Anxiety, under diagnosed and oftentimes over-treated by “big pharma,” will never change or get better without your personal involvement. The more energy you put into a situation the more personal satisfaction you get out of your effort. To support your energy and effort, I have created a safe and encouraging blog area to help you move forward in your life.
Rather than have a drink, toke, or a snort, to try to wipe away this ruminating anxiety by adding tools to the toolbox. Although it feels as if it is eating you alive, there are healthier ways to manage your anxiety, such as journaling. Writing Your Way to Healing and Wholeness is a guided journal, I will cover effective journaling in these first few blogs to enhance this form of art as meaningful outlet for you. Like many art forms, journaling is always an evolving process and each day either you have a new canvas to start or you are adding detail, texture, and context to what you wrote yesterday.

Not all art forms are the same; therefore, not all artists are the same. Some like working with clay and others with watercolor, while some don’t care for oils, others delve deep into the richness of color. Writing is the same way for people. For some, it would be boring just to record your daily life. However, recording your daily life may make you aware of how boring life has become for you! Thus, journaling as an “art” gets your creative juices going by supplementing your life and bringing life into the objects around you. For instance, anxiety that just won’t shut up becomes quiet, goes away, or stops for microseconds. The art of writing opens a new window of opportunity to do something different with anxiety by learning to externalize the anxiety, rather than be anxiety’s hostage.

To start externalizing your anxiety, set your timer for two minutes and close your eyes, imagine your anxiety and let it take form. What does the anxiety look like? How big? How small? What is its texture? Does it have an odor? What color or colors is it?

Once you have a clearly defined your anxiety, open your eyes, set your timer for three more minutes and write down the image of your anxiety. Take your time and really use your pen as a paintbrush and describe fully your anxiety. Take a deep breath and ask the anxiety, “What message do you have for me?” Write down what anxiety says. Notice how that message makes you feel inside of your body. Where do you feel it in your body and how would you like body to respond differently next time? Given the information from your body, write for three continuous minutes by responding to anxiety’s message to you. Continue back and forth in this dialogue. You may find the timer helpful or you may be ready to let the timer go and just keep dialoguing.

Timers are helpful tools when coping with concern or worry because anxiety enjoys being an intimidator. Anxiety enjoys its own chatter. It is constantly saying things like, “you are taking too much time,” “that was a stupid message,” and “this stupid exercise is getting your nowhere.” If you are writing while using a timer then you just keep focusing and moving on. A good analogy for me is physical therapy. While doing rehab for my knee replacement, the PT handed me a timer, I learned to hold a position for thirty seconds, one minute, and so on. The timer became my friend because when it went off I could let go. Similarly, the timer is a helpful friend while doing journal exercises.

Think about journaling as a therapy that helps you live a productive and engaged lifestyle with your friends, family, and yourself. Think about coming to your journal daily for as little as six-to- ten minutes. Then every other day add a minute. Eventually, you are doing ten to twenty-minute writing exercises every other day. That is enough if you want it to be. Some of you may write hours but that is not the usual experience of journaling folks. Six through twenty minutes is enough for personal growth and reflection. As in anything, consistency is the key.

Once a week spend a few minutes re-reading what you wrote. What was your focus? Where are you stuck? Where are you making progress? Where do you want you to focus this coming next week?

You don’t need to spend every exercise working with your anxiety, but if anxiety is a big issue for you dedicate at least one day a week externalizing it and dialoguing with the anxiety.  My new book allows you to discover many exercises.  Click on the link below to get your copy today.  

Writing Your Way to Healing and Wholeness

YOUR LIFE A-Z WARRIOR

BE PRO-ACTIVE EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE!

WARRIOR

What comes to your mind with this powerful word?  This blog will focus on how this word applies to you and your inner parts.  Warriors are those trained in keen awareness and are on alert for danger. Warriors are disciplined and very focused on their job and task.  They understand that if they lose focus that they and others around can get hurt.  Thus warriors operate out of their protective nature and defend out of care.  It is important that you learn to be a warrior on your own behalf.  Do you really care about yourself?   Do you really want to live your best life this year?  Then bring out the fierceness of your inner warrior.  Create and develop an inner warrior.  If you are not aware that you have an inner warrior, no problem.  It is time to install one, just like software for your computer.  Here is the disk.  

Find a spot inside of yourself that represents a powerful energy.  For example, close your eyes and see yourself sitting on a high cliff, above crashing waves, below just as the sun is rising.  Then allow your mind to create a powerful image of a warrior rising out of the ocean on the horizon.  Watch and the warrior comes to you and says, “I am here.  I am your protector.  I will help you accomplish the goal at hand.  I am here for you, let me in.”   You make eye contact with this part and open your arms and say, “Yes.  Enter.  I need you. I want to get to know you. Thank you for coming.”  

