Allison

Anxiety: I’m a Little Tea Pot Short and Stout!

May 8, 2019 by Allison

As many of us know, anxiety feels like being chased by a tiger. Our bodies are machines and don’t know the difference between a real threat versus a perceived threat. There may be no tiger chasing us, but our FIGHT, FLIGHT, or FREEZE response takes action the very same way.

Anxiety, fear, panic, and stress are degrees of the same feeling. Excitement is on that continuum as well. I’ve been skiing and felt excited, but at the same time, the ‘butterflies in my stomach’ feeling turn to fear, and then back again to the excitement. Do you know what I mean?

Our feelings (emotions) inform us. They also add depth, richness, and meaning to our lives. When we deny those emotions, anxiety ensues, much like this Tea Pot drawing (courtesy of Janie Hartmann). Strong emotions boil and rumble just below the surface. Lucky there’s an escape route, or spout to let out low levels of emotions.

As the heat in the kettle rises (as life happens), those feelings boil over into uncomfortable levels of anxiety. When we keep the lid on trying hard to release controlled amounts of steam, it’s like being at Grandma’s house and hearing the Whistling Tea Pot in the Kitchen. The sound interrupts the conversation, and someone rushes to the kitchen to turn off the stove. The screaming whistle can only go on so long before it drives us crazy!

Holding in our emotions causes the same reaction. The kettle’s lid eventually blows off and those strong emotions get loose! Yikes! Over time our anxiety becomes palpable and spills over into our relationships. It affects our functioning and eventually wreaks havoc in our lives.

The ‘boil over’ shows up in the form of anger, a panic attack, or a delayed grief response. It’s easy to understand why some of us don’t dare feel those strong emotions. “What if I do cry now like I wanted to when Dad died a few years ago? I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop.”

When we avoid strong emotions and put on a happy face as if life is always rosy, we end up reacting to little things, rather than responding to what’s really important. Someone might say, ” What up? You’re usually chill about these kinds of things. Your anger seems a bit over the top for the situation.” And, it is. Because when we don’t allow ourselves to feel a range of emotions, we will hit our threshold, and go from 0 to 10 without warning. That’s another discussion about how people with flexible boundaries need to add some tension to their fence lines. The equal amount of Flexion and Tension in our fences offers us choices as to how we respond to our thoughts and feelings.

Emotions are meant to be felt. If we take heed and feel the feeling rather than intellectualize it or run from it, we can respond to our feelings, rather then react to them. A sign of good emotional health is having the ability to think and feel at the same time. Uncoupling our thoughts from our feelings breaks the chain reaction of reacting to an experience rather than choosing a more honorable response.

So what Tips from the Trail can help us deal with our Whistling Tea Pots?

First off, we have to become aware of our dysfunctional relationship patterns if we want to change them. This is the frustrating part. We want our friends or loved ones to change because obviously, it’s their problem. 🙂 We recognize the pattern and they can’t or aren’t ready to turn FaceTime toward themselves, own it, and choose new ways of relating. When someone avoids feeling for so long, it’s not easy for them to all of a sudden become aware and decide to change.
If and when we do gain insight into our maladaptive relationship patterns and desire change, then we can slowly, over time, learn to tolerate these strong emotions. How? Try this technique called Riding the Wave of Strong Emotions.

Ride the Wave (learn more about emotional surfing @ http://www.mindfulexposurebook.com/).

