Ask a therapist: Beat burnout with a personal retreat

In this Ask a Therapist segment, I cover how planning a personal retreat can help you practice deep self-care.

Personal retreats are something that I really enjoy doing. I aim for at least once a year, to try to take a personal, private retreat. A little mini vacation, just me by myself. I did this last weekend actually, and I was chatting about it with some clients and some friends and had multiple people remark, "Oh, I just feel like I really need that in my life." Or, "I've never thought about doing that." So I thought I’d just share some thoughts on it.

Especially now in the midst of Covid stressors, I think a personal retreat is more valuable than ever.. Just with all the stress we're going through, and our world being so small, and many of us working from home even, and not getting many changes in scenery. So a personal retreat is basically just planning a weekend away for the purpose of being refreshed. That you intentionally take it privately and you intentionally structure your time to be re-creative to you.

We typically talk about the word “recreation, “ as what hobbies we do for fun in our free time, but that word means to be “re-created.” And there's something about play, about creativity, about adventure, and about rest that literally does re-create us. So if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling frazzled, if you're feeling stale... Yeah, I would recommend making time so you can experience being “re-created.”

What I did is just, I found an Airbnb not too far away. There are so many great options around here that you don't even have to drive two hours and you can be in a beautiful place close to nature, a really thoughtful, creative space. So I think knowing yourself, are you a person that you feel more alive and refreshed when you're in nature? Do you really appreciate the aesthetics of a beautifully designed space? What is it that makes you feel alive? And so, yeah, there's a lot of affordable Airbnbs that you can find all of those things.

I know for me, one of the top things I look for is aesthetics of a space. Because that, being in a really beautifully designed space just feeds my sense of creativity and reminds me of the importance of how space influences mood. I think one reason why they talk about cluttered desk, cluttered mind is our physical space really does have a lot to do with how we feel emotionally. And so getting into a space that's bright, natural light, that's clean, that's artistic, that's creative. You can really get an emotional boost, a spiritual boost, creative boost from that. So I find that super helpful, and I just notice that when I'm in spaces like that, I just feel like it's easier to dream. It's easier to think about possibilities. It's easier to be optimistic. So that's something I look for in a personal retreat.

Also being close to nature too, because it’s really peaceful and relaxing on so many levels. There’s research about even walking in the forest for 10 minutes and how it increases serotonin levels and decreases cortisol. Hearing birds, just things that we take for granted, but this stuff literally impacts our physiology. So that's stuff you can consider in a personal retreat, is proximity to nature.

And I think scheduling the time that is for you, what would make you feel at rest? And that can be sleeping in, that can be resting, not having a schedule, maybe watching some movies or something if you want to. But it could also maybe look like maybe not having any screen time, maybe totally unplugging, maybe reading books, or meditating, or journaling, or even creating something that you're working on. Outside of your job, but maybe a creative project, or just getting out and hiking. Using your body, doing yoga, whatever it is. Getting more into your body and less into your head. You want to think about, "How could I structure my time that would bring me rest?"

And then finally, what do you need in your spirituality? What do you need to feel fed, or feel rested spiritually? And incorporating some of that into your time. Maybe some prayer, maybe reading an encouraging book, or listening to music that helps you connect to God, or that you can express your spirituality that way, looking to build that in.

So when we think about just all the parts of ourself, our mind, body, spirit, emotions, looking at crafting a time away that is a little bit something for each part of ourself. I have a friend I was chatting with last week who is a mom, and she was saying she just noticed that her stress level was high. She felt like she was just a little more irritable than normal. She said, "This is not me.,” and she realized she just needed some time away. And she said she came back and felt so much better afterwards.

I know for me, taking time off of work and then just taking that weekend, I think for me, especially, it was just getting to be creative. Just getting to think about other projects or just other things that I'm interested in. And get to exercise that part of my mind, and my spirit, and myself, and take a break from the common scenery that we have every day. It can help just reignite that sense of adventure, that the world is good in spite of all the bad news that we're surrounded with, there's so much hope. There's so much to be optimistic about. We're going to get through this hard time in our history. And I think just sometimes changing the scenery is almost like changing the channel and can really give you a boost.

So consider practicing self-care by taking a personal retreat. Sometimes I think we don't give ourself permission to travel if it's not with friends or some big trip. But there's so much value in traveling even alone, and even going not very far. Even if it's a Airbnb across town, there's a ton of value in that and you're worth it. You're worth putting a little money aside and doing that. You don't have to spend a lot of money, but you're worth investing a little bit of resources to make that happen.

If you try it, reach out to me and tell me how it goes. I would love to hear about it!

Ask a therapist: Understanding triggers

For today’s Ask A Therapist question, I want to share some information about triggers. I think in this season of quarantine, all of us are feeling all the feelings. Right? So many heightened emotions. The emotions we are feeling around Covid and quarantine can really heighten any latent anxieties or triggers from our past.

First, what is a trigger? It’s when an issue in your present is triggering something from your past. In the present moment, you might have a heightened reaction, not necessarily because the present circumstances call for such a reaction, but because you are actually responding to something out of your past, in addition to the present situation. This means that you may have a level 10 reaction to an event that really warrants a level 3 response. Triggers usually catch us off guard a little bit in the moment because we find ourself having a really heightened emotional reaction, and in the moment we might not understand why or have it makes sense.

