Wed, 29 Dec 2021 19:47:04 -0800WeeblyWed, 09 Dec 2015 13:41:35 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/mindfullnessMindfulness is all the rage.  (Yes, there is a joke in there.)  But what is the point and how does it really help?  Recently I was instructed to stop using the term mindfulness and instead, call it ‘Non-Judgmental Awareness.’  While it doesn’t roll swiftly off the tongue, the term is more descriptive of the action.  The point is that we need to be able to create space between our thoughts and feelings and our judgment of our thoughts and feelings.  While many of us are fearful of our feelings, the real culprit is our judgment.  The rub is that if we don’t judge ourselves, we often don’t know what to do with our feelings, and because we never learned how to sit with them, we assume we can’t.  Well, you can.  Emotions come and go relatively quickly if we don’t judge them.  If we judge them, they can grip us for hours, days, even a lifetime.  I don’t mean to make this sound easy because it is probably the hardest task of our lifetime.  But it is very simple.  Seemingly impossible, but simple.  Just watch your judgment, and when you become aware of it, try putting your hand on your heart and give yourself a little warmth instead.  Being human isn’t easy, and it never was, and honestly it probably isn’t supposed to be. As Buddhist teachers like to joke, being present with your feelings will make you feel better.  It will make you feel everything, better.   

]]>Thu, 26 Nov 2015 15:13:46 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/give-thanks-no-thanksAround Thanksgiving we are inundated with evidence that it is beneficial to be grateful.  Now, with emerging brain science, we can even see how appreciation changes our wiring.  I don’t know if we need science to tell us this; Most of us will intuitively agree that, chances are, it is good to be grateful.  Most of us sincerely would like to be grateful.  So why does it sometimes feel so hard?  And why, when we try to feel grateful and come up blank, does it feel even worse?  Bear with me as I try to make this as simple as possible. Ideally, we can all tolerate feeling the good and the not so good in life.  But in order to have this tolerance as adults, we needed support and modeling in our childhoods.  We needed people who let us know it was safe to feel bad things and good things.  This isn’t easy, and many of our parents didn’t get this support when they were young, so the cards weren’t in our favor.  So, if as kids we aren’t supported to have our bad feelings and know they were okay, we end up stuffing them.  We may not know much about these bad feelings, but they have a lot of power over us.  Sometimes we can become sort of flag bearers for these feelings, like, we need to hold on to them for dear life because no one else wanted them.  If we let ourselves feel good things, then somehow we betray the bad.  After all, we were the only ones who had to bear the bad feelings because no one else could.  Flash over to the alternate scenario where we were supported in having our bad feelings; In this case, we know that feeling good will not mean that our bad feelings will be ignored.    So, when we were forced to exist in the land that we had to pretend to feel good, feelings become an either/or scenario.  We feel good OR bad.  When we were more supported, feelings exist in a both/and scenario.  We can feel good AND bad.  So, next time you are hard on yourself for not feeling grateful or thankful or appreciative enough, conjure up that little kid in you that was probably forced to pretend you felt okay when you didn’t.  Give that little kid a hug and tell him or her that it’s okay to feel bad.  Sit with that moment and see what happens.  Eventually, you will find that you can feel good AND bad. 

]]>Fri, 23 Oct 2015 13:07:27 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/just-comeThere is a certain kind of faith that it takes to stay in therapy.  I don’t mean uppercase F Faith, but a willingness to let go of a certain level of control.  Many of us go to therapy in part because we may have had to much of the responsibility to take care of ourselves.  Maybe our parents were stressed out with their own lives, or maybe they were too depressed or anxious or self involved.  As a result, we develop a sense that we need to control things.  If I just do this, that will happen.  Or, if I accomplish all the items on my list, then I can relax.  In therapy this can translate into a feeling that we have to “make use” of every session, and talk about the “right” thing.  We want bang for our buck and we want to feel like we are progressing.  We all wrestle with this urge, even the therapists!  But if you think about it, this sense that we can control it all is probably part of our suffering.  To this urge I say, just keep coming.  Trust the process and let it take over and give your mind a rest.  This is easier said than done, and this is not to say that we shouldn’t care or be aware of how therapy is or is not feeling helpful.  But I do encourage you to bring that issue into the room and let it be something we talk about.  That is one thing you don’t have to be responsible for that on your own.  

