Many people struggle with addictions in today’s stressful society. Drinking and/or using drugs, overeating, sexual compulsions, and gambling are all ways in which individuals attempt to self-soothe and forget about their problems. These misguided methods all have one thing in common—they enable the individual to temporarily attain a different state of consciousness in order to avoid looking at painful emotions they may be feeling.

Alcohol and drugs obviously create altered states of mind, but overeating, gambling, or having a sex addiction do as well. For those who overindulge, food typically brings up early memories of comfort and is used to fill up an inner sense of emptiness. Many who gamble tend to forget or overlook everything except the thrill and excitement of the potential win. For many individuals with a sex addiction, there is an attempt to seek connectedness through the sexual act, without having to connect on an emotional level.

So what are some ways that individuals can learn to cope with their emotions in a healthier way? The following steps can be taken to help overcome an addiction:

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1. Join a support group. There are many different peer-led support groups available that can be very helpful when trying to overcome any kind of addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, or Gamblers Anonymous, for example, are all groups where people can relate to others who are dealing with the same types of issues. Individuals hold each other accountable and are often inspired by others’ success stories.
2. Explore issues that the addiction may be covering up. Often, people resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms because they are struggling with painful emotions and/or traumatic situations that have not been integrated. Seeking out a qualified therapist can be helpful in working through past trauma and learning healthier ways to cope.
3. Keep track of your triggers. By noting the times you feel tempted to indulge in an addiction, you can begin to bring more awareness to the situation. For example, do you start drinking after work every time your boss criticizes you? Do you binge on fast food whenever your self-esteem is at a low point?
4. Look for the purpose your addiction may be serving. Many people struggling with addictions have difficulties with relationships. The addiction becomes their relationship of choice, and the individual may spend much of his or her time thinking about ways to indulge in it, rather than examining underlying issues related to connecting with others.
5. Learn to experience emotions rather than avoid them. Addictions are often an easy way to escape from feeling painful emotions, but this is only a temporary solution and ends up making the problem much worse. Try to spend five to 10 minutes a day just sitting with your eyes closed and focusing on the sensations in your body. Painful emotions tend to be held in the body and are typically experienced as a tightness or constriction. Practice mindfully sitting with the sensations, honoring and welcoming them, rather than trying to push them away. Remember to breathe in and out deeply when doing this exercise.
6. Journal about your feelings. Journaling is a helpful tool to get uncomfortable emotions off your chest. Whenever you feel triggered to indulge in your addiction, try to write about the thoughts and feelings that you are experiencing instead. This technique can also be useful right before going to bed, especially if you tend to toss and turn and ruminate over stressful issues.

Overcoming an addiction can be extremely challenging, but using some or all of the techniques above can be a great starting point. If you have a severe drinking or drug problem, you may need to start off with residential treatment in order to be surrounded by individuals who support you on your healing journey.

The first step can feel like the most difficult one, but recovery from any type of addiction is absolutely possible for anyone willing to reach out for help.

“You yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” —Buddha

As I write this, I can feel anxiety in my entire body; my legs are restless, my toes are tapping, and there are butterflies in my stomach twirling and diving, with some going on bombing missions. Thoughts are flying across the screen of my mind at the speed of light. My inner dialogue/landscape is one of charred wood and dead grass as I search to find the “right” words that will enlighten readers. In this barren wasteland of blank thoughts, I see a little pink flower that seems to be calling from afar, but, alas, it’s not to be! It’s only a figment of my imagination.

In my mind, I see no other recourse than to surrender and shout out, “I give up! This is too hard!” while another voice suggests, “Don’t you think this would be a great time to rearrange the furniture?” All the while, the wise part of me looks on with patience and compassion, nodding her head as she says, “Now, my dear, you know what you need to do.”

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I do know what I need to do, but I still wonder why, after all these years of writing, a deadline can bring up feelings of dread similar to those you get when the dentist informs you that you’re in need of a root canal. Unfortunately, I know the answer to this; and no, I am not as wise as Yoda! I happen to be very well acquainted with the inner critic, and I know that as soon as there’s a deadline looming on the horizon, the inner critic perks up, rubs her hands together with glee, laughs maniacally, and shouts with jubilation, “I knew sooner or later you’d need my help!” Hearing this, I turn to her, send her an imaginary bow of acknowledgment, and say, “It’s OK. I appreciate the offer, but I can do this on my own.” I lovingly guide her back to the meditation cushion and ask her to help by sending thoughts of loving kindness and compassion.

Unveiling the Inner Critic

“While others may fool us with stories, lies, and misinformation, the biggest deceptions happen within our very own heads!” —Dana Nourie

We all have an inner critic that gets activated when there is a sign of trouble or danger on the horizon. It shows up when we’re most vulnerable, fearful, or sad. It’s the scolding, critical, manipulative, and intimidating inner voice that is trying to help us stay safe. It can also sound like background noise; the voice is there, but we’ve gotten so used to it that we don’t hear it. When we don’t notice this inner dialogue, we may end up believing these thoughts, which creates even deeper suffering. So it’s important to recognize when the inner critic is present.

Below are just a few examples of how the inner critic shows up:

• The controller: This is the voice that constantly demands action. It can say things like, “You’re a lazy slob! Get up and do those dishes right now!” or, “Hurry up and finish that project or you’ll be fired!”
• The judge: This is the voice that sits on the high bench, evaluating and finding fault with your performance before you even begin the task. For example, you’re going to a new part of town and don’t have a good sense of direction. The judge immediately perks up, telling you, “You’re so hopeless with directions! You couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag!”
• The voice of doom and gloom: This is the fearful voice that’s always sending messages filled with shame and doubt. So you might have brought a beautiful dress that you’ve been longing to wear, and as you look in the mirror, this part starts sending warnings of upcoming failure. “Are you sure you really want to wear THAT? You’re going to be the laughingstock of the party!”

See the Vulnerability Beneath the Defense

Sometimes it helps to visualize the inner critic as a scared child. Most of us would respond with compassion if we saw a child suffering. Sometimes when I notice the critical self-talk in action, I’ll envision the fear as a child. I see the inner critic as a little girl who’s wearing an oversized lab coat and a hard hat. She stands anxiously watching over a grid with many blinking, colorful lights. While the grid contains a kaleidoscope of beautiful flashing colors, the inner critic ignores the beauty and instead is waiting for the moment when the grid flashes red.

Why red? Because it represents danger. (Think of stop signs, traffic lights, hazard lights, and ambulances.) When the illusion of trouble enters the mind, the grid flashes red, an alarm goes off, and a loud voice starts the countdown toward self-destruction. The inner critic immediately goes to work trying to avert danger in any way she can, and the negative self-talk begins. So the inner critic will say things such as, “You’re such a loser! No wonder creative thoughts don’t stick around! I’d leave too, if I could!” If I believe these thoughts, I might get paralyzed and stop myself from doing something that helps others and brings me joy. If instead I learn to look beyond the critical self-talk, I can begin to connect with the vulnerability beneath the defenses.

If I look beyond the inner critic and defensive stance, I see the feelings of vulnerability and fear. There’s fear of failure—that I won’t accomplish the task correctly or that I’ll lose my connection to what matters most. When I pause to connect through the practice of mindfulness and recognize that fear is present, I can begin to respond in ways that are healing and compassionate. This clear seeing of what is really happening beyond views of good/bad is essential in order for us to soothe the inner critic.

Before we get there, let’s take a deeper look at why and how fear triggers the inner critic.