Basically, this is where being connected to our body, super helpful. Because our body lets us know what's happening for us emotionally. For me, if I'm in a triggered situation (anger is typically an emotion associated with my triggers), I'll notice that I'm feeling really angry, even if the situation might not necessarily warrant anger on the surface. , My body clue me in that I’m being triggered.. My face will get hot, my heart rate will be increased, my breathing will change. As we're tuned into our body, we can be aware if we're having a heightened response. If we are, then it's an opportunity to do what we need to do to apply some emotional first aid in that moment.

I think what can be helpful is, if you're noticing a heightened emotional response, can you take a time out? Can you take a pause? Can you withdraw yourself from that situation for a minute? We know that once the nervous system gets amped up and we are triggered, our brain will be what psychologists refer to as “flooded.” Basically, you have adrenaline, cortisol, stress hormones that are released in your body, and you go into that fight or flight response. That fight or flight response takes over, and then the physiological changes happen in your body. When you’re flooded, the prefrontal cortex, which is the front part of the brain that's in charge of reasoning, decision-making, logic, it literally goes offline. It takes at least 20 minutes to get the prefrontal cortex back online by doing calming things to calm the nervous system down, like deep breathing.

So by removing yourself from the situation, taking a break, and cooling off, you can give your brain the 20+ minutes it needs to return to baseline after being flooded. Literally, taking a pause is important, because in the moment when we're triggered, we're living out of our emotional brain, and so we're not going to be able to make fully logical decisions. Because, literally, the part of our brain that does that is not online at that moment. If you can take a time out, breathe, pause, go for a walk.

If this is happening as an argument with a significant other or a friend, whatever, communicating that you need a break, not because you're checking out or shutting down emotionally, but because you want to actually find a resolution, you want to work this out with that person, but it would be counterproductive to continue doing it when you're in a triggered state. You can communicate that to them, and if it's your partner or a roommate or something, these are good conversations to have in advance of a triggered moment., We can develop in advance a protocol of how we want to respond when we're feeling triggered, basically, so that you guys can work through things in a productive way.

So pause, breathe, help get yourself back online, and then respond to yourself with empathy. This is a big one, is sometimes we can shame ourselves out of our emotional responses. We can feel we're overreacting. We can think that we are unreasonable. We can judge ourselves and just be like, "This shouldn't be a big deal. I should just get over it." Anytime we're using the word “should” in our self talk, that's an indication that we're probably judging ourself. Right? We're probably shaming ourself a little bit.

Instead of shaming, it's more helpful to respond with self compassion and empathy. Allow yourself to have that feeling. Allow yourself to explore it. It's okay. Whatever you're feeling is totally okay. There's a reason for it. Respond to yourself with empathy and explore what those feelings are. In fact, this trigger is helpful, because it’s letting you know there’s pain from the past that still needs your healing and attention to be resolved.

So in the moment, connect to what you feel in your body, and then put an emotion word to it. What is this pressure in my chest? If this could speak, if it could say, "I feel _____," what would it say? Try to name those emotions. Labeling emotions is such a small but massively helpful thing that you can do to really start to get resolution and work through something.

If we don't know what we're feeling, then we're probably going to just feel really overwhelmed. I know I've posted about this a number of times, I just find it such a helpful concept. But, feelings are external indicators of internal needs. Just like the light on the dashboard of your car, the check engine light says, "Oh, something internally that I can't see needs my attention on the inside of vehicle," our emotions, let us know what our internal needs are that we need to respond to.

By naming the emotion, that gives us a clue where we can start figuring out what need is this letting me know? The painful, difficult emotions are letting us know about our needs internally that are unmet, and that causes pain for us. They're meant to help us get that need met and effectively, and when the need is effectively met, then the emotion will easily resolve. But, we have to use self awareness to get the message of those emotions. Otherwise, we're just stuck in that emotional state, or maybe when the feeling dissipates, , but it's still there waiting to come up next time we get triggered.

Pausing, breathing, checking in with yourself, having empathy, exploring your emotions, being your own safe place, not judging yourself, but letting yourself feel whatever you feel is okay, naming that emotion, and then connecting it to that need. As you learn to explore and figure out, because it's not always easy to know what our emotions are signaling about our needs. But that's where I think it's beneficial to sit and take some time to explore that. Journaling, talking it out with a friend, having a therapist. I'm a big fan of using some inventories that lists emotions and needs, where you can literally sit down, name emotions, and connect them to what your needs are. Those are some helpful things that you can do in the moment.

Then, you can come back and re-enter that situation, whether it was a conflict that you were triggered from, or whatever was happening, and you'll have a lot more insight and be able to have a different outcome, because you have a lot more information about what you were responding to.

I hope that's helpful! Let me know if you use any of these strategies and how it goes!