You can do this anywhere. Just remember to keep your eyes open if you are driving. 🙂

a. When an uncomfortable emotion shows up, notice it, name it, and talk to yourself about it. For example, “Ah, there’s that fear again. Stay present, Allison. No tiger is chasing you. It is a perceived threat. You can handle this.”

b. Notice where it shows up in your body. I feel it in my stomach.

c. Then, imagine you are in a warm, beautiful ocean and the soft, round swells are rising up and down. See this in your mind’s eye: See it, hear it, feel it, smell it, and taste it. Engage every sense to bring yourself into and onto the WAVE.

d. Now, instead of pushing the emotion away and distracting yourself as you usually would, allow the feeling to rise in you like the warm swell of a wave. Breathe in slowly as the tide rises, and out even slower as you drop down on the other side of the swell.

e. Stay in the WAVE for several breath cycles. That might be four times or 10 times. Stay as long as you can tolerate the feeling. The feeling will dissipate over time. Just notice it as it gradually decreases in intensity. Don’t judge the emotion, or beat yourself up about feeling it. Read more in John Kabat Zinn’s book Mindfulness for Beginners to understand the power of the breath, and the power we have over how we choose to think.

f. I do this exercise when I am driving to an anxiety-provoking event. I sometimes, without warning get overwhelmed with emotion. I’ll notice it and take the time right then to feel it full on and with regular practice that feeling’s emotional valence drops.

g. Now it’s time to Self Regulate or Mood State Change. Come back to the present – get out of the water and onto the beach. Let the emotion go and get into what’s happening around you. I do the 5,4,3,2,1 exercise. Turn on some music, take a walk, or finish driving to the meeting and:

SEE 5 things you haven’t noticed before (Beginner’s Mind concept)

Hear 4 things

Feel 3 things

Smell 2 things

Taste 1 things.

Where ever you are, enjoy this day for you only have one chance at experiencing today. Happy trails, Allison

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Death by Suicide. Could I have done something different?

June 11, 2018 by Allison

I am sad. I am sad I didn’t know my friend as well as I thought I did. I am sad I was too busy to notice the subtle isolation, the loss of weight, the lack of connection we normally shared. I am confused. I don’t get it. Could I have done something different? Why did he take his life? Why didn’t he reach out to me?

If only we could read each other’s minds to that degree. We can’t. We can’t know the inner workings of even our most precious loved ones. We can, however, take a close look at how we view mental health and our beliefs about access to mental health care services. Seeking help from a professionally trained therapist has historically been kept secret. The stigma and shame of asking for help still exists. Seeking help is considered by many as a sign of weakness, of not being strong enough to pull yourself up from your bootstraps and just deal with it alone.

Therapy sessions are traditionally held behind closed doors. Have you ever heard the saying, we are only as sick as our darkest secrets? When you shed light on shame and put your dark thoughts and feelings right out in front of you, they can’t grow. Not all of us feel shame, some of us just need guidance on how to navigate the difficult situations that life throws at us. Like the wicked witch of the west, throw water on that bitch and she melts into nothing. The same thing happens when we shed light on our most shameful thoughts and feelings. They can’t survive in the light. It feels so good to tell someone how we really feel. Unfortunately, we have grown apart. We have joined the world of the socially isolated with our constant connection with everyone else, but the people right in front of us. We are too busy. We are too heavily laden with our own complicated lives that we’ve lost the emotional connectedness with our closest friends.

So, you’re saying it’s my fault? No. We are not responsible for someone dying from suicide. When someone wants to take their own life, they will, despite how much you tell them you love them. As a parent, a spouse, sibling, understanding you cannot protect anyone from feeling pain and suffering is a hard lesson. Each one of us has to experience the good, the bad, the happy and the sad of our own lives. We need to learn how to weather those storms on our own. We can model how to think, feel and behave through our own life events. We can come alongside our loved ones with empathy and encouragement. We just can’t do it for them. Damn. If only they could learn from our mistakes. Most of us are experiential. We need to do it ourselves, our way.

Here are some Tips from the Trail you might want to consider as you grieve the loss of your loved one.

