If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
-Woody Allen

No matter who you are, things will happen that throw you off-kilter. Life intrudes on inner peace with an uncanny regularity. It may be your boss, spouse or partner, children, house, parents, finances, health, or even a freaky weather event, but life has its own trajectory, and no one can know what new challenge awaits.

Luckily, there are many ways to regain equilibrium. Trial and error, plumbing your depths to see what really works for you, and discerning the differences between various situations that trigger your sympathetic nervous system—your fight or flight reaction—are all very helpful in developing an emotional first aid kit.

When you find you have strayed from your center, allow the imbalance. Just notice what is going on emotionally, physically, and mentally. What are you telling yourself about this experience? Are you ready to regroup, or do you need a bit more time to explore what is happening? Sometimes, the hardest thing is allowing yourself to totter emotionally, to grieve or feel angry, overwhelmed, or exhausted. Whatever is happening, it won’t last.

Ten Tips For Emergency Emotional First Aid

Since it is easy to get thrown off-kilter when you are shocked or surprised by unwelcome news, you may want to try these techniques as first responses:

1. Take slow, deep breaths, and allow a little extra time to exhale.
2. Remind yourself that this, too, shall pass.
3. Allow space for all of your feelings.
4. Have faith in yourself. The truth is that you can handle more than you might believe at this particular moment. You can use prayer or meditation for added support and to access your belief in a greater power.
5. Don’t take anything personally.
6. Try to stick with your routine, even if you are feeling dazed or numb. Having a routine will anchor you.
7. Eat, sleep, and get some fresh air.
8. Picture your 6-year-old self, and lovingly embrace that child. Gently reassure the frightened little being inside.
9. Connect with someone, such as a friend or family member, a therapist or neighbor, even a stranger on a local hot line.
10. Understand that you are here for everything, good and bad. Visualize yourself as a river of experiences, and let life flow without judgment.

Reading this list takes only a few minutes, but actually working through each item builds resiliency and will help you keep going, one second at a time. Sometimes, just existing during a traumatic experience is the best you can do and remembering that as time passes, your perspective will change. For now, it is best to accept the present, do what you can, and choose to believe everything is happening for your highest good.

If or when you are ready to re-center, reach out to a trusted friend, relative, clergy person, or therapist. Speak honestly and openly. Being heard and understood is one of the most bonding, loving, and freeing experiences you can have, but you have to ask for help. If this has been hard for you in the past, break out of your old rut of being super-independent and pick up the phone. Find a therapist in my area.

If company doesn’t fit the bill, try some solitude. Silence can be soothing and afford you the opportunity to integrate what you have experienced. If that feels overwhelming, try a guided meditation. There are numerous free podcasts on iTunes, like Meditation Oasis, A Quiet Mind, or The Meditation Podcast. If you have the time, try a soothing Yoga Nidra practice—this is a guided practice of yogic sleep, where you are in the liminal space between waking and sleeping, and involves no knowledge of yoga postures. (My favorite is available free from iTunes through Elsie’s Yoga Podcast, episode #62.)

Take a bath with Epsom salts and lavender oil. The magnesium sulfate in the salts will quiet any muscle tension, and the essential oil—about six to eight drops—will calm your mind and act as a pain reliever.

Read something inspirational. Try some poetry, or escape with a novel. Reading is both relaxing and engaging. If audio books work better for you, check some out from the library and download them to your iTunes so you’ll have a ready supply.

Music really can soothe the savage breast, as the playwright William Congreve suggested in the late 17th century. Find something that works for you: it may be hard rock, or hemi-synch. Sanskrit chants can be remarkably helpful, as they bathe you in mantras designed to calm your nervous system. Chanting them yourself will bring even greater benefits, as making the sounds activates different parts of the mouth that correspond to different areas in your brain. The simplest one is om, a sound that is said to embody all sounds.

Moving your body takes the kinks out emotionally, too. Even if the last thing you feel like doing is dancing, yoga, or taking a walk, just do something for five minutes as an experiment. If you feel better, do another five minutes.

Allow nature to work its magic. Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homeopathic medicine, wrote that eating well, sleeping enough, and getting fresh air are essential to good health, mentally and physically. Don’t underestimate their value.

Rebalance with a favorite ritual, like making yourself a cup of tea and sipping it slowly.

Dressing up can take extra effort, but it also feels good, especially if you receive extra compliments. A new study suggests what many women have experienced: dressing in nicer clothes makes you feel better.

According to a recent news release, one study has shown that women who are depressed or sad are more likely to wear baggy tops, jeans, and a sweatshirt or jumper. Women who are happy or positive are more likely to wear a favorite dress, jewelry, and jeans. These clothing choices seem to mean that women who are feeling down put less effort into what they’re wearing, and women who are in a good mood tend to try and look nicer to match their mood.

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There were 100 women interviewed for the study, and their ages ranged from 21 to 64 years, according to the news release. The researchers also found that 73% of women in the study “shopped for clothes at least every few months.” The majority of women, or 96%, “believed that what they wear affects how confident they feel,” according to the news release.

Researchers determined from the results that there is a possibility that wearing certain clothes can affect emotional states. “The strong link between clothing and mood state suggests we should put on clothes that we associate with happiness, even when feeling low,” according to the news release. The author of the study, Karen Pine, who is the coauthor of Flex: Do Something Different and a professor in the School of Psychology at University of Hertfordshire, added in the news release that jeans are more associated with a depressed mood state and that women should consider abandoning them for a different clothing choice in order to feel better.

“Jeans don’t look great on everyone. They are often poorly cut and badly fitting,” Pine said in the news release. “Jeans can signal that the wearer hasn’t bothered with their appearance. People who are depressed often lose interest in how they look and don’t wish to stand out, so the correlation between depression and wearing jeans is understandable. Most importantly, this research suggests that we can dress for happiness, but that might mean ditching the jeans.”

In the study, 51% of women would wear jeans when they felt sad or depressed, and only 33% of women would wear jeans when they felt happy or positive, according to the news release. So if people still wear jeans when they are happy, just to a lesser degree, why are they such a bad choice? Why are baggy clothes associated with a sad or depressed emotional state and dresses and jewelry associated with a happy or positive emotional state? Pine addressed these issues in an email.

“All the findings apply, but because jeans are so ubiquitous (everyone seems to have a pair, women on average have eight pairs each) we chose to ‘lead’ on this finding. It is interesting that many women wear them a lot but there’s still a variation according to mood. I think the finding that women will only wear their favourite dress when happy or will likely wear a baggy top when depressed is just as compelling.”

She said that the research didn’t go into certain details, like the fact that some women are more into a “jeans and T-shirt” type of fashion, and other women wear skirts and dresses every day as part of their style. It’s also uncertain whether results would’ve changed if researchers took into consideration the emphasis some women put on fashion and beauty and if women who shopped less were interviewed. “Of course there will always be individual differences, but nonetheless recent research into enclothed cognition … confirms there is a strong association between what we wear and our psychological processes,” Pine said.

