My Therapist Said...

The recent protests in Portland (and all over the country) have been fascinating to me and I’ve been glued to Twitter to keep track of them.  I have, at times, been proud of Portland and the way they have been managed, but, more often than not, I’ve been angered, disgusted, and ashamed.  I know the police have a job to do, and I know it’s a tough one. I’m positive I wouldn’t want to be put in that position.  And I don’t know where the blame lies for the pepper spraying and beating of peaceful protesters.  Is it a few overly aggressive police? Is it a police chief hoping to run for mayor who is pulling the strings?  Is it our mayor, of whom I have been a staunch supporter thus far, but whom I am losing faith in?  Again, I know they are in an impossible situation, and no matter what they do, everyone isn’t going to be satisfied.  That’s why they get paid the big bucks, I guess!!  :-)

I was hoping for more creative, humane solutions from Portland. Thankfully, I feel they made some progress in that area yesterday, when they allowed the protesters to march without being accompanied by police.  I read that the police met with them and asked if they could police themselves, and said they would step in if they needed to. This is more like it!! This is creative problem solving. What’s that quote…violence is the last refuge of the incompetent?  Something like that. I’m not saying they’re incompetent…just that they were adhering so rigidly to protocol and the way it’s always been done that they were blinded to a more compassionate, efficient way of approaching the situation. And this brings me to my point (which I didn’t have when I started this post…writing brought me here!): When we adhere to any extreme viewpoint, practice, dogma, belief, the danger is that we will miss the creative solutions that flexibility can bring. Try and see it a different way, even if you’re sure that way is wrong or inefficient. Turn it around in your mind and view it from all angles before making a decision about it.  This reminds me of a new game I have on my iPhone that’s called Blueprint. You start off with what looks like a collection of random lines and dots, and when you rotate it in all directions, you begin to see the picture…you begin to see that it isn’t random and senseless, and that by viewing it a different way, sense can be made of what seemed like chaos at first glance.

Aren’t our peaceful protesters, those who have the courage and strength to stand up for what’s right, worth that kind of thought and reflection? Don’t they deserve to be heard, and treated with kindness and respect? At the very least, they have the right to speak and to protest. The answers are far from simple, but I think we owe them that respect. We may, indeed, be powerless to prevent injustice, but let them protest.

I was contacted recently by Alan Lohner, the author of the ‘Fear Not’ book I’ve been writing about, which was a nice surprise!  I didn’t think anyone actually read my blog!  :-)  He sent me an advance copy of his new book, “Fail Not’ (Thanks, Alan!), and I got his permission to write about it here.  His new book is geared towards helping teens and young people succeed in life, or, in his words, “  inspire and empower young people and help them deal with challenges from a higher perspective.”  I think there’s wisdom for all of us.

Here’s the first entry:

“Whatever happened yesterday can’t bother you unless you let it. Look for positive lessons from everything, no matter how challenging this seems. Push aside disappointment and regret with new beginnings and new possibilities.”

I chose this entry from his book because one of the things I’m always harping on (ask my clients!) is how important it is to find the beauty, or the lesson, in everything…to make lemonade out of lemons, essentially.  It isn’t easy by far, but the alternative is letting yourself be overwhelmed by the sorrow of your circumstances, and be vulnerable to those things happening again (the idea of learning from history so you don’t repeat your mistakes, or allow yourself to be victimized).  If you can find beauty in even the most challenging or awful of circumstances (even if it’s as simple as noticing the color purple in something around you and appreciating that it’s not brown, or some other color you may not like), then you can reclaim your power, and keep from letting yourself become bitter and resentful.  Maybe you won’t see the beauty or the lesson in the moment, but the practice of looking for it can give you hope, and a reason to keep going. And you may see it later, too.  For most of us, we can look back at circumstances that were horrible at the time, and realize how it was perhaps part of a plan (if you believe in a Higher Power of whatever kind)…or maybe you can see how it helped you grow in ways you couldn’t have without that pain.

I’m not saying it doesn’t suck, by the way.  It does suck.  Sometimes there just doesn’t seem to be a way to find anything redeemable about a situation, and to suggest that there could be is just an insult.  I totally get that.  I do know that there ARE situations, though, where what I’ve written above applies.  It’s those situations that I’m suggesting we all have a closer look at, to see if there’s beauty to be found.

I wrote about this in another post.  I’ll paste it here:

This reminds me of a joke…most of which I don’t remember, but I remember enough to give you the gist of it. A man is on his farm, and goes by the barn, and sees a little boy in a stall filled to the brim with manure, and he’s shoveling as hard as he can. The man is very curious, and asks him incredulously, “What on earth are you doing?” The little boy stops, looks up with a grin on his face, and says with glee, “There’s gotta be a pony in there somewhere!”