Ask a therapist: How to avoid the motivation trap

For today’s Ask a Therapist question,I just want to share a helpful tip when you're thinking about goal setting or new year’s resolutions. This comes from cognitive behavioral therapy, but it's the idea of the role of motivation when we're trying to create new habits, set new goals and things like that. And you might be familiar with this, but I found it to be really helpful when I started to understand the way that this works. So there's something that researchers call the “motivation trap,” which is the idea that in order to do something new, like create a habit, start working out, start developing a daily writing routine, start eating out less, being healthy, whatever you might be interested in, that we commonly start off the new year with a ton of motivation and we feel excited about it.

But then obviously we hit a point where the motivation lags, and then it's harder to actually follow through on whatever that goal was that we set. And so we typically will put it off and wait until we feel like doing it. And we let the feeling of “not feeling like it,” get in the way of us accomplishing that action. And so there's something researchers call the “motivation trap”, which wrongly assumes that I should feel motivated before I take on a new behavior. And so what research has actually found, is that the feeling of being motivated to do something or being excited about it, typically does not come before we undertake an action, it comes in the middle of the action. So instead of waiting to feel like working out before I do it, the feeling of motivation will come, the research says, more likely halfway through the workout.

So it's a fallacy of thinking to wait to feel motivated to do something before you do it. And so if you want to change your relationship to motivation, instead of waiting to feel motivated to start something, to create a new behavior, you can choose to do it based on what you value, not your feelings.. So that is taking action in accordance with whatever your values are.

So if you say, "I really do have a value of being healthy, I haven't been living up to that value, but I want to." Then I'm going to take action based on what my values are, regardless of how I feel about it. And so hopefully once I get into whatever that action is, the motivation will come partway through you doing the thing. And it's a reward that helps you keep on going to follow through whatever that that goal is.

But it will typically trip us up, if we wait to feel motivated before we try to enact some new behavior. So I'm not an expert at this, this is something I'm working on and growing on, but this is in my mind as I'm thinking about my goals for 2020. And so how can I set myself up for success to make choices and do actions, regardless of if I feel like doing it or not? And hopefully get that extra boost of experiencing motivation after I've already made the choice in line with my values to undertake a new behavior.

So I hope that's helpful. Don't fall into the motivation trap, the myth of being motivated before you start something new. Instead choose to take action based on whatever your values are.

Ask a therapist: To lower anxiety, avoid this at all costs!

Hi, this is Kate with Destiny City Counseling, and just coming to you today with another “Ask a Therapist” question. And today, I just want to address the very common question that I get all the time in therapy, which is people just wanting to know “what can I do to reduce my anxiety?” And so I just wanted to give you a tip on how to lower anxiety. And so this is the number one thing to avoid if you want to lower your anxiety, so that all costs, whatever you do to lower your anxiety: avoid AVOIDING! Avoid “avoidance!”

So avoidance is the fuel for anxiety. Basically, if there's something you're afraid of doing, it's human nature. We don't necessarily want to face that fear. It's not comfortable. And so we'll do whatever we can oftentimes to avoid it. But what we don't realize is that by avoiding something, we are actually empowering that anxiety to grow and to become more powerful in our lives.

And so to give an example, one that I deal with is I don't like going to the dentist. So if I avoid and put off making that appointment for my cleaning, then there's that pressure of, “I know I should make this call. I know I should do it.” But then, I don't want to and I feel fearful, and so if I let myself off the hook and I give myself permission and I say, “well, I'll put it off a couple more weeks, what will that matter?” Immediately, the brain gets a reward. It gets a little hit; the fear of having to face that thing is removed. And so the brain is like, “oh, I feel so much better!” And so what we've just done there is we've reinforced the learning in the brain that says, one, I can't handle that fear and two, avoidance feels good.

And so the brain learns that avoidance feels good and it strengthens that avoidance pathway in the brain. And while that feels good in the short-term, in the long-term, what that does is it actually increases our anxiety because the next time we have to be in that situation where, say now it's two weeks later, and I need to make that call to the dentist, the resistance that I feel to making that call is even more so at this point. The anxiety I feel about doing that thing has been strengthened because I've been actually further entrenching and rewarding that avoidance cycle in my brain. This is how learning gets wired into the brain. The brain gets a hit, a reward anytime we avoid something. And the more you strengthen, they say neurons that fire together, wire together. So when I fire brain cells of avoidance, I'm also lighting up my reward circuits in the brain. And so those two things become very connected.

So in order to break the pattern of avoidance, we have to actually face the thing that we're afraid of. And what we're doing there is we're facing that fear and we are trying to wire our brain with qualities of resilience, of being able to be in uncomfortable situations and to handle it. And that's the neural connections that we want to strengthen. So unfortunately, with anxiety there's no easy way out. Anytime we're dealing with anxiety, almost always the treatment plan is going to have to involve facing that thing that we're afraid of. That's the sucky news about it. But basically, by avoiding avoidance, we will disempower anxiety and start to deconstruct it so it doesn't have a hold on us.

And when we put yourself in an anxious situation, you're putting yourself in a new situation to basically learn that, “oh, you know what? This isn't as bad as I thought. I actually can handle this. I'm actually more resilient than I imagined that I was. I have the ability to handle uncomfortable situations.” And then, more learning occurs in the brain and your brain learns you don’t have to be afraid of thing because you are up to the challenge.

