Let's stop calling people mental health diagnosis'
Let’s stop making mental health diagnosis' people’s identity. It’s inaccurate, degrading and only repeating a negative pattern.
Let’s stop making mental health diagnosis' people’s identity. It’s inaccurate, degrading and only repeating a negative pattern.
A phrase that often gets used is “He or She or They are just a ___________” Narcissist, Borderline, etc. This is a problem for two reasons:
1) COGNITIVE/EMOTIONAL TRAITS AND ORGANIZATION DO NOT EQUAL IDENTITY. THEY EQUAL A COMPLEX MIX OF GENETICS/EPIGENETICS/ENVIRONMENT. TRAITS REVEAL HOW A PERSON HAS COPED AND SURVIVED AND UNCONSCIOUSLY LEARNED TO PROTECT THEMSELVES (HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE). THOSE WAYS GOT USED OVER AND OVER AND BECAME HABIT AND EVENTUALLY PERSONALITY (A WAY OF SAYING AN UNCONSCIOUS AUTOMATIC PATTERN OF REACTING TO STIMULUS).
2) IN MY EXPERIENCE PEOPLE USE THAT LANGUAGE WHEN THEY’VE BEEN HURT BY SOMEONE WHO HAS THOSE KINDS OF TRAITS. IN CONDENSING THEM TO A DIAGNOSIS (THAT THEY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE) THEY ARE RELATING TO THE PERSON IN THE SAME DEHUMANIZING WAY THEY WERE RELATED TO FROM THEM. THIS IS NOT A HIGHER WAY ITS JUST FLIPPING THE SCRIPT, REVERSING ROLES AND CONTINUING THE SAME CONFIGURATION OF A DOMINATE OR BE DOMINATED MENTALITY. IT DOESN’T WORK TOWARDS A BETTER WORLD.
So please, if someone is a hurtful person let’s find ways to NOT continue the pattern of hurting on by calling them a diagnosis.
Are you isolating others and yourself and not knowing it?
Avoiding conflict to avoid pain? Turns out you are just perpetuating it.
When we are uncomfortable/insecure with certain emotions we unconsciously keep ourselves from knowing that we are feeling them. However, they still get communicated. Probably the most common way is what we usually call passive aggressiveness. Another way that’s becoming more common is sometimes called “toxic positivity”. People feel good when they are engaged authentically (albeit respectfully). Lots of reasons cause emotional conflict (e.g. religion, workplace politics, gender pressures, etc.) but they all come down to fear. We feel anxious to know about how we feel because we predict we will feel bad (maybe overwhelmed or guilty or ashamed) and others will have a hurtful reaction to us. If you find yourself always avoiding conflict you may wonder if you really are avoiding bothering people and having a negative effect on your relationships? People organically feel when someone is being honest with them (and themselves). The more people feel passivity in place of genuine emotion the more they feel isolated when with you. This is because they don’t feel resonated with as an emotional person. Over time that creates unconscious reactions to you that will cause people to avoid bringing things up to you. You will cut yourself out of the communication. So, if avoiding conflict is a problem for you maybe some self work is needed so you can give yourself the best chance for connection in the future.
5 tips for helping your kiddo when they blow up or shut down
For years I taught a seminar called “Good Enough Parenting”. Here are a few things I learned from it.
For years I taught a seminar called “Good Enough Parenting”. Here are a few things I learned from it.
check your own attitude and nervous system
Make sure your attitude is not “they are just trying to…” or “they are so ungrateful”. Basically make sure you’re not making it about yourself because if you do you will misunderstand your kids. What they are doing is different than what they are trying to communicate. They are trying to communicate they are overwhelmed by something. Their goal is not to hurt you or disrespect you, their goal is to get your help even if they struggle to accept it.
They need your nervous system to re-balance. You need to be in an emotional place where you can stay reasonably stable so they can be co-regulated by your steadiness. If you need to, take a break (with good communication about why you’re breaking in effort to decrease misunderstanding) before you engage or have someone else engage for you.
Ask yourself if they need to SEE: sleep, eat, exercise
Check the basics. Do they need food or sleep or to get some energy out? Is there something obvious that could be bothering them? No need to make things more complicated if they are simple.
Don’t stand, get to their height
The height difference between you standing and them may be enough to activate a threat response in them increasing an already stressful situation. Getting down to their level helps bring more calm to the situation.
