community_strong_counseling

Reconnecting After Stress

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:00:00 GMT

As we prepare to welcome employees back to work, we need to be sure to prepare to help them become reacclimated to the facility and reconnect with each other. Chances are, when they return to work, the environment will not be the same as when they left it.

We have experienced a world-wide trauma, and employee debriefing will be necessary when we return to the workplace. Through this debriefing process, employees will be able to share how they were affected and how they’re dealing with their emotions.

There may be some significant changes in your workplace due to the pandemic. Some employees may have been permanently let go, and some may still be furloughed. It’s likely that your organization will have to make some changes in protocol, and there are probably some new social norms. It may be awhile before the workplace feels normal again. The goal in “re-boarding” is to help employees deal with their thoughts and feelings as soon as possible so the healing begins and full productivity can resume.

To help associates reconnect and learn from each other during re-boarding, schedule a debriefing workshop to give employees a voice and open communication among them. This process will enable them to reflect on their personal experience and to bond. They’ll leave with a better understanding of each other and an appreciation for what you all went through.

Here are some helpful tips for holding a successful debriefing workshop:

Plan a workshop where you’re both an attendee and an organizer within the first 48 hours of returning to work.

Ask open-ended questions, such as:

How are you all feeling about what happened? (We don’t want to appear dismissive about the good or the b Allow each person to share his or her personal thoughts and feelings about this experience).
What is your current comfort level about returning to the workplace?

Ask for feedback. Make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the current plan and answer any questions he or she may have. Assure team members that leaders will hear and address any questions or concerns they have in the days, weeks and months to come. Let them know that you’re all in this together and that you’re there to support them throughout the re-boarding process.

The goal in “re-boarding” is to help employees deal with their thoughts and feelings as soon as possible so healing begins.

Taking the time to hold this debriefing workshop will also help your organization determine actions that you need to take to move forward and who needs to do what. As a result of what you learn during the debriefing session, you can establish actions, tasks and deadlines and create accountability.

To help associates reconnect and learn from each other during re-boarding, create a buddy system, whereby two employees mentor each other into new norms; encourage each other; and monitor each other’s stress, workload and safety. Here are five tips for buddies:

Get to know each other. Ask about your buddy’s background, family, hobbies and interests.
Look out for each other. Set up times to check in, listening carefully and sharing experiences and feelings.
Recognize each other’s accomplishments, regardless of how small they are.
Share ideas for stress relief (e.g., rest, routine sleep, a healthy diet, exercise and other forms of self-care).
Encourage your buddy to communicate openly with you and with his or her manager.

Implementing a buddy system at work not only provides benefits for the employees but can be valuable to your organization overall. It ensures that employees have someone to talk to, which will be important in the first weeks of re-boarding after the pandemic. Knowing expectations is an most important contributions to employee satisfaction, and the buddy system can help reinforce new social norms and protective hygienic rules.

To help associates reconnect with and learn from each other during re-boarding, schedule peer interaction and group learning activities. When employees have a feeling of camaraderie, they’re more likely to stay with the company and feel a sense of loyalty to their team.

Here are three suggestions for encouraging positive peer interaction and group learning:

Concentrate on teaching and being a good example of social and emotional learning strategies that encourage reflection and self-awareness.
Give employees opportunities to practice effective social skills both individually and in groups.
Work with team members on good problem-solving and conflict resolution skills.

It is our hope that these suggestions will be helpful in your upcoming re-boarding efforts. Until then, stay safe, and start planning now, because we truly are better together!

To help associates reconnect with and learn from each other during re-boarding, schedule group learning activities.

How to fight addiction in the season of Covid-19

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:00:00 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

Obviously the impact of lockdown and social distancing has been serious for many of my readers, and I’ve struggled to think of what I could share that might help. Finally I think I’ve got something to say. Even as the world closes down around you, you have to stay open!

In my last scientific article on addiction and recovery, I set out a new and improved model of addiction (described in more detail here). I looked at addiction as a “narrowing” of the brain — a setting and solidification of neural networks focused on drug rewards — paralleled by a narrowing of the (available, meaningful) social environment.

This is not rocket science, or even brain science.

