Blog

With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, I’m seeing many reminders about gratitude and being thankful. One friend on Facebook has decided to post something that she is grateful for each day. While I’m sure the same good-natured grumps who longed for all the online Halloween shenanigans to stop will soon convey the same attitude toward public displays of thanksgiving, I love the prompting to be grateful.

Gratitude has so many benefits to personal well-being and healthy relationships that it is too bad so many of us, myself included, forget to claim it more often. An important study* from 2003 shows how clearly gratitude is linked to resiliency:

• Gratitude not only helps the individual to feel good, it inspires us to do nice things for each other which leads to more and stronger friendships.

• The positive emotions generated by gratitude lead to a more flexible mindset.

• Both of the above provide for greater and deeper resources that we can access during times of adversity and stress.

“Gratitude is a form of love,” say the authors of the study and, in another paper, suggest that “Gratitude provides life meaning, by encapsulating life itself as a gift.”**

So, given that gratitude is a really important part of contentment and joy in life, how can we become aware of it more often?

Like a lot of people, I get a little tired of the chirpy “Have an attitude of gratitude” and the maintenance of gratitude lists. (Not that there’s anything wrong with either of them!) However, I stumbled upon a simple way to not only remember to be grateful, but to notice what I’m thankful for in the moment. My friend, Tovi, sent me the link to a blog post by Kelle Hampton in which the author wonders about how to teach gratitude to her young daughters.

If I asked Lainey to explain gratitude, she’d be stumped. But if I asked her to tell me what her favorite thing about today was, she’d pause and smile while she thought, and then she might begin by describing how cold the ocean was when she stepped past the foamy line that married sand with sea.

And so, Hampton and her daughters will often say “What I love about right now is . . .” Maybe it’s a cloud shaped like a bunny or the feel of ice cream on your tongue on a hot day.

I love this. It’s simple and it’s beautiful. Try it.

So, what I love about right now is . . .

. . . the silence of the house save for the rhythmic ticking of my beloved clocks on the wall.

. . . the way my cat sits beside my keyboard on the desk, watching me, blinking her green-yellow eyes slowly with contentment.

. . . feeling healthy and strong.

. . . having you to share these thoughts with.

What do you love about right now?

Takeaway points: Gratitude is one of those things that is scientifically proven to create health and well-being in our lives. But we don’t always have to carry lists around with us; sometimes we can just notice what we love about right now.

*Emmons, R.A. and McCullough, M.E. (2003). Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.

**Emmons R.A., Shelton C.S. Gratitude and the science of positive psychology. (2002). In: Snyder CR, Lopez SJ, editors. Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; pp. 459–471.

Want to cultivate more gratitude in your life or find gratitude in the midst of adversity? Give me a call at 650-529-9059 or email me for a therapy appointment.

I sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, head down, my upper body hunched over as tightly as possible trying to ease the driving pain in my lower abdomen. My breath came in shallow, raspy gasps and my damp, clammy skin stuck to the lining of my jacket. I knew I was white as a sheet because my head felt light and bloodless.

Unable to raise my head for fear of passing out, I could only turn it slightly to the right to see the sideways shapes of people passing by several feet away on the main street. Some of them turned to look at me then snapped their heads back so they could tell themselves they hadn’t really seen my crumpled figure.

“Why isn’t someone stopping to help?” I wondered with a mounting sense of desperation.

I tried to call Marie, the friend I left back in the bookstore when I went out to walk around to “get rid of the gas” I thought was building in my guts, but I couldn’t get through.

Finally, I saw – sideways – a young couple walking by. The woman looked at me and practiced the familiar head-snapping technique. However, the young man gazed at me a little longer. Maybe . . .

“Excuse me,” I said weakly, turning my head as far as I could towards him, “Can you help me?”

He stopped, looked at the woman a few steps ahead of him, then came toward me. I explained that I was sick and really needed my friend who was in the bookstore. She was a nurse and would know what to do. I described Marie to him and he said he would try to find her. He rejoined the young woman who was cautiously peeking around the corner at us and they left in the direction of the bookstore.

