Uncategorized Archives • East Dallas Therapy

How to have tough conversations with your kids

In light of the horrific events at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, we at EDT wanted to offer some help to parents navigating the difficulty of explaining these events to their own children.

1) Give yourself some time to process your own feelings about all this. Some things you may feel:

-Anger
-Fear
-Sadness
-Anxiety
-Overwhelmed
-Gratitude
-Focused

Or any number of other feelings. This is a horrible loss but as a parent, you may catch yourself wondering what if this were my kid? Or how in the world do I explain that to my kid? Or how in the world do I explain to my kid that schools are sometimes really dangerous places while helping them to trust their world and their people?

You may be ready to tell your kid everything or join in family advocacy. What is best to do in times like these?

Spend time journaling, walking outside, gardening or talking to a close friend or a therapist to get your feelings (somewhat) sorted through before you try to talk to your child about all this. It’s ok to process some of your emotions together but it is important to process the rawest of your emotions before you try to help your child process theirs. It’s the old oxygen mask on the airplane situation.

2) Be honest and age appropriate with the information you share with your child or with the info they will overhear.

Be mindful of how you talk about this in front of your children or the media you consume while your children are present. Share with them the facts in developmentally appropriate ways as you are comfortable.

3) Mr. [Fred] Rogers famously said when he was a child and anytime something scary happened on the news, his mother always told him to look for the helpers.

This approach does two things for children: it assures them of safety that even when the scariest things happen there are always kind people who will be there to help. It also teaches kids that when bad things happen if they can find a way to help, they can make things better.

4) Assure your child of their safety in all the ways that you honestly can.

Explain to them all the ways their school is safe. Also let them know that it is ok to feel worried, sad or mad or any number of big feelings and that you have lots of big feelings too. Make a list of all the people who are there to keep them safe and make a list of all the people they can talk to when their big feelings need to come out like:when their big feelings need to come out like:

1. Mom & Dad
2. School Counselor
3. Teacher
4. Coach
5. Faith leader
6. Special family member or grown up friend like a grandparent, neighbor or favorite aunt or uncle.

5) Work together to promote social change and/or comfort for the families who lost loved ones:

Maybe you want to attend a family march or write letters to elected officials together for some kind of social reform in light of recent events. Maybe your kids want to hold a lemonade stand to donate to the funeral homes or medical centers in and near Uvalde, TX.

6) Be gentle and practice gratitude.

In the face of injustice and horrific loss it is hard to be gentle with ourselves but it is what we and our children need most. After a day of dropping your kids off at school (a mundane task that is now much scarier for everyone), working, advocating with government or social agencies, come home and stay present.

Even though it is the end of school and the start of summer you may not want to attend every party or even finish every assignment to the A+ level you usually do. You may want to order dinner from your favorite place (because cooking and clean- up feels like too much and that’s fine) and go for a family walk after dinner or plant some new purple flowers in the backyard just because your kindergartener loves that color and that matters so much more now. Or instead of everyone going to their rooms to watch on their own devices, watch a family favorite all cuddled together on the couch.

Maybe the laundry stays on the stairs instead of going up at bedtime. Maybe you carry your big third grader to bed, which you haven’t done in ages.

Researcher and public advocate Brene Brown said that when she meets with people who have endured great loss she asks them, what do you want from the rest of us? Brown said those people say, “I need to know when you look at your children, you are grateful.”

Anxiety, Depression, Self-Care, Self-doubt, Trauma, Uncategorized

For Us Givers at Heart

Some filtering questions for those of you who are Givers at heart (and maybe sometimes over-functioning) 🙂

Many of us (we therapists know we’re In this category too!) find ourselves giving beyond our means and in ways that are unsustainable. People sometimes take more than they give back. And there is always a need that arises among the people we care about. We can find ourselves running around trying to meet these needs and we can get so tired and drained! We sometimes don’t stop to think if it’s something we want to do or something we can do.

If you relate to this, here are a few questions to ask yourself that might help you filter through these situations. Sometimes you can give sacrificially to others and sometimes you may need to practice saying no to others and saying yes to yourself and your needs.