The main trouble with the “brain disease model” of addiction is that it ignores the massive impacts of the social environment. Yet we know that emotional challenges create the predisposition to later addiction. We know that the social environment (including one’s family history) matters hugely. We know that abuse (including emotional abuse) and neglect during our growing-up years are by far the best predictors of addiction in adulthood. The brain disease model simply can’t make sense of these facts. How could a brain disease develop from hard times growing up?

So in my model I emphasize that harmful social experiences have a shrinking or narrowing effect. If caregivers or peers make you feel off or wrong or insecure, or unable to trust, unable to just be, then you ingest what gives you the next best thing. Something that soothes you and defines you. And then, as time goes by, you connect with people more shallowly, you connect with fewer people, you connect with fewer people who might actually love you — family, friends, lovers. That’s the outer garment of addiction: the thinning, the contraction, of the social world. And it parallels the “contraction” of available neural networks in the addict’s brain.

The social shutdown isn’t just in the words and deeds you receive from people you know. It’s also a reduction in the places you go, activities, walks in the park, the freedom to be buffeted by babbling crowds shopping, living, watching, listening. When drink or drugs seem all that’s available to provide what you need, you let go of other possible sources of pleasure and satisfaction, energy, and identity. They were never that reliable to begin with. And before long you forget about them, you forget how to find them, you forget they even exist. That’s what locks addiction in place.

It’s what Johann Hari wrote about in Chasing the Scream: the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety; it’s connection.

So living through this pandemic, here’s the main problem. The impact of social distancing on many people is increased loneliness, greater contraction of the social world, an accelerated plunge into being by yourself. For people with addictions, that’s the opposite of what they need most, the opposite of what they need in order to forget about getting high, at least for awhile.

Maybe it’s obvious, but it’s also what I’ve been told by my psychotherapy clients, especially those who haven’t quite found their way back to a drug-free (or drug-reduced) existence. The four walls feel more like concrete barriers than dividers in a lively hive. The doors and windows start to feel like relics of an existence that’s no longer possible. You can’t go out, you can’t mix, you can’t meet up, except online. And that’s just not quite the same. All you’ve got left is your addiction…or so it seems.

For those who are taking care of kids who are also stuck at home, the increased contraction of possibilities is laced with stress. You have to attend to these little buggers all day long. You love them, okay, but they’re kids. They’re not there for you. You’re there for them. So, infused in your isolation are the toxic currents of stress, not only boredom but frustration and anger and a sense of inadequacy. All of which derive from the situation, but it feels like they derive from you, from your own shortcomings. There you are, trapped inside your bunker, with heightened demands and anxieties that would be hard enough to deal with if you were free to get out and mix with other parents and relatives and the world at large. Forced captivity with junior cell-mates is nothing like being free to wander and connect.

So here’s what you should do. If you’re trying to quit or control substance use (or other addictive activities — porn, online gambling, whatever), get your ass out of the house! Social distancing doesn’t mean solitary confinement. Here in my city in the Netherlands, I’ve seen more and more people strolling over the last two or three weeks. People walk, and when they’re about to pass by, either they or you or most likely both of you move aside, so there’s a good two meters (six feet) separation. That separation doesn’t prevent, in fact it seems to enhance, people’s tendency to smile at each other, say Hi, wave, even utter a few words of greeting.

And it’s springtime! (at least in the northern hemisphere) The bushes and trees are budding and leafing like crazy, the flowers are coming out. My mood improves about 300% after I’ve walked around for awhile. And when you get home, call or zoom someone you care about. Ask about them. They’ll ask about you too. It’s easy to imagine that our isolation is some kind of penance for imagined wrongdoings. It’s not! The world is still full of people. And you still have an instinctive need to connect with them, in whatever way you can.

Getting out of your home is going to make you feel like you’re a part of the world rather than a prisoner on Rikers Island. And that’s going to help you feel like you don’t need to get loaded, or maybe have two drinks instead of eight, or maybe watch a movie, read a book, and fall asleep gently, wondering about the mysterious mix of chance and destiny that’s landed us in this crazy time. Together.