I hunched over again, wondering whether I was going to vomit, pass out, or both. I had never felt such pain before. A few minutes earlier, I had been walking along the street looking for a market to buy some anti-gas medication. Suddenly, the “gas pain” had intensified so sharply that I thought I was going to faint. I needed to sit down immediately but I had the surreal thought that I shouldn’t sit right here because I was right next to several tables of outdoor diners. I didn’t want to ruin their lunches by throwing up or passing out in front of them, so I went a few steps around a corner and crumpled into a heap.

And now here I was, hoping fervently that the young couple would be able to find Marie. More shapes passed by as I hung my head low over my legs. I was aware that I was barely able to get air into my lungs because any movement in my torso caused the pain to spike.

I heard a commotion and Marie came charging around the corner with the young couple. “What’s going on? What are your symptoms?” she barked at me. I knew that my ashen, sweaty form frightened her, but the barking wasn’t helping.

I gasped out my symptoms to her and was aware of a small crowd starting to form. There were feet in a semicircle all around me. People had finally started to notice that I was in crisis. And yet, they were just feet. Their voices came from above me: “What’s going on? Should we call an ambulance? Is anyone a doctor?”

I still was the only one on the sidewalk. I felt like I must have looked: a pathetic, lonely figure bent nearly in two, sitting among a crowd of people towering over me.

The arc of feet finally decided that one of them would go get his car to take me to the hospital. I gasped for air and shuddered as the pain intensified. I longed for some respite from this hell that was my guts and this sidewalk.

And then I felt someone on my left, kneeling very close to me. A hand was placed tenderly on my back and a very kind, gentle man’s voice said, “Just try to breathe. It always helps me. Breathe . . . you can do it . . . there you go.” His comforting touch and soothing words persuaded me to try to relax. I took a deeper breath and unclenched my fists. Just having him beside me, feeling the presence of a caring soul down with me on that sidewalk gave me hope. The pain in my abdomen was the same, but with this man kneeling next to me, I felt safer and started to think I might be okay.

I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, but I imagined that my hero was a therapist, or a clergyman, or just a kind businessman walking by who saw someone in not only physical, but emotional, need. He was probably a family man, handsome, and a pillar in the community.

When the car pulled up along the sidewalk, the feet parted and the man beside me took my left arm in his hand and put his right arm around my waist. He slowly but firmly pulled me to a standing, but still bent over, position and then helped me into the car. I never saw his face.

***********************************************************

Later, much later, after surgery revealed I had severe endometriosis with a ruptured cyst rather than the metastatic ovarian cancer that my doctor and I feared, Marie and I recalled the day I collapsed on the sidewalk.

“You know what’s strange?” I mused, “Everyone just stood around me. No one got down on the ground with me to really be with me. It was like they were all afraid or something. Until that man came along. He knelt right beside me and, I don’t know . . . his presence was just so . . .” I paused trying to find the right words, “serene and peaceful. I wish I could find him again – I want to thank him for being so caring. I wonder who he was?”

“Oh, him?” Marie shrugged. “That was some homeless guy.”

*************************************************************

Each of us, even those on the fringes of our society, have gifts to bring to our common “village.” While the well-meaning, but detached, upstanding citizens hovered around and above me, a shabby man from the streets who truly knew the experience of pain got right down with me, lending comfort and peace.

I needed that homeless guy. Don’t we all?

Takeaway points: Even those who are invisible to us or on the margins of our community have special gifts that we need to strengthen our “village.”

What’s your takeaway from this story?

My colleague, Renee Lamborn, and I sat at a local coffeehouse the other day, sipping our espresso drinks and swapping work stories. We were talking about how parents of special needs kids can feel quite isolated at times. I told her about my stepsister who has a teenager with Asperger’s. My stepsister still hasn’t met any other parents of kids with the syndrome, even after years of seeking out and using supportive services.