So this is how anxiety is deconstructed over time. So, yeah, there you have it. Avoid avoidance. So next time there's something that you're feeling anxious about, when you feel that temptation to avoid, try to remember that by avoiding, you're feeding a protein shake to that anxiety. You're pumping it up. And instead, you want to let that thing wither and you want to feed your resilience and your ability to tackle that thing. So just do it.

One of my favorite productivity hacks is you guys might've heard a quote by Mark Twain to the effect that if you know on your to do list that day you're going to have to eat a living bullfrog, you're not going to be able to think of anything else until you do it. It's so uncomfortable a task. You might as well get it out of the way first because you're just going to be living in dread oven until you do. So with anxiety, it's kind of that idea of eat the frog, just go for it and get it out of the way, and start strengthening those resilience circuits.

So, I hope that's helpful. Feel free to leave any questions in the comments or message me, and would love to share any helpful tips that I can. And I hope you guys have a great week.

Ask a Therapist: You are not the problem

This is Kate with Destiny City Counseling. And just coming to you for my first “Ask a Therapist” video. So the first question that I wanted to address is just a really common one that I get in counseling all the time. And that's just people coming in wanting to know what can I do to break out of the cycle of anxiety or depression. And so today I just wanted to share one of my favorite mindset shifts that I think can help with not only those issues, but a lot of other things that plague us in mental health and emotional health and stuff like that. And that is just the understanding that you are not the problem, the problem is the problem.

So I think what can often happen when we're dealing with anxiety or depression, especially for a long period of time, is that we can begin to feel like we identify with that thing. "I am depressed, I'm a depressed person, I'm a negative person, I'm an anxious person." And we take on that thing as our identity. And the problem with this kind of thinking is that it fuses us to the problem and it invites shame in and basically we start to see ourselves as the problem. And when you do that, you have boxed yourself out of a lot of the solutions. Because if I'm the problem, then it follows to think that I can only change a certain degree. “Well, I'm just a depressed person. Well, it's just who I am. So I'm always going to struggle with depression. Well, I'm just really anxious. I've always been that way. It's just my personality type.” So you see how that thinking locks you in to whatever the problem is. And you feel a sense of shame about who you are because on an identity level you've agreed with whatever that thing is that you'd like to change.

So alternatively, the way that we can think about it is, I am not the problem, the problem is the problem. Meaning, “I am not a depressed person. I'm a person that struggles with depression. I am not a negative person. I'm a person that has become accustomed to negative mindsets, but I can change that. I am not an anxious person, I'm a person that struggles with anxiety and I'm learning how to overcome it.” So just by changing, it might seem like semantics, changing the language, but language is really powerful. The words that we use in the way... What we think internally, our thoughts, really has an effect on how we see ourself and if we're tapped into a sense of hope. Basically when you're working on changing something, you want to become best friends with hope, and you want to become best friends with empowerment, and you want to tap into mindsets where you believe you can change.

What’s so great, is that in the field of psychology, we’re learing so much about “neuroplasticity,” meaning “neuro”= brain, and “plastic” = moldable, changeable. Psychology just continues to come with more and more research about how we can change the brain, we can change our thoughts. So there's always hope. There's always the ability to change. You are not the problem, the problem is the problem.

You can point your efforts towards what in this equation can I change? What do I have control over? I'm not fusing with whatever that negative thing is. Seeing it as this external thing that you're fighting and you're working to change, but not identifying with it as a sense of self or sense of identity.

Who you are is good and wonderful, and you're learning just to make those changes so that you're not dealing with what you've had to deal with before. So I hope that helps guys. Let me know what other questions you'd like in the comments. Love to answer some in the future.

Hello! Nice to meet you!

Hello, my name is Kate Hagborg and I'm a counselor with Destiny City Counseling in Tacoma, Washington. I'm a licensed professional counselor and I work with women who are ready to get unstuck and start loving their life. I have a passion in working with women to help address dysfunctional patterns that people have just can't quite seem to break free of and they're looking to get more insight, looking for a breakthrough, looking to heal from whatever trauma from the past that might be keeping them stuck in a place that they don't want to be anymore. I help women take things to the next level in their relationships, in their self esteem, in their career, in their spirituality, and in their creativity.

As you can see in the video, I'm wearing my Tacoma sweater today, my all-time favorite sweater. I practically live in it. I absolutely love Tacoma and the name Destiny City Counseling is named after the nickname for Tacoma, and I just love that the Tacoma is known as the “City of Destiny.” And I wanted to take the idea of that into my practice because it's my absolute passion. I love helping women identify what's been keeping them stuck in the past, in the dysfunction, and the hurt and the pain; get healing at the source of that. But then, to help them look forward and ask “what does the next chapter of my story look like? What is my destiny? What does hope look like for me and all of these other areas?” So I love doing that work of both the healing side of things, but then also looking ahead and helping people find their destiny, what they're born for, why they're alive on this planet. Nothing gives me more joy than to walk alongside that journey with people.