Cupid in Quarantine

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 05:00:00 GMT

A global tragedy has forced us into full-time togetherness. Here’s how couples can rekindle romantic love and grow together rather than apart.

Long ago, my man and I agreed to do what’s called “Living Apart Together,” or LAT. Even if we ever marry, I intend to keep my pad in Manhattan and spend a couple nights there alone every week.

During this global tragedy, however, we are, by necessity, now living together full time. It has its challenges, but I am confident that we — and many other lovers — will survive, even thrive in this crazy time.

Why? Because I’ve spent more than 40 years studying the evolution of human marriage, adultery and divorce, as well as romantic love around the world today and the brain circuitry of this universal passion. In fact, romantic love and feelings of deep attachment run along powerful pathways in the brain. Love is primordial, adaptable and eternal.

Nevertheless, this dreadful virus has pushed all of us to assess our needs, make difficult decisions and build stronger partnerships and family bonds. It’s a tremendous opportunity to learn more about your partner and kin — and grow together.

That said, we are a nomadic species — built to leave home regularly for quests of all kinds. So being cooped up 24/7 during this pandemic requires creativity. Here are a few suggestions on how to make the most of this difficult situation.

Dwell on the positive
Psychologists have offered a host of tips for how to maintain a healthy and happy long-term partnership. Among them: Don’t show contempt. Don’t threaten divorce. Listen actively. Compromise.

But there is one piece of solid advice that comes directly from my work with the neuroscientist Lucy Brown and other members of our brain-scanning team. Among those adults we scanned who were in long term happy partnerships (in America and China), we found activity in three brain regions: a brain region associated with empathy; another linked with controlling your own stress and emotions; and a third coupled with the ability to overlook what you don’t like about your partner and focus on what you do — what’s known as “positive illusions.”

I do this daily. OK, so sometimes he isn’t listening to a word I’m saying. But I know that women tend to be better at doing several things at once — probably an inheritance from raising helpless infants throughout our prehistoric past — whereas men tend to do one thing at a time. So rather than assuming he is ignoring me, I chalk this up to his remarkable ability to focus, a trait that probably helped him build his brilliant career.

In short: I dwell on the positive. It works.

Create your safe space
I’ve also carved out a “safe space” in his apartment — a room where I can’t be interrupted. If my partner needs me, he knocks on my door and asks if I’m available. Data show that people around the world have an innate need for autonomy, at least in the parts of their lives that they regard as valuable; creating a safe space can help people to feel in control, so they feel happy instead of helpless — or sometimes even hostile. If you have children in the home, let them select their own safe space as well.
Editors’ Picks
Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind
Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement?
Jimmy Fallon Is Sorry. But What Does That Mean?
Continue reading the main story

Create a schedule
My man and I make a daily schedule, too. People differ in what scientists call “intolerance of uncertainty.” Some express extreme anxiety in ambiguous situations. That’s not me. But I do like plans, because they help me organize my time.

So over morning coffee, we make a program for the day. Typically, we decide to remain at our desks for a specific period and eat lunch separately — generally leftovers. In this time of crisis, establishing specific work hours can calm the mind, as well as establish when we’ll play and meet for dinner. We plan all this every day.

We make sure to “dress” for dinner too — no pajamas or old sweats. In fact, he recently had a birthday, so I brought in a host of goodies and asked him to get dressed up. He emerged from the bedroom in his tuxedo. It made my month.

Make time for play
Play triggers the brain’s dopamine system to give you energy, focus, motivation and optimism. So we often assemble on the living room couch in midafternoon to play some bridge together, online.

We also play self-revealing games. I particularly like a game I invented a couple weeks ago, “Remember When.” I begin the game with a remembrance of an endearing time together. Yesterday, I started with: “Remember our first date — when you knocked on my door and immediately apologized for being on time?”

Nostalgia is good for you — if you do it correctly. Instead of pining for “the good ol’ days,” savor them.

Another game we play is: “My Favorite Moment.” Some evenings, we write one another an email, telling of our favorite moment of the day. It doesn’t need to be momentous. Two days ago, mine was when he winked at me in the supermarket. It’s valuable to let your partner know what’s meaningful to you. This way they know how to please.