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real

We all face fear at one time or another. Sometimes many times a day! Fear shows up for the major events of our lives. It also shows up for the small, everyday activities, such as not getting to an appointment on time, getting into an argument with a close friend, etc. What transforms the fear into suffering isn’t the feeling itself; it’s how we react to it.

It’s also important to note that when fear arises it triggers our fight, flight, and freeze or submit response, which was essential for the survival of our species. After all, if our ancestors weren’t alert to the dangers they faced when they were out hunting for food, we wouldn’t be here today.

The problem is that most of the threats we face are intense reactions that go off when our self-concept is threatened. This makes sense, as we are social animals and our connection to each other and life is important to our well-being. However, when we react as if our very life is threatened, we end up adding suffering to what is often a moment of pain. As Dr. Kristin Neff writes in her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself:

We confuse our thoughts and representations of ourselves for our actual selves, meaning that when our self-image is under siege, we react as if our very existence is threatened. When this happens, our threat defense system uses the same strategies to stay safe as follows:

• Fight: We turn on ourselves, we criticize, blame, shame, and belittle ourselves.
• Flight: Feeling anxious and agitated, we seek to numb the pain by using distractions such as food, alcohol, gambling, or other distractions.
• Freeze: We get caught up in a holding pattern of thoughts. We ruminate on what we see as our inadequacies and weaknesses.
• Submit: We resign ourselves and accept our harsh and critical self-judgment, which leaves us feeling unworthy and ashamed.

This overreaction can leave us feeling highly anxious, depressed, and angry with ourselves, others, and the world, and this can lead us to limit our experiences in life and relationships.

How the Inner Critic Limits Our Lived Experience

“We get identified with patterns of thought and this leads to repetitive behaviors, these repetitive behaviors become who we are. We stop growing because we limit out experiences.” —Steve Armstrong, dharma talk on Greeting Visitors to the Mind

The truth is that we hurt ourselves when we lock ourselves in a mental cage, and the sad part is that the fear we are trying to avoid is in the cage with us.

I remember listening to a talk by meditation teacher Tara Brach on how fear affects us. She shared a moving story about a white tiger called Mohini, who lived in a 12-by-12-foot rectangular cage at the zoo in Washington, D.C. The tiger spent her days restlessly pacing within the small enclosure, and eventually the staff and biologists worked to create a natural habitat for her. This was a beautiful space with hills, trees, and a pond to swim in.

When Mohini was transferred to her new surroundings, everyone expected she would feel free to explore this wide-open space. The moment she was released, she “immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Mohini paced and paced in that corner until an area 12 by 12 feet was worn bare of grass.”

We similarly confine ourselves to certain patterns that limit our ability to fully experience life. The inner critic becomes the gatekeeper—in charge of keeping us contained within these limits, where there is an illusion of safety. The truth is that we hurt ourselves when we lock ourselves in a mental cage, and the sad part is that the fear we are trying to avoid is in the cage with us. Recognizing how we’re reacting to the inner critic, to our thoughts and feelings, is an important step toward helping ourselves reconnect to this moment. Just as important is our ability to practice self-compassion in the face of pain.

Self-Compassion Helps Soothe the Inner Critic

“With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend.” —Dr. Kristin Neff

Dr. Neff describes self-compassion as “quieting of one’s inner critic and replacing it with a voice of support, understanding, and care for one’s self.” So we treat ourselves with the same compassion and kindness we show others who are suffering. This can be challenging, as our defenses were developed over many years and show up as patterns of behavior that often stop us from being vulnerable. What helps us to shift out of these patterns is meeting our experience with mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion. As Neff points out in her book, there are three elements to the practice, as follows:

Practicing self-kindness, we:

• Let go of pursuing perfection
• Accept that, in life, things don’t always go according to plan
• Learn to recognize and accept that pain is a part of life
• Meet pain with kindness and compassion instead of self-condemnation and harsh judgment

Common humanity means that we:

• Are all vulnerable, earthly, and imperfect beings
• Suffering and feelings of inadequacy are felt by everyone, and this is part of our shared human experience.
• We all walk the path of life together; sometimes the path is smooth and pleasant, and sometimes it’s unpleasant; strewn with obstacles and challenges.

We meet our moment-to-moment experience by:

• Observing our moment-to-moment experience (thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) in a nonjudgmental manner
• Noticing how these thoughts affect our body, mind, and heart
• If we’re overwhelmed, we help ourselves by practicing mindfulness of breathing (shift your attention from thoughts to the sensation of the breath coming in and the breath flowing out).
• As we feel more centered, we can begin to notice how emotions are affecting our body (emotions are felt as physical sensations in the body). We allow the thoughts to be there without feeding them.
• Noticing tension, emotional or physical pain, we bring a feeling of kindness and compassion to our experience and begin to soften around the tension.
• Sending love to the inner critic or the part of us that is caught up in thoughts, stories, or limiting beliefs

Mindfulness and Compassion Foster Healing and Growth

Mindfulness and self-compassion help us to see how we are limiting ourselves. We see and feel the barriers we’re constructing around our hearts, and in seeing them we can begin to explore what is happening within the mind that’s causing us to build the wall. We free our hearts as we explore with a real desire to understand, to open to the pain and meet it with compassion and loving kindness. This leads us to have moments of mindfulness, where the mind is free of ruminating, judging, planning, and obsessing, and a mind that is free of torment is loving, clear, understanding, equanimous, and easeful.

As I write this last line, I pause to check in with the inner critic. I see that she’s still sitting on the meditation cushion, sending thoughts of loving kindness, and on her face is a look of profound peace.

When a friend or family member tells you they are transgender, or trans, it can be hard to figure out the best way to show support. Trans issues have recently become part of the mainstream conversation in the United States, from  Caitlyn Jenner’s widely publicized transition to Laverne Cox’s appearance on the cover of Time. As more trans people feel comfortable sharing their stories, their friends and families are growing and changing with them.

The word “transgender” describes a gender identity that is different than the one someone is born into. Gender identity is the internal experience that we all have of our maleness or femaleness (or both, or neither). For most people, this experience is aligned with their biological sex. People who identify as trans have a different experience.

Many allies feel confused about how they can best support a friend or family member who tells them they are trans. Such conflict can come about for any number of reasons, including feelings of embarrassment talking about trans issues, not knowing what language or terminology to use, or not wanting to offend. With that in mind, here are five ways to support someone you love who identifies as trans:

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1. Listen Closely and Trust Their Experience

Every trans person has a different experience of gender and their transition. When a trans person shares their story with you, it’s a gift. It means they trust you enough to share something so fundamentally important to them. And their experience might not be what you expect.

There is no “right way” to be trans and no “right way” to transition. Each story is unique.

2. Use Their Language

Language is personal, and the only way to know how someone identifies is to listen to how they talk about themselves. You don’t necessarily need to know all the terms related to transgender to be supportive; you just need to respect and try to use the ones your friend or loved one prefers. Some people have a word they closely identify with. For example, they might feel like the umbrella term trans describes them best. Other terms they might use include transgender, transsexual, trans man, trans woman, female-to-male (FTM), male-to-female (MTF), or genderqueer, among others.

There is no “right way” to be trans and no “right way” to transition. Each story is unique.

Trans people may also have a preferred pronoun. Possible pronoun choices may include he/him, she/her, ze/hir, and they/them. Ze/hir and they/them (used to refer to an individual, not a group) are gender-neutral pronouns and are being used by more and more people who don’t feel like he/him or she/her adequately describe them.

Your friend or family member might also choose a new name. They might even change it two or three times as they attempt to find a name that feels like a good fit. Using a trans person’s chosen name shows love and respect and is important, even when change feels hard.