And I think for me, this work is just an extension of a lot of the healing and breakthrough and transformation that I feel fortunate to have experienced in my life through a variety of kind of modes of healing. Counseling is one way of healing that has brought profound change in my life, and gave me a new hope and a new lease on life basically. And so it's my joy to get to walk along other people and help be a part of that change process for them too.

So I'm going to start doing some weekly video session like this called “Ask a Therapist.” So I want to know, do you have any questions that you would like to ask a therapist? It could be about relationships, anxiety, depression, codependency, spiritual burnout; basically, any emotional, relational health, psychological health. And I'd love to try to address some of that and maybe give you some resources or some things to think about. So feel free to post in the comments or send me a message on Facebook or on Instagram of any questions that you want me to address and I'd be happy to share on those things.

Depression as a message that your spiritual life needs an upgrade

This is our final blog in the series "What is your depression trying to tell you?” and today we look at the ramifications that our spiritual beliefs have on our everyday emotions, behaviors, and relationships. Spirituality will probably not be part of the equation for what is causing every person’s depression symptoms, but for some it may be a contributing factor. It was in my case.

Spiritual author AW Tozer said, “What comes into your mind when you think about God [insert: the Universe, Your Higher Power, etc] is the most important thing about you.”

For me, I realized in my twenties that what came into my mind when I thought about God was a picture of a disappointed boss. I had the feeling of being graded harshly, like someone getting a performance review, and like I just wasn’t measuring up. I could never do enough. After all, I thought, if God is perfect, how could I ever please him? I felt like I was on a never-ending treadmill of perfectionism and performance—and not just in my spiritual life, but this mindset had bled over into my work, my relationships, and the way I saw myself.

This led to a feeling of defeat and futility in my everyday life. I felt like a disappointment to God and a disappointment to myself and others. For me, this was a major source of my depression. My spirituality was in desperate need for an upgrade.

The way we see the Universe and relate to our Higher Power is massively connected to how we feel about ourselves, how we perceive others see us, how we decide how to spend our time, what career we go into, etc. If we believe that God is harsh, we will feel the constant weight of divine disapproval. We can develop a lens that God is like this if we grow up with harsh parents, comes from a religious system that emphasizes performance or earning God’s love through religious transactions, or many other reasons.

If we believe that God doesn’t care about us, or there is no Higher Power or source of Divine Love in the Universe to help us, protect us, or guide us, we may experience fear, anxiety, or the feeling that we have to fend for ourselves. Internally there may be a pressure because we truly believe we are totally on our own, having to be the one to make sure that everything works out, never able to take a break, having to always be on guard. Perhaps we came to see God like this because maybe we really were on our own in our childhood, had absent parents (emotionally or literally), or developed a worldview where God either doesn’t exist, or even worse—just isn’t that interested in us.

Many people have the belief that God is angry at them. They think they are bad, dirty, sinful, or just plain wrong at the core of their being somehow. If we believe that deep down we are bad and God despises us for being who we are, this can absolutely lead to feelings of depression. Where do we get this message? Perhaps as children we were abused or hurt by those who should have protected and nurtured us. Perhaps we come from a religious system that spewed messages of hate instead of Unconditional Love. Perhaps there was an unhealthy emphasis on sin to the neglect of the truth that in fact we are all children of God, worthy of love and infinitely valuable.

For me, counseling helped me to uncover the filter I had developed that warped how I saw God and in turn how that was contributing to my depression. With my counselor, we sorted out what I believed about God and myself deep down, where these beliefs had come from, and we examined them to see what the fruit of those beliefs was. From that vantage point, I was able to see areas I had been confused and where things got distorted I was then able to start shedding those things and embracing Truth and Love. And man, did that feel good!!

My feelings of depression, as painful as they were at the time, were giving me a much needed message that I had outgrown my old view of God and it was time for an upgrade. It was time to break up with old lies about God that kept me feeling small, exhausted, and never good enough. Through this healing process I got to trade all that in for an upgrade in knowing God as the source of Unconditional Love. Everything in my life got so much easier to handle when I realized that my Higher Power is actually full of kindness, is easy to please, is extremely encouraging towards me, and is near to me to bring help and comfort 24/7. I came into awareness that there is so much Hope available in the Universe and there’s something bigger than me out there taking me lovingly by the hand and walking me into healing and freedom.

It is my deep conviction that every single person is made in the image of Divine Love. We are all children of God. We are all insanely, crazily, off the charts loved and valued by a good God. We are not alone in a cold Universe.—we are being helped. Hope is real. Goodness is real. Love is out there helping you. Guiding you. Providing for you. Working things out for good for you. And you don’t have to earn it. And it’s not about religion or “being good.” This is for everyone.

To me, this is absolutely foundational in my work with clients even if we never directly address spirituality, and in many cases we don’t. But my core belief for every person i work with is that Unconditional Love is real and active in this person’s life, and helping each of us find healing, freedom, peace and joy. And so I have full permission to hope for all the goodness and breakthrough and healing in the world with every person i work with, and my goal is help them realize that they have this permission to hope for these things too.