Renee then told me about talking with a woman, the mother of a special needs kid, who enlisted Renee’s help as a special education advocate. The woman had been trying to advocate for her child in the school system herself and was completely overwhelmed. She felt alone and as though no one understood her. Renee’s vast experience and understanding nature helped the woman feel supported immediately. After she got off the phone with Renee, the woman burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” her husband asked, concerned.

“Nothing is wrong,” the woman wept, “It’s just that I finally found an ally.“

I smiled. Community activator Bruce Anderson long ago taught me the importance of the ally role in working with people on the margins of society. I remember him teaching a seminar on recovery from chronic psychiatric disability at the mental health clinic where I worked at the time. He was telling a story about a group of clients who experienced severe mental illnesses and yet were doing very well in their communities.

“What do you think was the number one factor that the clients themselves named as the most important in their recovery?” Bruce asked us.

“Effective medications?” someone suggested.

“Learning social skills?” ventured another.

After several more guesses, Bruce said, “Those are all really good ideas, but the number one factor the clients pointed to was the presence of a person in their lives who believed in them and stuck with them throughout their journey with their illness.“

After Renee told me her story about the mother weeping in relief because she found someone who understood her, I smiled and felt tears welling in my eyes. I remembered the comfort I felt from my cousin who doggedly stuck by me after my partner died. I still think I probably would not have made it through without her.

Moms of special needs kids, people with chronic mental illness, and those who are lost in grief all need allies. But don’t we all? Life is about the big stuff and the little stuff, the huge mountains and deep valleys as well as the everyday rises and dips. Knowing we have an ally helps us make it through any terrain in life.

Who is your ally?

And maybe more importantly, can you be an ally for someone else?

Takeaway points: An ally is someone who will see you through the tough spots in life and stick with you. You may not see them or talk to them everyday, but just knowing they are there makes all the difference. Engaging in life requires us to both have an ally and be one to somebody else.

Looking for an ally? I’m happy to help you through life’s ups and downs. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for an appointment.

Mucking around the internet in my constant quest for cool stuff about resiliency, I came upon the work of Dr. Kristin Neff.  I am adding her work on an important component of acceptance, self-compassion, to my list of research to follow along with Barbara Fredrickson’s work on positivity and Brene Brown’s shame resilience research.

Dr. Neff not only studies self-compassion in a scholarly setting, but has life experience to weave in as well. Her son, Rowan, has autism and her and her husband’s ability to accept, rather than resist, his diagnosis led to them discovering the healing powers of horses in his life. Their story is the subject of the book, The Horse Boy.

Neff believes that self-compassion is made up of three things:

1. Mindfulness

Rather than being tossed about by your own thoughts and feelings, holding a stance of merely being aware of them without passing judgment is a key component of mindfulness. How often do you find yourself frustrated or angry but unsure why? It’s because you are doing what most of us do: going through the day quite unaware of what we are really thinking or feeling.

Taking a moment several times during your day to stop and check in with yourself is a great first step toward mindfulness. How are you feeling? What are you thinking about? Breathe!

2. Common humanity

Ever feel like you’re the only one who is going through something? Maybe it’s a small thing like a bad habit or a more impactful experience such as having a special needs kid or losing your job. For some reason, it’s human nature to think we’re the only ones who have these problems. Realizing that we share everything from bad habits to special needs kids to job loss with other people puts us in the same boat and encourages mutual support rather than isolation.

3. Kindness

I vividly remember sitting in a grief support group listening to a man berate himself about what he “should” have done to prevent his wife from dying. “I should have known she wasn’t acting herself . . . I should have taken her to the hospital sooner . . . I should have . . .” he sobbed. Finally, one of the facilitators put her hand on his. He took a breath and looked at her. With the utmost kindness in her eyes, she said softly, “Have mercy.”

Self-kindness and sympthy toward oneself is a necessary ingredient to healing and self-compassion.

While the pursuit of high self-esteem is tenuous and has actually been shown to cause problems with competition and aggression, Neff says that, with self-compassion, “whether we’re on top of the world or at the bottom of the heap, we can embrace ourselves with a sense of kindness, connectedness and emotional balance.”

