Archives for 2017

Self-Care Quiz: Are you practicing self-awareness?

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Use the following quiz to determine if you are living a self examined life.

Give yourself a point for any one of the following you do most days.

  • Laugh, smile, and interact with others.
  • Give of yourself or your resources in some way that feels meaningful.
  • Meditate.
  • Openly talk with friends, family, a therapist, or clergy.
  • Do yoga, qigong, or something else physical, breath related and restorative.
  • Get outside for a walk or any other conscious appreciation of nature.
  • Pay attention to something sensuous: a bite of food, piece of music, bird song, water cascading in the shower, or anything else you notice and appreciate.
  • Journal.
  • Drink enough water.
  • Get enough sleep.
  • Read or watch something inspiring, beautiful or deep.
  • Eat healthy, delicious plant foods.

A perfect score would be a 12. You’re not going for perfection. You’re going for awareness and consciously choosing to take the very best care of your body, mind and spirit as you possibly can. If your score is zero to 3 you might want to consider upping your game a bit. Why? So you can feel better. The lower your score the more likely you make everyone and everything else in your life a priority and put yourself last. Yet, these rejuvenating practices all make you a better, calmer, more centered soul.

What does better mean? To me, it’s authentic, congruent, flexible, confident and peaceful. For some, it might be more physically strong. Whatever your criteria, you intuitively know how you feel this minute and how you would like to feel.

The above 12 questions are merely a way to take stock and see if you’re giving yourself the gift of time. Time to take radically great care of yourself. This does not make you selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, or egotistical. On the contrary, it keeps you grounded, self aware, and healthy so you can actually give more to other people. Whether that’s as a parent, friend, sibling, daughter, volunteer, employee, employer, or community member. It can’t be said enough: when you take the very best care of yourself you have more energy for everyone else. And even more importantly, the energy you bestow on others comes from a place of open heartedness rather than depletion.

While there is nothing new or earth shattering about the above information, it’s a good idea to regularly take stock of how well you care for yourself. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the daily race from one thing to the next. Making time for radical self care is probably the best thing you can do for everyone on earth. It’s certainly the most adult choice, as keeping your body, mind, and spirit fit means you’re less of a drain on everyone else. Being responsible for yourself is the hallmark of adulthood. At the same time being grounded enough in your authentic self enables you to be inter-dependent and cooperative; clearly crucial components of an evolved, compassionate society.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

Three tips for handling people who put you on the defensive

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Yesterday, I had an experience I’ve had many times in the course of my career. Someone said, “I wish you could be with me in situations when I don’t know what to say, get completely flustered, and end up down the rabbit hole of a conversation that is either difficult, contentious, or unproductive.”

Spurred on by that comment, I want to offer you a few easy to remember techniques to help you navigate challenging conversations.

The problem we have when we feel put on the spot with a difficult question, or we feel conflicted and confused about something and not sure how to answer in the best way, is we overthink our response. Instead:

  1. Ditch your cognitions and focus on your physical reactions in the moment as well as your emotions. This means you tune in to what you’re feeling in your body. For example, somebody says something that puts you on the defensive. You quickly assess how that feels in your body. Does your chest suddenly feel tight and heavy did your jaw tense up is your stomach fluttering?
  2. Then, ask yourself what am I feeling right this minute? Am I anxious, angry, resentful, guilty, or overwhelmed? Now, respond to the person’s question by saying how you feel both physically and emotionally. For example, say something like: When you say that to me, or when you ask me that, I feel my whole body tense up. I feel overwhelmed and afraid that whatever I say is going to disappoint you or create some dissonance between us.

This is a very straightforward practice, but it is difficult for many of us because our natural default is reaching deeply into our pre-frontal cortex to find the exact right thing to say. We think we can think ourselves out of any situation. Often, when we search for the right words, while simultaneously assessing how we’re feeling about the question, we get completely flummoxed and derailed. This technique allows you to be honest and explain how you’re feeling physically and emotionally, while buying you time to really think about the question.

A corollary of this method is applying conscious delay (#3). There’s no law of the universe that says you can’t respond to a question, even one that sounds more like a demand, with the response: I wish I could answer that right now, but I’m still figuring out how I feel or what I want to do. I think I need to take a little more time to let it percolate inside me.  I’ll get back to you as soon as I have some clarity.

Most of us, probably because we spent so many years in school situations where specific responses were expected of us when questions were asked, think we must respond immediately with something. If we do that before we’re ready we can get ourselves in a bit of a mess. We might say things we haven’t fully thought out, or make comments that negatively trigger the other person. Even worse, what we blurt out when feeling pressured and on the spot can easily complicate and obfuscate the issues, as well as our relationship with that person, because we don’t really know what we want yet.