If you’d like to upgrade your spirituality, to explore how this may be a part of what you are experiencing emotionally, in your relationships, in your job, or your self-image, give me a call. I’d love to work together and see if counseling can help you connect Love and Peace in a deeper way.

Depression as a message that your hope tank needs a refill

Continuing with our series about the messages our emotions give us, today we are looking at depression as a message that we are in desperate need of refill of hope. Hope is such a vital substance for wellness, and there is so much we could explore on this topic. For today, I just want to hit on a couple ideas:

1. Firstly, locating the places in our life where we feel an absence of hope shows us the places where we are feeling powerless and in need of emotional first aid.

2. And second, once we are aware of these deficits, there are some things we can do to proactively feed our hope so it will grow over time.

What is hope? Dictionary.com defines it as “the feeling that what is wanted can be had,” or “to look forward with desire and reasonable confidence.” True hope is stronger than maybe. True hope has an expectation that what you expect in theory you will experience in reality. Hope is oriented from the present to the future. It is a forward-looking feeling of encouragement that things will not always be as they are now, but an assurance that you have permission to expect something new.

When we are depressed, we have often been driven to a place where our hope has eroded over time. Instead of living with an excitement about the future, we experience dread about what’s to come because we anticipate it will be more of the same. We feel so weighed down by the pain of the past, it’s become too difficult to imagine anything new. In this place, the idea of hope can seem like nothing more than wishful thinking.

When we are feeling hopeless, we often feel like a victim. We feel disempowered and unable to change things. This is the ultimate feeling of powerlessness, like life is happening to us and there’s nothing we can do about it. This powerlessness feeds our depression.

So what are we to do? The first step to healing and a revival of hope is becoming aware of the parts of our lives under the influence of hopelessness. In these places you are sure to find likely what feels like a fountain of pain. Are you dealing with disappointment that this chronic sickness might never go away? Grief about the passing of a parent? Bitterness from the betrayal of a friend? Blinding pain from years of buried feelings of self-hatred?

It’s important to explore these feelings and find the source. This requires courage. Maybe we are so used to burying painful feelings like this we don’t even know how to know where this is coming from. This is where working with a therapist can be especially useful to have someone to ask questions, hold space for your story, and gently help you locate these entry points in our stories where pain led to a breaking place of hope.

Once we find those places, the task before us to actually feel that pain, not run and hide from it. Really feel it. Allow it to exist. Validate it. This will help us begin to heal. Empathy and compassion (from both self and others) are the ointment and bandages in our emotional first-aid kit. The symptoms of depression can be the screaming signals from the nerve endings meant to lead you to the injury—”Here’s the wound! Help needed here!”

As we allow ourselves to feel our pain and validate that it’s real, we can start to understand how that pain began to warp our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Spiritual teacher Bill Johnson often says, “Any area of my life for which I have no hope is under the influence of a lie.” These lies are the vultures that feast on our pain and siphon off our hope. Lies like:

• “I’m too fat, no one could possibly love me.”

• “I’m so needy, I will always drain people and drive them away.”

• “I’m so stupid, I never have any good ideas, I should stay quiet.”

• “Everyone close to me always leaves me, I’ll always be alone.”

• “The best years of my life are behind me, it’s too late, why bother dreaming anymore?”

First you address the emotional wound, then you break-up with the lies that have been holding you hostage far too long. Through this process, we can gradually introduce ourselves to the truths that become our pipelines for hope:

• “I’m worthy of love.”

• “I’m enough.”

• “I was made to belong.”

• “I can trust again.”

• “Who I am inside and out is beautiful.”

In places where lies have been wreaking havoc for a long time, the truth is going to feel unfamiliar. But with past pain addressed and healed, we can absolutely change our mindsets and internal beliefs and becoming intimate partners with truth in these parts of our lives. And crazy enough, feeling hopeful will actually begin to attract into your life the positive experiences and relationships to start backing these new beliefs up. The process unfolds and now you have a positive feedback loop, gaining steam and feeding hope in your life.

So let’s take this into the practical—what are some things you can do to start refilling the hope tank in your life?

• Allow yourself to get honest about the places in your life where you feel hopeless. Pull out your journal and let yourself explore what you are feeling and why. Follow the feelings of sadness, disappointment, anger, resentment, etc. to their source.

• Let yourself feel. Cry, scream, rage—whatever you are holding in your body that needs to be expressed. Allow it to exist. Feel it, and validate those feelings as being okay.

• Open up to another human. Find someone safe—your friend, your therapist, your spiritual leader, and share your story. “What has been wounded in relationship, heals in relationship.” Whoever you share with, find someone who loves you and can give you the empathy and compassion you need to help you heal. This can be immensely freeing.

• Ask yourself, “What lies did I come to believe because of this pain?” It can be helpful to journal these out or talk with a friend. What are the lies about how you are seeing yourself? Other people? The world? Your future? Tapping into your intuition and/or your spiritual higher power is very helpful for this. Invite Love and Truth to come and guide you in this.

• Continue the conversation with Love and Truth and ask, “What is actually the truth in my situation?” Have a friend tell you what she sees in you: that you are beautiful, worthy of love, that you are more than enough. If you are a spiritual person, allow God, who is Unconditional Love, to cover you in love and speak these good things about who you really are over you. You can also work with a therapist to explore what the truth is in these areas and start applying that to your life.

