You’ve Got To Feel It To Heal It

a woman holding a pink rose in her hands.

It makes me happy when clients come to session in the midst of emotional discomfort.

Now, I know what you must be thinking, so please allow me to explain. No, I’m not a sadist. I don’t take pleasure in my clients’ pain. But I do know an opportunity for healing when I see one.

What I mean is this: When it comes to emotional pain, most of the efforts people make to stop feeling it end up having the opposite effect. The more they try to numb or escape the emotion, the more they end up suffering. This numbing can come in various forms. For some people it’s drugs and alcohol, for others it’s work. Some people dive into relationships to escape unpleasant feelings, others dive into chocolate cake and ice cream. While some of these approaches are more dangerous than others, they all have the same underlying motivation: to avoid, suppress, distort, or deny whatever’s going on inside. We all have our own methods for doing this, and we can all likely agree that even if they seem to work a little at first, the relief doesn’t last. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a deep wound—some of the surface gets covered, but the real affliction remains untreated.

The reason I get happy when clients come in feeling bad is that I know they’re in the perfect position to heal themselves. That’s because when it comes to the emotional stuff, you’ve got to feel it to heal it. This might seem like unfortunate news—after all, who wants to make direct contact with something that feels so awful? But you need to know that it isn’t all bad. You see, what you’ll come to find when you begin to practice healing through feeling is that you start to feel better much sooner than when you attempt to numb and avoid. Ever heard the expression what we resist persists? Well, it applies perfectly here. Whenever we try not to feel what we’re feeling, whenever we try to push out the pain, we end up getting even more tangled up in it. We add an extra layer of suffering to something that’s already agonizing.

When my clients sit across from me in a state of emotional distress, I have them start by inviting their pain to the proverbial table and asking it to have a seat. This begins the process of keeping company with the emotion. It also begins the process of relieving the pain. Next, I have them identify the emotion as specifically as possible. This is based on research that shows people who are able to identify their emotions and distinguish one from the other are more effective at coping with them. I have my clients track the physical manifestations of the emotional pain throughout their bodies. They might find that nervousness feels like a tightening in the chest or sadness feels like heaviness in the shoulders. Getting in touch with the embodied aspects of the pain furthers the process of addressing and healing it. The rest of the work is a deliberate and compassionate practice of making room for the emotion, learning from it, and trusting that it will pass. It always does.

If therapy or any form of self-work is to be effective, it has to go directly to the source. We have to be willing to go inward and visit the places we don’t want to go. We have to learn how to keep company with all of our emotions, not just the ones we like to feel. We have to make a practice of tuning into our internal experience and asking ourselves the difficult question: What am I trying to keep myself from feeling?

When you feel bad it’s natural to want to feel better; but once you start practicing this stuff, you’ll never again want to settle for feeling better when you know you can actually get better. You are capable, and you are worth it.

Want a Better Life? Do Less, Be More

a person sitting on top of a cliff.

Take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:

  • When was the last time I jumped out of bed in the morning with the energy of a child, eager to face the day?  
  • When did I last take a moment to pause, look up at the sky, and marvel at its vastness? 
  • What was the last thing I did that made me feel completely and utterly in love with myself?
  • How long has it been since I had a meaningful interaction with another person?
  • When was the last time I felt fully satisfied with the life I’m living?

Chances are you had a difficult time answering a few, if not all, of those questions. Most people do.

In our increasingly fast-paced society, in which we glorify being busy and contend with countless demands on our time, life can often feel like a struggle to keep up. Emails flood our inboxes at a frenzied pace, and every issue in our lives seems to require our immediate attention. Our technology keeps us flooded with information that’s impossible to keep up with, and we’re in a constant state of sensory overload. It’s no wonder we often feel exhausted and (ironically) disconnected so much of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, much can be gained from working hard, seeking advancement, and making the most of the technology available to us. The problem is that it comes at quite a cost.

Here’s the thing. There’s a reason we’re called human beings and not human doings. Although we’re highly capable of doing, we were designed for being. And when we allow ourselves to slow down and just be, we discover how much we’re missing and overlooking when we’re zipping through life at lightning speed.

Shifting from doing mode to being mode can create a monumental shift in our experience of life. When we make this shift, we start to feel more centered, more balanced, more grounded, more connected. We start deliberately using our five senses to encounter the world around us. We start getting curious about our internal experience, noticing our thoughts and emotions as they arise. We start to get intentional about engaging with everything that surrounds us, including other human beings. We start discovering and enjoying the miraculous nature of being alive.

People who learn how to create the shift from doing to being tend to have a positive outlook on life. They tend to find their relationships meaningful and satisfying. Most importantly, they tend to experience deep love for themselves and their lives.

Are you interested in becoming one of those people? I’m happy to tell you that you can be. It’s only a matter of practice.

The best way to begin the practice of doing less and being more is to create small rituals and commit to carrying them out each day. You might start by doing something as simple as setting an alarm on your phone that goes off 5 times a day. Each time the alarm goes off, you stop whatever you’re doing and take 5 full, deep breaths, allowing yourself to rest your attention completely on the sensation of breathing. Another entry point to being mode is meditation. You might begin by searching YouTube for guided meditations, choosing one you feel comfortable with, and doing it 2 times a week.

When you commit to living more intentionally, you’re committing to a life of more vitality and deeper awareness. You’re giving yourself the gift of living life more fully, with a greater sense of purpose. I welcome you to explore some other ways you can engage your natural state of being, and I invite you to stay tuned for more posts here at Evergreen Therapy that will guide your journey toward slowing down and tuning in.

 

 

 

 

Don’t Tread on Me: The Essential Nature of Relationship Rules

padlocks on a railing near a lake with mountains in the background.