Sidenote: We believe the end goal in our relationships is to be generous to others in a sustainable way. We aren’t advocating for you to be self focused, but to tend to your needs so that you have more to give to those around you.

So ask yourself these questions:

Is the person asking for your help? Sometimes when we hear about something difficult we want to fix it. But sometimes people don’t need anything from you than just to listen.
Do you have it to give? Do you have the food in the pantry to be able to make someone a meal? Do you have the time to sit and listen to someone without being late something else? Do you have the patience and energy to give to this person without losing patience for those that you know you must give it to (aka your kids or spouse)
Can you give joyfully? Without resentment or bitterness.
Can you give without expecting something in return?

This feels like a sucker punch even as a write this, but when I’ve tried to follow my instincts with how much I can realistically give I end up feeling more rested and centered. Try this out and see how your emotional (and financial and mental) reserves seem to change.

Anxiety, Couples Counseling, Depression, Marriage Counseling, Relationships, Self-doubt, Trauma, Uncategorized

Restoring Trust

If the integrity of your relationship has been violated due to a harmful choice or behavior by either party, there are steps that you can take to restore trust and intimacy within the relationship.

There is no one size fits all approach for handling a trust violation in a relationship, however, there are ways to begin the process of repairing the relationship.

Here are 4 actionable steps that you can take to begin the process of healing:

Step 1:
Take 100% accountability.

Accountability is twofold. Accountability includes (1) acknowledgement of your wrongdoings and (2) not offering excuses to suggest that you couldn’t help doing what you did.

Developing empathy in a relationship is crucial. The most effective way to do so is to imagine yourself in your partner’s shoes. Ask yourself, how did my actions affect my partner’s life? Did my behavior cause damage to their sense of self-worth?

Taking accountability for your mistakes and acknowledging the impact helps you to avoid invalidating your partner’s emotions.

Step 2:
Offering an apology and asking your partner what can be done to rectify the situation and repair the damage.

Create an amends plan or contract to demonstrate your commitment to the relationship. An amends plan is a guide for navigating a breach of trust or betrayal; it generally includes an outline for what changes will be made on a personal and relational level. It will include actions and activities that indirectly restore your partner’s faith and trust in you.

For example, “Allow access to social media passwords, computer, phone, etc.” “Increase quality time with my partner and enjoy a date night every Friday.”

Your amends plan will need to be tailored to your relationship’s specific needs. Including your partner in the creation of the plan helps to show your devotion to your partner’s needs.

Step 3:
Making a promise to not betray your partner in the future and to follow-through with the actions you have promised.

Relationship check-ins at various intervals can help keep you on track and provide you with more of an understanding of what relationship needs are not being met and what promises have not been kept.

Step 4:
Communicating with your partner if you feel you are unable to follow through with promises made.

Increasing communication and vulnerability with your partner promotes emotional connection and intimacy. In order to repair and reconnect, you have to give your partner something to connect to. Secrecy, blame, anger, disengagement, and control do not provide connection points for repairing trust and faith in a relationship.

In seeking to mend a fractured relationship, the willingness to work on the relationship and reconstruct the trust that was broken is crucial.

Anxiety, Depression, Self-Care, Self-doubt, Uncategorized

I’m in a Relationship, With My Emotions

Being a therapist has a lot of perks, one of those being the countless opportunities for introspection. Being able to sit with negative, painful, and intense emotions is a part of the job description. I will shamelessly admit that at one point, this was my Achilles heel. In my early days of therapy, witnessing clients experiencing difficult emotions was uncomfortable for me. My instinct was to “fix it.” I wanted to make it better, make it go away, paint over it with an inspiring phrase or motivational quote, deflect, or better yet, lighten the mood with a good ol’ joke. Not cool.
You see, the problem was that I had an unhealthy relationship with my own emotions. I was unable to tolerate distressing emotions and had in turn developed a number of strategies to avoid dealing with my emotions. This made me less understanding, empathetic, and emotionally available. Choosing to work on my relationship with my emotions has enabled me to better understand myself and others and has improved my capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