3. Do Some Research

If you want to know more about trans identities in general, the best way is to learn is to do some simple research. Just like it’s not your job to tell others what it’s like to be ______ (fill in your own gender identity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, race, etc.), your friend might not want to educate others about their experience.

Unless specifically invited to do so, it’s never appropriate to ask anyone (including a trans person) personal questions about their body or sexuality. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be curious or want to know more. Fortunately, we have a lot of great resources available at our fingertips. Many trans activists post video blogs on YouTube both about their personal experiences and to answer questions for people who just want to know more.

4. Get the Support You Need

Learning that someone you know is transgender can bring up a lot of feelings, especially if it’s a close family member such as a child or parent. It’s OK to have all of those feelings, and it’s important that you find the supports you need to sort through them and understand your own experience. Your family member or friend may not be able to be this support person for you.

Many family members I’ve worked with have found support through working with their own therapist or connecting with groups such as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and TransYouth Family Allies (TYFA). Connecting with a therapist is a great place to start.

5. Practice Active Allyship

Trans family members and friends are counting on you to help them make this a safe and friendly world for people of all gender identities. Trans people often face oppression and discrimination from their medical providers, schools, employers, housing, places of worship, and families.

Being an ally means consistently noticing and challenging transphobia and ignorance both in yourself and the world around you. This can mean telling someone that a joke isn’t funny, asking a trans friend what they need when someone uses the wrong name or pronoun, or participating in events and rallies in support of the rights of trans people.

What it looks like to support a trans family member or friend can vary greatly from person to person. In many ways, it looks exactly the same as being a good friend or support to anyone who is going through a significant life change. What are some ways you can support transgender people in your own life and community? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

“It’s taken me a long time to get here,” Jessica lamented in her first session. “I don’t know what my problem is. I just feel unhappy. Something is missing in my life, but I don’t know what I want or what it could be. I’m a 46-year-old married woman. My marriage to Peter is fine and I like my job as a speech therapist well enough. I feel boring and bored and maybe have more anxiety than I should. What do you think is wrong?”

Jessica’s statement at the start of therapy began our quest to understand Jessica’s sense of emptiness. In our sessions, her talk was tinged with melancholy. Jessica said that when she looked in the mirror she saw “a not very attractive, aging, unsatisfied woman who feels empty.” Apart from Jessica’s sad demeanor, she brought urgency to the sessions with her intense desire to find out “what is wrong with me?”

Jessica grew up in a suburb of a large city as the younger of two daughters. Her parents divorced when she was 9 years old. Her father quickly remarried and had a child with his new wife. Jessica had vivid memories: “I was crying and my father was hugging me. He said he was moving out because he and my mother had too many problems to stay together.” A tearful Jessica continued: “I remember thinking, ‘How can he leave me?’ I couldn’t stop crying and ran to my room.”

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Jessica and her sister saw her father weekly for a little more than a year, but when he became involved with his wife to be, their visits became less frequent. She recalled, “It was never the same after he left. I never saw him alone and I couldn’t hold onto the feeling that I was special to him. I lost that when I lost him.”

Jessica tried in our sessions to recapture what growing up was like. She wondered if she had been sad even before her father left: “I think I’ve always been sad. Maybe our whole household was sad. My mother was not an energetic or happy person. She often seemed far away. I think she was depressed after my father left and she definitely became more anxious. I was always anxious, too. My sister, who is five years older than me, always did her own thing. But I was very attached to my mother. I felt a strong need for her, and it must have gotten more intense after my father left. She wasn’t very affectionate, and I was very clingy. I remember we used to play cards a lot and we’d go shopping together. I wanted to be around her. I didn’t have a lot of friends. When I went to high school, I started to make friends, but I was always nervous around them. I felt different and not part of the group, so I didn’t do as much at school or with them as I now wish I had.”

When Jessica left home for college, she became somewhat more engaged with the world. She had her first date at the end of her freshman year and dated occasionally throughout college. For the most part, she focused on her education. The college and graduate school Jessica chose was two hours away from home. She spent most weekends and school vacations home alone with her mother (her sister had married and moved to California).

Jessica recalled her conflicted feelings about going home: “I missed my mother when I was away at school, but I don’t know what I missed, exactly. Going home was pretty boring. My mother wasn’t very interested in what I was doing. Whenever I was excited to tell her about my classes or my patients when I was in grad school, she seemed to change the subject. I don’t know what it was, but being around her made me anxious about school and dating and I guess about most everything. Still, after grad school I moved back near my mother and got a job as a speech therapist. When I think about it now, I don’t get why I went home. I think I felt my mother wanted something from me, but I don’t know what.”

I asked Jessica to talk more about her experience with her mother.

“It’s hard to describe,” she said. “I felt so ambivalent about her. I loved her desperately but always felt something was missing in our connection. I wanted her to tell me I was terrific, to give me the feeling she was interested in me and my life. I wanted to feel like she took pleasure in what I did and who I was, but she never did. If anything, I made her feel good. I felt she needed me, but I didn’t know what she needed me for. She was very sensitive, and I was very anxious around her. It didn’t take much for me to feel I had hurt her. She seemed like a pretty lonely person. I think I felt I was supposed to do something to make her life better. She seemed to like it when I was around, but she never seemed to want me very close to her. It was confusing because I also needed to be with her, but it never made sense to me that I felt that way.”

Jessica was beginning to recognize that her mother was limited and couldn’t provide her with feelings of being special that she desperately needed and longed for. Jessica also began to appreciate the consequences of her strong feelings that she would hurt her mother by being special or fulfilled.

Tears started to flow: “You know, she died too young. She developed heart problems and became very sick when I was 32. After that, I spoke to her every day and visited as much as I could, even if I didn’t want to. All my energy was focused on her. She was very depressed, and I was very careful not to make her feel worse by telling her anything that was good in my life.”

Jessica’s mother was ill for four years and died when Jessica was 36, 10 years before she came to see me. During her illness, Jessica’s mother was a constant companion in Jessica’s mind.

“I got more anxious and very depressed,” Jessica recalled. “My mother was dying, and I felt totally helpless. I was so worried that I would say or do something that would upset her. I was preoccupied with thoughts about what I should be doing for her and what she would think about my life. Sometimes I still catch myself wondering what she would think about me. I’m very sad that she never got to meet Peter or know that I married. But sometimes I think marrying Peter was a betrayal of my mother. She never felt very good about herself. How would she feel if my life went well? I think it would hurt her. She might think I was arrogant if I said I had a good life or expressed excitement about my accomplishments. I’d feel like I was being mean to her.”

Even now, after the death of her mother, Jessica still expresses a strong need for her mother: “Since my mother died, she is in my head more than ever. I find myself wondering what she would think about everything: would she like something I bought or would she be OK with my coming here?”

“What kind of response would you want from your mother now?” I asked.

Jessica began to sob: “I wish she would give me a big smile and look really delighted with me. I don’t think I ever got that from her.”

As we continued to explore Jessica’s relationship with her mother, it became clearer that her mother had been unable to provide Jessica with the basics for developing positive self-feelings and a sense of being valued, admired, and recognized. Jessica’s mother couldn’t mirror Jessica’s excitement, enthusiasm, and good self-feelings back to her. Consequently, Jessica infrequently experienced these feelings as part of herself. This left a space inside Jessica, which I believed was what Jessica described as “something missing.” Growing up, Jessica did not know that her need and longing for her mother was her effort to find her missing good and valuable self in her mother’s experience of her.