We don’t tend to enter romantic relationships with the intention of getting our hearts stepped on, but at some point or another most of us have felt that pain. There are few things more agonizing than reflecting on a romance turned sour and wondering what could have been done differently. However, there’s also a lot we can learn from looking back at what went wrong. One thing that’s really helpful to look into when exploring our past relationships is the way we dealt with rules and boundaries.

All relationships, romantic and otherwise, operate based on certain rules. Each person comes into the relationship with a personal set of rules, and together the couple establishes rules that dictate what works and what doesn’t in the relationship. While we tend to put some of the rules on the table, many of them go unspoken. We communicate those unspoken rules—with varying degrees of subtlety—through our actions and interactions in the relationship. For example, if a man gets agitated and rigid every time his partner attempts to show affection in public, he’s silently communicating one of his personal rules—in this case, that PDA is off limits. But if his partner doesn’t pick up on this nonverbal communication, it’s almost a guarantee that the interaction will generate some unpleasant friction. A single instance of this may not cause much damage, but if it happens often, it could unravel the relationship.

That’s why it’s so important to be clear about our personal rules and boundaries. We need to know what they are and maintain them firmly, ensuring that whoever we enter a relationship with is willing to respect them as much as we do. When processing breakups in therapy, many of my clients come to realize that they and their partners failed to speak up about their rules, which set in motion negative patterns of interaction that destroyed the relationship.

I recently worked with a client who was devastated after breaking up with a woman he thought would become his wife. When we explored the series of events that he identified as the cause for the breakup, he started to get agitated and experience feelings of anger and resentment. The further he went into these feelings, the closer he got to understanding where they were coming from. He realized that he felt disrespected and taken advantage of by this woman. This is how he put it: “I did everything for her and didn’t ask for anything in return. There were tons of things that she did that I wasn’t okay with, but I let her do them because I didn’t want any problems. And she didn’t appreciate any of it. She just took and took from me and then ended things without considering what I wanted.”

My client’s feelings of resentment and anger were understandable. His pain was justified. But for him to learn from what went wrong in that relationship, it was important for him to look at the role he played. By examining this in therapy, my client came to realize that he had specific personal rules he never communicated to his girlfriend and, more importantly, didn’t uphold or respect himself. He came to acknowledge that while he wanted respect from his girlfriend, he wasn’t showing much respect for himself by allowing her to do things he wasn’t okay with. By violating his own rules, he was silently telling his girlfriend she could violate them also.

How we treat our own rules sends a message to our partners about how they can treat them. Think about it this way: If you have a no shoes in the house policy in your home but walk around with shoes on, you can’t expect your guests to know the rule and follow it. By breaking the rule yourself, you’ve given them permission to break it as well.

Nobody’s perfect, and no relationship is perfect either. But most of us do strive to have intimate relationships that are as healthy and harmonious as possible. It’s important to remember that harmony at the relationship level starts with clarity at the individual level. Take some time to identify your personal rules and boundaries, and be intentional about respecting them so your partner will respect them too.

Loving an Addicted Person: The Help/Harm Paradox

a road with a mountain in the background.

As a family therapist with years of experience in addiction treatment, I know how painful it is to love someone with a substance use problem. It means staying up all night worrying about what might happen. It means fearing the worst every time the phone rings. And for many people, it means tirelessly trying to figure out how to help.

It can feel helpless to witness a loved one struggle with substance abuse, and it’s natural to want to do everything possible to keep him or her safe. The problem is that when it comes to addiction, helping can sometimes be harmful. Many people try to support their loved ones in active addiction without realizing that they’re doing more harm than good. Despite their best intentions, their efforts to help ultimately allow their loved ones to keep damaging their lives.

Although loving a person who suffers from addiction can feel hopeless, you need to know that there is, in fact, hope. Here are a few ways you can manage the difficult help/harm paradox, supporting your loved one while keeping yourself well.

1) Learn about addiction. As it is with most illnesses, the more informed you are about addiction, the better positioned you’ll be to effectively support your loved one. There are some excellent resources out there (like this one) that clearly explain the nature of addiction. Learn as much as you can, and develop a relationship with a therapist or professional who can answer your questions.

2) Aim to strike a balance. As difficult as it can be, it is possible to help your loved one without causing harm. This means being compassionate but keeping necessary boundaries in place. It means remaining in connection with your loved one while holding him or her accountable. You’ll need to be clear about what you are and aren’t willing to tolerate. Only by determining and being firm with your limits can you effectively support your loved one while keeping your mental and emotional health in tact.

3) Understand that recovery is a process. People can and do change, but they pass through several stages on their way to making it happen. These stages are not linear, so some stalls, stops, and reverses in progress are to be expected. Understand that although there are likely to be setbacks, your loved one is still capable of creating and sustaining a sober lifestyle.

4) Take care of yourself. When you fear for a loved one’s health and safety, it can be easy to lose yourself. But if you’re not well, you’re in no position to help anyone else get well. It’s essential that you attend to your personal needs, prioritizing your health and wellbeing. As you work on trying to get your loved one professional support, make sure you’re being supported as well.

6) Know that you are not alone. You’re tired, you’re angry, you’re afraid. But you’re not alone. Addiction doesn’t discriminate, and it’s more common than you might think.  Al-Anon Family Groups are held every day in countless locations throughout the country, offering family members of people with substance abuse problems a place to vent their struggles in an atmosphere of mutual support.

Whether your loved one is in active addiction, in treatment, or in recovery, it’s possible for you to be an important ally and champion for change in his or her life. Educate yourself and take care of yourself, being sure to be good to yourself while you do good for your loved one.