Music & touch
You’re trying to help them rebalance which may really be helped by music or touch. Have a calming playlist made ahead of time (here’s one from Spotify already) you can stealthily put on when the blow up/shut down is simmering.
Ask before you touch. Showing them respect and not talking down by asking if it’s okay to give them a hug or to scratch their back or to pick them up, etc. Allowing them to be in control of their own space. But if you’re allowed, hugging, etc. can be so helpful for co-regulation.
If they’re open to it wrestling might really help to start to re-open them up.
Connect BEFORE you redirect
This comes from Dan Siegel’s work and is huge. Emotionally validate and understand (from their perspective) before you move to correct or change or put in some kind of limit. I can’t stress how important this is. One reason is to do this requires us as parents to slow down in the moment to make emotional space for them. That alone is valuable plus when our children feel understood you’re more than halfway to victory in terms of helping them cope. (BONUS TIP: it doesn't really matter if you or your kids are late. Letting go of the stress to be on time opens up the space needed to tend to what's needed.)
Social situations are the new stalking lions in our lives. How can we survive?
The brain can’t tell the difference between physical threat and emotional threat. It is going react (ie fight/flight/freeze) to both the same. Important takeaways!
The bullets:
The brain reacts the same to emotional threat as to physical threat.
Threat takes us out of the game and majorly decreases our creativity.
Knowing you're in threat is powerful to combating an unnecessary threat response.
There are some steps you can take to help restore peace.
The brain can’t tell the difference between physical threat and emotional threat. It is going react (ie fight/flight/freeze) to both the same.
HOW TO KNOW IF YOU'RE POSSIBLY IN THREAT
Heart speeds up
Sweating Blood will flow to larger areas like your legs to prep you to run away
Hearing negatively effected (less middle frequency)
Ability for eye contact goes down
Ability to think smoothly and reflectively diminishes
Becoming more reactive
Less creativity
Vigilance (noticing every little problem)
Thoughts that see others as a threat (likely in the form of judging people) and yourself as vulnerable (likely in over inflating yourself or under inflating).
2 STEPS TO CONSIDER FOR RESTORING PEACE:
Awareness: notice that you’re in a threat response without judging yourself. This is MASSIVELY different than just being IN a threat response.
Shift from inside focus to outside focus: this comes from Somatic Experiencing. We take 80% of our content in from sight. Using your vision, let your eyes go wherever they want. SLOWLY. You are trying to not think and just notice the outside environment: colors, lighting, textures, objects, details, shapes, etc. Doesn’t matter why you want to look at anything. The point is to shift from the brain focusing on the inside to focusing on the outside. This literally shifts which part of the brain is activated and can give your nervous system a chance to reset. Notice if you spontaneously take a deeper breath or sigh or yawn or want to stretch. It could help to tap your feet while you do this.
Are these feelings shadows or real?
Our brains are prediction machines using the past to predict the future and un-healed past events cloud those predictions and can cause un-adaptive emotions.
Here is this post summarized in three sentences:
Our brains are prediction machines using the past to predict the future and un-healed past events cloud those predictions and can cause un-adaptive emotions.
Slowing down and reflecting using non judgement and lots of self acceptance helps us suss out whether our feelings are adaptive or not.
Working on our past helps our present be clearer.
It’s popular to say that you won’t let fear drive your life. While that’s maybe an important counter balance to living too much in fear or giving away your personal power it’s also a misnomer. The goal shouldn’t be to get rid of any core emotion, instead it should be to slow down when we are sped up and automatic so that we can listen to what we’re feeling (this might take a lot of self acceptance and be alarming to do). That is how we start to be truly adaptive. Remember what we feel is going to be based on both the present moment and your past. So it takes some time to suss out whether your intuition is adaptive emotions to the present moment or out of date feelings from the past being put on the current moment. Our brains are prediction machines. Their job is to efficiently predict what will happen based on the past. When the past is incomplete then we inaccurately predict. So in order to be more present we need to not only slow down we also need to process and complete or re-complete the past. Fear is important, without fear we would be much more vulnerable to being taken advantages of. That said, unnecessary fear keeps us small and under selling ourselves.
So to recap once again in those three sentences:
Our brains are prediction machines using the past to predict the future and un-healed past events cloud those predictions and can cause un-adaptive emotions.
Slowing down and reflecting using non judgement and lots of self acceptance helps us suss out whether our feelings are adaptive or not.
Working on our past helps our present be clearer.