These techniques: focusing on your emotions and physical feelings, honestly sharing those with the other person, and asking for time to reflect on the question, are incredibly empowering. It’s easy to feel stressed and think you must respond immediately when someone requests something of you. It takes guts and skill to use these tactics to change the focus of the interaction and buy yourself more time. Almost immediately, you will notice a greater sense of personal agency, as well as the inner groundedness that comes from being true to yourself while not becoming defensive…or offensive.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

Realistic expectations after a childhood of trauma: Allowing grief and taking responsibility for what you can change

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When it comes to the effects of childhood trauma, I have good news and bad news. Let’s do the bad news first.

The bad news is that if you were traumatized as a child because you didn’t get love, safe connection, nurturing, and attention, nothing else can ever take the place of what you didn’t get. No matter how much self compassion you lavish on yourself, how many thousands of hours of meditation and yoga you do, no matter how loving a spouse, friends and children you have in your life, there is absolutely nothing that will fill the void that was created by a mother, or other caretaker, who wasn’t capable of healthy attachment.

I know everything out there will tell you the opposite message. They will tell you that you can meditate, use self compassion, or the therapy choice du jour, to heal this ache in you and fill that space that was never filled. Unfortunately, they’re all wrong. You can’t fill a space that was specifically designated for a mother’s love with something you give yourself as an adult. Even if you got love from someone else and it was very healing and saved your bacon emotionally, there was still a space designated in your mind-body-spirit for love from your mother. As sad as I am to say this, I truly believe that nothing else can fill it. (If you doubt the long term effects of trauma, look at the ACE study:   https://acestoohigh.com/2012/10/03/the-adverse-childhood-experiences-study-the-largest-most-important-public-health-study-you-never-heard-of-began-in-an-obesity-clinic/)

Luckily, that’s not the end of the story. There are many nurturing, wonderful things that you can do for yourself to help feel more grounded, peaceful, and whole. Some will help enormously, which is why it’s good to invest your time and energy in developing self compassion, getting therapy, and creating/developing nurturing loving relationships in your life.

Why share this news with you? Because if you can reconcile yourself to the loss of something you will never have, just the way you can reconcile yourself to the death of a loved one, you can more fully enjoy your life. As long as you consciously or unconsciously seek what you didn’t get, you have less potential for joy because your obsession with what’s missing stands in the way and gobbles up tons of your energy. That’s energy that could be focused on creating the life you want.

Since I believe that there is a space in all of us that ideally is meant to be filled by a mother’s love and attention, which for many is unattainable, the real issue is how to deal with loss, especially if your mother is still living. If she were dead would you crave what you didn’t get as badly? I don’t know, but I think the loss could be assimilated differently, the way a death often is.

In America we like to think we can fix everything. We can create amazing prosthetics for people who have lost a limb but we can’t give them back the limb they lost. Perhaps, what I’m really saying here is you can create a prosthetic for what isn’t there, but it will never be the real thing. And no matter how much you love the freedom and the ease it affords you in moving through your day there’s a part of you that will always miss your real limb, or the healthy attachment you didn’t receive in your early years.

So, why go to therapy? Because therapy helps you understand yourself and develop more self compassion, while working wisely with conditions that were and are. Most of all, a good therapist will validate and support you.

This is life. We move forward despite the challenges. We do the best we can with what we have. We find love and belonging where we can. We learn to be self compassionate and compassionate with all beings. And most of all, we try to give the love we didn’t get.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang 

The Holy Grail of Psychotherapy: What It Is And How You Can Achieve It

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After 45 years as a psychotherapist I now believe the holy grail of therapy is helping people feel safe. If that sounds too simplistic, just think about it. Whatever you are dealing with: anxiety, depression, grief, guilt, or anger, the best possible outcome is feeling safe in your body, mind, emotions, and environment. If you had traumatic events in your life, physical illness, abandonment, betrayal, abuse of any kind, you may not feel safe, even if the actual experiences happened years ago. Typically, this presents as anxiety and panic, but the body-mind is very creative when it wants to express itself. It can give you all sorts of physical symptoms, like headaches, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, muscle pains, GERD, blurry vision, vertigo, and a host of other unpleasant and challenging sensations.

While understanding and insight are wonderful, and can feel so exciting in those Aha! moments when patterns suddenly make sense, all the intellectual knowing in the world will probably not make you feel safe inside.