Results would also possibly look different if men were included in the study. “A lot of my research concerns women’s issues .. and I think the emotional link is probably stronger for women than for men, although there is research that shows men’s clothes affect how they behave (e.g. sports teams that wear all black act more aggressively),” Pine said.

Overall, Pine believes the research provides a look into how we can improve our moods. “It shows that clothes impact strongly on how we feel and may also influence how we think (as the above research also suggests), which we’ll be exploring further in our research,” Pine said. “It suggests we should give more thought to what we wear and even dress for happiness, irrespective of how we are feeling. If we knew more about which clothes could lift a person’s mood perhaps there’d be less need for anti-depressant medication.”

Shauna Mackenzie Heathman, a certified image consultant and owner of Mackenzie Image Consulting in South Carolina, said in an email that the results of the study are expected. “When we are feeling depressed or unhappy, looking our best is not on our minds,” Pine said. “In fact, it becomes a hassle and waste of time. Mental energy is turned inwards towards emotional thoughts. Dressing simply becomes function versus adornment or fun.”

She said that people shouldn’t necessarily make assumptions about the feelings and emotions of another person based on their clothing though. “We have the power to wear items that represent our personalities and feelings,” Heathman said. “With that being said, who knows how other people will interpret it. We make [judgments]/assumptions based on our own experiences. Bottom line: I would be careful to assume one’s feelings based on what they wear. To a certain extent, you can read whether someone is feeling insecure based on their clothing, but body language and nonverbal communication is much more representative of one’s feelings.”

She thinks there could also be a separate study on men that explores their clothing choices and emotional states. “I think it was okay for this study to be focused around women,” Heathman said. “A separate study on men should be considered. However, first you would need to discover the underlying differences between men and women and how they interpret clothes. Men are much more focused on functionality in their wardrobe than women, regardless of emotional state. So I do think there may be some general similarities, but overall women’s results would probably be more dramatic.”

One of the main parts of the study Pine focused on was jeans and their association with a depressed or sad mood state, and Heathman thinks this could be because jeans are an easy choice that doesn’t require a lot of thought. “I don’t think it’s the fact of wearing jeans that suggests sadness or depression as it is just wanting effortlessness and functionality,” Heathman said. “As I mentioned before, when we are depressed or sad, we’re not focused on how we look. We stop caring. We turn to what’s easy and comfortable. Prolonged long enough, you then fall in ‘the rut.’ Often, altering one’s mood by enhancing wardrobe can be done. However, it generally only has short-term results if working on one’s emotional and mental state is not at play as well.”

“The study mentions that happy clothes include well-cut, figure-enhancing items made from bright and beautiful fabrics,” Heathman said. “To this, I ponder, isn’t this obvious? If something makes our figure look poor, we generally don’t like this and thus are unhappy about it. When we don’t like what we wear, we focus on it throughout the day. It takes away the focus from the daily tasks that are important—work, relationships, family. A woman should walk out of the door and not have to think about what she’s wearing for the rest of the day. You’d be amazed at how much mental energy is exhausted pondering about how we look.”

Overall she thinks the study could have gone more in-depth to provide more useful information. “I think the study lacks depth. What is revealed seems fairly obvious,” Heathman said. “I would be curious to hear why women choose to wear a hat more often when they are happy. Is it because it’s fun? Is it because it draws attention towards them? Also, the psychology of color comes into play much more than the study presents. I think it’s informative more than it is useful.”

Donna Stellhorn, a Feng Shui expert and author of 2012 Year of the Water Dragon, interprets the study from a unique perspective involving her experience with Feng Shui. For those who are unfamiliar with Feng Shui, it is “the study of how the environment affects those who dwell in it,” according to the American Feng Shui Institute website. The “science” of Feng Shui suggests that there are “different energies” in our planet, and learning how to balance these energies can help improve various aspects of life.

“In Feng Shui we understand how you dress is associated with the five elements. Each element has an energy, and we’ll gravitate to the energy that’s in harmony with how we feel at the moment,” Stellhorn said. “The study says when we’re feeling down we’re more likely to reach for jeans and loose-fitting tops. These boxy shapes relate to the Earth element, a desire for stillness and stability. There are five elements (Earth, Wood, Fire, Water, and Metal), each with an energy, feeling, and a related style. Besides the shape of clothes, also the color and material indicates the element. For instance, animal prints are associated with the Fire element and a desire to be noticed and feel alive.”

She said for men, color would probably be more of an indicator of emotional states. “Because men tend to stick to a limited wardrobe, emotional states can be read in the choices of colors and the slight changes in what they normally wear,” Stellhorn said. “Men who usually sport a T-Shirt and suddenly start wearing a button-down shirt in greens or browns has moved from the Earth element to Wood, showing a desire to grow, to add to their life financially and socially, they’ve become curious about the world.”

She agrees that jeans are less effort when people are already preoccupied with other areas of life. “It’s not that jeans specifically suggest sadness, but that the desire to throw on a pair of jeans can indicate that life’s been too chaotic, there are too many choices and we want some quiet stillness to contemplate what’s ahead,” Stellhorn said. “When we reach for jeans we want something familiar because things around us are stressful.”

Accessories can also affect mood, like the study suggests. “Women’s hats bring attention (from others and our own) to our heads and indicate a person with power,” Stellhorn said. “A man in a ball cap might be covering thinning hair, but by wearing the hat he feels more powerful and better able to interact in the world. Jewelry and handbags also bring an energy, and therefore an emotion, to the person.”

Linda Froiland, an image consultant and personal shopper, said in an email that jeans don’t need to always be associated with depression, although sometimes it can be difficult to find the perfect fit. “Jeans are not just for tennis shoes. If you have a great fitting pair in a dark wash they can be quite sexy with an elevated heel, high heel, or wedge shoes,” Froiland said. “I wear mine out dancing, dinners at friends or restaurants, shopping, everywhere really, but they fit like a glove and have attitude. I can honestly say I am not depressed when wearing jeans, nor are my clients once they know how they should fit, what they should look like, and what to pair them with.”

Rosa Mae Neel, a stylist for professionals and the founder of Prune, agrees with Froiland that jeans don’t necessarily mean depression. “In a place like New York, where women commonly spend up to $300 for a pair of jeans and wear them with heels and a sexy top to go out at night, jeans do not necessarily equal depressive state,” Neel said. “Perhaps in other parts of the country or for older generations, jeans that are not designer jeans and that are more comfortable than flattering are a go-to for depressive states. Again, blousy tops can be trendy and hip if expensive or worn with gusto, or they can be a medium through which to hide extra pounds or negative feelings.”

Froiland said that clothing can be important in not only affecting mood but also in making impressions on other people. “Whenever I talk to a group, large or small, I always start out my presentation with telling everyone that ‘It’s in less than 3 minutes someone has already decided who and what you are. First by your appearance (87%), second your body language (8%), and then your verbal communication (5%). It takes another 20 times meeting that person to change that original perception,’” Froiland said. “So the value in our clothing is profound.”

