Posts Tagged ‘Meaning’
10 ways of getting through a crisis:
- Remember what matters- Connect with those you care about. Bring to mind, relive, remember, and cherish the connections you have and what your current relationships mean to you.
- Look for meaning in the current situation. See if there are any positives. Sometimes being in a lot of pain makes you more sensitive to others who go through the same thing.
- Keep in mind the “bigger picture” and long-term goals. If you don’t have a “bigger picture” or long term goals, start making them. Working towards long-term goals also produces positive emotions and a sense of mastery and achievement.
- Consider what you have that other people don’t have, and how other people could be jealous of what you have. Look for what this is- whether it is a job, an able body, health, a place to live, a relationship, or a child.
- Take care of what you need to take care of in the current moment.
- If you can’t solve the problem right now, do something restful and restorative.
- Maintain balance in your life by giving your mind a “break”- plan adaptive distractions that have nothing to do with your current life stressors.
- Remember that physical activity can help you “shift gears” by releasing endorphins and changing your physiological arousal. Since changing physiological arousal is also associated with emotions, this can also help you with your emotions.
- If overwhelmed, focus on doing what you can do. If you are able to achieve or accomplish one step, then you can move on to the next. There is only one way to get through a crisis- and that is one step at a time.
- Consider your options for how you typically respond to a crisis, and see if your options include complete avoidance, making things worse, or escalating in a way that doesn’t solve problems or is not helpful. Take the first step towards doing what works and what will get problems solved the fastest.
Posted in Distress Tolerance | 
Tags: Acceptance, anxiety, Change, Meaning, Misery, Stress | 
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Improvements in behavior
DBT skills groups are often structured so that clients in the groups do homework for week to week. The homework assignments might include ways of problem-solving emotions, finding ways of being attentive or mindful when in distress, or effectively approaching a relationship conflict. Sometimes there is an emphasis on doing or trying the homework, and some clients can do the homework without really getting how it “fits.” While I like to encourage people to try new assignments, I try to pay attention to- and discourage- doing homework for the sake of doing homework in my groups. This is because over-rehearsal of content learning often lacks the value of experientially “getting” something meaningful and relevant to painful life problems.
One thing that I like to encourage my clients to consider is this: What would be an improvement in behavior?. The application and acquisition of new learning has to do with how you would do something differently from how you always do things. After all, if you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’d continue get the same results.
Improvements in behavior can be incredibly small- and can even be characterized as noticing or paying attention to something not paid attention to before. This can be a minor yet critical item, especially for people who automatically “find themselves” doing behaviors that they did not intend.
Since big changes in behavior are often way too overwhelming, it may be helpful to think about ways of experimenting with smaller changes. Here are some ideas for thinking about small ways to improve behavior:
- If you are a person who doesn’t speak up much, make an effort to say something
- If you are a person who withholds a lot of personal information- try disclosing small things, even if they are not that “a big deal”, and see what the effect is
- If you are a person who tends to act on urges, try tolerating urges.
- If you are a person who tends to say “I am fine” when you are not fine, try observing or paying careful attention to how you know you are not fine. See if you can gently indicate a more accurate description of feeling.
Improvements in behavior vary from person to person. Someone who is loud and overbearing may make improvements by holding their tongue, while someone who never sticks up for him/herself may become persistent in a disagreement. Since change involves risk, new behaviors are generally not entirely comfortable! Hence, tolerating distress may take on a whole new meaning.
Posted in Behavior Change | Tags: Change, communication, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Meaning | Comments Closed
Mindfulness, DBT, extreme emotions, and doing what works:
One of the DBT mindfulness skills includes being effective: Doing what works. Learning how to sit for long periods of time and focus on one thing, such as your breath, can have quite an impact on quieting the mind. However, sitting for long periods of time can be rather difficult for people who are learning how to “be mindful”, and may not be helpful in solving other problems (ie, communicating, reading one’s environment accurately, interpreting behavior).
The persons I tend to treat have difficult with extreme emotion- and sometimes tolerating a single moment can seem like an eternity. The skill of “observing” in mindfulness appears deceptively simple- and yet the actual doing of the observing when it’s needed in real life- as it applies to solving painful problems- is a whole different story.
Observing and describing the cracks on the sidewalk or the ceiling tiles may be a way to be mindful. But here is where it can get tricky:
- It may be an effective way to be present in the moment, to become grounded and connected to what’s going around you, and prevent you from dissociating, “floating off”, or disconnecting.
- It may be a way to distract, avoid, inhibit feeling, occupy the mind, and avoid relationships. If you can become overly focused on things and not people, you can avoid taking emotional risks, connections, and opportunities to address conflict. Noticing a tendency to avoid may be a more effective use of mindful activity.
I’ve been working hard on getting together my free 30 days of mindfulness for my mailing list readers. The approach for learning varies and the agenda includes suggestions for trying new and different things. It’s experiential- which means that you get to participate in the exercises. I’m hoping that it will satisfy those who are looking for ways on how to be mindful as it relates to real life.
All you have to do is click on the upper right side of this blog post where it says Get 7 free steps for sailing through emotional storms when you join my mailing list. Sign up!
The 30 days of mindfulness are going to start February 8, so you will have to sign up before then if you want to be included!