Paradoxically, sitting with whatever arises and investigating it can help you feel more comfortable and grounded. Remind yourself the painful emotion or physical feeling is there to be felt. You might even say, “Let me feel this” when something unpleasant shows up. Giving yourself a cosmic permission slip to feel what you are experiencing is empowering and can lower the emotional ante.

Just as helpful as being with your experience as it unfolds is developing the capacity to soothe yourself. To talk kindly, patiently, gently, and lovingly to the parts of you that feel afraid, alone, sad, or hopeless. This may sound fairly straightforward, but it’s actually very difficult.

Here are a few ways to cultivate lovingkindness towards yourself:

Meditate. Meditation helps develop curiosity about whatever is happening in your body-mind. You sit with what is, notice it, name it, and go back to following your breath. When in the throes of a panic attack or surfing despair you probably won’t be able to meditate, but all that training can allow you to view your current situation from a different perspective: one that helps you see how everything arises and dissolves.

Metta meditation is a special practice that starts with wishing yourself peace, happiness, and freedom from suffering. My version goes like this:

May I be peaceful.

May I be happy.

May I be free from suffering.

May I seek, find, know, and spread joy.

May I be grateful for all that has been given to me.

May I feel safe inside and outside my body.

After wishing these things for yourself you wish them for:

People you love

People you find off-putting or difficult

Strangers

All creatures.

You can spend as little or as long as you like with this practice, lying down or sitting.

Physical practices can be great reminders of your deep love and concern for yourself. One way to access this connection is by simply placing your hand on your heart. There is a yogic hand gesture called Vajrapradama Mudra that has you intertwine your fingers and place your palms directly over your heart with your thumbs pointing up, elbows wide. Hold the posture for a few minutes or longer as you breathe into your heart. You can also say: “I love you. Everything will be fine.” This can be incredibly grounding in the midst of feeling something threatening.

A butterfly hug is another soothing technique. Simply cross your arms over your chest, tuck your fingers in your armpits and leave your thumbs on your chest facing up.

Drawing attention to your repetitive thoughts, especially the catastrophizing and self-downing ones, can help as it allows you to challenge them and substitute more loving self-talk.

Watch out for thoughts, like:

I’ll never overcome this depression.

No one really cares if I live or die.

This pain will only get worse.

I’ll never be at peace.

It’s unbearable to feel this way.

I’ll always be a mess.

If you notice any of these, or other extreme, negative thoughts, ask yourself if they are true. Is there any evidence proving their veracity? Have you felt miserable every second of your life? Probably not. But, even if you thought so in that bleak moment (what the Buddhists call the hell realm) you could still remind yourself the great thing about life is its mysterious ways. The next second you could get a phone call from a loving friend or relative. You could suddenly see some of your thoughts as so extreme they strike you as funny. You never know. I have surprised myself by listening to my audio journal the day after recording an upsetting night’s experience and found things quite amusing.

Try Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or Tapping. There are literally hundreds of YouTube videos (Brad Yates has one for almost everything) that can guide you through the Tapping protocol to calm your nervous system and clear out negative patterns. It’s very easy to learn, especially if you follow along with the video. Just remember to substitute your words when the practitioner says something that doesn’t feel right to you. That way, you customize the practice to your unique experience.

Wait. Yes, just wait. As Americans we are very impatient with things taking time, but simply waiting until this surge of self-downing, anxiety, anger, grief, etc. passes can make all the difference. If you can consciously choose to let your upsetting thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations be there they will eventually lessen, change, or evaporate.

Use Yoga Nidra, the ancient practice of Yogic Sleep. You may actually fall asleep listening to it, but even if you don’t, it will distract your active mind from all its racing thoughts. You can find more information on this incredible practice here: http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/yoga-nidra-for-relaxation-insomnia-and-posttraumatic-stress-0202154.

Make sure you are not hungry or thirsty, as both states can trigger a negative emotional cascade. In general, it’s best not to let more than three to four hours go between a meal or snack. Eating breakfast also helps stabilize your blood sugar levels and helps you maintain a better perspective. Some people are more sensitive to these blood sugar fluctuations than others, but almost everyone gets cranky when their levels are low.

Get enough sleep. Resting well and long enough allows your brain to consolidate everything it experienced and learned the day before, as well as gives you the energy you need to face the day.  Some meditation teachers, like Jeff Foster, say depression is our body’s cry for rest. While I think depression can be more complicated than that, rest is crucial to feeling good. My colleague, Robyn Posin, always says, “Rest is a sacred act.” I agree. It’s also radical to slow down, take it easy, and consider that a productive use of your time.