Jessica was beginning to recognize that her mother was limited and couldn’t provide her with feelings of being special that she desperately needed and longed for. Jessica also began to appreciate the consequences of her strong feelings that she would hurt her mother by being special or fulfilled. We spent many sessions talking about all the ways Jessica had held herself back in her life. She became aware of how her relationship to her mother governed her choices and kept her trapped in patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling that interfered with her ability to enjoy life, engage with people, and ultimately feel self-confident and pleased with herself and her life. She began to understand how, unconsciously, she had lived her life to assure that if her mother contrasted her life to Jessica’s, she wouldn’t feel threatened by finding too much “good stuff” in Jessica’s life. Jessica wondered if she was only able to find a partner and marry after her mother’s death.

Jessica and I worked hard exploring her attachment to her mother. Now she has emotional knowledge (knowledge with feelings attached, not just thoughts) about that connection. She knows she connected to her mother by becoming like her: she internalized her mother’s sadness and duplicated the absence of her mother’s good internalized self-feelings. She knows that her sadness about her missing good self-parts was a kind of mourning for the absence of a nurturing mother and the good feelings she was never able to obtain from her.

Now Jessica is freeing herself from protecting her mother. Now she can be there for herself. She can nurture her missing parts and change her internal world. She will be able to own a new sense of self-confidence and self-esteem and follow her own wishes, get her needs met, and feel special.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

Have you ever called yourself “stupid” just because you made a mistake?

When you look in the mirror, do you curse your reflection for not being attractive enough?

Do you make silent, sarcastic remarks to yourself after you speak?

When you engage in self-criticism, it’s like having your very own personal bully living inside your head.

Whenever you try something new, the bully is there to taunt you. When you think about taking a risk, the bully lets you know you’ll probably fail. And when it comes to relationships, the bully is the first to point out your flaws and weaknesses, all the reasons no one could ever really love you.

The bully loves to control you. It’s the bully’s “thing.”

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Your bully is happiest when you’re anxious about screwing up, or else feeling like you already screwed up. That’s what gives bullies their power.

If you want to ditch the bully, you’ll need to take your power back. But before you can do that, make sure you really want to get rid of the bully inside your head.

“What?” you may ask. “How can you even ask me that? Of COURSE I want to ditch this bully!”

Are you sure?

The bully in your head is there for a reason. The bully is there to keep you on your toes. What if you didn’t have a bully pointing out how badly you’re doing in everything? How much worse might you be?

Taking your power back by rejecting the lie (i.e., there’s something wrong with you) is much easier said than done. But what does it feel like to consider the possibility that you’re just fine exactly as you are?

The real bully is your belief that there’s something inherently wrong with you. How ready do you feel to let go of that?

As long as you suspect there’s something wrong with you, you’ll need a bully to keep you on the right track.

Taking your power back by rejecting the lie (i.e., there’s something wrong with you) is much easier said than done. But what does it feel like to consider the possibility that you’re just fine exactly as you are?

Take a few moments to mull it over.

What does it mean if there is really, truly nothing at all wrong with you? It could mean a lot of things, not all of them pleasant. For example:

• You’ve been treated worse than you deserve to be treated.
• You’ve turned down opportunities that might have made your life better.
• Your expectations of yourself may have seemed too high, but have really been too low.
• Your expectations of others have been low or nonexistent.
• You wasted years not following your dreams for fear you didn’t deserve them.

Taking back your power from the bully in your head is not without cost. The cost of taking back your power is regret—for all the years you let the bully control you.

Go ahead and feel the regret. You earned it and it won’t kill you.

Then take back your power by saying no to the bully who insists there’s something wrong with you.

There’s no special trick to it. Just do it.

Act as if there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a good person. You won’t do bad things just because no one’s there to criticize you anymore.

You trusted the bully to take care of you all these years, but it cost you some self-esteem. Trust yourself now. Ditch the bully.

When the bully calls you stupid or unattractive, say, “I disagree.” Then mentally walk away from that criticism.

That’s how you take charge. One thought, one moment, at a time.

Good luck taking on your bully. Let me know how it goes.

Editor’s note: Ashley Davis Bush, LICSW is a psychotherapist in private practice with over twenty years experience. She is the author of six self-help books, including Simple Self-Care for Therapists: Restorative Practices to Weave Through Your Workday. Ashley’s continuing education presentation for GoodTherapy, titled “A New Approach to Self-Care: The Ethical Imperative of Daily Restoration“ is available as a homestudy course at no additional cost to Premium and Pro GoodTherapy Members (Basic Members and mental health professionals without membership can view this course for $14.95). This homestudy course is good for two CE credits. For details, or to register, please click here.

Sitting with a group of colleagues, having just finished our monthly consultation group, I blurted out the question, “How do you feel about self-care?” At the time, I was researching and writing a book about self-care for therapists, so this question was very much on my mind.

I fielded a range of responses from, “I know it’s important but I don’t have the time,” to “I’m in this field to take care of others, not myself!” Over the next few months, as I polled my colleagues, I heard these themes of conflict and time constraints repeated many times.

I began to realize and assert with increasing vigor that it’s time to change our approach to self-care. Not only do we have to address the practical roadblocks to self-care but also the ethical quandary that allows self-sacrifice to undermine good therapy.

Ethically speaking, it’s important to understand that taking care of yourself is taking care of your clients (and your family and friends.) I have been a lifelong singer, and I remember when a voice teacher told me, “You are the instrument. You have to take care of your body or otherwise you won’t have a voice to share.”

Ashley Davis Bush, LICSW

Being a therapist is not unlike being a singer—you are the instrument of healing. Whether you employ CBT, DBT, EMDR, or EFT, it’s the therapeutic relationship itself, as we well know, that is the tool for healing. It’s your presence and your personal resonance that create the relational environment for healing. If we don’t take care of ourselves in mind, body, and spirit, we can’t take care of others.

Consider how we are compromised when we are overworked and burned out, depleted and compassionately fatigued, numbed and vicariously traumatized. If we don’t replenish and restore ourselves, if we don’t take self-care seriously, we’re not doing our best clinical work.

If we don’t take care of ourselves in mind, body, and spirit, we can’t take care of others. So given that self-care is not only vital but an ethical imperative, how do we realistically fit it into our busy, overworked schedules? It’s not like we can drop everything and book a monthly vacation or even a weekly massage. How can we practically engage in self-care and give it the priority it deserves in our lives and in our careers?

One answer is to microtize self-care. What does this mean? It means to engage in small habits in our daily lives that have a big impact on our well-being. Advances in neuroplasticity underscore this successful strategy: Small repetitive practices matter, both in creating new neural networks in our brains and in creating sustainable self-care.

Practically, it can be as simple as ‘shrinking down’ the macro–self-care activities and practices that you already love into their most powerful essences. For example, you might not be able to get to a yoga class today, but you can benefit from the stretch and relaxation of one power-pose between sessions. You might not be able to schedule a full body massage today, but you can realize the benefits of myofascial release by massaging your feet with a tennis ball before you go home.

[fat_widget_right]The idea is to create a personal toolbox of micro-habits—self-care activities that you can do in a few minutes or less which can then be woven through the workday. With this new approach, you can take care of yourself throughout the workday, before clients, between clients, and even in session.

Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

• You love to read but don’t have time to dive into a novel: Keep a book of poetry nearby that you can flip through between sessions.
• You love to take long walks in the woods but don’t have time for that right now: Do a march-in-place exercise and add 10 jumping jacks to get your blood flowing.
• You want to do long meditations but never seem to have the time: Set your timer for a one-minute. A brief moment of mindfully focusing on your breath is a powerful form of relaxation.
• You can’t wait to go on vacation, but don’t have anything scheduled for months: Spend a minute looking at photographs of places that you long to visit (look online or in a travel magazine).
• You’ve gotten triggered in a session and want to go outside for fresh air: Reengage your dual awareness with a deep belly breath and then lengthen your spine by imagining a string pulling your head upward.

