment is much different. Even in Maine, I rarely encounter a predator! However, our brain still perceives “threats” from anything potentially stressful, even an upcoming test, a work assignment, a fleeting negative thought, or even a memory of an earlier time where we felt unsafe.  A fight or flight response is not picky. If a stimulus, internal or external, seems “scary” it will trigger the system to have a full-on fear response. The problem is the fight or flight response will not protect us from a test or assignment or a negative thought. Instead, most people are confused as to why they are feeling this natural response, which, absent the need to fight or flee, is highly uncomfortable. Not knowing what it is, often people fear they are going crazy, dying, or having a heart attack. These concerns then make us further afraid, increasing the duration of the fear response. We call these “symptoms” panic attacks and anxiety.

I think it’s very interesting that we have the same physiological response to real or just perceived threats. The bear is the same to my brain and body as an algebra test (assuming that I’m fearful of a math test, which is probably pretty accurate). Knowing this makes me a lot more aware. I don’t want to make my body and brain go through something that I don’t need to. I try to have the discipline to catch my thoughts and say, “Don’t go down that track, you’ll just have a completely unnecessary fear response.” I read recently that we are actually more resilient to emotional pain if we are less anxious (I’ll keep looking for that source and update this post when I find it). So there is only a disadvantage to firing off the fear system without a true physical risk to life or limb.

If you think you are experiencing the fear response on a regular basis, you may need help learning how to respond to it differently, trigger it less often, and get out of a vicious cycle. That is where counseling can be very helpful and probably necessary to get some relief.

For people who are recovering from panic and anxiety or for folks who want to do more to reduce vulnerability to stress and anxiety, I have some ideas. I’ve noticed in my practice that when clients are feeling less anxious, they almost always start to engage in a creative project. I know things have turned a corner when someone comes in and talks about painting for the first time in years, or picking up a musical instrument that they used to love to play. Sometimes, it’s just that they have music going in the background, are singing in the shower, or are laughing more with friends. I’ve started to wonder if things like music, art, dancing, laughter, reading, writing, relaxation, fun, celebration are cues to our brains that we are enjoying a period of safety and abundance. Maybe it cues the fear response to chill out for a while.

I believe these aspects of thriving are essential to being well. I also think they may be the factors that help keep us out of a constant fear response. Our ancestors did a lot to make sure our species survived into the 21st century. We can learn to thrive now, but we need to be careful what messages we give our brains and bodies. Nourishing food, sleep, social connection, music, art, laughter, dance are all markers of thriving. Things like going to a concert help us recognize that we are not just surviving, but can have celebration and abundance. Learning how to manage our thoughts, feelings, and natural responses can give us new insights into ways to be peaceful in our minds and bodies.

What do you do to thrive?

Note from Hannah: This the first in a series of guest posts with the goal of providing new perspectives to mental health, wellness, and being a human. This piece is written by Aaron Bilodeau, co-founder of Exist Anew.

My brain is broken, I thought to myself, as I sat in a plush, brown leather chair in my psychiatrist’s office; the perfect cliché- in an old brick building in downtown Portland, Maine. I stared, vacantly, through a large bay window, the sun’s rays cast upon my face, warming my skin through the white sheer curtains. Being a few stories up, I gazed at a slightly veiled view of  the modest skyline of the city I grew up in, amidst the backdrop of sparkling ocean and blue sky. The view made it easy to transport myself elsewhere, in avoidance of what I was being told: “You have a mental illness and you need stronger medication.”

This visit was the culmination of many other painstaking appointments, over years, with therapists and other doctors abound in which I was prescribed different anti-depressants and other drugs for a variety of health issues. From the time I was a teenager, chronic insomnia, panic attacks and mood disturbances led me to a multitude of diagnoses: Depression, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Cyclothymia… call it whatever; I just wanted to feel better, even “normal.” At the time, in my late twenties, I experienced an air of skepticism and frankly, hopelessness, that I would ever feel well.