Posted in Mindfulness | Tags: Acceptance, balance, Breath, Breathing, Change, Effectiveness, Emotion, Meaning, Mindfulness, Understanding emotion | No Comments »
Mindfulness for the holiday season: Christmas and the New Year
December is a time of year in which our sensations can be easily bombarded. It’s easy to get stressed about Christmas shopping, overcrowded malls, travel plans, holiday parties, familial obligations, and in some cases, snowstorms. The practice of being mindful is the intentional practice of focusing attention on one thing. Focused attention calms and settles the mind, and circumvents the rat race of disorganized, divided, and unfocused attention. It is a way to come back to the current moment and show up for everything the moment has to offer.
Here are three different ways of being mindful this holiday season:
Five minutes of breathing:
Sit quietly for five minutes and focus on the rise and fall of your breath. Every time you notice your mind wandering or your attention scattered, bring your attention back to the rise and fall of your breath. This may be a useful exercise to do after driving in bad traffic, being in a crowd, or after coming home from work.
Savor sensation: Take a few moments to take in the entire experience of the following:
- The taste of peppermint. Do you really taste peppermint when you eat it?
- Do you ever notice how the air changes as it grows colder? Try figuring out how the air smells or tastes. I’ve noticed the winter air to be crisp, bitter, biting, heavy, cold, damp, salty, and even woody.
- Pay attention to tastes and smells that you enjoy- in other words, don’t pass them up or take them for granted when you notice them.
Show up for the moment…even if the moment brings pain
Sometimes people experience a great deal of sadness during the holidays: Spending holidays alone, spending a “first” holiday after losing a loved one during the year, or being reminded of recent losses or relationships ruptures.
If sadness is part of your holiday, consider:
- Reflecting on what is important and meaningful
- Allowing yourself to grieve deeply and fully, to cry openly, to acknowledge everything you experience with your heart wide open
- Honor what has been lost
- Be gentle and tender with yourself
Singing, carols, generosity of spirit, pageants, and performances can move people deeply. If joy is part of your holiday
- allow yourself to be moved to tears
- fully experience, absorb, take in, and reflect on what you have
- share with others what you appreciate or love
- allow for the positive
- recognize times in your life in which things have been difficult- and how different they are for you now.
Wishing you a holiday in which your experiences are rich and meaningful- I will be back at my blog posting in 2012!
Posted in Mindfulness | Tags: Christmas, Emotion, grief, Holidays, Joy, Meaning, Mindfulness, Openness, Sensation | No Comments »
What is mentalization-based therapy?
Last week I had the opportunity to observe a mentalization-based group therapy. Mentalization was developed by Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman and is the only other treatment (besides DBT) that has strong empirical (scientific) support for treating borderline personality disorder.
What exactly is mentalization? This is my own attempt to describe what I know about it so far: We are constantly making interpretations about the intentions of other people, and we tend to be pre-occupied with their intentions towards us. When we assume the intentions of others we think we “know” what other people are wanting, thinking, or feeling. While sometimes this is perceptive and accurate, poor (or inaccurate) mentalizing can often exacerbate conflict or add stress to relationships.
Consider the following scenario: You are late to work. Consider what your reaction might be if your employer insisted that the following scenarios are true:
“You must really hate me. You do hate me, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me why you hate me so much and we can get everything off our chests. Come on. You can be honest. Tell me what your problem is with me.”
“You think you are too good for other people. What makes you think you are better than everyone else? If you think you are better than everyone here, then maybe we should give you extra work so you can keep proving to the rest of us how important you are.”
When other people do not “mentalize” accurately, it can increase defensiveness and emotional arousal. And talk about being misunderstood! When other people insist that their interpretation of your behavior is accurate (when it is not), it makes it more difficult to keep emotions on an even keel and steer clear of more conflict. Can you think of a time in which this has happened to you?
In a mentalization-based group, group members are encouraged to generate many “interpretations” of reported or observed behaviors. Some of these “interpretations” may be accurate and some may not. Some may be entirely out of this world! Attempts at accurate mentalization (“You must have been really taken aback when your boss said those things!”), may increase understanding, lower emotional arousal, and enable a person to use the group for perspective-taking and problem solving. Additional benefits include seeing things from a wide variety of viewpoints (What might have been going on with your boss that day?), considering things that have not been previously considered, increasing compassion when others misinterpret intentions, and staying level-headed when there are strong urges to engage in extreme ways of responding.
Posted in Behavior Change | Tags: Acceptance, Change, dialectics, interpretations, Meaning, Relationship, Stress | No Comments »
Why consider the function of behavior?
People sometimes behave in ways that are not understandable! Extreme and out-of-control behaviors can result in relationship ruptures and endings, strain, awkwardness, discomfort, and avoidance of talking about “what happened.”
The function of a behavior has to do with the purpose that the behavior serves for a person. Often confusing, problematic, and egregious behaviors have some benefit for a person.
Some functions of extreme behaviors may include: Emphasizing a point, communicating the importance of something, making a statement, expressing outrage or protest, being taken seriously, reducing anxiety, feeling reassured or calmed down, feeling cared about or secure about the future, feeling *something*, being independent, having a say in a situation, being included, or letting someone know that something is important or meaningful.
Understanding function often helps people to problem-solve, to communicate more effectively, to be able to validate experience, to let go of situations or relationships that won’t change, and to find compassion for self and others.
Posted in Behavior Change | Tags: Change, Function of behavior, Meaning, Relationship, Stress, Understanding emotion, validation | No Comments »