Of all these techniques, the most important one is to talk lovingly, patiently, kindly, and gently to your sweet self. Notice when that inner critic’s harsh voice appears and think of other things to say to yourself. If that’s difficult, pretend you’re talking to the five year old version of yourself. Use the Recording and Listening suggestions on this site to record yourself saying supportive, compassionate, patient, understanding, and soothing things so you can listen to it when no one is there to say those loving words to you. You may find that hearing them in your own voice is even more powerful.

It’s not quick nor easy to change patterns, but you can do it. Every little shift you make will accrue over time into a more compassionate, loving relationship with yourself.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

Use Tapping (EFT) to Relieve Stress, Clear Negative Emotions & Feel Safe

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Have you heard about Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Tapping? Nick and Jessica Ortner regularly host the Annual Tapping Summit which explores many different ways this method helps you deal with stress, physical issues, anxiety, grief, guilt, depression, relationships, work challenges, parenting, and trauma. All of these benefit from Tapping’s almost-immediate calming of your nervous system.

It’s amazing how pairing negative experiences and emotions with a calm body allows you to engage the thinking part of your brain, the pre-frontal cortex where clearer ideas are generated. When stressful experiences (in or outside your body) trigger your sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze) it’s almost impossible to think rationally. The limbic system, the area of the brain that produces emotions and stores long term memories, reacts to new information much faster than the thinking part of your brain; so, you can get emotionally hijacked before you are able to think things through.

Tapping lets you quickly calm the body by sending messages to your limbic system that you’re safe. It also ratchets down the production of adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones). Once you’re calmer you can figure out what to do.

Paradoxically, the first things you tap on are negative thoughts or feelings. Next are your bodily sensations. This is allows you to fully acknowledge what bothers you and to clear it before tapping on your resilience, strengths, and positive intentions.

At first, Tapping looks a little weird. You tap on a series of meridian points. Here’s a video to explain the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclBdj20ZU. (There is also a Tapping podcast by the Ortners.)

YouTube has hundreds of Tapping videos. I recommend Jessica Ortner, Nick Ortner, Brad Yates, and Steve Wells. Tapping may look as if it follows a script, but it actually works best when you substitute your own words, based on your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and history. This takes some practice. It’s a bit easier if you learn the formula first. Tapping can be incredibly creative. It also blends very well with Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), or parts work.

One of the major tenets of tapping is the idea that pairing a calmer body with your negative or upsetting thoughts actually lowers their emotional charge. This enables you to talk about anything without feeling hijacked by your sympathetic nervous system. If you do get upset, take a detour and tap on being upset (how it feels in your body, what exactly those “upset” emotions are, how they might have been triggered in the past, and when you first noticed them). After you calm down, you can go back to where you were with your original topic, or just enjoy the peace.

Here’s a quick primer to entice you to try this potentially powerful technique. It can clear psychological, emotional, and even some physical issues when done regularly.

The physical part of Tapping is incredibly easy to learn, but the accompanying words are harder to master. With practice, you can design your own script. The Tapping Solution website has free downloadable scripts to get you started.

When using led Tapping sessions, like those on YouTube or the Tapping Summit, say whatever words feel true to you. Feel free to play around with the way you express yourself so it reflects your beliefs and values, not those of the person leading the session. Be patient, this takes practice. If it seems daunting call a therapist who can guide you based on your unique experiences. It makes all the difference when you customize the practice to you, rather than fitting your thoughts and feelings to someone else’s template. That said, those videos can be a fantastic place to start, both as introductions to tapping and jumping off points for your own work.

You can assess how well the technique works by assigning a number, before Tapping,  from 1-10 to the intensity of your reaction, whether it’s a physical feeling, like neck tension, stomach clenching, a headache, or an emotion. After a few Tapping rounds you can reassess using the same scale. Any lower number shows you’re getting the benefit.

If the set-up statement, usually framed like: “Even though…I have this rage towards my boss (for example), I can still deeply and completely love and accept myself,” annoys you because you’re not feeling accepting or loving towards yourself, change it. Try: “Even though…I have this rage towards my boss, I choose to feel calm.” Or: “Even though…I have this rage towards my boss, I can still cultivate compassion for myself.” There’s a lot of room for flexibility and creativity with EFT. You can even just tap and rant, or do the tapping without words while watching TV. It’s also helpful to gently press each tapping point while you take a slow, deep diaphragmatic breath. (Here’s a link to diaphragmatic breathing: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/diaphragmatic-breathing.)

One of the most powerful ways to use Tapping is when you find yourself getting tense or upset about something. As soon as you realize your emotional temperature is rising start Tapping.