Caroline Adams Miller, a professional coach, author of “Creating Your Best Life” and a graduate of University of Pennsylvania’s Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology program, said in an email that baggy clothes in general can indicate more of a lackluster mood. “Baggy jeans that could be perceived as asexual probably don’t correlate with happiness unless paired with more individualistic shirts or accessories,” Miller said. “The baggy tops reference doesn’t surprise me because they would ‘hide’ someone, and unhappy people don’t want to interact with people—they want to ruminate and be alone, and these clothing choices are perfect indicators of not feeling worthy of being ‘seen.’”

She believes that men could be affected by clothing choices as well, although they might put more effort into choosing a car to express their personality and mood. “I do believe that many men use clothing to express and change their moods, though, so I think a future study would find similar results,” Miller said.

Overall she believes the study makes sense and that there is a real connection between clothing and mood. “The science of happiness has found that we have ‘positive interventions’ that can change our mood, and when we deliberately intervene on our happiness by wearing things that evoke positive feelings, positive reactions from others, or that remind you of positive experiences, you will be happier,” Miller said.

Related articles:
Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?
Seven Mistakes People Often Make When They Get Depressed
Depression as Trickster and Communicator

If you have completed Codependency Workbook Exercise One, congratulations to you. Please take a moment to pat yourself on the back. You deserve it, because it must have taken a great deal of courage to write about your family history. Most people shed some tears in our therapy session when they share it with me. Then they feel very relieved.

Many people are not ready to share the letter with their family of origin right away. If you have a therapist available or a sponsor, discuss it with that person. If not, review it with a supportive, nonjudgmental friend. Before sharing this with your family, it is important that you be ready to deal with their reactions. Unless they are in recovery, most families will not be able to validate your experience. However, it is very therapeutic to put your family history on paper and share it with another person.

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Now we are ready to begin the next workbook exercise, which concerns relationships. Please make a list of the most important people in your life. This may include friends, lovers, a spouse, family members, coworkers, or a boss. Spend a few minutes thinking about each relationship. How many people on your list do you believe are dysfunctional? How many are addicts, have untreated mental illness, refuse to work, even if they are able, or have other major issues? Are you taking care of some of the people on your list? Are some of the relationships lopsided, where you do most of the giving?

You may wonder why some of your relationships are lopsided. Dysfunctional people can sense that you are a caretaker and are drawn to you. It is almost as though they can smell you. You may find yourself drawn to them as well.

Last night, I saw a married couple where the wife was unsuccessfully trying to stop her alcoholic husband from drinking. She was anxious, frustrated, and very angry. Of course she would be frustrated. She was trying to control something that she had no control over. The facts are that we are powerless over other people, places, and things. Realizing this is helpful to codependents because they can learn to let go and relax. Trying to fix others is impossible, and just upsets the fixer. It also is not helpful to the dysfunctional person. Normally addicts only get help because of the consequences of their using. If the caretaker undoes the consequences, they caretaker unknowingly helps enable the dysfunctional person to remain sick.

Since caretaking may make you miserable and help your loved one stay sick, maybe we can work on not doing it. How? You can begin to learn to set boundaries. For example, you might tell the loved one that you will no longer bail him or her out if he is arrested. You may tell him that you will no longer call in sick if he is too hung over to work. You may tell her that you will only talk with her when she is sober.

I suggest that you put your list away for at least 24 hours. Then pick the relationship that causes you the most stress. Think about a boundary that you may set and write it down. Practice telling your loved one about the boundary. He or she will probably not like it, but in the long run it will be good for both of you. Be sure that you are prepared to maintain the boundary before you set it. The first time you do this, you are taking a major step in your recovery. Be sure to spend some time with someone who will support you setting a boundary.

Bad person feelings typically develop early in life. Although it may not be intended, children can get the message that it isn’t simply what they do or think or feel that is bad, but that they themselves are bad.  When these feelings are communicated, verbally or nonverbally, children soon learn to avoid them by working very hard to please and not disappoint parents. They may try so hard to be good (i.e., to be the child the parent expects), that they have little room to develop their own unique selves.

The Experience of “I Am a Bad Person”
When parents yell at their children or verbally or physically abuse them, we can imagine that this might frighten, shame, humiliate, or terrify a child.  But parents can also respond in more subtle ways that can damage a child. When a parent expresses hurt or disappointment by a sigh, a look, crying, head shaking, or leaving the room, the impact can be devastating: “How can I have done this to my parent? I must be a terrible person.” When the parent’s displeasure is expressed as hurt, it is especially difficult for the child to mobilize a strong sense of self and fight back.  The parent’s hurt is evidence that the child is a bad person. It then feels necessary to always please others and behave in ways to avoid the “I am a bad person” feeling.

People Pleasing
In my practice of psychotherapy, I frequently work with patients who have a strong desire to please. They often come to therapy when they find that their anxiety about pleasing others is having a serious impact on their lives.  Worry and rumination about whether or not someone “likes me” characterize most relationships.  Their concern is not only about the feelings of significant others; coworkers and casual acquaintances can create as much worry about being liked as a parent, spouse, or boss.
The focus on pleasing others interferes with developing the ability to consider what would be pleasing to oneself.  Alan came to therapy struggling with what to do with his life. At the age of 29 he wasn’t sure how much he really liked the woman he was dating. He felt he couldn’t trust his feelings. He also had doubts about his job and couldn’t figure out if he was being realistic in what he wanted. He reported that he was tired of trying to keep his girlfriend and his boss happy.  He wasn’t comfortable telling them what wasn’t working for him and he worried that he was too demanding. As is typical with people pleasers, he frequently second guessed himself and questioned what his true feelings were.  Alan spent so much time avoiding displeasing others that he hadn’t developed a sense of who he was, what he wanted, and how to get it.

Disappointment
When struggling with bad person feelings, experiences of disappointing and being a disappointment are prominent. My patient Diane often described how she felt a pit in her stomach or on the verge of tears when she thought she disappointed someone. But what was totally intolerable was when she felt she was a disappointment. She recalled that her mom would look sad and hurt and shake her head when Diane refused to wear what mom had chosen for her. She told me that it wasn’t simply that she felt that her behavior had hurt and disappointed her mother. Tearing up, she said “I felt that I am a disappointment and it felt like that defined my very essence.”
Diane also would become very anxious when she felt that someone disappointed her. She felt she had no right to such feelings and believed she was wrong or exaggerating if she allowed herself to feel that way. She told me “If I let my husband know some of the things that trouble and disappoint me in our relationship, I will hurt his feelings. Then I will feel terrible, that I am a bad person.”  What Diane described is her fear of asserting herself:  someone could get hurt and this will be proof of her badness.