• Be on the lookout for signs and circumstances in your life that point to hope. Be a detective for what in life is going well. Then take time to write it down, take a mental picture, or say a prayer of gratitude for it. Even the smallest things—a text from a friend, a moment of beauty in a sunset, a blue bird landing close to you almost like a friend, a random memory crossing your mind of a time you overcame something hard—pick up these as clues for hope and encouragement, see how many you can start to collect if you are looking for them.

• Feed on stories of hope from friends or whatever you can find online. Be discerning of the sources of information you are consuming. The news is really great at reminding us of everything we have to fear and be discouraged about in the world, and sometimes we need to turn that off. Take time to intentionally take in stories of hope, overcoming, goodness, beauty, and love in the world. Have coffee with a friend and share stories about times you have overcome pain, things you’ve come through that way back when you weren’t sure if you could. Feed off hope in the lives of those around you.

• Finally, I highly recommend journalling a lot about the idea, “what would my life be like if I was not depressed?” Especially when we have been dealing with depression or disappointment for a long time, we forget to ask the question, what do I want instead? Put energy into imagining how it will feel to experience joy—in your body, in your relationships, in an average day. You can even journal about an entire day, from waking up to going to bed, where you feel joyful and hopeful. What’s different? Hope do you feel in your physical body? What is your routine like? What’s it like to be full of hope at work? How do you enjoy your kids when you feel this way? Maybe notice who or what is not present in this exercise—habits or people you have let go of that makes room for more joy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when in comes to hope—there’s so much more richness to be explored in these things. If you’d like to delve deeper, give me a call to see how therapy can set the stage for you to make these kinds of shifts in your own life.

Depression as a message that your relationships are disconnected

In this series, we have been exploring how our emotions are messengers, giving us vital information on whether our internal needs are being met or not. Instead of negative feelings being enemies to conquer, we are learning to approach our emotions as friends trying to help us address the root of the problem internally. So let’s not shoot the messenger!! Tuning into our feelings instead of shutting them down is the path to thriving.

Today we are examining depression as a message that our relationships are disconnected. As humans, we are literally hard-wired for connection and belonging. Having healthy, meaningful relationships in our lives is not a “nice to have” option in our lives—it’s absolutely essential for mental, emotional and even physical health. Consider this evidence compiled by slate.com:

• “The increased mortality risk [of loneliness] is comparable to that from smoking. And loneliness is about twice as dangerous as obesity.”

• “Social isolation impairs immune function and boosts inflammation, which can lead to arthritis, type II diabetes, and heart disease. Loneliness is breaking our hearts, but as a culture we rarely talk about it.”

• “All of our Internet interactions aren’t helping and may be making loneliness worse. A recent study of Facebook users found that the amount of time you spend on the social network is inversely related to how happy you feel throughout the day.”

If you are feeling depressed, take a look at your relationships. How would you characterize the close relationships in your life—are they supportive and encouraging; or distant and full of drama? Are your people accessible when you need someone to talk to, or want someone to laugh and share life with? Or maybe do you find yourself drifting apart from old relationships, no longer able to find time to connect with once-close friends? When you are hanging out with the close people in your life, do they know the real you beneath the cleaned up exterior—the you that is messy and raw and full of imperfections? Or do the people in your life only interact with your carefully curated self, the part of you that you spiff up like a filtered Instagram photo?

It’s been said that you can define intimacy as “into me you see.” Real intimacy happens when the walls come down and we crack open the door and let others glimpse inside the rooms of our heart. I think the strongest human desire in existence is the desire to be loved, truly and deeply, exactly as we are. True human connection means I am fully known and fully loved for who I truly am. But if I don’t let anyone see the real me, all the messiness included, then how can I experience real love? If I am censoring the version of myself you see, whatever affection I feel coming back at me is going to fall flat and feel hollow.

When you are assessing the health of your relationships, to truly thrive, you must have at least a few close friends who know The Real You. Unfiltered. The good, the bad and the ugly. Because this is where it gets good—when we relate to one another as our true, authentic selves, this is where genuine love and acceptance flows into our life and produces joy. It can produce pain too—that’s why Brene Brown equates this vulnerability to the essence of courage. But the joy far outweighs the potential for hurt. All the things we really want in life and packaged up in these kinds of relationships.

It’s what you were made for. And it’s essential to be truly happy and healthy in life.

As a 20- or 30-something, figuring out how to make friends post-college can be a difficult code to crack, especially if you find yourself relocating to a new city or transitioning into a stage of life that makes it harder to get out socially (like becoming a new mom). So if you’ve found it challenging to make friends in your adult life, you’re not alone.

And honest relationships like these are scary for all of us. None of us have been spared from the pain of betrayal, disappointment, or loss when it comes to the world of relationships. Emotional vulnerability takes guts. And it’s virtually a guarantee that you will get hurt at least a little bit in the process.

