Lowering Anxiety

Some ways to lower anxiety:

Relaxation Techniques before event: If something is causing you anxiety, practice deep breathing and relaxing your entire body.

Preparation: If the anxiety producing event has something to do with performance, one way to lower anxiety is by proper preparation, making sure your ducks are lined up in a row.

Visualizations: this works for any type of anxiety. When you feel anxious use visualization techniques, where you actuallly go over what your role will be, what you will do, what you will be like, what the environment will look like, etc...

Building Self-Esteem: reminding of competence and abilities. After you allow yourself to feel anxious and/or nervous and you have already done the proper preparation, you can begin to use positive self-talk reminding yourself that you are competent, able, relaxed, prepared, accepting of yourself, and ok.

Practice all the time proper processing of emotions: practicing processing emotions all of the time will at first feel like you are feeling more anxiety, but what is actually happening is that you are practicing and being aware of what your body is doing, so that you will be lowering the overall intensity of anxiety in the future. Increasing body awareness is another way to look at it. It is building that connection between body and mind.

How to Properly Use I-Statements

You might hear a lot of times to use I-statements as techniques for better communication. But I think that some really don't understand what that means.
I-Statements are NOT:

I feel happy
I feel you don't do...
I feel you are.....
I feel upset
I do....
I think you don't do.....
etc....

They are not to simply state how you feel on the surface or to turn it around on the other person. They are not to state something about the past that you did, you felt, you think the other person did or felt.

I-statements are meant to open up the communication between two people in a non-threatening way. They are meant to stop yourself and really think about what is really going on inside of you and what is at the root of why you are feeling the way you are feeling. So it is not just to state your feeling, but to state why you are feeling that way, but still in regards to yourself so it is said in a non-threatening manner.

I'll give some examples:
One person may ask the other person when they get home, "where have YOU been?" "Who were you talking to?" Right away this puts the other person on the defensive and feel like they are being attacked. Instead, an I-statement could've been used here: "I am afraid I am going to lose you." "I am feeling insecure and began to think bad thoughts."
Another example is: "When are YOU going to stop reading that book?". Proper I-statement: "I would like to spend some time with you."

The difficultly comes I think, with our natural tendency to protect ourselves with our defense mechanisms. The person got hurt, either by reality or by their own thoughts running through their head. And the tendency is to protect yourself by attacking the other person. Instead I am asking you to be even more vulnerable by using an I-statement. That is why it is so difficult to use and why many do not use it the proper way.

But when a couple makes that commitment to stop hurting each other, you make that commitment to let your walls down, you make that commitment that you will begin to be dependent on someone to not hurt you, you can begin to use I-statements in the right way, and begin to work your way to a more intimate relationship.

Therapy Has Many Different Styles

Hello and Happy New Year! It has been a while since my last blog; but I am back in the routine of things and will be posting more regularly.

One thing that I am not sure if people understand when they go to see a therapist for any reason is that therapists can come from different theoretical orientations and do therapy vastly different.

Some therapists focus on only solving the problem and will work on only solutions. Other therapists will think that therapy is more of a process and that there are underlying reasons for problem areas that you may not be aware of. Another one can focus more on cognitive thoughts and thought processes that are negatively affecting your life. And yet others can focus more on proper emotional processing to better handle stressors.

There are therapist that only do one or the other and then there are yet others that may use a certain one after they assess and meet with you and use the one that they feel will best suit you. I tend to fall in the latter, but my main orientation is more focused on processing emotions (letting your body experience what it needs to) and making the connection between emotions and cognitions which is called Experiential Therapy or Humanistic Therapy.

When meeting with a therapist for the first time, you may want to ask what orientation they come from and what style of therapy they tend to do and see if that sounds like it would be a good match for you.

Meditation Part II: Being Present

Ok. So the second part to meditation is the practice of being present. That was sort of a foreign idea to me before, I didn't really know what the heck it meant. I thought of course I'm present what the heck. But now that I did a little training I think I have a better understanding of it.

Being present means that you are not living in your imagination. Awesome examples of this can be found in Byron Katie's website and what she calls "The Work". People are constantly thinking right?, constantly having thoughts go through our heads of the future, the what-if's, the past, the negative core beliefs, what other's may be thinking, etc. Well similar to meditation where you put all of that out of your head, being present is living in reality. Instead of living in your fears, your anxiety, your worries for yourself or others, what is true right now? Live in the right now. Bring your mind and your awareness to what is happening right now.

Right now I am typing this blog and I can feel my fingers on the keys and my body sitting in this chair. I am a bit relaxed and calm. I am not worried about what I am going to do today, what I did yesterday, not thinking that maybe I said something wrong at a party last night, not worried about what others thought about what I wore, etc.

There is a time for our minds to think about what we need to do. That is the job of our minds and we wouldn't get far if we just lived in the present all of the time. But when anxiety and worry and control takes over, that is when we need this reminder that our mind went into overdrive and took over. Right now I need to gain control over my mind and let it rest. That is what being present means to me.

Meditation Part I

I recently learned about meditation and what it really means and entails. I have to say it is quite interesting. I'm not sure what I thought before. I thought it was something about being somewhere else actually, like looking at your past. But the exact opposite is true of meditation.

Here is what I learned:

Meditation is sitting with yourself in the silence and being exactly where you are in body and mind. So it means to put everything about who you think you are, away, out of your mind. Everything that you identify with, your home, your family, your job, your car, your insecurities, your past, your future, you put it all away and you tell your mind to stop talking.

You ever notice how our minds just go and go and go and think and think and think. Well, during meditation you tell your mind to rest. Of course it is going to try to do its job and start thinking of something else again, but as soon as you realize it, you tell it to rest, and you try to do that without words.

No words.

The idea is that you just sit with yourself in silence and JUST BE.

Letting Our Walls Down

Most of us who grew up in households where we didn't get what we needed (which is most of us), tend to grow up with a defense of protecting ourselves against harm and/or hurt. Then when we encounter heartbreak, our already fragile self is hurt even more and our walls go up even further. This can lead to a person who becomes very independent and does not learn to rely on other people, because other people hurt them or break their trust. This independence then leads to not letting a significant other in, which in effect can cause conflict, poor communication, and disconnect.

Part of learning to be in an intimate relationship is learning how to depend on someone else. When we have spent most of our lives up to this point, not being dependent on anyone, this is a hard task.

When conflict arises and you find yourself pushing your partner away as they are hitting that wall, stopping, taking a break and looking at what is causing you to protect yourself, can help you to remind yourself that you are bringing your past into the now.

When two people make a decision to work on their relationship and they make that commitment that they are not going to hurt each other anymore, you also have to be willing to let that wall down, trust your partner, and learn to be dependent on them to not hurt you.

Change

Have you ever noticed how when there is change conflicts and anxieties rise? This is called homeostatic anxiety. Whenever things change people have a tendency to get worried and scared.

Some psychologists say that is because you are unsure of your role in the new situation. It is human nature to want to maintain homeostasis, but when you get stuck in specific patterns of interaction and then positive feedback loops begin to take place, things get to a level of conflict and dysfunction. The best thing to do is to stay flexible and be used to change.
Similar to what the article I posted previously was saying about resiliency; staying flexible will allow one to be more resilient. Kind of like practice makes perfect.

The important thing to remember then is that change is inevitable, conflicts will rise at times of change and transition, be flexible by being aware that change is happening and that our anxieties are increasing, and reassure yourself and others of their new roles.