We’ve begun to tell one another a story at cocktail hour too. Telling stories was standard entertainment during our long prehistory — and in our home, it’s standing the test of time.

Touch, if you’re both healthy
Regularly we also curl up and listen to a book. Touch (including kissing) is important: it drives up the oxytocin system in the brain and generates feelings of calm and attachment. Of course, if one of you is sick, this isn’t possible.

Plan your next vacation
One of my favorite current pastimes with my man is planning our next vacation. Hopefully, we’ll go to Scandinavia next summer. So we sit together at his computer and look at maps, museums, nature walks and historic sites. I think it’s important to imagine your life after this plague has passed — and live it now. Research shows that anticipating your next vacation makes you happy.

Make it a family affair
If you have children in the home, include them in your daily morning powwow as you review the family’s schedule. Invite them to join your exercise routine, or the evening’s “story telling” hour. Give them free time to do just as they please, something children enjoyed throughout our past. And how about some new challenges — like making lunch. It might not be four-star chow, but they will learn and you might laugh. And laughter is the elixir of survival — it evolved to get us through hard times.

Keep love alive with novelty
Then there are all the obvious things a couple can do to keep love alive. Put on dance music and waltz or swing — even if you can’t dance. Cook dinner together — and follow a new recipe. Take virtual tours through the world’s great museums, cities or nature preserves. Go over old photographs together. Or just plan your next party. You might try an evening of Halloween, too — dress up in any outlandish costume you can create. But do something new. Novelty also stimulates dopamine activity in the brain to give you energy and optimism.

So be creative. And when you emerge from this challenging time, you might be surprised at how much you’ve grown together — rather than apart.

Helen E. Fisher is a biological anthropologist and senior research fellow at The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. She has written six books, including “Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray.”

How to Be a Modern Parent

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 16:20:19 GMT

We all want to be the best parents we can be for our children, but there is often conflicting advice on how to raise a kid who is confident, kind and successful. Throughout the circus act of parenting, it’s important to focus on balancing priorities, juggling responsibilities and quickly flipping between the needs of your children, other family members and yourself. Modern parents have the entire internet at their disposal and don’t follow any single authority. It’s hard to know whom or what to trust. Here, we’ll talk about how to help your child grow up to be a person you really like without losing yourself in the process.

Your Parenting Style

Good news: There is no one right way to raise a child.
Research tells us that to raise a self-reliant child with high self-esteem, it is more effective to be authoritative than authoritarian. You want your child to listen, respect and trust you rather than fear you. You want to be supportive, but not a hovering, helicopter parent.

All of these things are easy to set as goals, but hard to achieve. How do you find the right balance?

As your child develops, the challenges will change, and your thinking may evolve, but your approach should be consistent, firm and loving. Help your child learn through experience that making an effort builds confidence and helps you learn to tackle challenges. Calibrate your expectations about what your child is capable of doing independently, whether you have an infant learning to sleep through the night, a toddler helping to put toys away, or an older child resolving conflicts.

Remember, there is no one right way to raise a child. Do your best, trust yourself and enjoy the company of the small person in your life.

Conquering the Basics
Your healthy attitude toward sleep, food and discipline will affect your children in the most important ways.

How to Put a Baby to Sleep

Right from the beginning, babies vary tremendously in their sleep patterns. And parents, too, vary in terms of how they cope with interrupted nights.

There are two general schools of thought around babies and sleep after those early months when they need nighttime feedings — soothe the baby to sleep or don’t — and many parents find themselves wavering back and forth. Those who believe in sleep training, including many sleep experts, would argue that in helping babies learn to fall asleep by themselves and soothe themselves back to sleep when they wake during the night, parents are helping them master vital skills for comfort and independence.

Two techniques for this are:
Graduated extinction, in which babies are allowed to cry for short, prescribed intervals over the course of several nights. Bedtime fading, in which parents delay bedtime in 15-minute increments so the child becomes more and more tired.

And many parents report that these strategies improve their children’s sleep patterns, as well as their own. But there are also parents who find the idea of letting a baby cry at night unduly harsh.