YOUR LIFE A-Z UNITY

UNITY

Unity is defined as a state of being in full agreement.  From a psychological point of view we have many parts of our inner self.  Just like our body has arms, legs, heart, and lungs, blood and so on, our psyche has many parts as well.  It has taken the medical field a very long time to understand that if my leg hurts then everything else is affected in my body.  The body is one and when it is at its best all parts are in alignment and working on your behalf.  If you go back to my example on strength and core strength you hear me say, “I don’t enjoy the type of work involved to have a strong core. “  I also say,  “I am brutally harsh on myself for not being willing to change that.”  That critic that tells me that I am lazy, foolish, and one day will pay, is out of step with the other parts of me.I need to bring it into alignment.  I need to work with the inner critic in supportive and nourishing ways in order to calm the fear.  The critic in this case is operating in fear that I will loose my ability to stay active which is very important to me if I don’t work with my core.  Inner work is important to our psychic well-being. We have parts that are young and developmentally delayed.  There are neglected parts, scared parts and playful parts.  See if you can list 10 different inner parts and then begin the work of getting them in unity.  

Lessons From the Life of Pi

Lessons from the Life of Pi:

There are many lessons throughout this wonderfully complex movie …too many to write about in today’s newsletter.  Some of those lessons I will be blogging about at www.blogsot.com/drdilley.
However, if you have not watched the movie, please do so and focus (for the purpose of this article) on the part of the movie where Pi trains Richard Parker.  (Richard Parker is the tiger’s name.)
In this segment of the movie a lot of lessons have already been learned by Pi, especially a really important, but perhaps harsh lesson (sometimes in life we need a bit of harshness to get the point).  That lesson was:  tigers are tigers and they are carnivores.  They will eat you.
Pi’s father taught him that lesson when Pi was very young and he was getting ready to feed the tiger by hand.  For those of you who are parents, think about how quickly you react when your young child runs out into the middle of oncoming traffic.  A good parent does not say, “Now Jimmy or Susie, don’t do that.”  A good parent grabs the child from the middle of the intersection and proceeds to find a way to express how dangerous that action was and insist it never ever happen again.
Pi learned that lesson and it came in very handy when he was in the middle of the ocean for days, if not weeks, on the same boat as Richard Parker.  Pi was clearly intimidated and afraid and spends most of his time on a very poorly made raft, keeping a safe distance from Richard Parker.  Richard Parker on the other hand enjoyed the boat, with shade and lots of space.
This raises the therapeutic question,  “What are you doing on the raft when your fear is ruling you from the much more comfortable life boat?”
Finally, when Pi became more and more uncomfortable on the raft, he decided it was time to train Richard Parker.  The battle between human and beast - or you and your fear - begins.
In the beginning, the training did not go well and Richard Parker maintained control of the lifeboat.  But one day, Pi decided that perhaps it was a good idea to make Richard Parker seasick.  The next few scenes are a brilliant display of Pi rocking Richard Parker’s luxurious lifeboat while using the gentleness of the whistle to comfort Richard Parker.   The whistle created interest in Richard Parker and he began to pay attention to the whistle.  From that point on, Richard Parker and Pi created a safe dance between the two of them and they were able to co-exist with mutual respect and awareness; they needed each other.

Who is Richard Parker (fear) in your life?
How is Richard Parker taking over your life and your comfort zone?
How can you begin to train your fear to be under the trance of your whistle in order for you and your fear can co-exist?

Perhaps your fear will never go away or perhaps one day it will walk away in respect to your needs, as Richard Parker left Pi lying on the beach.  But none the less, for now your fear is like Richard Parker, an untamed tiger that needs to be trained in order for you to move forward in your life.  I invite you to write about you and your relationship to your fear pretending your fear is a wild beast that if given a chance will eat you alive.  See what comes up for you.

If you want to explore this metaphor more fully, you can email at drdilley@psycyhcotherapyunlimted.com to make an appointment to explore what this movie can do for you.

Series on Overcoming the Darkness of Shame

FINDING YOUR VOICE – FINDING YOUR SELF


A Beginning Journey of Overcoming The Darkness of Shame.



These first few paragraphs are share with you some points of view of the psychological aspects of shame and then share with you how shame influences your daily life. This is the first article in many to come on my blog.

Shame has been consistently the stepchild of psychotherapy because it seems that we have found it shameful and uncomfortable to talk about shame and shaming events. Often even well trained psychologists brush the surface of shame in sessions. An example of that might be a situation where a client is talking about peeing or pooping their pants in school. If the psychologist is uncomfortable with that topic, the psychologist may not inquire for further information by asking questions like, “What was that like for you or what happened when you did that?” As the stepchild of psychology, shame has been pushed into the closet and not openly investigated. Recently, our field of psychology we have moved into a “fix-it” or “educational” modality. It is my opinion that keeps the psychotherapy office rather sterile. By an educational modality, I mean often times the therapist will lapse into explaining what happened for the client when they were shamed or telling the client, what they can do about it. The art of exploration from therapist to client can often feel uncomfortable. Therapists must undergo a certain amount of training “unlearning” social standards of appropriate communication. For example, as a Southern girl I learned it is impolite to ask questions, any question, and much less questions about sex, bodily functions, or money.