The Tenacity of the Bad Person Feeling
Both Alan and Diane were overly attentive to pleasing others, not disappointing, and protecting themselves from bad person feelings. Both found it difficult and dangerous to please themselves, believing that if they focused on their own needs, they would create hurt and disappointment in others. Both worked to maintain a positive self-image by vigilantly trying to be sure that they never were experienced as having negative impact.
For people who struggle with bad person feelings, the most important goal in relationships is not so much to be related to with positive regard as to avoid negative regard. As a result, whatever positive regard is directed toward people pleasers tends not to be taken seriously.  Alan explained: “I know I bend over backwards to make sure no one is upset or angry or displeased with me. So when people like me, deep down I don’t give it much credence. Sometimes I think I am always acting.”  The point here is that the bad person feelings continue to define the person and are not easily changed by experiences of positive regard from others.

Changing the Bad Person Feeling
The bad person feeling typically digs its claws into the internal life of those who suffer with it.  It feels real, inevitable, and a fundamental part of “who I am.” The feeling defines how one thinks about the self and typically was developed through early relationships with significant others.  As one develops, many relationships mirror the dynamics of the parent-child relationship where the aim is to avoid hurting the other and to not feel like the bad person. Reflecting on these feelings, it is not so easy to consider that a parent, even without intention, was involved in the development of these terrible feelings. If that were to be accepted, it would mean accepting that I am the hurt one. This perspective turns the way the world has been understood upside down. With such a radical shift in thinking needed, how can these feelings be diminished?
You have to be willing to consider alternative ways of thinking about your early experience. Thoughts that once made sense have to be reflected on and reconsidered.  Even if at first, you can’t emotionally accept a new way of thinking, it is important to start by logically considering what you believe about your experiences, perceptions, and feelings. It will be important to become aware of how many of your relationships mirror the anxieties you felt (and feel) with your parents.
Objectively, you may be able to consider that children do no wrong even if a parent feels hurt when they have independent thoughts or don’t do as the parent asks. Can you apply this thought to yourself?  Can you become aware and intellectually accept that as humans in relationships, we all hurt those we love in unintended ways and that this does not make us bad people? Coming up with new ways of thinking about old assumptions is an important beginning in changing bad person feelings. However, it is not enough. To accomplish a change in your definition of self, from the bad person who is a disappointment to a good enough person who doesn’t always please and can disappoint from time to time, requires an emotional shift internally. Therapy is one means of facilitating this shift. Another means is to gradually use your rational thoughts to urge yourself to risk responding honestly.  By this I mean, it becomes necessary to first remind yourself “Yes, I am human and it is okay to express my own unique thoughts even if they are different. I know someone could respond negatively but this doesn’t mean I have done something wrong.”
This takes time. As you repeatedly risk the possibility of making a negative impact by asserting your separate thoughts and feelings, your tolerance for anxiety, risk taking, and bad person feelings will increase. You need to be able to gradually tolerate situations where you do hurt someone. The goal is to increase the experience of being yourself in relationships and learn that typically, you will not hurt the other by being a separate, individuated self. This lesson is crucial.  Most important is the emotional registering of the other person maintaining their acceptance, love, and admiration for you, even when they feel you have hurt, disappointed, or made them angry. This is the emotional experience that will finally lead to change. The end result is that your tolerance for the other’s feelings of anger, hurt, or disappointment are increased and the bad person feelings are diminished.

Related articles:
The Fear of Hurting the Other and the Inhibition of Self
The Price Paid for Being the Perfect Child
Getting to Know (and Esteem) Yourself

Did you know that your imagination is a powerful tool for positive change? Or that, without your intentional guidance, it can be your greatest enemy? Many people neglect their imagination, allowing outside influences to guide and direct this powerful engine and then wonder why their lives are less than satisfying. Your imagination is yours to develop as you will, but ignored and neglected it can become a liability—the very source of depression, anxiety, interpersonal problems, and unconscious self-sabotage. Unless you take the initiative to choose your goals and begin to exercise discretion in what messages you allow your brain to receive and process, all the forces of marketing that bombard us on a daily basis—television, email, pop–ups, and Facebook—will shape your choices (and therefore your destiny) without your input, and often without your awareness.

When we don’t exercise careful choice over what we feed our imagination, we can end up developing habits of thought that impede success. Habits of thought are things like catastrophizing—thinking about worst-case scenarios—a habit of thought guaranteed to generate anxiety and/or depression; or habits of thought like filling in the blanks when you really don’t know—a habit of thought that can lead to all kinds of interpersonal problems if you make the mistake of believing that your imagination knows what is unknowable.

The first step to taking charge of your life is to take charge of your imagination. You can begin with a few simple exercises. Imagine a very unpleasant scene from a horror movie. If you allow this scene to fill up your whole imagination your feelings will follow—heart racing, palms sweating, a ball in your stomach, the whole nine yards. You see, your imagination cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not. Now imagine that you are seeing the same unpleasant scene on a small flat-screen TV. Notice that you still have some of the same reactions you did before, but not as intensely. Now shrink the screen down to a very small size. Remember, this is your imagination, so you can do whatever you want with the image. Now turn the TV off.

Ok, that was interesting. But it was an unpleasant image. Now try it with a pleasant one. Bring up one of your all-time favorite memories. Perhaps recall a time when you really felt loved, or maybe a time when you had just accomplished something very hard and fairly important. Allow that image to fill your imagination and keep it on the screen in your mind. If it fades or slips, bring it back, and focus in on some random detail. The more you focus on some detail of this experience, the more vivid it will likely become and the more practiced you will get at using your imagination for your own good. While you’re focusing on this image in your mind, notice the warm feelings that result. Notice where in your body you feel these warm feelings of love, happiness, joy, and delight—usually right in the middle of your chest.

This is the power of your imagination to influence your emotions. All your thoughts and all your emotions are neurochemical events in your brain and in your body. So when you choose to develop your imagination and your ability to focus and direct your imagination, you gain the ability to guide and shift and direct your emotions as well. And when you have the ability to direct your imagination and modulate your emotions, then you also have the ability to influence the neurochemicals in your brain and in your body, too. Like all things mental, this ability is learned, and, like all things learned, this ability is made proficient through repetition. You do not learn to read overnight. You learn to read through repetition. Repetition makes proficiency.

Once you become proficient at managing your own imagination, you can do all kinds of other things—like set goals and define all the small steps that make up progress toward that goal. You can anticipate problems and anticipate solutions. You can try out various solutions and develop the confidence you need to translate goals into actions. You can step back from emotional triggers. You can pull yourself out of funks and you can stave off anxiety. You can even improve your sex life. But we’ll talk more about that later.

Related articles:
Changing Brain Chemistry, Changing Paradigms
Help! My Brain is Betraying Me!: Intrusive Thoughts in Motherhood

Traumatic experiences and the trauma healing process can expose the shrapnel from what feels like perpetually open wounds. Time lost to history and recovery, missed opportunities, broken relationships, and a delay in building life’s foundation can be negative side effects of traumatic experiences.