But there’s hope—it can be done, and it’s worth it. There are so many people just like yourself wanting the same kind of connection that you are wanting. It’s my belief that as we put ourselves out there with the intention to get vulnerable and really create meaningful connections with others, you will find that Life wants to help you do just that. There’s a force of goodness in the world working with you on this one, helping you. So don’t give up.

In the next post, we will follow this up and explore some practical ways to make friends in your 20’s and 30’s, and also some ways to deepen the relationships you already have in your life.

Therapy itself is a relationship that is created for you to practice the brave work of vulnerability and authentic connection. It has been said “what has been hurt through relationship must be healed through relationship.” Counseling can be a safe place to work through issues of recurring relational dysfunction, fears of intimacy, or grief from relationships ended. Call today if you’re looking for a safe place to explore these things in your own life.

depression as a message that your heart is wounded

Today we are revisiting our series, “what is your depression trying to tell you?” in which we delve into understanding our emotions as messengers helping us interpret our unmet needs. Emotions (even the painful ones) are friends, not foes, trying to give us vital information about our internal world so we can fix issues at their source and thrive again.

Let’s explore one message that depression may be trying to get you to hear: that your heart is wounded. There’s great book about dealing with painful emotions called “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die” by Karol K Truman. Wow, that title paints a mental picture, huh? The truth is that we can’t outrun pain; we cannot stuff it in the closet and close the door and hope it disappears. The hard truth is that buried pain will be there waiting for us until we are ready to deal with. But if you stuff enough of it, it might start to pop up in your life in uninvited ways and crash your party. This stuffed pain may show up in the form of depression, chronic illness, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, low grade anxiety, or physical ailments like head aches, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.

Consider these examples:

• Somatic psychologist Susanne Babbel MFT, PhD writes about the connection between psychological health and chronic pain issues: “Often, physical pain functions to warn a person that there is still emotional work to be done, and it can also be a sign of unresolved trauma in the nervous system.”

• Johns Hopkins Medicine illustrates that chronic anger, resentment, and unforgiveness can increase your likelihood for suffering from depression, anxiety, heart disease and diabetes, as well as lowers immunity and increases chronic pain. But practicing forgiveness can improve your cholesterol, help you sleep better, decrease pain, and lower your risk of heart attack.

In my own life, I’ve experienced depression in different seasons and for different reasons. There was a season when I was stuck in a job where I felt overwhelmed, overworked, and like my passion was all dried up. During this time I was constantly fatigued, felt like I could never get enough sleep, and I was pretty irritable. To deal with the stress, I would overeat and over-binge on Netflix and social media to numb out the sense of frustration I felt, further adding to the feelings of depression. In this case, the depressive feelings were a helpful indicator to me that my work-life was way out of whack and causing all kinds of issues for me. The pain of the depressive symptoms forced me to stop and re-evaluate this area of my life and make the hard choices to leave that job and deal with the underlying fears that were keeping me stuck and giving me excuses not to chase after the dreams my heart truly craved.

Another time in my life I dealt with depressive symptoms that were coming from underlying resentment issues in my close relationships. I was constantly feeling like people were taking advantage of my kindness, like my time was all tied up doing things that I really didn’t want to do, and that I couldn’t say no. What it felt like in that season was a slowly building underlying anger, always being drained of energy, and a listless hopelessness that prevented me from connecting to a sense of joy in my present or excitement about my future. Where was this depression really coming from?

At the time I had no idea, but after digging deeper with the help of a therapist, I discovered this depression was trying to help me address on-going issues with not knowing how to set boundaries with people. As my therapist and I dug deeper into the boundaries issue, I discovered this was coming from a low self-esteem and faulty belief that I had to earn love in my life through being helpful to others. Going through this process with my therapist changed my life. Today I am so thankful for that period of depression because it alerted me to some huge issues under the surface that were sabotaging me and needed an overhaul. In place of this dysfunction, I started to understand that I am worthy of love simply for who I am, not what I do. I am still learning this in my life, and the journey has been LIBERATING! As a result of addressing those root issues, I started to thrive and come alive in ways I had not experienced before. It’s been a beautiful journey, and it’s still ongoing. And paying attention to what my depression was trying to tell me helped get me here.

Painful emotions such as resentment, rage, hopelessness, are not meant to wreck you—they are meant to help you. Just like the nerve endings that scream “PAIN! PAIN! PAIN!” when your hand touches a hot stove, those pain receptors go into alarm mode so you can take action and snatch your hand off the heat and treat the burn before any major damage is done. Same with our painful emotions—if we can learn to be really tuned into our emotions and follow the symptoms of pain to the source of the unmet need, we can return to a state of emotional health. It’s when we ignore the pain sirens and leave our emotions on the burning stove that we end up with bigger problems.

Therapy can help you dig under the surface of the depressed, anxious, numbed out, or overwhelmed feelings and find out what the roots are. It can help you find pain that needs comfort, shame that needs compassion, and lies about yourself that need to be upgraded into beautiful, liberating truths. Therapy can help you learn to live more self-aware and tuned in emotionally so you can catch little things before they become big things and learn the tools to care for yourself as life happens.

Call today for a free 15-minute phone session if you’d like to talk about working with me to take the next step in this journey for yourself.