Whatever you try, remember, some babies, no matter what you do, are not reliably good sleepers. Parents need to be aware of what sleep deprivation may be doing to them, to their level of functioning, and to their relationships, and take their own sleep needs seriously as well. So, ask for help when you need it, from your pediatrician or a trusted friend or family member.

Bedtime
For older children, the rules around sleep are clearer: Turn off devices, read aloud at bedtime, and build rituals that help small children wind down and fall asleep. Establishing regular bedtime routines and consistent sleep patterns will be even more important as children grow older and are expected to be awake and alert during school hours; getting enough sleep on a regular basis and coming to school well-rested will help grade-school children’s academic performance and their social behavior as well. Keeping screens out of the bedroom (and turned off during the hours before bed) becomes more and more important as children grow — and it’s not a bad habit for adults, either.

As your child hits adolescence, her body clock will shift so that she is “programmed” to stay up later and sleep later, often just as schools are demanding early starts. Again, good family “sleep hygiene,” especially around screens at bedtime, in the bedroom, and even in the bed, can help teenagers disconnect and get the sleep they need. By taking sleep seriously, as a vital component of health and happiness, parents are sending an important message to children at every age.

Writing to Heal Pain

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 05:00:00 GMT

There are so many good reasons to communicate with site visitors. Tell them about sales and new products or update them with tips and information.

Three therapists and twelve women who are surviving partner or stranger violence, accidental trauma, and rape sit in a wide circle, not too close to each other, on a Tuesday evening. Our class, sponsored by a local non-profit, will present the modalities of meditation, Qi Gong, art therapy, and writing, in the service of healing from trauma. When it’s my turn to introduce writing, several women protest:

“I have no privacy. No way I can write anything honest.”
“Why would I write that $@&%!! I’m living it, isn’t that enough?”
“I’ve never been a journal writer.”

I explain the physical and mental health benefits of writing about difficult life experiences, drawing on the research of Pennebaker and Smyth (2016.)

While all the women in the group also work with an individual counselor, I encourage them to write during this group, saying “Sometimes you are your own best counselor. Give writing a try, and see whether this is one of the modalities that you find helpful.” Next week, Katie* brings her journal.

“OK, you asked for it,” she warns. Reading aloud, Katie describes her rape with vivid, sensory, emotional language. The participants sit in silence for a while before responding. At the end of the session I suggest that she write using one or more of several approaches; help she wishes she could have called on, what she is learning about her resilience and toughness, or an alternate ending that interrupts the violence. She chooses the alternate ending. When Katie reads the new ending a few weeks later, she sits in silence then says, “I am going to give that ending more time in my imagination.”

Writing Through Grief
Not everyone wants to write after experiencing the loss of a beloved other. We seem to benefit from writing if we have sought bereavement or other counseling. Traumatic or complicated grieving presents an ideal opportunity for writing to process loss. Attachment style makes a difference. When the purpose of writing is to process the permanent loss of a beloved other, writing can heal the gaping identity wound of a loss.

I experienced four family deaths in a short period of time. When my younger sister died suddenly of brain cancer in 2004, as a long-time journal-writer I naturally began to write as a way to seek meaning and solace. With no thought of publishing this writing, I explored my obsession with my sister’s belongings, our sister relationship, my anguish at not knowing how I would restructure my identity after the loss of my best friend and confidant, dreams that arose in which my sister and parents, who had also died, appeared, and imaginary dialogues with my family members.

When my sister’s colleagues asked me to write her biography to give background to an academic journal honoring her work as a communication professor, I eagerly searched my memory for stories that illuminated her younger years and later academic writing. In the process of writing, my own shattered heart began to mend. This year my book-length memoir, with stories of loss and resilience, will be published. While I did not begin with the idea of writing for others, I experience satisfaction in detailing my individual response to grief and healing.

Benefits of Writing
Across many experiments, people experience a positive effect from employing expressive writing to cope with difficult life experiences. Even though a traumatic or grievous experience comes crashing into one’s life unbidden, through writing, one can shape and explore the difficulty. Writing takes time. Taking time to write of one’s own life experience provides a way to respect, hone and understand the trauma or loss. We dignify our lives by taking seriously, in writing, the unwanted experience. We can make meaning of tragedy. Simply writing emotively, without telling a story, is not effective. Creating a narrative helps one write with authority in the face of unwanted change.