Therapists and people who have experienced trauma are able to identify, with ease, what may seem like irreversible damage or pain. However, it is simple to overlook the pieces of people’s trauma stories that are peppered with traces of hope and with a certain innocence that runs counter to what many of them have survived. This article will reflect on what people in therapy have shared with me. Through their eyes, these are the gifts of trauma:

Gratitude

We can begin with the basics. Survivors regularly express gratitude, disbelief even, for the fact that they are still living. Operating from this premise provides a great deal of delight in each day received. While it may sound cliché, perhaps this is so because of the ordinariness of what is being conveyed; it seems natural that life would be lived with greater enthusiasm in the face of its uncertainty. However, near-death experiences do not appear to be a necessary condition for people to begin to appreciate each new day; rather, being confronted with suffering, fear, or an assault on one’s humanity appear to be more relevant to our ability to appreciate existence.

Enjoying Simple Pleasures

Despite the real struggle associated with trauma recovery, there is often a simultaneous increase in a person’s capacity to enjoy the mundane. A blue sky, a delicate fragrance, a small act of compassion, the subtleties of nature, and the innocence of children and animals are often noted as having significance. Perhaps the sweetness of normalcy is illuminated when confronted with certain kinds of darkness.

Enhanced Awareness and Intuition

Survivors of trauma regularly inform me of what they experience as something akin to having superpowers. The capacity to feel things other people can’t, to identify either the goodness or inherent evil in someone just by looking at them, or to “predict” interpersonal outcomes are some of the new-found abilities people have described. People who have experienced trauma often indicate that they are able to pick up on covert human behaviors, and there is a great deal of trust in their capacity to intuit. Oftentimes, these powers really do exist; survivors have developed a discriminating aptitude for picking up on environmental cues that may have significance to them. A clinical explanation could be hypervigilence; however, people do not necessarily experience this skill negatively and are often quite opposed to this capacity diminishing.

Sense of Surprise and Enchantment

Finally, survivors often work from the assumption that, at some point, things will go awry. There is a sense of something lurking, and they conclude that something will happen that will take them out emotionally (or physically). The consequence of being right is the devastation of experiencing their truth (i.e., the world is not safe, I will never be happy) as real. However, when things go well, even smoothly, a genuine sense of surprise and enchantment is rendered.

[fat_widget_left]Feelings of defeat, pain, and innocence lost can be simple to identify following trauma’s destructive trail, while the search for a trailhead to peace can feel insurmountable. Throughout the witnessing of people’s narratives, I have discovered that there are nuggets of their remaining truth that may linger under the surface. During the process of unfolding and unpacking their stories, honoring each component of truth can facilitate a sense of hope for those who have none. In addition, some people are fully aware of what their trauma has provided them and do not want to lose these new strengths; they may have concerns about admitting this to themselves or the therapist.

Identification of trauma gifts throughout one’s story provides a platform for discussing this in a nonpathologizing way. It may also allow therapists to assist people in letting go of vigilance while embracing intuition, releasing pain while maintaining gratitude, and experiencing safety while holding on to joy.

Love is one of the most elemental of emotions. It is a building block of some of our deepest relationships and a component in many of our happiest days. Yet the ability to freely give and receive love is a fragile skill, which traumatic experiences can all too easily dent or damage.

Learning how to be loved is a vital part of your healing. Here are a few things to think about as you regain your ability to accept someone’s care, concern, and nurturing.

Part of learning how to be loved again is learning how to interact with people who express kindness, care, concern, nurture, and attention. Because you have experienced a traumatic experience, you have learned that people are capable of great cruelty. To avoid experiencing cruelty again, a part of your mind may have decided to ensure that you will never be hurt again. One of the ways that your mind tries to protect you from future cruelty is to assume that people are dangerous. This assumption in turn results in you leaning towards mistrust, avoiding vulnerability, and shying away from emotional intimacy.

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One way to practice opening yourself up to love is to practice opening yourself up to trust, vulnerability, and intimacy. But you have to make sure that you are practicing this with a safe person: someone who will not be cruel, let alone abusive, to you.

First, assess the level of vulnerability you open yourself up to if you take in the token of love.

• A compliment from a coworker is a token of kindness that carries with it a low level of vulnerability.
• Accepting a birthday present from a friend is an expression of care that has a bit more risk.
• Taking in a statement of love from a nonabusive romantic partner is a higher level of vulnerability.
• Accepting a dinner invitation from a friend who has been cruel may be a much higher level of vulnerability than taking in a statement of love from a partner who has been trustworthy.

Once you assess the level of vulnerability, take a moment and decide if this is a level of vulnerability you are safe with. If the vulnerability exceeds your level of healing, claim your right to do what is wisest for you, and back off or decline the token of love.

Consider the giver’s genuineness and accuracy. Is this someone with whom you have enough history to know their usual level of genuineness and accuracy? If you’re not sure, consider only accepting an expression of love that is low on your level of vulnerability. If you do have enough history with this person, then let their history of genuineness and accuracy help you decide whether to take in the expression of care, concern, or love. Someone who has proven to be genuine, truthful, and accurate is most likely extending an expression of love that is worthy of trust.

Consider whether there could be an ulterior motive. How would the giver of this token of love benefit from you accepting it? Could this benefit be damaging to you? When accepting an expression of love that makes you beholden or indebted to someone, think long and hard whether there could be an ulterior motive on the behalf of the giver.

If the expression of care is within your range of vulnerability, and is from a genuine and accurate person who does not have a damaging ulterior motive, then take in the love. Practice taking a deep breath while reminding yourself that you are actively healing one of the most fundamental of skills. Recognize that this is a moment in which you are being cared for, loved, and nurtured. Try not to miss these moments of kindness and care.

If you can believe the giver’s statements of friendship, respect, or love, then rejoice in the fact that someone believes these positive things about you. If believing these messages of love is out of your reach right now, then simply practice listening. Avoid disagreeing and don’t rebut the person’s opinions of you. Give voice to your gratitude, and express your thankfulness for this token of love.

If you are working on your healing with a therapist, try using that relationship to practice accepting care. I hope you have experienced your therapist to be the kind of genuine, accurate person with whom it will be safe to practice accepting love. Those questions about how you are, how your week was, and so on, are not just the standard questions of therapy: they are also tiny moments when therapeutic care and concern are being expressed. If nothing else, practice listening to these statements of care without disagreeing. I encourage you to take in the warmth of your therapist.

A death, divorce, illness, sudden unemployment, or any major loss can create chaos in your life. This emotional fracturing, as well as the practical aftershocks of dealing with estates, lawyers, housing, finances, and doctors often yields intense feelings that can be overwhelming.

When you can’t assimilate another thing, it is crucial to just stop. Even if you have never meditated, simply sitting or lying down and paying attention to your breath can calm your nervous system and give you the literal breather you need.

If it is too hard to stay still, take a walk. It is imperative you give yourself a break from the internal chatter and incessant activity that may be consuming every waking moment. When you think you do not have a minute to sit, lie down, or walk, that is when you need the break the most. Take it, and watch the world continue to spin on its axis.