When we attempt to avoid, suppress, control, numb, or deny the existence of our emotions, paradoxically, emotional distress is maintained and sometimes intensified. Maybe you have heard the saying, “don’t think about a pink elephant.” Ironic process theory states that deliberate attempts to suppress a thought often lead to an increase in having the thought. So, if you were told to not think about a pink elephant, ironic process theory predicts that you would experience an uptick in the amount of pink elephant related thoughts. This concept can be applied to emotions as well. When we attempt to avoid our emotions, we increase our own suffering. Haruki Murakami once said, “Pain in inevitable, suffering is optional.”

So how do you cultivate a healthier relationship with your emotions? It begins with self-awareness and understanding your responses to negative emotions. By examining your own behaviors and looking out for clues that indicate your relationship with your emotions could use work, you can begin taking steps toward creating an emotionally enriched existence. Here are 2 warning signs that you may be on the outs with your emotions:

Overuse of distraction techniques.

I love a good distraction, but you know what they say, everything in moderation. Being busy can be a great thing, but the ‘why’ for your busyness is important. If you are keeping yourself busy in an attempt to avoid experiencing painful or negative emotions, you may be doing yourself a disservice. You can’t outrun your emotions. Emotional avoidance reinforces that idea that worry, doubt, anxiety, anger, sadness, discomfort, etc. are “dangerous” or “bad,” therefore we must avoid them or run away from them. This belief reduces your ability to tolerate pain associated with many of life’s challenges.

You judge yourself harshly for feeling bad.

Feeling bad is a part of the human experience. You are allowed to have bad days, you are allowed to feel sad, angry, lonely, anxious, rejected, afraid, envious, or whatever emotion is coming up for you. Experiencing a difficult emotion does not make you “weak,” it makes you courageous for being vulnerable enough to own that experience. Growing up, were you told to “suck it up, get over it, man up, quit your crying, stop overreacting, just be happy,” or any version of these phrases? Many of us were, which has proven to be detrimental in adulthood. These phrases can communicate the belief that you shouldn’t feel how you feel and perhaps your feelings are “wrong.” These phrases can lead to an inability to trust your own emotions, believing that they will lead you astray if you give them a voice or acknowledge their existence. You are entitled to your emotions and giving yourself permission to feel your feelings can help to normalize your emotional experience and prevent further pain from self-criticism.

Your relationship with your emotions is similar to any other relationship you have had. It is a relationship that requires kindness, attention, nurturing, curiosity, understanding, awareness, and respect. Improving your relationship with your emotions involves embracing the emotions that come and allowing them to be, which ultimately helps you to develop a capacity to tolerate unpleasant life experiences.

Anxiety, Kids Mental Health, Parenting, Self-Care, Uncategorized

Cleaning Out Our Emotional Backpacks

Have you ever let your kid’s backpack go too long without being cleaned out? It’s like the creature from the black lagoon’s habitat in there! There’s no telling what you may find but you can be pretty sure it will be horrifying.

Kids also need to clean out there emotional backpacks on the regular!

I got caught talking so my teacher wrote my name on the board.
So I stuff embarrassment, anger and injustice (because my friend started the conversation) into my emotional backpack.

I finally figured out that math concept I’ve been faking that I understood for days but couldn’t celebrate because I wanted everyone (including my teacher) to think I already got it.
So I stuff frustration, deferred pride & self-hatred into my emotional backpack.

My best friends were pulled for a special project and I wasn’t so I had to hustle all of recess to find new kids to play with.
So I stuff sadness, loneliness and feelings of inferiority into my emotional backpack.

Some kids like to verbally unpack their emotional backpacks and a feelings chart can be helpful. You can ask which of these feelings did you feel today? Encourage them to list more than one and then say, “It was important enough for you to carry (enter their feeling word here) with you all day & you brought them home. What do they want to say?”