Rainy weather…we’re used to it, most of us, around here…but many don’t like it, or don’t do well emotionally when it rains too much.  I get that, and it occasionally gets to me too.  But as a non-native, maybe I can offer some insight.  It really doesn’t rain that much more here than in other places.  In fact, the annual rainfall here is LESS THAN where I grew up, in the South.  According to infoplease.com, the average rainfall in Portland is 37.07 inches, compared to 43.05 for Raleigh, NC, 49.69 for New York, and a whopping 101.91 for Mt Washington, NH.   It doesn’t seem like it at times, and I think the difference is that when it rains there, IT RAINS!  I’m talking buckets of hard rain.  Many times, it’s more of a mist here, which I find easier to take.  I do still like a gullywasher from time to time, though!

So what’s my point?  It’s partly about perception.  People here complain about the rain…a LOT.  We have a reputation for it being rainy all the time.  Truthfully, it isn’t.  But we hear what people say and assume it’s true.  Sounds kind of like life in general, doesn’t it?  If we hear something enough, we decide it MUST be true, and sometimes we don’t check it out to see.  How many times do we need to hear about it being depressing here when it rains and is gloomy so much for us to take it in and believe it…and let it affect how we see our lovely city?  To be clear, I’m  not talking about people who have Seasonal Affective Disorder…and I completely believe that some people are dramatically affected by the weather.  I’m talking about the average person who wakes up, sees the rain, and consciously or unconsciously decides it’s going to be a bad day, or automatically feels down just because the sun isn’t out.

Dear reader, don’t misunderstand.  I’m not saying anything like, “Cheer up!  The rain is beautiful (though I do think it often is)!  Embrace it!”  I’m just encouraging you to look at it a different way, and see if you can make peace with it.  Maybe the rain is a reminder to slow down and look within.  Maybe sometimes it’s a way to get us to focus more, and get things done inside (both literally and figuratively).  I don’t have all the answers…but what I do know is that, for those of us that live here, it’s a reality, and finding a way to love it or at least make peace with it could be a way to learn to love other things and people that are beautiful in their entirety…and not beautiful except for this or that flaw.

“Listen loudly to yourself.  When you feel a nudge, pay attention. Trust your intuition, even if it flies in the face of convention.  Heed your dreams, hold your vision, and drown out discouraging words with your own inner voice.”-fear not, Alan Lohner

Listen loudly.  I’m not exactly sure how to do that, but it seems interesting nonetheless!  I suppose it just means to give yourself and your own inner voice the same undivided attention that you might some expert, or someone whose opinion your value greatly.  Hear what you’re saying inside.  Do you listen to yourself?  Or do you feel that inner nag that something isn’t right, and squash it down?  How many times have we all had the experience of looking back at a mistake we made, or a situation that didn’t go well, and realize that we knew it, on some level, at the time?  But we tried to argue it away…rationalize…doubted what we knew.  Maybe it was a person we knew we shouldn’t trust.  Perhaps a purchase we knew we couldn’t afford but wanted SO bad!  We have wisdom inside, and we need to listen!

Are there situations where our inner voice is confused, and may not be the best guide at that time?  Of course.  It can all get so tangled up and confused in there, between what we think we’re supposed to want and be, what we think other people expect of us, what we want but don’t think we’re allowed to want…and it goes on and on.  All of those other voices can get things all mixed up inside at times.  That’s when it’s good to find a friend we trust to help sort it out, or a therapist.  The important thing is to realize that there is wisdom inside, whether we acknowledge it or not.  No one knows you as well as your know yourself (or could know, if you allowed yourself to listen).  Not even your therapist!  As I have said since I started my therapy practice, you are the only expert on you.  Learn to know and trust yourself.

Another from the ‘Fear Not’ book (see earlier posts for the reference).

‘Asking for help is a strength. If pride prevents you from seeking assistance, that is a weakness. Turn your situation around. Ask yourself, “Why deny another the gift of helping me?”

I think that, as a society, we’re taught to “buck up” and ‘tough it out’. Football players are told to ‘shake it off’ when they’re injured. Little boys are told to ‘be a man’ and are often shamed for crying. Even little girls are discouraged from showing their emotions at times. Ever seen a little girl get a scraped knee, start to cry, and be told something like, “Get up! You’re not hurt?” I believe that, in most cases, these things come from good intentions, if misguided. Unless we make a conscious effort to do otherwise, most of us parent, at least to some extent, the way that we were parented (if we were parented at all). We often don’t think about the underlying meaning of our actions. Most likely, the people who tell their child (or other adults) to ‘buck up’ are trying to instill strength (as they see it) and fortitude in the other person. I have little doubt that, if they had realized the underlying meaning and possible result, those people would not have responded the same way to their child’s pain. But the underlying meaning is that it’s not okay to have emotions, and not okay to hurt. As a result, many learn to stuff their feelings, hide their emotions, and sometimes end up depressed, anxious, and out of touch with what they really want, feel, and value. And there’s a good chance they are the people the quote above is talking about…those who see asking for help as a weakness.