Less really is more. Once you get into the habit of using micro–self-care practices throughout the day, every day, you’ll notice that you start to feel replenished on a regular basis. The process begins first with the realization that self-care is your ethical obligation, and second with the intention of making self-care a daily priority. With this approach, you honor the importance of self-care in your professional life and you make it happen.

Despite using protection, you have gotten pregnant; naturally, you are shocked. You are not happy with your boyfriend, he is not a person you want to parent with, and you’re wondering if you even want (or have) to tell him that you are pregnant in the first place. You seem to indicate that your relationship doesn’t promise the stability—emotional and financial—that a child needs and deserves. You are worried but very clear-headed and caring in your analysis of the issues involved in your pregnancy.

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You ask whether you are within your rights to terminate your pregnancy and not tell your boyfriend. As you might know, abortion has been legal in the United States since 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women have the right to abort prior to the viability of the fetus. I am not an attorney and nothing I write in this space should be construed as legal advice, but as far as I can tell the Roe v. Wade ruling doesn’t spell out paternal rights, and a little online research suggests that there are no barriers to you making this decision on your own, without your boyfriend’s consent or awareness (Planned Parenthood v. Danforth in 1976 addressed consent, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 addressed awareness). Again, do not take anything I’ve written here as gospel. Your question is one that an attorney can and should answer definitively, possibly even over the phone. Please call one. You might also refer to Planned Parenthood, which would either be able to answer your questions or point you to resources that can.

Beyond the legalities, you ask “should it matter” whether your boyfriend knows about your desire to have an abortion. That’s a difficult question that only you can answer.

You do not indicate your age, nor do you ask whether your parents need to know, but for the record, according to Planned Parenthood’s website, there is no parental involvement requirement in New York for persons under 18. (Some states may require one or both parents to consent to an abortion or be informed of it, a requirement that can be waived by a judge.)

Beyond the legalities, you ask “should it matter” whether your boyfriend knows about your desire to have an abortion. That’s a difficult question that only you can answer. The fact you’re grappling with the ethics of it all is a sign, to me, that you are proceeding carefully and thoughtfully.

It seems to me that one of the questions you might be asking yourself is what it means to be a woman in the United States in 2015. There’s a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published in 1973 and updated every few years—the latest edition was released in 2011. You might take a look at it and see if it helps you find peace. The book supports women taking ownership of their bodies, which seems to be one of the many issues you are struggling with.

You ask for reassurance that you are not a “bad person.” You don’t seem like a bad person to me. You seem like a worried and scared young woman who is in a bad spot and trying to figure out the best way out of it. I think you would benefit greatly from speaking to a counselor or therapist who can help guide you through some of the more challenging internal quandaries you face. You write, correctly, that it’s your body and your future that you have to consider when making important life-changing decisions. I salute your warm, level-headed, and thoughtful approach to finding your way.

Good luck! I’m with you in spirit.

Respectfully,
Lynn

Bereavement, the grief we feel in response to the death of a loved one, is part of our being in the world. It includes different categories of loss. There is the literal loss of the unique and irreplaceable other person. There is also the apparent loss of the functions that person carried in the relationship (he was the one who always filed our taxes; she was the one who held the family together). Here we can find as well the loss of the one who witnessed us (he was the last person who knew me when I was a teenager).

Less conscious is the—again, apparent—loss of self, of who one was in relationship to the loved one who passed.

Who among us wants to go through bereavement? Yet grief is a healthy response, and a necessary one in order to adjust and go on in a world where people die. At such times, our religious, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs can support us. It can also happen that such structures of belief or hope, which were previously unconscious, come forward spontaneously in response to loss. This can happen in the form of highly subjective, deeply personal experiences.

In the discussion that follows, names have been changed and personally identifying material has been screened out in order to preserve confidentiality.

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After the death of his partner, Jim finds himself waiting for him to come home, to hear the jingle of his keys in the door or to share a piece of news with him. Leah hears her husband call her name from the next room as she’s falling asleep at night. It’s not scary for her, but it brings her grief back when she starts to get up to attend him and remembers that he’s gone. Janet feels her husband sit down on the couch next to her when she’s watching television before going to bed. Annie, out on lunch break, has her eye caught by what appears to be a dear and departed colleague, waiting across the street at a bus stop. Mark sees a close friend twice after the friend’s death: once walking down the street “looking like hell,” the second time some months later, standing outside an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. John rages at God each afternoon for the loss of his wife, and God—silent, invisible, but palpably present—hears him out.

These phenomena form a broad spectrum, from a subjective feeling to transitory perceptions when in a relaxed or distracted state. It’s important to note that none of these folks met the criteria for psychotic, mood, or substance dependence disorders at the time of their experiences. Bereavement, while not a formal diagnosis, can be a time of disruption, during which material that was previously unconscious comes into awareness. Often, the material serves an adaptive function. One way to support that adaptation is to treat it as symbolic rather than literal. As in dreamwork, we’ll look for what the experiences mean to the one having them rather than debating whether or not they “really” happened. When supported with empathy and respect, the events yield meaning and can be integrated into the person’s worldview, enriching it and making it more resilient.

Leah acted as caregiver for her husband in his final illness. As a result of hearing him speak her name, she reconsiders her situation. The role she filled for the last several years no longer has a purpose. The house where they raised a family and lived together is “too big” for her now. She begins thinking about moving into someplace smaller and closer to her adult daughter, so she can help out with her grandchildren. Annie notes that when she looked again “I saw it wasn’t Greg, not even someone who looked like him, really. But for that moment, I got to see him again. It’s like he paid me a visit.” When asked where Greg “was” when he visited, Annie gives a bittersweet smile and says, “In my thoughts.” Both Leah and Annie assimilate their experiences easily.

As in dreamwork, we’ll look for what the experiences mean to the one having them rather than debating whether or not they “really” happened. When supported with empathy and respect, the events yield meaning and can be integrated into the person’s worldview, enriching it and making it more resilient.

Like Annie, Mark sees a dead friend. Richard died of an accidental overdose, and Mark grieves as much for what seems to him the waste of his friend’s life as for his actual death. His two glimpses seem to be sequential and almost tell a story. In the first, Richard looks to be doing badly. Mark’s associations are that he has continued on the downward spiral he was in at the time of his death. The second glimpse, some months later, is of Richard among a group of others apparently taking a break outside an AA meeting place and looking “better than I remember seeing him for a long time.”

Mark doesn’t subscribe to the idea of life after death. But he was raised as a Roman Catholic in a small New England town. He notices that these experiences seem to refer to the idea of purgatory, a place or state where corrective balance takes place. Or as Mark puts it, with some humor, “It’s like Richard had to go to summer school so he could graduate.” Then he adds, “It makes me feel hopeful. I don’t want to make a religion of this, but it’s like the message is it’s never too late to get your act together.” The psyche provides Mark with images that help express and heal his grief.

Like Mark, John is surprised at his experience. He describes himself as “a scientific humanist, like Carl Sagan.” His wife’s death from cancer was drawn out and marked by suffering, both from the disease progress and from the treatment. John suffered with her. In this second month following her death, he tells me that he “indicts God” on his afternoon walks, giving vent to anger and bitterness that “someone who never hurt anyone suffered so much for no reason.” Angie wasn’t just his wife, she was his primary companion, and her loss makes the world an empty place for John.