Some kids like to creatively unpack their emotional backpacks. Encourage them to build paint or journal their feelings. A prompt that might help would be, “It sounds like you felt really proud of yourself today but you didn’t get to shine. Can you show me that shine with your markers & glitter or magnet tiles.”
PSA: Playdough is great for cleaning up glitter

Some kids like to physically clean out their emotional backpacks. You can offer the opportunity to write out difficult feelings and tape them to a punching bag, trampoline or bury them in the back yard.

Cleaning out our emotional backpacks should help mitigate meltdowns, sibling squabbles and rigidity after school.
Parents might want to try cleaning out their emotional work bags too!

Anxiety, Kids Mental Health, Self-doubt, Trauma, Uncategorized

I’m Stressed About What Others Think

Sometimes unhealthy relationships give you weird skills. For instance, you may realize you pick up on the tiniest changes in facial expressions. Others don’t even notice, but you’re already registering someone else’s body language and slight variations in tone. You can guess what others are thinking and feeling before they even say a word.

That’s called mindreading, and many people do it. In fact, sometimes people expect you to do it. That’s how you acquired the skill in the first place. Maybe you grew up in a family where direct communication was discouraged. If you didn’t guess what people wanted before they said something, you got in trouble or were accused of not loving them enough to figure it out.

Or maybe you’ve been in a toxic relationship that required a lot of mindreading. You may have gotten used to constantly scanning conversations for warning signs of the next meltdown or blowup. In any case, mindreading helped you avoid danger. You learned to read the cues so you could either step in to prevent something bad from happening or run away from it.

As useful as it is, though, mindreading comes with its own problems. For one thing, accurately guessing what others think 100% of the time is impossible! Spending so much energy on reading between the lines can be exhausting. Plus, the more you try to guess what other people think, the more likely you are to eventually misunderstand them.

While mindreading may have been a useful tool to have in a toxic relationship, it may no longer work as well in other relationships. This is because abusive relationships teach you to expect the negative. For example, if a friend doesn’t reply to your text, you automatically assume the negative – they don’t like you anymore – rather than assuming the positive – they’re just busy and will get back to you later.

When you feel tempted to mindread, it can be helpful to remind yourself:

· Mindreading helped me survive…

· …but it’s an impossible task that puts too much pressure on me.

· It’s not my responsibility to guess what others want/think/feel.

· If others want something, they can clearly communicate their needs to me.

· Instead of stressing and guessing, I can ask others what they think.

Mindreading can happen so automatically you don’t notice when you’re doing it. If you’d like some help figuring out how to let go of stressing over what others think, set up an appointment at eastdallastherapy.com or contact summer@eastdallastherapy.com.

Anxiety, Depression, Self-Care, Uncategorized

Our Nerves Are Fried

Our nerves are fried.

It’s been one of the most challenging years. We have faced a lifetime of ups and downs within the span of a few months. If you are squeezed in any one essential area of life it can feel like your whole foundation has been rocked. These essential areas are what we build our lives on: our financial security, our health, our close relationships, our view of God, our views of the world. They have been flipped on their heads during the pandemic.

And now we’re facing a second or third wave of COVID. Which brings a second or third wave of fear, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, outrage at our politics, and uncertainty about our future.
We’re all feeling it.

Even in the middle of the fear though, we have to remember we’ve been here before. We learned some things the first time. If we hadn’t learned to cope with this the first time, we would still be curled up in a ball on the floor. Maybe we did curl up in a ball for a bit. But we figured out how to get back up.

So I wonder, what helped you get back up? What fear did you learn to soothe? What white hot anxiety did you learn to abate? Remembering that can help you this time.

I think it has something to do with bringing your attention to what you can control. For me it’s this belief: If my family, my kids, my garden, and my dog are here with me, I’m ok. I can be ok when the world is not ok.

I can be ok when the world is not ok.

It could be this:
Other’s judgements and opinions have nothing to do with me. I don’t have to doubt my decisions because someone else does.

I don’t have to doubt my decisions just because someone else does.