So, there I found myself, contemplating treatment with more and stronger medications with potentially serious, frightening and lifelong side effects. My general detachment from this conversation quickly turned to fear, then anger, at this prospect. I felt deeply that this path was not for me and I became incensed with a renewed passion, even desperation, to move as far away from this path as I possibly could.

It was around this time that I encountered a truly unsuspecting catalyst for this journey; I found the novel, Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn. It’s a story of fiction that incorporates factual events about how human life has changed since the Agricultural Revolution, around 10,000 years ago. I know what you’re saying, what the heck does this have to do with mental illness? Allow me to explain…

As homo sapiens, our species have been around for about 200,000 years (and other species recognizable as humans for much longer.) For the vast majority of that time, humans have been hunter-gatherers- living outside, eating wild foods. Around 10,000 years ago, some humans decided to make some big changes, namely, growing and raising their own food through agriculture. This change led to surpluses of food that became “locked up,” which then led to the creation of different means of work, in order to get money to buy that locked up food. This occurred along with tremendous and rapid rise in population and development of hierarchies within civilizations.

Thanks for the history lesson right…so why does this matter?

Well, it matters because over millions of years of evolution, nature has made some requirements for our health through food and lifestyle that literally affect us on a genetic level. They are nature’s non-negotiables, and human life, which changed dramatically following the agricultural revolution, has progressively neglected this.

Here is a very abbreviated way to look at it:

Food-Before agriculture, our food was wild, full of nutrition and medicinal properties and free from pesticides and pollution. Today, almost all of our food is genetically modified and low in nutrients and medicinal properties, high in calories and full of pesticides.

Work Stress- Before agriculture, humans worked modest hours to secure their survival needs, in nature, breathing in fresh air and absorbing sunlight. Today, most humans work stressful and seemingly endless hours inside buildings, under florescent lights.

Movement- Before agriculture, humans used to move and lift objects frequently as part of survival. Today, we are often docile because our lives require little movement. We move from seated position to seated position with little regular movement (with the exception of some gym workouts-if we can manage that- thrown in.)

Support and Nurturing- Before agriculture, humans enjoyed the safety of tribes, social connections and ways of upbringing that worked for them over eons. Today, many of us do not experience the necessary familial and social connections and support necessary to create healthy people.

The previous examples briefly highlight what most of us know we need to make us healthy:  Healthy food, lowered stress levels, movement, exposure to the outdoors and support and nurturing. But rather than have this be just some generic health advice, it’s crucial to remember that through millions of years of evolution, they all affect our health on a genetic level. Yet, they are all disappearing from human life at a rapid pace and we have poor health and a change in our genetic expression of disease to show for it.

We are now living completely out of context. Our very environment is becoming completely toxic and malnourishing, from the food we eat and water we drink to the relationships we experience to the way we live our lives-our basic needs are no longer being met.

Diseases of modern times, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and even mental illness, which have become an epidemic today, did not exist in any prominence, if at all, in our ancestors. Nor do they exist in modern wild human populations.

This realization changed everything for me, because I realized that the symptoms I had been suffering from were not indicative of an isolated or personal flaw. They were, at least to a significant extent, a sign of the times; a product of the modern human’s dilemma of illness from living out of context with our evolutionary requirements for health.

Now, I don’t want to simplify mental illness because having dealt with it personally and working professionally with people with mental illness, I realize its extreme complexity. It will require a lot of support from many areas to help most of us experience a consistent level of mental and physical health. But, shouldn’t we begin by understanding our evolutionary requirements for health as a new perspective upon which to look at mental illness, and disease in general? The level of illness we see today is not the natural state of humanity.