Practice Beginner’s Mind, Witness Consciousness, and Self-Compassion

[fat_widget_grief_right]A big part of healing through grief is connecting with yourself while putting all the parts back together in a new way that makes you feel safe and whole. This process of reconnecting all the emotional, physical, and spiritual dots can be an exhausting and chaotic ride. One minute, there is a sense of control and growing mastery; the next, you are surfing a sea of feelings.

Part of the immediate task is showing up with what yogis call beginner’s mind and witness consciousness. Beginner’s mind refers to an attitude of openness when approaching something new—without preconceived notions—just as a beginner would. This particular grief experience is terra incognita; you haven’t had it before. By abandoning all your ideas about how you “should” feel or behave, you allow yourself to safely feel what is true in the moment. That cosmic permission slip, coupled with open awareness, allows you to fully experience the moment and all it entails emotionally. While you may want to run from it, the only way out is through it. Avoidance may provide short-term relief, but it often brings long-term pain.

Achieving witness consciousness means retraining your mind to detach enough for objectivity. It is practicing watching something with a neutral perspective and not identifying with it. Both of these yogic techniques encourage you to leave your ego outside. You might never succeed in completely detaching from your ego, but these practices can allow you to experience the freedom and joy of not taking everything personally, while enhancing your chances for greater inner peace.

Beginner’s mind, witness consciousness, and self-compassion can be the trifecta for healing from almost anything. They shore you up, increase your perspective, and allow for enough detachment to see things more clearly.

Simple Routines Can Help Ease the Chaos

Just as in yoga, where each visit to the mat reveals something new, the process of unraveling the threads of grief is fresh every minute. Whether it’s a crying spell, a fit of anger, guilt, or deep sadness, recognizing how each one is unique can keep you open to change and transformation.

The chaos of grief is sometimes caused, in part, by the old issues it triggers, such as abandonment and posttraumatic stress. During times of acute emotional turmoil, being gentle with yourself can ease the pain. Recognizing unhelpful thought patterns and challenging them as much as possible may help you to feel better and more in control.

The chaotic emotional fallout of grief can also be assuaged by establishing simple routines, such as:

•  Taking a tea break at the same time every day
• Getting some exercise
• Listening to soothing music
• Meditating
• Talking on the phone with someone supportive
• Eating at regular intervals
• Watching the sky
• Spending time with your pet

Simple and readily available tasks can have a greater chance of providing you with an enjoyable way to calm the chaos.

Related articles:
Learn to Sit with Discomfort in Your Life
Surviving Suffering
How to Be With Someone Who Is Grieving

Many people, but primarily young, educated, Western women, struggle to sustain a positive body image—for a multitude of reasons that have been discussed in previous posts. Often a negative body image leads to a poor relationship with the body and other aspects of self. It is associated with impoverished self-care and unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits.

Having a negative body image is related to general low self-esteem and depression or anxiety. Women with poor body image often struggle with boundaries in relationship to self and others. In this post, I will attempt to shed some light on the issue of boundaries related to poor body image, a concept often discussed and infrequently understood.

Women with poor body image tend to have a compartmentalized approach to well-being. For example, they may be overly focused on certain parts of the body or particular goals, such as weight loss, while devaluing other important aspects of overall health and fitness. People who have poor body image demonstrate an all-or-nothing approach to wellness, swinging from one extreme to the other, sometimes within the same day. They tend to have an exceptional level of acquired knowledge about what is healthy and set idealistic goals based on this knowledge and also are frequently disappointed and blame themselves when they are unable to attain these goals.

The lack of a holistic perspective is evidenced in an inability to balance fitness with relaxation, healthy food choices with enjoyment of food, and so on. Not surprisingly, it is common to hear that they have dissatisfying relationships with others. The all-or-nothing tendency is implicated in their sense of being overwhelmed in relationships. They sometimes become preoccupied with the other person, swinging from feeling too close to feeling uncomfortably vulnerable even feeling lost in a relationship and wanting to cut it off.

The biggest and most obvious issue I see in working with women with poor body image is that most of the information used to make decisions about relationships and well-being comes from external sources. A total and complete lack of trust in the body and the self’s ability to regulate is obvious in their decision making. There is usually a clear history in the development of this lack of trust with regard to personal, familial, and cultural messages that have been internalized. (A full discussion of these factors is beyond the scope of this article). A lack of trust in the body and in the self leads to poor listening and misinterpretation of the cues that emerge from within. After a prolonged period of not paying attention to these signals, one’s ability to understand and act in accordance to one’s own needs becomes weakened. The needs of others become the focus of too much energy and attention, often referred to as a boundary issue.

Boundaries can be physical, mental, or emotional. Clear boundary violations are easy to identify and are well known as something that is usually morally or legally wrong and/or clearly harmful to another person’s safety, integrity, or well-being. However, there is a huge gray area between what is ideal and what is harmful, and sometimes subtle violations can lead to hurt, shame, self-doubt, and low self-esteem. Violations usually happen by the person who is in a perceived position of power, as in the obvious case of an adult taking advantage of or imposing his or her personal needs on a child, or a doctor over a patient. But there are other relationships in which people can feel vulnerable and open to influence, harmful or positive. In these more subtle cases of power and vulnerability, the delivery of emotional (or more direct) messages about the self can also lead to unhealthy attitudes, self-doubt, and low self-worth. For example, people in positions of perceived or felt power who regularly directly or indirectly impose their opinions and choices can influence others to have doubts about their own choices.

A healthy boundary between people is a perceived buffering zone, whereby a felt sense of acceptable difference exists. Respectful support of differences by people in positions of perceived power and influence can help a person grow a strong sense of self and hence the ability to re-enact these perceived boundaries in other relationships. Good boundaries lead to healthy awareness of needs of the self and also positive choices that enhance the sense of self and relationships. Supporting an individual’s development involves a strong sense of self and honoring differences in others, an open attitude of acceptance and humility. A supportive stance involves allowing another person to feel, think, struggle, learn, and identify what is right for him or her without unwelcome advice or control tactics or too much distance or silence.

Recognizing and accepting differences, a supportive stance, involves sharing personal views and opinions with a sense of humility and recognizing that they are indeed personal and individual and should not be imposed on others. Offering help when it is asked for and refraining from taking over, micromanaging, or rescuing another person is important. Healthy boundaries lead to healthy relationships, and healthy relationships lead to healthy development of individuals.

Where the development of healthy boundaries has been challenged, an individual will often be overly dependent on external information and feedback to feel safe in their decision making and hence may have a poorly developed or negative sense of their own worth. In the case of the person with poor body image, this person becomes adept at information gathering, using perceived feedback to set expectations for the self that are often unrealistic. Perception itself is flawed and is often skewed towards negative, self-fulfilling ideas of self-worth. By engaging in a selection bias, people with low self-esteem will seek out and attend to cues that confirm what they think they know about themselves that is usually negative. In addition, they may believe it is possible to please others all of the time, which is clearly faulty.