Parenting, Self-Care, Uncategorized

5 Tips for Talking to Your Child about their Differences

You (& your child) get to decide how and when to share your child’s diagnosis and details related to their functioning with people even when they ask. Being curious doesn’t entitle someone to an answer. It can be helpful to have a planned response for such times, such as: “ Thanks for being concerned/interested in (child’s name). We choose not to discuss that with you right now.”

1. Have an “elevator pitch answer” ready to go.

Sometimes people will ask about your child’s difference and you may want a quick way to explain it. Think of this like the elevator pitch that salespeople learn. They have a speech where they can pitch their product in the time it takes the elevator to get them to their floor. I have Cerebral Palsy and my elevator speech to a curious adult is, “Thanks for asking. My diagnosis is Cerebral Palsy. It is a neurological problem caused by premature birth and it affects my balance and the tightness of the muscles in my legs.” I also explain this to kids a lot, in the playroom at work and in public places like the grocery store. I usually say something like this, “ You’re really paying attention! You noticed that I walk differently from other people. I have Cerebral Palsy, that means that my brain which is like a big computer has a little difference. Instead of telling my muscles to work like most people’s do, my brain tells my muscles to be tight all the time and my body is always a little off balance.”

2. Look to your child to see how much is appropriate to share.

If your child is able, discuss with them how and when they want to discuss their difference with friends, classmates, etc. If they are unable to communicate verbally, pay attention to the ways they do communicate with you to gauge their awareness and level of comfort with these conversations and adjust accordingly.

3. Sometimes it’s helpful to officially share about your child’s differences

For some families, it feels most helpful to have the child address their class at the beginning of the school year and explain their difference so that they can have some more control over how their difference is understood.

4. This isn’t the end all be all, you can adjust the way you communicate at each developmental stage.

These conversations will need to be tweaked over time as your child grows both developmentally and socially. Sometimes different people or situations will require different conversations. Be willing to shape and change your explanations, as it feels right to you, your child and your family. Trust yourself and your child when navigating these situations. Also, be patient with yourself and your child. These conversations may bring up difficult feelings or painful interactions.

5. Remember to prioritize self-care!

Having conversations where you or your kid explain their difference can be difficult but even when they are good conversations they can still leave you feeling depleted. Self-care is important. This could be journaling, going for a run or making time to talk to trusted friends. Your child also needs self-care during this time. It can be time alone doing a favorite activity or engaging with family or friends to play or talk through their feelings.

Book an appointment with Kate Miller, LPC

Uncategorized

Parenting in a Pandemic

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These are unprecedented times. As soon as we seem to have a handle on things: business, entertainment venues and places of worship are opening up again, COVID numbers spike, there are more closures and most school districts have delayed the beginning of school in person to after Labor day. Living with the threat of a dangerous illness, wearing masks everywhere we go and having no one including– the government and the healthcare community– knows when the pandemic will come to an end.

Everyone agrees that quantity time spending time with your kids is important and valuable, but it is way more challenging when this quantity time goes on and on! These days families feel on top of one another all the time especially since parents are working remotely and for kids summer camp and family vacations have been cancelled this year. On top of all of these disappointing cancellations, there’s distance from important family and friends, financial difficulties and fear of illness that feels immanent.

Both parents and kids are carrying around a lot of extra stress these days. It is easy to become irritable or overwhelmed (sometimes without even knowing why) and self-care for adults and kids is more important than ever. Here are some self-care practices that may help your family function better during COVID-19.

Create a new structure

It can feel great to take a Saturday and sleep in, have everyone wear their pajamas all day, watch movies all day and get mark absolutely nothing off your to-do list. But now that we are all home together much more often it can be helpful to have a schedule including meal (& snack) times, getting dressed, work and educational time, do chores, time for physical exercise, time to intentionally connect with your partner and your kids (even though you’re home together all the time, date nights, one on one time, focused family time still need to be a priority you can all count on), engaging in spiritual practices and a consistent bedtime, for kids and grown-ups