You can tap on events or experiences from the past, emotions (both past and present), physical pain and your feelings about it, issues in relationships, addictions, things you might be trying to avoid, or current sensations in your body. All will lead you to insights you couldn’t have predicted, as well as a calmer nervous system. The more you practice tapping the greater its impact, since you’re creating new neural pathways that associate tapping, talking, and greater peace.

Some people think tapping on negative thoughts, feelings, or even physical pain, will only attract more misery. Nothing could be further from the truth. What you resist persists. Tapping when you are angry or upset releases its emotional charge, even if what you are tapping on happened decades ago. Bottling up  your feelings almost always insures they will surface some other way.

(Here’s a link to a different description from Julie Murphy: https://yogaressa.com/what-is-eft-tapping/)

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang

How to adapt and thrive through life’s transitions and transformations

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The only constant is change.

Heraclitus

It’s easy to think of certain life events, like marriage, divorce, or an empty nest, as big transitions. Yet, not all transitions are so obvious. Daily life is a stream of them, whether shifting from sleep to wakefulness, hunger to satiety, calm to annoyed, concentrating to distracted, or healthy to flu-infested. On a mundane level, every inhale is a transition to the next exhale. You are transitioning from the past to the present to the future every single second of your life.

Moment by moment you change and grow. Much of this is unconscious, some quite conscious, and all of it moves you forward. There is really no such thing as being in limbo. When you think you’re stuck you’re actually changing and growing in unconscious ways. Later on, you can look back and see how catalyzing that period that looked like limbo really was.

How does being aware of this constant dance help you? It highlights the importance of flexibility and openness, so you can ride the waves of existence while allowing transitions to become transformative.

These constant transformations almost demand you adopt a radical openness to what is rather than staying glued to preconceived notions of how things should be. This may sound simple but it’s actually very challenging. Everyone has ideas of how they want life to be, yet its slings and arrows constantly buffet you about, casting you onto to unknown shores.

How can you develop this radical flexibility and curiosity from moment to moment so life is just a little less daunting and overwhelming? One way is to start with the idea that this is how life is supposed to be. If you’re living mindfully,  you’re aware of the constant ebb and flow around everyone and everything.

Internally, your body works towards maintaining homeostasis, but that balance almost never arrives, and, if it does, it doesn’t stick around very long. Your body is in a constant state of flux. Similarly, because you’re always changing and everyone else is, too, your relationships are constantly changing.

Your work situations change.  Whether it’s with the people we work with or internally in our relationship to our work.

Your body ages and changes every day.

Your environment changes constantly, whether on the macro level of climate change or simply whether you’re having oatmeal or eggs for breakfast.

Your finances always change, and not always in ways you can control.

Which brings us to the essence of this topic of constant transitioning: This perennial state of change and flux calls on you to adapt. The most important skill to help you go with the flow is realizing this is simply how life is for everyone. No one made it extra hard for you. To expect any kind of stability is irrational and makes life far more difficult.

The major benefit of life eternally fluctuating is how fascinating it can be. Of course, those daily shifts can also be annoying, but if you cultivate curiosity some of those hard times will feel less overwhelming.

Once you except this is the nature of life you won’t push against the inevitable ups and down with such ferocity or denial. You will come to assume change and not expect stability or security, as that only sets you up for disappointment, stress, and unrealistic expectations of yourself, life, and other people.

In addition, truly knowing these changes and transitions are a part of everyone’s life helps you not be as surprised when things shift, whether in a way you welcome or eschew. And it’s not just things. It’s people, too. Once you understand that everybody is changing every single second it’s almost miraculous that we’re not careening into each other constantly. We can develop a new appreciation for what people go through. There’s nobody out there who isn’t dealing with some challenge. Whether it’s their health, finances, job, family, friendships, or something else, you can be sure every single person is carrying burdens. Ideally, this realization helps you cultivate compassion for yourself and others. When you see someone who seems to have everything going for them: a nice big smile on their face, a good attitude, and all their little ducks in a row, you can be 100% sure that’s not the case. There is absolutely no adult on earth who has not suffered, and suffered many times. Don’t be fooled by appearances. And, please don’t compare your insides to their outsides. (See Compare to Despair.)

This shift in attitude is all about your expectations. When you can get more comfortable with accepting how every second everything is changing for everyone you will not feel alone. Of course, on a molecular level we are all connected, as everything on earth is made of energy, but in a more prosaic way this notion that we’re all in transition every single minute of every day on every level helps us feel connected to each other. That in turn fosters compassion for ourselves and everyone else. The more compassion we develop the kinder, gentler, and more understanding we will be to each other. That’s the world I want to live in.

Copyright Nicole S. Urdang