Theories of shame have been proposed by Silvan Tomkins, Helen Block Lewis, Gershen Kaufman and Donald Nathanson since the early 1960’s. Before that, the only real mention of shame was by developmental psychiatrist, Erik Erickson. He speaks of shame in the second developmental stage of life: autonomy vs. shame and doubt. Toddlers of eighteen months are learning how to do things on their own. It is important that they learn to master their environment, bodily functions, and acquire a sense of self. The more the toddler learns to do master his/her environment, the more autonomous the toddler becomes. Autonomy is equated with a good sense of self. The more a toddler fails at achieving and mastering his/her environment, the more the toddler develops a sense of shame and self-doubt. Self-doubt sets us up to operate our life from an external locus of control which means looking to others for approval as well as trying to figure out what are the right and wrong things for us to do.

Silvan Tomkins’ (1963) work on Shame and Shame Theory conceptualizes shame from an evolutionary perspective introducing into literature the nine biological affects. According to Tomkins, we are all wired with nine biological affects. We become aware of our nine affects when we become aware of our facial, skeletal, and inner visceral behaviors. Affect is primarily facial behavior and secondarily bodily skeletal and inner visceral behavior. Shame is one of our nine biological affects that we are pre-wired to express.

Kaufman (1989) speaks more clearly about shame, speaking of it in terms most of us can identify, such as feeling exposed, diminished, imperfect, and defective.



“Shame reveals the inner self, exposing it to view. The self feels exposed both to itself and to anyone else present.” (Kaufman 1989) So, perhaps you felt exposed. Perhaps, afraid someone was going to point out to you that something was wrong with you, how you thought, believed or acted. Perhaps that fear comes from a history of self-doubt because your memory tells you that your parents were always pointing out what you were saying or doing wrong. It is even possible that you keep remembering a scene that was particularly embarrassing to you as a child. Because of the negative impact of that one situation, that memory might continue to cause you to feel a phenomenological sense of feeling seen in a painfully diminished sense. Kaufman (1989) the experience of feeling diminished in front of someone or even in your own headspace is that uncomfortable affect of shame. Donald Nathanson (1992) tells us that when humans experience shame they respond to that shame from one of four perspectives. Nathanson calls those four perspectives the compass of shame. He tells us that we attack others, attack ourselves, and avoid (addictions) or withdraw (depression). Thus, when we are in situations that trigger old memories of defeat, failures, or rejections the current situation does not need to be actual, only perceived as such, shame envelopes you crippling your ability to respond in ways that might be healthier for you.

In addition to providing a theory for how shame impacts our lives, Nathanson offers strategies for dealing with shame. Nathanson helps us understand shame by reducing to a simple definition, that shame is the interruption of positive affect. The two positive affects, interest and excitement and joy are powerful affective responses. When a person is in the process of enjoyment or interest and something negative or bad happens to them, it interrupts those positive affects and shame sets in. Over time, a person might even stop moving toward something they enjoy or are interested in because of the fear of failure and defeat. Thus, the negative possibilities immobilize them from moving toward something they enjoy. This recurring issue can cause someone to give up their voice, their desire, or their ambition toward something they so desire.

Now, let us look at the practical issues involving shame and how those issues affect us on a daily basis.

It is common to believe that when we turn eighteen or twenty-one that we will somehow magically know how to be an adult. We dream that we will know the right things to say and always do the right things just as we believed our parents were always right. Even when we were fighting with our parents as adolescents, often there was that secret sense that we hoped they were right. Because if they were not right then how could we ever really trust anyone? They raised us and we were completely dependent upon their worldview.

For instance, when was the last time you were out to coffee with a friend and the topic of discussion turned to politics, religion, or just an opinion about a TV show. For instance, let us say you like Dancing with the Stars.

And your friend says, “I don’t understand how anyone can get caught up in these reality TV shows, especially something as ditzy as Dancing with the Stars.

You think to yourself. “Ouch, I thought that was an okay show to watch. I must be stupid for wasting my time doing that.”

However, in the conversation you say nothing, agree with your friend, or find a quick excuse to go to the restroom. What would it have taken you to say, “I disagree with that? I find Dancing with Stars very relaxing and by the end of the season, I can see how each dancer has progressed. I really enjoy it.”

Somewhere along your life’s journey, you have lost your voice. Now, you are at a deciding point, you either have to decide to stay inside of your cocoon and feel silently miserable about your secret opinions and enjoyments or to put your toes into the river of life and learn how to voice your opinion to others. Your opinion is who you are. You have a right to like the things you like and enjoy things that bring you relaxation, hope, and positive feelings. You are uniquely you and that is okay. Not only is it okay, but you need to celebrate who you are. Find one way today to celebrate yourself.

Voice is one of the most important aspects of who we are. Voice allows others to get to know us and to engage us in their lives. Without voice, we are invisible.