]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2015 14:59:09 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/what-is-an-adultI often hear people beat up on themselves about acting or feeling 'like a child.'  Usually this sentiment is followed by something like, 'I'm an adult, I should be passed this kind of thing.'  I get it, I really do.  We are attracted to the fantasy that the passage times means we become adults.  Moreover, we are attracted to the fantasy that being an 'adult' means we no longer feel out of control, bad, angry, pouty, jealous, rejected, rebellious, etc.  Unfortunately, well, you get the gist.  Another way of looking at development is that we have different parts of ourselves.  Some parts get more nurture than others, and those parts grow up faster.  So if we were lucky enough to have parents that could tolerate our sadness and anger then those sad and angry parts of ourselves grow up alongside our loving parts.  If we didn't, then those sad and angry parts of ourselves might get left behind and stay feeling 'childlike.'  In order to grow up, all parts of ourselves need to feel accepted.  This is pretty rare, so that leaves us feeling 'childlike' sometimes.  Or maybe we should just reconceptualize our idea of adulthood to include difficult feelings that still need acceptance. That is one of the goals of therapy.]]>Fri, 05 Jun 2015 13:22:05 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/what-if-there-are-no-wordsWe learn most of what we know about relationships before we can even talk.  In the business, we call this knowledge 'pre-verbal.' Our preverbal experience is pesky because, well, we don't have words for it.  Imagine that your parents were very anxious about having a newborn and every time you cried, they were triggered into a panic attack.  You won't remember this, but your wiring will adapt to take care of that parent, either by cutting off your needs so as to not threaten them, or by not learning to self regulate your emotions because you never got the proper kind of comfort.  Either way, this is pre-verbal experience that leaks into later life and because so habitual that it is like the air we breathe.  Whenever you wonder why you would do something that isn't good for yourself, or something that you rationally wouldn't decide to do,  the stock explanation is that it's preverbal.  We all find ourselves in those situations where we don't understand why we keep doing some self-destructive behavior, or why we can't do the more healthy behaviors we know we should.  Well, the reason we can't figure out why is that it is generally pre-verbal.  And because it feels too hard to figure it out with out verbal brains, we generally opt for explanations like, "I'm just lazy," or "I lack discipline," or "something is just wrong with me."  This is where things really get messy and intractable.  When I hear people say these things, I know we are up against the hard and early stuff.  The hard stuff consists of the stuff we can't remember, the stuff we don't have words for, and the stuff that is too hard to feel.  When you find yourself using these kind of self-blaming phrases, pause for a second and wonder what is going on, and what you might have had to adapt to as a baby in order to survive.  ]]>Wed, 06 May 2015 13:01:15 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/feeling-is-doingAt least a few times a day someone asks me, “What do I do with that?”  This question most commonly occurs at a moment when the person has reached some kind of emotional or intellectual insight.  For instance, maybe something has happened that brought on the realization that the person has always prioritized others over themselves.  Maybe I empathize and say something like a therapist will, “How sad that you never got prioritized.”  Almost guaranteed, that is the moment when the person will say, “But what do I do with that?”  The answer is, you feel it.  Sad, bad, mad, glad, whatever comes up.  If you don’t feel anything about it, then you feel that absence of feeling.  Action will arise through the feeling, but because feeling can be scary, we often want to skip right to action.  The tricky part of this approach is that until our feelings are liberated, all of them, action can be very hard.  If it wasn’t, then therapists would be out of a job.  So, feeling IS doing.  In fact, feeling WITH another person and receiving empathy and comfort is about the most efficient path to changing your action.  

]]>Sun, 22 Feb 2015 16:32:49 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/anger-isnt-the-enemyThe other day I put my Therapist’s Angel hat on again.  I found myself explaining to a friend why his therapist is encouraging him to feel angry.  This seemed  counterintuitive, or at least undesirable to him.  He goes to therapy in order to feel better, and anger is associated with feeling worse.  First off, we are not encouraging you to be angry, we are encouraging you to feel your anger.  The difference here is important.      The first is a state of being, and the second is the flow of existing emotion.  In fact, as therapists, we want to help you feel all of your emotions, not just anger.  Anger often comes first, and serves as a gateway to sadness and loss, and then, luckily, more good feeling.  We all have a fantasy that we can just feel good.  The pharmaceutical industry feeds this fantasy with its sparkly ads for antidepressants.  Anger appears in many different forms, and doesn’t always look like yelling or dramatics.  Often it comes in the form of feeling nothing much, numbness, a turning in your stomach, or a tightness in your chest.  If anger is stuck in the space of numbness or in your physical body, it usually means that you learned somewhere along the way that you had to stuff your anger.  Many of us got the message that our anger was dangerous or unwelcome and we unconsciously learned to absorb it into our self-concept.  In its extreme form, this absorbed anger can be the source of depression and severe self-criticism.  Feeling anger does not mean we are bad, or mean.  It usually just means we are feeling vulnerable or hurt.  I should add that letting ourselves feel our anger doesn’t necessarily mean we have to express our anger.  Sometimes just letting ourselves know we are angry is enough to let the experience flow.  As the anger flows, we create space for the other emotions we would all prefer to feel.