Emphasis on interpretation and internalization of other people’s expectations is a recipe for impoverished self-worth. Living according to perceived notions of other people’s expectations often leads to repressed resentment, disempowerment, and disappointment. In some cases, the only way to assert the self is in a passive-aggressive manner, which is usually not received well by others. While indeed it is healthy to have a sense of social expectation and be kind and thoughtful towards others, these behaviors need to be enacted based on a clear and healthy sense of self, which requires an awareness of personal thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and needs and the differences between self and other. Healthy self and healthy relationships interrelate and influence the development of both. The development of clear boundaries has a positive impact on individuals and on others with whom they have relationships.

However, the responsibility for nurturing clear boundaries falls on individuals in a position of power of any kind. Most people in some domain of their lives are in a position to help or hinder the development of another person. It is important that we always be aware of the difference between our own needs and feelings and those of others and to refrain from overstepping and imposing or, conversely, mistakenly taking on responsibility for other people in a way that invalidates or challenges their own development.

Where boundaries were violated, or not properly developed, psychotherapy can help to personalize new ways of being that include more emotional self-awareness and self-regulation, as well as assertiveness and effective communication skills. Healthy boundaries and self-esteem are achievable goals.

Related articles:
Our Bodies/Ourselves
The Vanity Myth: Eating Disorders and Beauty
Self-Esteem and Standards

If Hollywood is an indicator of our most common fantasies, modern Americans want to sleep with their therapists. I am horrified that so many television shows and movies depict romantic relationships between therapists and clients as though they were perfectly normal! The truth is, romance within a therapeutic relationship is as far from normal, acceptable, healthy, and sane as you can possibly get.

The writers of How I Met Your Mother currently have the character Robin dating her previous therapist. The relationship has been rationalized through a series of cutesy excuses: “Well, we only had a handful of therapy sessions … it hardly counted!” and, “Well, if we have a session where the previous client now becomes the therapist, it will all balance out!” ICK!  In no way, shape, or form is dating a current or previous therapist healthy, ethical, or socially acceptable.

In California, there is a legal clause that states that a personal relationship between a previous therapist and client may be pursued two years after the termination of services. However, research tells us that the power imbalance remains strong, even after time has passed, and that romance in this situation is usually still emotionally damaging to the one who was the client. Hormones, brain chemistry, and emotional issues often inadvertently conspire to lead us toward unhealthy romantic choices, which is why therapists are clearly instructed that “Professional Therapy Never Includes Sex” (this is the name of a pamphlet that every single therapist-in-training in California receives on several occasions). Although specifics vary from state to state, 19 states have sexual exploitation laws forbidding therapists from engaging in sexual contact with clients.

Even though in the movie 50/50, Joseph Gordon-Levitt appears to find care, comfort, and I-don’t-know-what-else in the arms of his intern therapist (I don’t know because I walked out of the movie), your therapist is neither your caretaker nor your best friend. Your therapist can help you develop the skills you need to go out and make friends and find someone to help you through the difficulties of life. But if your therapist tries to convince you that his or her role is to love and protect you, run away! That is NOT appropriate therapy! And if he or she makes any sexually suggestive advances (verbal or physical), you know you are not working with an ethical therapist.

Extensive worldwide research and anecdotal evidence dating back to the origins of formalized therapy indicate that romantic relationships between therapists and their clients, regardless of which role is the initiator, are criminally damaging to the client in the majority of situations. The client is typically left with extreme emotional disruption, feelings of emptiness, isolation and guilt, and a tragically impaired ability to trust.

Certainly the therapeutic relationship is a unique situation wherein two human beings share space in a room while playing particular roles that ask them to maintain strict discipline of their human instincts, but to share the greatest level of openness and honesty imaginable. When deconstructed, the therapeutic hour shows itself to be a very bizarre social construct that is quite challenging to enact in a productive and healthy way. When properly delivered, the benefits of appropriate psychotherapy can be powerfully life-changing. However, there are many ways to get off track throughout the process, which is why therapists need to be well-trained, licensed, ethically and emotionally stable, grounded in common sense, and masters of self-discipline and self-care.

The boundaries around the therapeutic relationship are essential to the success and integrity of our profession, and I find it inexcusable for our entertainment industry to treat the subject matter so lightly and irresponsibly. We know that the mass public derives their sense of “normal” and desirable from the information presented on the screens in front of them. If this were an isolated incident of poor judgment, I could write it off as such. But the theme has become so ubiquitous as to appear in highly rated productions reaching tens of millions impressionable minds worldwide.

I started enjoying the recently cancelled sitcom, Free Agents, until the female character’s therapist asked her out during a session and they started dating. What? After a few therapy sessions, in which he did nothing of therapeutic value, he declared her problem-free and decided to hit on her. My concern is that the writers of these shows may actually be typical, regular people who truly believe that relationships with therapists are normal. If this storyline is depicted in other regular people’s everyday media consumption, a very serious misconception about the purpose and practice of psychotherapy may occur.

Of course, romantic, sexual, and loving feelings can arise between two people who sit close together and speak of personal and intimate issues on a regular basis. A well-trained and ethical therapist will seek professional consultation if romantic or lustful feelings arise and will follow wise counsel as to the most ethical way to proceed. Often these feelings can be worked through and resolved without any negative effect on the therapy. If the feelings persist, the responsible and legitimate therapist will control his or her impulses and refer the client to another professional. With the help of an esteemed consultant, they can determine how best to implement the transition with the client.

The therapist portrayed by Gabriel Byrne in In Treatment struggled with sexual feelings toward a client in the first season of the series. I have not seen these episodes, but I know the series is highly revered and often seen by the general public as an accurate representation of therapy. It was very disheartening for me to hear that this character acted on his sexual impulses, even though he apparently understood the harm that physical intimacy could do to his client. I think these representations are misguided and ill-advised, as they imply that the psychotherapeutic setting is always imbued with sexual energy and tension.

It is not uncommon for strong feelings to arise in a psychotherapy client. For many schools of thought, this is actually an important part of the therapeutic process. However, if the feelings become strong enough to breach the integrity of the therapy, they must be addressed. In the healthiest of situations, the client would admit these feelings to the therapist—the best therapeutic alliances are built on trust and acceptance, communicating to the client that no judgment or disgust will befall them in that room, under any circumstances. If a client shares the feelings he or she is having, the issue can be discussed openly and often can be resolved, bringing greater insight and personal power to the client. If the feelings cannot be redirected and resolved, it is best to help the client find a new therapist to continue the growth work in a nonsexualized setting.

Looking at current blog posts, I see many people justifying their seductions, romances, and friendships with their therapists. Most of these bloggers are writing at the beginning of their relationships and seem not to believe that they may not get a Hollywood ending. I am very concerned that media representations of our profession are casting a skewed and uninformed light on this very complex issue. The general public is clearly buying into the idea that dating their therapists may be legitimate.