Allow yourself time to grieve. We all grieve differently. There’s no right or wrong way. There’s no time frame. Learn more about grief here. A great book to read and share with everyone you know is called Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss by Pat Schwiebert.
Take a look at how you regulate your mood through the day. We all work to maintain an even mood from the minute we wake up in the morning. Some of us get our dopamine fix (feeling of reward) through exercise, by doing yoga, walking in the woods, calling a friend, or laughing. Some coping strategies used to better our mood are less healthy. For example, smoking cigarettes. It works immediately, but not for long. Thus, the easy habit of chain smoking. You get what I mean. How we recover from traumatic life events is very individual. Figure out what works best for you.
Seek help to learn new coping strategies. Normalize mental health care by seeking care yourself if and when you need it. We all go in and out of emotional wellness. Read this Trailtalk® blog about what it means to be emotionally healthy.
Remember that therapy can be intermittent. Emotional tune-ups can happen periodically depending on your current season of life. How you use therapy is up to you. You can go to therapy regularly, or just when you need help navigating a difficulty that life has thrown at you.
Join us at Trailtalk® as we work to shed light on the shame and stigma of emotional care for everyone. You and your peers are active and functional. Many of your friends and family members don’t feel “sick enough” to go sit on a couch with a stranger and talk about their feelings. You are part of a disenfranchised group of folks who need and deserve emotional care and don’t seek help. Shift the paradigm with us and think in terms of mental wellness instead of mental illness. Let’s practice preventive mental health care like we do preventive physical health care. Add in routine emotional tune-ups™ to your health care program.

Contact us if you want to walk and talk about suicide, grief, and how to adapt back to your best self after a traumatic life event. Happy trails to you and yours, Allison

Self Care? Who has time?

June 6, 2018 by Allison

How many times have we heard those words? If you are a parent, that will be hard to do in an airplane emergency. Our inclination is to rescue our children, take care of others first and attend to ourselves after. When you spend your life as the “caretaker” there comes a time when you get weary. Where’s the nurse when the nurse needs to be cared for? If you grew up taking care of people, how you feel love is tightly twisted up in caring for others. We heard what a good girl or boy we were when we did the right thing and rescued or nurtured someone in need. Of course, it feels good to get outside ourselves and love others unconditionally. On the other hand, when it’s our only mode of operation it is a double edge sword. The “don’t rock the boat” kind of people and the “avoid confrontation, make sure everyone is happy” person has an impossible job. We can’t make people happy. We can’t save others from themselves. We can’t do someone’s journey for them in hopes of saving them from discomfort or failure. The more we enable, the more we suffocate the person we are trying to protect.

Turning Facetime toward ourselves is hard. Why are you telling me I am doing something wrong when I care so much about helping others? I give of myself all the time, to everyone and you have the nerve to tell me that’s not OK?

Yup, I am. Giving to others can be an addiction like all other addictions. We have to do it because we have to prove we are not selfish. We want to make sure people know we are “good guys.” Again, feeling love is often twisted up in ways of behaving, in long-held patterns we learned from our family of origin. Well, when is it ok and how do I know the difference?

Answer these questions:

1. Do you feel angry when you are not recognized for doing a good deed?

2. Are there conditions attached to your giving? You owe me. You owe me respect, or love or recognition that I am a good person.

3. Do your loved ones suffer from your giving? OMG, it’s Christmas Eve and I haven’t gotten any gifts for the family. But isn’t toys for tots, and the lions club giving, and the salvation army bell ringing enough for you?

4. Do you have a hard time asking for help when you need it? No, I had surgery, but I am ok. I can pull a dinner party together tonight. Yes, I am homesick. Don’t bother, I don’t need anything. Then inside you wish someone would take care of you without being asked. Mind reading and wishful thinking are common thought errors.

5. Are you angry and bitter because you never get heard? Are you a people pleaser who wants everyone to like you? It’s a tough cycle to break because when you learn new skills and do use your voice, you change the family dance, your partners get pissed and want you to go back to the original steps they find comfortable. Your loved ones might ask, why are you rocking the boat? You are the stable one in this dance. Get back to your old self and stay in step with how we’ve always done our relationships. If you do stay silent, just go with the flow, don’t make your yes your yes and your no your no, over time those issues we didn’t address stay harbored in our souls, sorta like the chicken pox. The varicella virus lays dormant in our spines until we are immunosuppressed and all hell breaks loose. We get Shingles. And, Shingles hurt worse than the original case of Chicken Pox! Get what I mean?