Of course, everything can be taken to extremes, and that results in being out of balance. There are those who ask for help too much, and burden their friends and family with constant demands or pleas for help. The danger here is that they don’t learn to stand on their own…don’t realize their own strength, because they’re accustomed to asking others to do things for them that they can do themselves. This can be as crippling as the other extreme…those who refuse to reach out for help when they desperately need it. Again, the key, I think, is balance. Easy for me to say…much more difficult to figure out.

I ran across an interesting article today.  I’ll insert a quote from it and here’s the link.

“For­tu­nately, the brain has some built — in safety sys­tems. Too much cor­ti­sol in the blood sig­nals the brain and adrenal glands to decrease cor­ti­sol pro­duc­tion. And under nor­mal con­di­tions, when the stress is over­come or brought under con­trol (by fight­ing, flee­ing, or turn­ing into an immo­bile statue, or by mas­ter­ing the threat), the hypo­thal­a­mus starts send­ing out the orders to stand down. Stop pro­duc­ing cor­ti­sol!  Event over!  Under con­tin­u­ous stress, how­ever, this feed­back sys­tem breaks down. The hypo­thal­a­mus keeps read­ing the stress as a threat, furtively send­ing mes­sages to the pitu­itary gland, which screams out to the adrenal glands to keep pump­ing out cor­ti­sol, which at this point begins to be neu­ro­toxic — poi­son to the brain.”

Strong words…poison to the brain. I don’t know about you, but that makes me a little nervous and it certainly got my attention. I’d venture a guess that most or all of us experience more stress than is healthy, and some are so stressed out that their bodies are in a constant state of fight of flight with all that cortisol pumping through their veins. Cortisol (thanks for About.com for this information) has positive effects in small doses:

A quick burst of energy for survival reasons

Heightened memory functions

A burst of increased immunity

Lower sensitivity to pain

Helps maintain homeostasis in the body

BUT…balance is key.  In higher doses, or when the body doesn’t have a chance to calm down and maintain homeostasis, here’s what can happen:

Impaired cognitive performance

Suppressed thyroid function

Blood sugar imbalances such as hyperglycemia

Decreased bone density

Decrease in muscle tissue

Higher blood pressure

Lowered immunity and inflammatory responses in the body, slowed wound healing, and other health consequences

Increased abdominal fat, which is associated with a greater amount of health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body. Some of the health problems associated with increased stomach fat are heart attacks, strokes, the development of metabolic syndrome, higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL), which can lead to other health problems!

Ugh!  This is not good!  We knew stress wasn’t good for us, but this is REALLY not good! Imagine how much healthier we could all be if we could manage our stress, and keep our bodies from being in a constant state of fight or flight. I think it’s possible, though not easy. Avoiding stress in our society is pretty close to impossible, unless you’re a Buddhist monk in a monastery, and I’m sure they have some form of stress too.  And so, if we can’t avoid it, what can we do?

I don’t have THE answer to this (if I did, I’d have a Nobel prize of some sort!), but I do have some ideas. I’m not expecting that any of my ideas will be a surprise to you, but maybe having them together in one place will warm up those neurons in your brain and provide a bit of a nudge towards making some changes.

First, I think that stress can be managed if it can’t be avoided. I’m thinking of things like…

-Exercise

-Meditation

-Massage

-Relaxation exercises

-Breathing exercises

-Yoga

-Sex (yes, I did say sex, which I think can be a wonderful stress reliever as well as a way to bond and connect with your partner)

-Doing things you love

-Spending time in nature (see here for information about the stress relieving power of negative ions present in nature and other ways, like salt lamps)

Let’s talk more about meditation and stress. Lots of people realize how good meditation is for us, and many talk about wanting to get into a meditation routine. I, too, struggle with this, knowing it would help me but finding it hard to incorporate into my daily routine. I think meditation is a powerful tool we can all benefit from using, and it’s free!

 According to a study by researchers at MIT and Harvard, meditation can actually help with chronic pain and mental focus. It’s a way of training the brain to focus on what we want it to focus on, not on things that distract us and stress us. In the study, the participants who meditated actually had changes in the way their brain functioned, simply as a result of meditating. My office is in the basement of a meditation center, and I can tell you that my landlord, the guy who runs the place and meditates all the time, is NEVER ruffled!! It’s an enviable state.

One final thing I’d like to address as a way to deal with stress is perception. How we perceive a situation has a great deal to do with whether we find it stressful or not. If we can turn it this way or that…see it from a different angle, perhaps, then we have a chance to turn stress into something that’s easier to manage and cope with. I can be angry at traffic and how it’s slowing me down, or I can breathe and use it as an opportunity to be mindful and perhaps even meditate for a few minutes…or to just slow the pace for a few minutes. It’s all in how you see it, and use it.

It doesn’t really matter which strategy you use to cope with stress, but it does matter that you have one. Choose one and start de-stressing!