What Writing Formats Bring Relief?
People respond differently to trauma and grief. Some will journal,write personal essays honoring someone, explore imaginary dialogues, or write letters to the departed. All these forms of writing help create healing continuing bonds with the lost person. The sense of self disrupted by trauma begins to mend.

First, Love Yourself

Tue, 14 Mar 2017 05:00:00 GMT

Learning To FLY

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You can’t love another until you love yourself”? Well, it’s true, and here’s why.

When you don’t love yourself it’s very difficult to be in a relationship with anyone else. There are many reasons for this, but one particularly juicy reason is a psychological term called Projection. Projection occurs when you have uncomfortable feelings that are hard to accept, so you unconsciously project, or place, those feelings onto someone else.

For example, if you are a selfish person but don’t accept or like this quality about yourself, you might end up accusing others of being selfish, mainly because it’s too hard to admit to yourself that you are actually the selfish one. Kind of confusing, I know.

So, let’s look at how this applies to relationships. If you don’t love yourself, you might feel like your partner doesn’t love you either. You project that lack of love onto him instead of accepting that it is actually coming from within.

You might think that he is the one who thinks you are overweight or unworthy when instead it’s really you who thinks these things about yourself. He actually thinks you are amazing!

Unfortunately, you don’t believe him when he tells you that because you don’t believe that about yourself.

As a result, you might push him away and start to distance yourself because you just don’t get how someone like him could possibly love someone like you. Your ego hates to be wrong so it will do everything in it’s power to find evidence to support these limiting beliefs about yourself.

So while all this is going on in your unconscious mind, you start to act on it without even realizing it. You start to self-sabotage and find reasons why he is not good enough for you when in reality it’s you who feels not good enough to be with him.

Crazy right?! The unconscious mind is a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Not loving yourself almost always leads to feeling insecure, and this is likely to make you more prone to jealousy and mistrust. Jealousy and mistrust are relationship killers and make it very difficult for your love to thrive. If your partner hasn’t given you any reason to doubt him, but you still feel the need to check his phone every night, a lack of self-love may be the culprit.

Furthermore, if you are insecure about your body and looks, you will probably be oversensitive to the idea that your partner finds other women attractive. You might find yourself constantly asking for validation or reassurance, which can backfire and actually make you seem less attractive!

As a psychologist, I believe that the best relationships happen when two whole people come together to make a union. This idea of a “better half,” is really flawed, because how can a half a person contribute to a loving relationship? The hole that is left from not loving yourself has your shape on it. It can’t be filled by anyone else.

So, what are some ways to love yourself more?

Watch The Talk

Be mindful of the things that you say to yourself. Notice how often you criticize your own efforts and stop doing it! When you hear yourself say things like, “I’ll never be able to finish this class,” or “I am too slow to run a 5K,” try to turn those into more optimistic thoughts. Praise yourself for whatever you are able to do, and try not to focus so much on what you haven’t done.

Say No
Setting boundaries and saying no to things that you don’t really want to do goes a long way toward self-love. In a sense, you are being a good parent to yourself by limiting how much you have to do, and saving your energy for things that bring you joy.

Love Your Flaws
Whether it be emotional or physical flaws, know that they are part of you for a reason. Understand that your flaws show where you have been and made you who you are. Embrace these parts of yourself and know that they are part of what makes you a unique and valuable human being.

If you’re like most people, you are probably thinking “but I don’t love my flaws.” You probably have a list of body parts you would change if you could and you can’t possibly imagine loving them. That’s why I am so excited to introduce my friend Lauren McAulay, an incredible body love and intuitive eating coach and my own personal ambassador of self-love.

I know what an impact self-love and body image issues can have on your relationship and how freeing it can be to put those insecurities to rest. Lauren and her business partner Jenna were gracious enough to put together a free guide to help you ditch the diet, heal your body image, and free up space for you to be your best and most confident self.

Check out their free guide on the homepage of The Body Love Society and be sure to share this article on your favorite social media platform by clicking the share buttons below.