Tips from the Trail™

Here’s the Facetime trick – turn the camera toward yourself and ask yourself in a kind way (more about this in another blog), how often do I say I don’t care, or agree because it isn’t a big deal? For the time being, just notice the pattern. We’ll talk about how this style of showing up in a relationship causes problems over time.
Pick your battles. The thing is you never pick battles in the first place! Many of us avoid confrontation at all costs or in other terms, address boundary violations because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. In turn, we get hurt, and that hurt accumulates leading to relationship discord.
Awareness is the first step in changing up our stories and improving our relationships. The next steps might require seeking support.
Go for a walk and talk with a Trailtalk® therapist and learn how to retool your coping strategies and develop new relationship skills. Trailtalk therapists guide you in reevaluating various parts of your TRUE SELF to gain new competencies and an overall better sense of self. Moving from awareness to renouncing the original family dance and rebuilding new ways of showing up on the dance floor is vital in repairing our broken or damaged relationship.

I hope this helps. Please comment or ask questions if this post resonates with your current journey. Thanks.

Life is daily. Enjoy your moments. Happy trails! Allison

Trailtalk: where Nursing Theory meets Wilderness Therapy

April 23, 2017 by Allison

Florence Night was the ‘Mother of all Nurses.’ Her environmental principles were frowned upon when she started opening the hospital ward windows, and shedding light on the abhorrent care of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. She persevered, collected data to prove her theory, and created what is now known as modern-day nursing. Her nursing theory about the healing powers of fresh air, fresh water, and cleanliness changed the face of health care. Florence’s guiding theories are currently referred to as Mind/Body Integration. So what’s that got to with Trailtalk®?

Trailtalk combines nursing theory with wilderness therapy. We harnesses the healing power of nature, while addressing the unique genetic/biological needs of our clients. We call it Therapylite®. Trailtalk’s holistic approach to emotional care differentiates us from other mental health care counselors. Our Signature Walk and Talks, attend to our client’s physical health, and our tracking outcomes data ensures Trailtalk® is talkin’ the talk and walkin’ the walk.

If you have never sought out emotional care, consider calling us at 435-513-2715, or emailing us at info@trailtalk.com. Better emotional health starts with one step®.

Peace, love, health and hope to you and yours, Allison

You can Run, but you can’t Hide from your Emotions

February 27, 2017 by Allison

Run, Run, Runaway …..

Do you tend to avoid uncomfortable emotions like anger, sadness, or fear? It’s pretty common. Many of us learn to “put on a happy face” and turn those strong emotions off.

The problem is, life is about feeling. And feeling involves a range of emotions.

Love, hate, sorrow, joy and fear are considered universal emotions. Read more here about emotions.

Emotions inform, guide, and engage us in life, and in relationships. Without them, our relationships lack real connection.

Here’s some Tips from the Trail to consider this week:

Do you tend to avoid feeling or showing anger?
Do you feel uncomfortable when someone shows their anger? Many of us “avoid confrontation” at all costs.
What makes you angry? Bad drivers, kids not listening, technology problems, etc?
Try this exercise: Next time you start to feel anger, just notice it and identify where in your body you are feeling it. Many of us feel anger in our guts, around our hearts, or shoulders. Then, name it. ” I feel angry.” Say it out loud. Once we name a feeling, it doesn’t have power over us, we have power of it! Make sense?

Shed light on the emotion by recognizing it, identifying where you feel it in your body, and then calling it what it is.

When we pause and notice, identify, and name our emotions, we can learn to respond to it (our choice) versus react to it (anger choosing for you).

Here’s a sketch showing how we go into automatic reaction mode. Our goal is to respond to our emotions instead of reacting to them. I’ll explain what I mean in the next post.