The image of God, never previously active, becomes so in this crisis. It functions like a container for what might otherwise be overwhelming feelings, which John is then more safely able to identify and express in the form of his “indictments.” And more than an image: somewhat like Janet feeling her husband sit down next to her, John describes feeling God’s presence as an almost bodily sensation. Whether or not he goes on to live a religious life, in this period this experience provides a supportive and adaptive function.

As we see, some of these experiences are perceptual—auditory, visual, sensate. As a therapist, when someone describes such things, I look for some awareness on his or her part that these experiences are unusual. Also, that what’s experienced is characterized by feelings of grief or loss, or conversely by feelings of relief or hope. If the material is held concretely or literally, I would expect to find some cultural support for that. For instance, Kenny, a practitioner of Santeria, tells me that his recently deceased brother has given him some important information during a shell reading, or divination ceremony. Mary, first-generation Italian American, covers the mirrors with cloth so she won’t see her husband and “get taken by him.” Where I might become concerned is when there’s no such cultural cuing, or when the material is characterized primarily by feelings of guilt or worthlessness.

Alice tells me that she’s very distressed over the loss of her mother two years ago. She can hear the voices of the dead, blaming her not only for her mother’s death but for theirs as well. In order to get some relief from the voices, she accesses alcohol on a daily basis. She becomes distraught as she tells me this, weeping hopelessly. I don’t argue the matter with her, nor do I help her open it up for meaning. I tell her that I believe that she’s hearing the dead and it must be very rough. I ask if she’ll sign a release so we can call her doctor together and see if there’s something that might work better than alcohol.

Not everyone experiences these types of phenomena. For many of us, bereavement can be tracked through dreams. David, unable to be present when his father died, describes a dream a few months later in which his father enters the room David is in. After making eye contact with David (“so I could feel that he was at peace”), the father smiles, closes his eyes, and slowly leans back until David is left looking at the soles of his feet. Barbara dreams of her husband several times in the year following his death due to cancer. The dreams seem to form a sequence, in which she observes that her husband recovers from the symptoms of Alzheimer’s that were increasingly present the last three years of his life. “He looks like his old self now,” she says.

This phenomenon, the healing of the deceased in dreams, can generate different meanings. For Ron, his father wanted to come back and show him that he was all right. Bridget experienced this as a promise that our sufferings and their impact on us are reversible, and that there’s mercy operating in the universe. One additional meaning we might consider is that the healing of the image of the loved one corresponds to the healing and adjustment of the dreamer to the fact of loss.

We derive our personal meanings from the common experiences of loss. I expect you to come home because there are corners of the psyche where news of your death hasn’t reached yet. I hear your voice because I’m shocked by the sudden silence. I see you because I’m looking for you, and my eye assembles your lovely face out of whatever the environment provides—a stranger waiting for a bus, or someone smoking outside of a meeting place.

Although we know one another, much of our knowing is activity in our brains. The familiar face is conveyed by light that enters the eye and causes impulses to travel along the optic nerves and stimulate processing in the visual cortex, whose patterns of response are rendered semi-stable in the temporal lobe. Likewise, the voice. And likewise, too, our feeling responses and memories of shared events. The image we form corresponds to the other person, is alive, but is “made” of our own processes. When someone dies, it seems to be essential to successful adaptation to acknowledge and adjust to that fact. And after that adjustment, many of us find that in some very real ways, the image of the other person continues to live in us.

In psychotherapy, the first time a person tells me she dreamed of me, or that when facing conflict he imagined what I would tell him, I smile and say, “Now you have my image, and it belongs to you.” Later on, when working through closure and termination, we return to this idea. Bereavement is about ending. It’s also about ending’s opposite, which is continuation.

These days, it seems like depression is all over the news. It usually gets publicity when a high-profile tragedy occurs. You don’t hear people talking about how great they feel now that their depression is being effectively treated. A lot of inaccuracies and half-truths get thrown around, and it can be tough to dig through them and find the facts.

Here are 10 particularly troubling myths and misconceptions about depression. I’d love to hear what you would add to the list!

1. It’s Something You Should Be Ashamed Of

The shame people often experience with depression (or any other mental health issue) is real, but this doesn’t mean embarrassment is warranted. In the United States and its territories, as many as 9% of the population currently meets the criteria for depression. Hundreds of celebrities, athletes, and political figures are known to have struggled with depression. You have nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about. Depression doesn’t mean you’re lazy or pouting or ungrateful.

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2. If You Have Depression, You Will Always Feel Depressed

Depression comes in all shapes and sizes. For many people, their depression changes throughout their lives. Medication, life events, hormonal changes such as pregnancy or menopause, illness, or stresses can change depression. Some people find that psychotherapy relieves their symptoms, others seek out medication or homeopathies, and some make behavioral changes, such as exercise.

3. Depression Is Always Hereditary

Studies have shown that between 40% and 50% of depression is rooted in genetics. So if your parent or sibling has depression, it’s not a guarantee that you will develop it. There are also things you can do that might minimize your risk of developing depression. These include maintaining a strong support network, staying active, having a healthy diet, and learning positive coping skills such as meditation and deep breathing.

4. If Something Horrible Didn’t Happen, You Should Not Be Depressed

This is simply not true. Many people have a trigger in their lives, a trauma they can pinpoint as a starting point for their depression, such as the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job. Sometimes a passing challenge, such as failing a test or moving, can bring on a major depressive episode. Or the depression can appear with no known trigger at all.

5. Depression Is Simply a Feeling

Depression is not having “the blues” or feeling sad. The DSM-5 (a handbook used by mental health professionals to determine what constitutes a diagnosable issue) includes a list of symptoms. People who are clinically depressed have a cluster of these symptoms, such as thoughts of suicide or death, insomnia or hypersomnia, significant weight loss, and depressed mood most of the day nearly every day.

6. Medication Is a Sure Cure for Depression

Unfortunately, there is no magic pill that can obliterate depression. Depression is a complicated beast that can be incredibly hard to treat. Medication can be helpful at managing depression for some people. Others find that medication doesn’t help or, due to side effects, can even make things worse. It can take trying several different medications or combinations of treatments until you feel better.

7. Therapy Is a Sure Cure for Depression

Psychotherapy certainly can help people who struggle with depression. It’s been shown to decrease many symptoms and help people manage their moods. Like medication, though, therapy is not a cure in and of itself. Many people respond to therapy, but some don’t. A combination of therapy and medication tends to yield the best results, and many people incorporate both in their healing.

People with depression aren’t always depressed. Like everyone else, they have their good days and bad days.

8. If You’re Depressed, You Can’t Be Happy

People with depression aren’t always depressed. Like everyone else, they have their good days and bad days. When their depression is being effectively treated, the good days outnumber the bad. You cannot look at people’s Facebook pages with pictures of them laughing and enjoying life and conclude they’re not depressed. Many people are good at hiding their feelings and present to the world a persona that is much different from what they are experiencing.

9. Depression Shouldn’t Be Talked About

Millions of people throughout the world will experience depression sometime in their lives. You’re far from alone, and it doesn’t have to be something you keep secret. I’ve worked with people in therapy who, upon sharing their experience with friends and family, expressed surprise at how many of them also have struggled with depression.

10. If You Have Depression, You Will Never Have a Fulfilled, Productive Life

Depression is not a life sentence to misery. Depression is a treatable condition, and people who are diagnosed with it can go on to have wonderful, happy lives. The key is getting the correct treatment. If something you try isn’t working, keep searching. Find a psychiatrist or doctor who will patiently work with you to find the best medication, if you go that route. Find a skilled therapist who specializes in depression and whom you trust and feel a connection with.