2. Be flexible

Schedules are important to help everyone feel secure, but life in a pandemic is unpredictable. Flexibility is required and parenting guilt isn’t helpful for anyone. You may work hard to limit your kids’ screen time and encourage indoor and outdoor play but maybe you have a day full of important zoom meetings and the only way you can guarantee your kids will stay occupied and won’t interrupt your meeting with questions like, “Where is my light saber?” or “Can I use the paints now?” is letting your kids have ongoing access to the iPad. Life is about balance. Sometimes you make a healthy dinner and your kids eat every bite and other times you order pizza and call it a day. The same will be true with your kids some days they might be eager to learn or excited to help fold the laundry. Other days they might beg for more screen time all day long or melt down when you ask them to do something as simple as putting their plate in the sink. Sometimes it’s best to set firm limits and other times you just need to read them a bedtime story and try again tomorrow.

3. Voice your feelings (and take others’ feelings seriously)

Of course, there are the big things like the family vacation to Disney is cancelled or the family reunion is put off until the Fall, are big disappointments. Make sure you are aware of your own feelings about these losses: anxiety, sadness, frustration, irritation or maybe even relief. Just like you can feel lots of different things at once so can your kids. Make time to process your own feelings. Help your kids identify their own feelings and express them in a healthy way. An example might be: Using a feelings chart to help kids identify their feelings and then letting them express their feelings by drawing or releasing pent up frustration on the trampoline in the backyard. The earlier you can tackle your (& your child’s feelings) the better, stuffing feelings leads to emotional complications. If things feel out of control often or if your child seems to be regressing, it may be time to consider therapy either in person or with telehealth.

4. Find ways to stay connected with important people outside of your family

It is a loss to not have the summer to spend with friends and extended family members. For some families it helps to have regular FaceTime dates with grandma and grandpa or having the neighbors over while maintaining social distance with each family playing on their own driveway or sending fun care packages to the cousins every few weeks.

4. Look for new things to celebrate and new ways to relax

Before COVID you may have looked forward to a weekly date night with your spouse but pandemic date night may be date night in once or twice a week. Instead of going out to dinner or to the movies you could order in new foods or cook family favorites together. Also, you could introduce your kids to your favorite childhood movies this summer. Maybe instead of spending one on one time with your son while your daughter has her weekly ballet lessons you can take a walk around the neighborhood or take him to Sonic for slushies once a week.

Parenting during a pandemic is incredibly challenging, but it can become a time when your family grows even closer to one another. If you are intentional, flexible, attentive and creative your family will grow individually and as a unit.

Escape to the Present- Mindfulness and Nature

There is something that draws us into the beauty of nature. I like to think of it as surrender to the elements we can’t control- and in the lack of control, there is beauty and peace. It is wild and unpredictable and we are just in it. I think of being in the ocean with water so deep, waves high, and animals swimming beneath our feet. It’s thrilling and yet, it can be the most relaxing and refreshing experience. We spend our time and money getting to these places so we can experience this escape. What if we didn’t have to fly away on vacation to experience this kind of escape and relaxation?

This is where I believe nature can come in to provide rest from our busy lives. If we can routinely (key word) let ourselves experience something purely present, we can calm those physiological symptoms (heart rate, breathing, other stress responses), and we can settle the emotional and mental noise.

There is new research in the mental health community about the healing affects of nature. There are scientists right now testing the affects of soil bacteria in healing allergies and now even depression (article here). We are increasingly drawn away to other worlds through our phones, social media, netflix, etc. None of these are unhealthy in themselves, but they can send us back into that mental loop that we get stuck in sometimes. I call it rumination. It can be a thought pattern of fear, discouragement, overwhelm, or stress. By contrast nature is present. It’s the beautiful now.

I discovered how true this is a years ago when my first daughter was born. I struggled with post pardum depression. I had dark days where my thoughts spiraled into despair and despondency. One day I decided to get outside and work on my backyard. I started digging and planted a small vegetable garden. Since then I have come back again and again to my garden as a respite from my internal world.

My garden is seasonal- it teaches me things change. It has a mind of its own and teaches me patience and peace in what I can’t control. It’s beautiful, which pulls be back into the present every time I see a seed sprout or a flower emerge.