Takeaway points: Self-compassion is a part of accepting what is going on in your life and being kind to yourself about it. Mindfulness, the idea of common humanity, and kindness are components we can practice to treat ourselves more gently, a needed tool in our resiliency toolkit.

Is it easy or hard for you to practice self-compassion?

I know two things about ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease: 1. It’s awful, and 2. It’s awful.

I have only had a couple of experiences with ALS and those were just knowing people who had a loved one with the disease. A friend of ours lost her partner of thirty years to ALS in 2007. I never knew Jane, but Andrea said she was witty, vivacious, and fun. Andrea also said it was excruciating to watch Jane lose her speech first, followed by declines in motor functioning that eventually led to no mobility at all.

Andrea and I sometimes talk about what it would be like to have a disease like ALS, to watch helplessly as your body deteriorates until you can no longer move. What kind of life is that? How can one be resilient in this worst of scenarios?

It never fails that when I ask these kinds of questions the universe slides an answer right under my nose. Literally, this time, as I sat at our kitchen table bent over our weekly paper, The Almanac. A headline caught my eye: “Teacher dies after battle with ALS”.

Hmmm. There must be more to this story as this was no usual obituary but an actual article written about this man. I picked up the paper and began to read.

Jason Picetti, age 42, former middle school math teacher, diagnosed with ALS in 2008. Married and the father of a three-year-old daughter. “Aww, poor guy,” I think to myself.

As I have observed previously on this blog: O, me of little faith.

Reading further into the article, I see that Jason wrote a blog. “Yes, good resiliency skill,” I note, “Probably a great way for him to vent.”

Then I read the title of his blog: The Adventures of ALS Boy. I grin. Wait a minute. This is no mere venting blog, I can tell that by the title. This guy has chutzpah. I go to my computer and punch in www.alsboy.com.

After reading three posts, I came to the conclusion that my “Aww, poor guy,” response wasn’t even close to an accurate thought about Jason Picetti. “Wow, what a guy!” was much closer.

Here are just a few of the aspects of resiliency to be found in Jason’s writing:

1. Humor

Jason has listed a quarter of his posts over the last three years under the category of “Allegedly Funny.” I think he is the only writer who has made me laugh over stories of haphazard drooling and the “unearthly howls” of spontaneous yawns.

2. Radical acceptance

I would have just called this regular ol’ acceptance until my friend Susan pointed out that it is really radical acceptance. Jason had been diagnosed with ALS – a fatal and “awful” disease – only seven months earlier, and here is how he introduces himself in his blog:

In his days prior to wearing the cape and cowl of the Amazing, Inspiring and Adventurous ALS Boy, Jason Picetti’s not-so-secret identities included weekend warrior rock star, enthusiastic and motivating middle school math teacher, and all-around decent guy. While still a decent guy, he has been battling the evil forces of ALS since being diagnosed in February of 2008. Never one to shy away from a good fight, Jason has been combining the healing forces of western medicine, alternative medicine, a positive and never-give-up attitude and mindset, and the love and prayers and support of his incredible family and friends to win the toughest battle of his life.

Here is a man who knows what he is up against and accepts it fully so he can utilize his arsenal of “healing forces.”

3. Using an arsenal of healing forces

Not to be redundant, but Jason’s use of his medical team, family, friends, and anything he can think of to live well with this disease is a great example for us to tackle even our “ordinary” problems with an eclectic arsenal of support.

4. The art of active non-resistance

Although Jason uses language like “battling the evil forces of ALS”, he also practices non-resistance by being able to hold two fairly opposite thoughts/feelings at the same time using the magic word and: I don’t like ALS and I’m going to live my best life with it.

At one point, Jason tells a story about how he figured out on his own how to get his thumb unstuck from his involuntarily clenched fist in the middle of the night. He ends with:

I grinned like a cat who had just made short work of the family’s fine feathered friend as I drifted off to sleep dreaming the dreams of the victorious champion.