Depression does not have to hold you hostage. The more people are honest about their struggles, the more accepting and understanding society will be—and the better off we all will be.

References:

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010). Current Depression Among Adults – United States, 2006 and 2008. MMWR 2010, Vol. 59 No. 38.
2. Levinston, Douglas F., & Nichols, Walter E. (2015). Major Depression and Genetics. Stanford School of Medicine, Genetics of Brain Function. Retrieved from http://depressiongenetics.stanford.edu/mddandgenes.html

During healthy development, children learn that the people around them are mostly safe and trustworthy. Even when they do not get what they want, they eventually learn to self-soothe in many ways as they grow. They may try persuasion or defiance to get what they want or avoid what they do not want, but ultimately they learn that being respectful and cooperative maintains stability. Because the average child’s brain is not easily triggered to extremes, they typically find ways to self-soothe, delay gratification, and self-regulate their emotions.

Either due to traumatic experiences—including abuse or extreme neglect—or developmental anomalies, some kids have intense fight, flight, or freeze responses and little ability to self-soothe. Chronic volatility in family relationships can also set this pattern into motion. Developmental neurobiologist Daniel Siegel (2003) wrote, “The mind develops as the brain responds to ongoing experience.” Problem behavior is a manifestation of well-worn neural and cognitive pathways that translate into reflexive emotional, cognitive, and behavior patterns.

We must learn to detour kids’ domino-effect reactions, which so frequently emanate from underlying fear or shame. Matthew Selekman (1993) wrote that change arises “out of the breaking of patterns, both of thought and action, the interruption of repeating sequences.” Many adults perpetuate volatile cycles of emotion, thought, and behavior unintentionally by interacting with children in ways that trigger further volatility.

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Navigating out of these ruts requires self-control, empathy, and creativity. Explosive and withdrawn behaviors are typically adaptive responses, arising out of needs to be liked, valued, and respected, needs to have some sense of predictability and control, needs to heighten or lessen sensory stimulation, or all of the above. When behaviors are confronted through criticism or control, a defensive neurophysiological response perpetuates the vicious cycle through an emotional display on the outside of feelings being felt on the inside.

Development is a train choo-choo-ing along. When the Polar Express slid out of control on a lake of ice, it took courage, creativity, and collaboration to aim it back onto its tracks. It is important to maintain firm guidance alongside unconditional acceptance, as well as to discern that fine line between what is vital and what is negotiable. Consequently, the need to become defensive and act out may diminish over time if the child finds that it is not needed anymore to be heard or to feel loved.

I describe therapeutic connection in the acronym ATM, in which “A” stands for accommodation, “T” for tracking, and “M” for mirroring. We maximize opportunities for connection when we accommodate our use of words to those used by another, track and intentionally relate with the stories they tell, and mirror body language to the extent that it sends the message, “There is no need for defense. I’m here with you, and I care about you. I’m trying the best I can to know you.” This is part of the way we invest into the relationship account, and when the time comes for withdrawal, those who have done so won’t go for broke.

It is important to maintain firm guidance alongside unconditional acceptance, as well as to discern that fine line between what is vital and what is negotiable.

Children who are withdrawn often need greater affirmation of their strengths and efforts. Mark Twain once wrote, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” When someone approves of some part of who we are, it is as if that part of us becomes illumined. The need for approval can be compulsive, but just about anything can be. The truth is that we benefit from that sort of love in our lives. We grow better in the light.

Discipline should aim to teach and to train a child. We must not fail to teach facts and skills, for they are pixels in the resolution of a bigger picture. Yet, insight also has its limitations. I believe that there are few better ways to teach or train a child than to immerse him or her in the best experiences that life has to offer: fun, silliness, art, creativity, exercise, work, rest, food, adventure, and relationship—not necessarily in that order. I call these the parenting disciplines. Shared moments equal shared lives.

Children who are explosive may engage easily in power struggles. Before getting hooked in, learn the patterns and try to better anticipate them. Proactively communicate about expectations, limits, and consequences so that they are clear, measurable, and enforceable. When a power struggle is beginning, verbalize guidance authoritatively, then stop talking, and maybe even walk away. Become a broken record, if need be, in reinforcing limits. Play good cop/bad cop, and let established rules and limits do the dirty work.

If you accidentally get stuck in a power struggle, catch yourself, confess it, and end it: “Ah, you hooked me, and I just realized it.” It’s OK to change your mind. It’s also OK to be honest about your own internal ambivalence about a decision, yet to be firm in it. We need not hide these tricks up our sleeves.

Also, be sure that you understand the difference between perpetual tugs-of-war and constructive complaints or requests from your child. Be open to negotiating or changing your mind when there is opportunity to be flexible. Diplomacy and adaptability are fundamental life skills for all of us, skills that are gained via modeling and experience, and we would do well to pass them along to our children.

More than anything, it is important to remain calm and cool-headed when facing difficult behavior. The best strategy is to “seek first to understand and then to be understood.” When people are angry, resistant, and anxious, feeling that someone is attempting to hear and understand them can be calming and helpful.

Many children carry with them legitimate anger, fear, sadness, and shame related to predispositions, situations, and experiences largely out of their control. They need someone to love them in spite of ways they reflexively aggress or distance as they negotiate through ambivalent inclinations. At the end of the day, every child wants to be heard, which is just another way of saying understood, and loved, which is just another way of saying known.

There is a child in your life secretly hoping you will hear and love him or her today. Will you?

References:

1. Selekman, M. (1993). Pathways to change: Brief therapy solutions with difficult adolescents. New York: The Guilford Press.
2. Hartzell, M., & Siegel, D. (2003). Parenting from the inside out. New York, NY: Tarcher/Penguin.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality type classification questionnaire based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types. For the past several decades, it has been the most frequently referenced resource on the subject of personality.

I have used a short-form version of the MBTI with most people I’ve worked with in the therapy room since 2000, including more than 500 couples. Many of those couples were seeking answers to a common question: “Are our personality types compatible?”

Before we delve into whether the MBTI is a predictor of compatibility, though, it is important to understand what it is designed to measure.

In the early 1900s, Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, concluded that natural differences in psychological types exist. He believed these differences were present at birth, identifiable at an early age, and did not change much across time. Jung further believed that an individual’s type orientation is determined by the degree to which he or she is, naturally and normally:

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• More Extroverted or Introverted
• More Sensing (literal) or iNtuitive (possibilities oriented)
• More Thinking-oriented or Feeling-oriented when drawing conclusions and experiencing emotions
• More Judging (structured) or Perceiving (open-ended)

The MBTI was designed to help identify an individual’s natural response orientation on each of these four dichotomies. It also identifies characteristics and traits known to be common for each of the sixteen types that can be derived from different combinations of response orientations on these dichotomies.

The MBTI assigns a letter, highlighted in bold above, for the response orientation at opposite poles of each dichotomy. (N is used for iNtuition because I was used for Introversion.) A four-letter code is then used to identify each of the sixteen possible psychological (personality) types. For example, because I score toward the Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, and Perceiving poles, the four-letter code that applies to my personality type is INFP.

The more pronounced your response process is toward one pole on a dichotomy, the more likely traits and characteristics associated with that pole will fit for you. However, many people find that some do not fit at all. For this reason, while the MBTI may provide insight into the nature of one’s personality, it cannot be described as unfailingly accurate.