]]>Thu, 19 Feb 2015 14:42:54 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/settle-downRemember when a parent might have said this to you?  "Settle down!" Or if we were lucky, they might have said it without the exclamation point, in a calming hushed tone.  But did someone ever help you settle down?  Many of us might have been told to settle down, but lacked the guidance and comfort to actually settle down.  Perhaps this is why we are currently experiencing a cultural surge of mindfulness meditation and yoga.  We need help settling down.  How did we become so overly alert?  Why did our minds and bodies get so activated?  Obviously there is no one answer to these questions.  But in a general sense, we need a basic feeling of safety that things will be okay.  If we didn't get this "safe feeling" pathway grooved into us when we were young, we are left trying to dig that groove as adults.  What kinds of factors might have made us feel unsafe?  It could have been anything from the more overt issues of poverty, physical abuse or an addicted parent, to the more subtle issues of an anxious-depressed parent, or a self-involved parent who couldn't really respond to our needs.  When we have grown up in these kinds of conditions, our minds and bodies kick in to make sure we feel safe.  It becomes our job to be on high alert.  Later in life we take sleep aids, we anxiously make to-do lists, we develop fears that help us feel in control, all in the often fruitless effort to settle down.  The newsflash here is that we need actual comfort to settle down, and all these strategies we developed aren't actual comforts, they are coping mechanisms for a kind of basic anxiety.  We are never too old to learn how to receive comfort from others and learn to comfort ourselves, but don't get discouraged if you find it harder than you expect.  These are deep and historic grooves.]]>Wed, 18 Feb 2015 13:46:26 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/attention-grabTherapy is weird.  You come in and talk to a stranger about your deepest feelings.  This makes sense to some people because sometimes talking to a stranger feels less vulnerable.  For others, it can feel really bizarre for a while.  Maybe you are the type of person that enjoys keeping the attention on other people so the fact that therapy is a space for you to explore YOU makes you uneasy.  But one of the elegant aspects of therapy is that how we feel in the room tends to mirror how we feel in other aspects of our lives. So when you first start, you might feel like you don't know what to talk about.  You might find yourself making lists of topics.  You might even feel yourself going blank when you come in the room.  None of this is wrong, it just is. Part of the therapy process is helping all of us feel more comfortable with the things that make us uncomfortable.  If you don't like to have the spotlight on you, then therapy can help you explore the underlying discomfort around this.  Sometimes we have an implicit assumption that people won't listen or be interested.  Many of us got the message that taking up space might be burdensome to others. Whatever the root of the discomfort, in order to be in meaningful mutual relationships with others, we need to learn to hold and take in attention.  ]]>Tue, 17 Feb 2015 14:16:23 GMThttp://sgreenebaum.com/therapists-corner/guiltWhat is guilt, anyway?  One thing we know is that it feels crappy.  The worst part of guilt for me is that it obscures any other feeling.  When I feel guilty, I don't feel happy or sad or mad, I just feel guilt.  That is when it occurred to me that that is the purpose of guilt; It ensures we do not feel our emotions.  Knowing what we want and feel is often a lot harder than it should be.  Why is this?   Well, it is probably infinitely complicated, but imagine you are a kid and you want to go out with your friends.  Now imagine that your caregiver is feeling a little down and would like your company.  So, in the guilt free option, your caregiver notices his/her feelings but realizes that it is normal for you to want to be with your friends and says, sure, go ahead.  In the guilt inducing option your caregiver may say something like, "You want to leave me all alone tonight?" or, "Fine, don't worry about me, I'll just be home all by myself."  There you are, faced with feeling like your own desire is going to hurt someone else.  Over time, this takes its toll and we can start to lose touch with what our desire is because we get so worried about taking care of other people.  While it might seem like a viable option to just take care of others, it most often doesn't work out that neatly.  Our disavowed desires come out in other ways that are often not that pleasant.  But that is a subject for another post.  ]]>