Perhaps we therapists can take this challenge as an opportunity for greater enlightenment and education with our clients. It will keep us on our toes (even more) so that we may identify and address misplaced emotional feelings that arise in therapy. This aspect of the profession is difficult enough without added pressures from the mass media. However, our awareness of the issue can serve to reinforce our ethical stance and prepare us for any type of challenge that may walk through our consultation door.

I was thinking about the phrase, “Food is love”; thinking about how this idea came to be. I often hear people say that food is a means by which their mothers or grandmothers expressed their love for family members. Sometimes their stories conjure images of warm kitchens filled with wonderful smells and family members connecting over delicious meals. But sometimes they’ll tell me things like, “She would keep putting food on my plate, even after I said I was full,” or, “It would hurt her feelings if someone didn’t eat everything she gave them.” When I hear things like this, I think not of love, but of boundary violations and invalidation of the eater’s feelings and needs.

To consider the notion of food as love, it’s important to clarify what love is. I like the definition M. Scott Peck offers in his book, The Road Less Traveled. Peck defines love not as a feeling, but as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” In other words, love is the willingness to go beyond our comfort zones in service of what is best for ourselves or another.

From this perspective, we see how a caregiver loving a child instills in that child the awareness of his or her own worth, value and lovableness. When we are young, we can’t feed ourselves. We are fed by our caregivers, and the act of being fed, of receiving physical nourishment from our caregivers, is entwined with receiving emotional nurturing. If, as infants, our signs of hunger are recognized and we are put to the breast or cuddled with a bottle, our caregiver gazing into our eyes, we learn from the beginnings of our lives that our needs matter, that they are being seen and heard and honored and that someone is looking out for us. The relationship between feeder and eater is tender and sweet. Our caregivers are feeding us, whether or not it’s convenient for them, because we need nourishment and our needs matter. Being fed is an act of being loved.

As we grow, we learn words for the experiences of hunger and fullness. The transaction between child and caregiver is a dance that shapes our awareness of being seen and heard. If we say we are hungry, and then we are fed or are gently told that dinner will be soon and we’re given a snack to tide us over, and if we say we are full and are validated in stopping eating, our trust in our perceptions is strengthened. If we are made to wait until mealtime regardless of how hungry we are, or if we are told to clean our plates even after we are full, we can construe that our internal experiences of hunger or fullness are wrong, unimportant, or even nonexistent.

If we are raised by someone who uses food to express her caring for us (and I say “her” because it’s usually a woman in this role) by feeding us without regard for how much food we actually need, it can become easy to confuse the overriding of our bodies’ signals that we are full with being loved. We might confuse focusing on the feelings of the person feeding us rather than our own needs, with love. We may find ourselves in relationships as adults in which we subjugate our own needs to the other person’s feelings.

As we get older and become more able to fend for ourselves, we learn to feed ourselves, perhaps first with snacks, and later with meals. We develop our own internal relationships between the “feeder” part of us and the “eater” part of us. If we see eating as a relationship between these parts of self, one in which we express to ourselves the importance of our health and well-being, then the “feeder” part will be attuned to the “eater” part, noticing our hunger and attending to our nutritional needs. If eating is about soothing ourselves emotionally or molding our bodies into a certain size or shape, then the “feeder” part is operating in response to cues other than our bodies’ needs, and the “eater” part can come to desire food for reasons other than physical sustenance.

Our relationships with food offer important clues to the nature of our relationships with ourselves, and changing our relationships with food can be instrumental in changing our relationships with ourselves. Feeding ourselves as a nurturing parent would a child, honoring our needs for nutrition with compassion, attending to both our emotional needs for comfort and soothing and our physical needs for nourishment, can communicate to ourselves that we deserve time, attention, and care, whether we believe it or not. And the more we do it—the more our “feeder” parts tend to our “eater” parts in this way—the more we’ll believe it.  If food is love, then eating is the most important thing we do.

Most people would agree that having a compassionate stance towards oneself is desirable. But how do you cultivate self-compassion?

Let’s quickly define the term. In this article, “compassion” means tenderhearted recognition of pain or distress, coupled with a desire to alleviate it. Each component of this definition—recognition, tenderheartedness, and a desire to alleviate distress—offers opportunities for cultivating compassion. This article will look at how the skill of “recognition” can help you grow self-compassion.

The ability to recognize your pain or distress requires that you embrace your limits. Each of us has inherent human limits, as well as personal limits that are rooted in our personalities, life experiences, knowledge, skill levels, and more.

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For example, one obvious human limit is that everyone needs sleep on a regular and consistent basis. A less obvious human limit is that everyone needs some amount of play. Other examples may include the amount of money you need in your savings account in order to feel prepared for a “rainy day,” your tolerance for grumpy individuals, the patience you have for slow drivers, and more.

Some people have a difficult time accepting these human and personal limits. This desire to have no limits stems from a variety of sources. One common reason is that people confuse limits, which are neutral facts, with weaknesses. To put it another way, some people (falsely) believe that if they have limits, they are somehow flawed, weak, insufficient, or not capable of great things—therefore, they deny the reality of their limits. Denying your limits does not enhance your worth or value, but does block you from having genuine self-compassion.

By recognizing that you have limits, you can notice when you have been pushed beyond them, and then deem your ensuing emotions as legitimate. For example, if you know one of your limits is that you need a break every three or four hours of work, and you have to work a full day without breaks, you will know it is legitimate to feel exhausted.

Understanding this emotional distress as legitimate sets you up for the next component of compassion, which is tenderheartedness. In order for you to have compassion towards your distress, you must recognize your distress as legitimate: worth noticing, worth caring about, worth turning towards, and worth alleviating. It is by acknowledging, accepting, and allowing your limits to exist that you bestow legitimacy onto your distress.

Another piece of “recognition” is granting yourself permission to accept your limits as they are in the here and now. Your limits are not what you desire them to be or think they should be. Some limits, such as how much sleep you need, cannot be changed. Other limits, like patience for slow drivers, can be changed—but regardless of the flexibility of the limit in question, if you’ve exceeded your limit, you are beyond it.

While it is entirely appropriate, and a sign of maturity, to work on expanding limits, you can’t do that by denying that you have exceeded a limit. Instead, practice noticing when you have passed a limit and acknowledging it, instead of judging yourself harshly for having it in the first place. Rather than berating yourself for being exhausted at the end of a work day that had no breaks, recognize that you are bone-tired not because you are incompetent, but because you eclipsed your work-break limit.

Self-compassion is grounded in the ability to recognize that you are in pain or distress and that this pain or distress deserves and requires attention. Recognizing your limits as they are in this moment in time, personally and as a human being, allows you to acknowledge the legitimacy of your pain and the ensuing need to attend to your distress. You are entirely capable of growing into a person with more self-compassion, and I encourage you in this work. If you desire or need the guidance of a trained professional, do not hesitate to reach out.