Think about it like this- what if you took a wild animal and placed it almost entirely indoors and made it reliant on others for food very different from what it had always eaten in the wild? Food that was full of sugar, low in nutrients and, in many cases, full of toxins. What if this wild animal spent the rest of its life, alienated from its natural environment, moving far less than it ever had because it was encaged in a small area. What if this animal was forced to do stressful tricks for eight hours a day or more , five days a week, for fear of losing its food and shelter (and often alongside other animals it didn’t like?) What would you expect this wild animal’s health to look like? Aren’t we kind of like this wild animal? If so, then it becomes no wonder so many of us are ill.

We certainly cannot create all of the same wild conditions that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in, nor am I suggesting we wish to go back in time. However, we should feel assured that we can make dramatic changes given what we know about how the human animal evolved to be healthy.

For me, the biggest changes occurred when I altered my diet. While this would require a much more in-depth conversation, my diet gradually became based in food much closer to what our ancestors ate, and modern wild humans eat. We can’t always eat truly wild foods but we can use them as a guideline:

• While a wild turkey might be best, an organic, free range chicken is a lot better than chicken mcnuggets.

• While harvesting your own wild grains might be best, store bought wild rice is a lot better than a loaf of white bread or pasta.

• While foraging wild plants might be best, organic salad mix is a lot better than iceberg lettuce.

• While catching your own wild fish might be best, choosing wild fish at the market is better than frozen fish sticks.

Gradually eliminating sugar and most modern, processed foods really made the biggest difference for me. However, other lifestyle changes were critical as well, and involved me changing the entire framework of my life. This included changing how and what I do for work, altering social relationships and reconnecting with movement and nature. All of these changes were made upon the foundational knowledge of what is required to become a healthy, human animal.

So have all of these changes “cured” me? Heck no. But it has been years since I have required any type of medication and virtually every marker of my health has improved. The fear, anger and sometimes hopelessness I felt at my previous prognosis has been replaced by the calm that comes with increased knowledge and steady changes. This was not an overnight, dramatic change, but rather a gradual process over years that I am still very much taking part in. I’m confident that anyone could take similar steps to enjoy the increased health and freedom that goes along with recognizing our deeply rooted requirements for health.

Aaron Bilodeau is the co-creator of www.existanew.com, a project that challenges conventional notions on how to foster health, live and be happy. If you have questions for Aaron please contact him at existanew@gmail.com.

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.

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.

A couple of weeks ago, I posed the question: Does therapy need a makeover? Many people wrote back saying that while therapy is (or at least can be) great, people without first-hand experience tend to feel negatively towards it.

Since then, I have been working on ideas to achieve my stated mission: to convey to people everywhere that working on your emotional life is a positive and useful endeavor that yields good results.

I need help again. I’ve created a survey that is very short (only 2-4 minutes to complete) and anonymous, that will provide useful information for my project. Find the link here.

Thank you to everyone who chooses to participate in my project. Please share the link to the survey, if you are so inclined. I will keep you updated as it (hopefully!) goes forward, or morphs, or whatever happens. Please also feel free to give more ideas in the comment section or go ahead and contact me.

I’m on a mission to convey to people everywhere that working on your emotional life is a positive and useful endeavor that yields good results.

I may have my work cut out for me. I have a deep concern that most people have negative associations with words like therapy or mental health.

Essentially, I worry that people think they are healthy as long as they don’t “need” to go to therapy. Therapy is seen as evidence of illness, instead of a way to accomplish wellness.

I love what I do. My day tends to be uplifting, fun, interesting, inspiring and motivating. The fabulous clients I work with do come for depression, anxiety, trauma, anger, and other issues. I listen, empathize, and validate feelings.

The work, however, is focused on finding ways to make life feel better and more fulfilling.

Through conversation, education, reflection and connection, I help people find ways to look at their situations in a more helpful way and take actions that increase their life satisfaction. It’s a pretty great way to make a living.

Still, when I think about “mental health” as a topic or as a profession, it seems heavy and a bit yucky. Even I don’t like it’s reputation, and I’m happily in the field.

I want this to change. We can find ways to be happier, healthier, and wiser. We can work on ourselves not because we are sick, but because we want to be well.