Jason, you will always be a champion to me. Thanks for showing me that just because a disease is “awful” doesn’t mean your life has to be the same. Rest in peace and joy.

Takeaway points: Want to be inspired? Awed? Laugh out loud? Read The Adventures of ALS Boy. Start with the first post and read all the way through. You’ll laugh, cry, and you’ll never be the same.

What do you learn from ALS Boy?

1. Will Rogers

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

2. Robert Louis Stevenson

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

3. Viktor Frankl

He who has a why to live for can endure almost any how.

4. Charles Darwin

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

5. Japanese proverb

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.

What’s your favorite quote?

I’m available for individual therapy sessions to help you get your bounce back. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for a free 30-minute consultation.

Several years ago, I sat with my partner, Ruth, as she recovered from her second round of aggressive chemo treatment. She had metastatic breast cancer and this was the last of several different kinds of treatment she had received over her four-year journey with the disease. This particular concoction made her very weak and ill.

I was reading Science of Mind Magazine and a passage jumped out at me. “Listen to this,” I said to Ruth as she lay in bed:

When we are ill, we may feel lost as to what to do or where to go. Waiting may have the feel of being passive, but think of the caterpillar in the cocoon, the seed in the ground, or a mother bird sitting on her egg. Waiting in our lostness is sometimes vital for the journey into wholeness.

“Does that mean I’m going to become a butterfly?” Ruth asked excitedly.

“I think it does,” I replied, squeezing her hand.

I knew what she meant. We had often talked about the reality that this cancer would eventually kill her. She was talking about being set as free as a butterfly when she died.

Which she did, two months later.

Suddenly, I was the one in the cocoon. I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of my grief and I felt utterly lost and unsure of everything, including life itself. It took almost three years before I crawled out of the cocoon, my fragile, weak wings dewy with both tears and anticipation. And, finally, I started to fly.

I wasn’t the same as I was before; I was very different and there were times I longed to crawl back into the cocoon. But my new life was beautiful in a way that would not have occurred had I not allowed myself to cocoon and “wait in lostness”. The experience of grief filled me out and made me more of a whole person, able now to be with others in a healing way on their paths of grief.

Sometimes it’s easy to misinterpret your need for cocooning as being passive, the feeling of lostness as being undesirable. And yet, maybe those times are the very thing you need to be whole.

Be gentle with yourself when you find yourself lost and waiting. Perhaps you need that time to become the beautiful butterfly you were always meant to be.

Takeaway points: Although our culture promotes being action- and goal-oriented, there are times when lostness and cocooning are necessary for much-needed but unexpected growth.

Have you had times of cocooning in your life?

If you are feeling lost and unsure, I am happy to walk that path with you or have gentle, healing conversations within your cocoon. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for a counseling appointment.

Part of being resilient in the outer world is learning to be resilient in our inner worlds. If we
 don’t have a solid concept of who we really are inside, then it is much more likely that events happening outside are going to rock both our inner and outer worlds, and not in a good way.

With that in mind, I want to present some thoughts from two women I admire greatly: writer Anne Lamott and shame researcher Brene Brown.

I first shared these words from Anne Lamott in a previous post called Becoming the person you were meant to be:

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be. The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down. So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren’t? (My emphases.)

 

And here are some thoughts from Brene Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.

When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’re supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, pleasing, and proving. (p.23)

Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.

Choosing authenticity means

• cultivating the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable;
• exercising the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle; and
• nurturing the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we believe that we are enough.

Authenticity demands Wholehearted living and loving – even when it’s hard, even when we’re wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and especially when the joy is so intense that we’re afraid to let ourselves feel it.

Mindfully practicing authenticity during our most soul-searching struggles is how we invite grace, joy, and gratitude into our lives. (p.50)

 

Takeaway points: Even though we are so often encouraged to be someone we aren’t, only cultivating the courage to be our true selves allows us to live freely and authentically – a good recipe for resilience.

 

I know I sometimes struggle with authenticity and feel the pressure to be someone other than my true self. How about you?

Brown, Brene. The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. 2010. Hazelden; Minnesota.