There are so many benefits to my garden, it’s difficult to determine what really helps the most: the exercise, the vitamin D, the distraction, the soil, or the beauty? It was so healing for me in a time in my life when I felt under water. Douglas LaBier Ph.D. wrote an article about this very thing. In nature “…you’re simply present. Conscious in the moment. Observing the flow of your mental and emotional activity; but not being pulled into it. That conscious “now” allows for greater inner calm, clearer judgment, and it enables more focused, creative responses to everyday life.” Dr. LaBier talks about broadening our view by seeing ourselves as connected to the world right around us. Where you can move from self-focused thoughts and feelings to seeing yourself as part of a community of people and within the natural world. To try this practice out, try a mindfulness mediation (click here) then take a walk or try one of these ideas.

Some ideas for engaging with the present world around us:

Plant some seeds
Take a walk (leave your phone at home)
sketch something you see outside
smell the flowers and the freshly cut grass!
Take a drive with the windows down
Try this mindfulness meditation

Morgan Myers, LPC-intern
Supervised by Jessica Taylor, LPC-S

Morgan is a therapist at East Dallas Psychotherapy specializing in mothers with young kids overwhelmed by life, figuring out relationships, and dealing with depression and anxiety. For more about her click here.

Perfectionism in unusual places

by Morgan Myers, LPC-intern

I wondered today, as I was making my lunch, if most of us deep down inside have some perfectionistic tendencies. I’ve never thought of myself as a perfectionist in the classic sense, because I don’t care much about living up to other people’s view of me. But I’m noticing I have very high expectations for myself. While I was making a mediocre chicken salad for lunch today I was thinking, this just isn’t good enough. It’s not creative, I don’t have the ingredients I need, or the energy to make it better. Then I thought, no one is here telling me this isn’t good enough. It was coming from my own desire to do more. It’s a silly example, but I think it illustrates my point. We all want to live up to the vision in our heads. We want to achieve our goals. Or we want to live up to other’s goals for us, and the potential others see in us. I think that’s human nature to want to improve. We want to show ourselves as perfect to others and ourselves. We probably don’t say it so bluntly, but you can find the message of perfectionism in the always and never statements we tell ourselves. I want to ALWAYS be professional, I want to ALWAYS be on time, I NEVER want to make a mistake like this again.

Another example is a client I had a while ago who wanted to be successful as a mother so bad. She spent all her time with her kids, and couldn’t give herself a break. Then she got completely frustrated and exhausted and had to leave for the weekend to recharge. It was all or nothing. She was either a successful mom at home day and night, exhausted or had to feel guilty if she took some time away. She couldn’t see that she could care about her family and herself. She could be a good mom and do things she enjoyed that recharged her.

The ALWAYS and NEVER framework (perfectionism) has a rigid view of self. That rigidity can be crippling. It’s like a bowling alley where the edges of the lane move closer and closer. If you roll the ball in a very straight line, you win! If it falls in the gutter, you lose. It’s a trap.

Maybe it’s time to consider widening the lane. Health comes in a FLEXIBLE view of self. Peace and rest come with it too.

In counseling I like to say people are a constellation of themselves. They aren’t strictly one thing. We can be any one of the stars in the constellation, depending on the day, the mood, the fact that you’re hungry or tired. It can vary depending on the life stage. All of it is you. If we can view ourselves as a constellation, we can loosen the grip on who we think we should be, and just be.

Photo by Eidy Bambang-Sunaryo on Unsplash

If you’d like to explore this more for yourself, begin to notice when you feel those lanes closing in. It might be an ALWAYS or NEVER statement. It might be an area where you keep criticizing yourself.
Slow down.
You can be more than one thing. You can make mistakes. Your constellation will have some contradictions. (For example, fun and serious, prompt but sometimes forgetful, mom
If you have time, draw a constellation. Put at least 20 stars. Label each one with qualities you possess- good and not-so-good. Allow for contradictions. You might begin to notice some themes about who you are. Practice self-compassion and reflection.