The terms used for the dichotomy opposites on the MBTI have specific meanings that are sometimes misunderstood. For example, extroverts may view introverts as quiet, shy, withdrawn, possibly depressed or antisocial, withholding, self-centered, or uninvolved. Introverts may view extroverts as talkative, sociable, friendly, noisy, needy, intrusive, or either unable or unwilling to listen. Such assumptions are often inaccurate, of course.

Extroverts tend to be more energized when interacting with others, while introverts draw energy from more introspective, reflective processes. Each type has its strengths.

Let’s take a closer look at the other three dichotomies.

Sensing-oriented people naturally process information based on what is literally happening within the context of past experience, while intuition-oriented people naturally process information from a possible meanings plane—from consideration of alternative possibilities for what is literally happening.

Thinking-oriented people have feelings, and feeling-oriented folks can think. It’s just that thinking-oriented people naturally assess what is happening from a logical assessment of cause and effect, expressing their conclusions in an objective manner. Feeling-oriented people naturally add an additional consideration for how others might feel in making decisions and expressing them.

Individuals with a judging orientation naturally plan future events in advance, while perceiving-oriented people naturally respond more as events play out.

Implications for Relationships

The stronger an individual’s natural response orientation toward one pole of a dichotomy, the greater the likelihood he or she will have difficulty experientially comprehending the natural response process of someone who responds from that dichotomy’s opposite pole. This has particular relevance when addressing the issue of relationship compatibility.

Understanding the nature of personality differences, and acceptance of those differences, is key to lasting harmony.

Contemporary models for understanding individual differences in human behavior are built on an assumption of choice—a belief that human beings can alter their response patterns if they want to. Consequently, when a couple is dealing with a difference of opinion in an area where natural differences are at play, each may believe the other could understand his or her perspective if he or she really wanted to, when that may not be so. The assumption of choice in comprehension can lead to debilitating and perhaps relationship-threatening debates over who is right and who is wrong.

MBTI-based information has been instrumental in my work in helping couples and families resolve their differences. This experience has provided a solid base of empirical evidence to support Jung’s belief that differences are natural and normal and not subject to an option to alter. Understanding the nature of personality differences, and acceptance of those differences, is key to lasting harmony.

With regard to MBTI type orientations and their implications for relationships, I have observed the following:

• Most people I have worked with in therapy have found the general information on traits and characteristics associated with their own type, as well as for the types of significant others, to be accurate.
• This information has consistently facilitated greater self-understanding and self-acceptance, as well as understanding and acceptance of the nature of significant others.
• When the primary issue for a couple was a breakdown in communication, information and education on natural differences was much more helpful in brokering a mutually satisfactory resolution than any conflict resolution model I’ve been trained to use.
• While some pairings of personality types have proved more problematic than others and required more time to resolve, I have yet to work with a couple whose combination of types was inherently incompatible. The degree to which one partner accepted personality differences, however, did factor into outcomes.

In cases where couples were unable to resolve differences, at least one of the following factors has usually been present:

• One half of the couple had already mentally and emotionally disconnected from the relationship. His or her reasons for attending counseling varied, but relationship recovery was not one of them.
• The build-up of resentment was such that understanding the role that natural differences played was not sufficient to facilitate healing.
• The couple, without intention or awareness, repeated relationship-defeating dynamics carried over from before the relationship existed, patterns of responding that an understanding of natural differences was unable to alter.
• With some couples, one or the other partner was not able to comprehend and/or accommodate natural differences in his or her partner’s nature.
• Infidelity. For some couples, the occurrence was situational and nonrecurring, while for others it was chronic. Some in each category stayed together, while others did not.

A Note of Caution

While the characteristics and traits associated with individual differences in MBTI-based types tend to be accurate, the MBTI is broad in nature, addressing response dynamics known to be common among individuals with each type profile. A comprehensive understanding of oneself, separate from others, is far too complex to be captured by a measure with such a design.

In 2008, Teresa Sheehan, a woman with a long history of mental health issues, was shot multiple times by two San Francisco police officers. The incident occurred after a social worker called police to the group home where Sheehan lived. Sheehan was experiencing mental health difficulties, and allegedly threatened group home members. When police arrived and entered the home without a warrant, they claim she threatened them with a knife.

Sheehan sued the city, claiming that her status as a person with mental health issues should have been considered when police evaluated how to deal with her. The Americans With Disabilities Act, a federal law, requires that people with disabilities—including mental health disabilities—not face discrimination. It also mandates that employers and schools give “reasonable accommodations” to those with such disabilities.

The Supreme Court’s opinion has been widely cited as determining that the ADA does not apply to Sheehan’s case. In fact, the Court opted not to rule on the issue, citing the fact that the City changed its arguments halfway through the proceedings. This change means that lower courts were not fully able to address the ADA issue, making it inappropriate for the Supreme Court to do so. Justice Scalia wrote in his opinion, “We were thus deprived of the opportunity to consider, and settle, a controverted question of law that has divided the Circuits, and were invited instead to decide an ADA question that has relevance only if we assume the Ninth Circuit correctly resolved the antecedent, unargued question on which we granted certiorari.” Thus the law on whether the ADA applies in police shootings remains unclear for now.

Oregon Outlaws Gay Conversion Therapy, Joining Two Other States

Conversion therapy, which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, is increasingly the subject of controversy. It’s also been roundly condemned by most major mental health organizations. Now, Oregon has joined California, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. in outlawing conversion therapy for minors. While adults can still seek conversion therapy, it’s often minors who are subjected to it, frequently against their will. Many other states are considering similar legislation. [fat_widget_right]

Ted Lieu Introduces First Federal Ban on Gay Conversion Therapy

Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles) played a key role in California’s ban on conversion therapy three years ago. Now, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he hopes to replicate these results. Arguing that conversion therapy is a kind of fraud, he introduced the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act this week. If the bill passes, it will ban conversion therapy at the federal level.

The Army’s New Plan to Help Soldiers with PTSD

Veterans and active-duty soldiers continue to struggle with posttraumatic stress (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and other effects of war. An overhaul of the military mental health system endeavors to reverse this trend. As part of this overhaul, the Army wants to make mental health care more accessible by putting mental health specialists within walking distance of soldiers’ barracks. The idea here is that soldiers will be more likely to seek care when it’s convenient and accessible.

Texting at the Playground: New Study Shows How Much Time Parents Spend Buried in Their Smartphones

Though a new University of Washington study suggests 44% of parents think smartphones have no place at the playground, the temptation of the phone can be tough to resist. To assess whether smartphones are a playground distraction, researchers observed caregivers at several playgrounds, collecting a total of 33 hours of data. It turns out that many parents spend little time on their phones when watching their children at playgrounds. They found that two-thirds of participants spent less than five minutes on their phones. Forty-one percent didn’t use their phones at all.

Groundbreaking Study on Shifting Attitudes Toward Gays Used Fake Data

Late last year, a study was published in Science claiming that a 20-minute conversation might be sufficient to undermine homophobia. Now, the authors of the paper have retracted it, admitting that they faked their data. The research was so convincing that it fooled even statisticians. It took two graduate students intending to extend the study to uncover the problem. The news comes on the heels of a study in which researchers were only able to duplicate 39% of recently published psychology studies.

Bullied as a Kid, Obese as a Grown-up?

According to a study of more than 7,000 adults, there may be yet another consequence of bullying: obesity. Researchers gathered data about participants’ childhood experiences, including whether they were bullied. By the age of 45, more than 25% of women who were bullied were obese, compared to just 19% of women who weren’t bullied. Men were also more likely to become obese if they had been bullied, and both men and women who were bullied were more likely to have high blood inflammation, a risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, and similar health problems.