I believe that my calling is to find some way to communicate on a large scale that we need to focus on our emotional well-being. I want emotional wellness to be a topic that we all talk about and teach our children.

I’m not sure what it will take. New words? A whole new system? New options? I need your help so that I can figure out how to fulfill my mission. Please share your thoughts:

What do you really think about therapy? Have you ever thought about ways to improve your emotional wellness? Am I right? Is there a PR issue here? What would make it more appealing? How do I convince people that investing in emotional well-being is truly a positive thing and not an admission of defect? 

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?

As a therapist, I find that the cause of many mental health issues is not the emotion one naturally feels about an event or situation, it is the reaction to this initial or primary emotion. Often for people experiencing panic, it is the fear or embarrassment of having the panic symptoms that becomes problematic. For depression, it may be the shame of feeling sad, which prompts even worse sadness and lowers self-esteem. The first step in therapy is most frequently addressing the reaction to our own natural, understandable feelings. In short, ineffective internal responses to feelings we have are the underlying issue in many mental health diagnoses.

As a result, I think a lot about why we are so ineffective at accepting, managing, or feeling our emotions. Why do we feel shame, anger, fear, or guilt about having feelings? For me, this is an issue that is much bigger than any one individual. It is a societal issue about how we think about emotions. Frankly, I think we as a culture have a messed up view of emotions and how they function in our lives. Instead of seeing our emotions as generally informative and natural, we have framed them as being unhelpful and shameful. People often believe having feelings is weak, irresponsible, or dramatic. We can see emotions as being extraneous to our goals and lives. You can see why they become something that people try to avoid.

It is this avoidance that creates a whole other level of problems. In avoiding feelings, which are a normal and healthy part of being human, we do things that truly wreak havoc. Suppressing feelings has become something of a national past-time, from what I can tell. Substance use, gambling, over-working, staying excessively busy, trying to achieve the impossible goal of “perfection” can all lead very quickly to numbing and disconnection. This disconnection occurs not only from our own emotional selves, but also leads to disconnecting from others.

This is a fundamental problem leading to a lot of human suffering. But I still have a lot of hope. I think that this issue is not widely understood and in helping people gain an understanding, things can change. In fact, that’s why I started this blog. For me, its a small way of trying to show other ways of thinking about ourselves and our emotions. I guess I’m a PR manager for emotions. They need a new, more realistic image. I’ll try to do my part.

What to you think? Why do emotions get such a bad reputation?

Some of you might know that I’m really into helping my clients make changes. But I am also very aware that change can feel scary and overwhelming. If you are torn between wanting to make changes, but feeling like it’s just too big of a job, you are not alone. I often see people who are in the stage of wanting change but not sure if they can handle it. This is a perfectly fine place to be. I like seeing clients who want to explore what change might be like even if they are not convinced to make the change.

Change is a process. Part of the process is thinking about and talking about making a change. We called this the contemplation stage. Having a therapist at this stage in the process can be very helpful. You can identify and work through barriers to change. You can also get support in increasing skills and motivation to be successful should you choose to go forward with the change. It can be beneficial to have someone to break the processes down into small pieces and to provide encouragement.

Seeing change as a process that takes time and exploration can make it a lot less scary. Allow yourself some space to contemplate.

Big news: the move is complete and today was the first day operating out of the new office at 203 Anderson Street! The new space features more space, more light and views of the Back Cove in Portland. I’m loving the East Bayside location, just off of Marginal Way and 295. I’m neighbors with cool local businesses like Urban Farm Fermentory (your source for quality fermented foods), Zero Station (digital printing and framing), and Portland Power Yoga. Who wouldn’t love being around artists, culinary geniuses, and yogis? I’m also conveniently located off of Bayside Trail, the Back Bay Trail, and the Eastern Prom Trail. I hope you will consider New Approaches for individual and family therapy and maybe have a walk and support some local Portland businesses while in my new neighborhood!