Finding Balance Between Healthy and Unhealthy Anxiety

By Concentric Counselor Charles Weiss, LPC

There are 10 seconds left of the clock in the state championship game and your team is down by 2 points.  You have the ball and the fate of the team is in your hands on what will you do next, either pass or take the game winning shot.  Sweat is protruding down your face, your heart is beating a thousand miles a hour, your mind is racing with a million and one different case scenarios on what you should do and then your anxiety starts to take over.  However, you realized that your anxiety has allowed you to think quicker on your feet and make better decisions, because you don’t let it control and consume you.  3, 2, 1 and throw up a prayer of shot from about 35 feet away from the basket, knowing that being vulnerable to your anxiety, you can live with the consequences…  Swish!  Game over and you have just won the state championship for your team.

Anxiety… What is it and what does to mean to us when it begins to take control; do we let it control our consciousness or embrace it as an opportunity of growth and self-discovery?  According to dictionary.com, anxiety is defined as “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”

When outcomes are uncertain to us in which we want to control, but can’t, anxiety can consume our every decision, thought and feeling.  It leads to panic, fear and vulnerability to the unknown, having us over-analyze every decision we make, postulating those “what if” scenarios.  Anxiety can so debilitating to someone when it’s severe and impacts our day-to-day activities.  Plain and simple, anxiety can suck!  Nobody wants to constantly live a life of panic, fear, worry and dread, wondering all the time, “What if?” When you let anxiety take control and inhibit your ability to just be “you”, it becomes unhealthy.

Is there a way to gain back that control over anxiety before it begins to consume us, crippling our sense of self and being vulnerable to “What if…?”  Anxiety is your body’s indication that something isn’t right, like a built-in warning system indicating that your homeostasis might be out of balance.  When we listen to our body as it talks to us and yes, our body does speak to us, you can begin to prepare and embrace for its impact and figure out how to manage it. Certain symptoms to be mindful of that can alert us when something “isn’t right” and anxiety begins to manifest itself within us, are the following:

·        Racing thoughts

·        Irritability

·        Headaches

·        Nausea/upset stomach

·        Disturbed sleep

·        Muscle tension/tightness

·        Shortness of breath

·        Mind going blank

·        Difficulty concentrating/focusing

·        Fatigued

·        Palpitations

When we are able to listen to these symptoms we experience, then we can to things to keep these symptoms in check before they exacerbate. Taking the time to do a body scan, deep breathing exercises, mindfulness exercises, progressive muscle relaxation techniques can all help keep the heightened level of anxiety at bay.

Can anxiety be healthy?

Anxiety can also be a way to motivate yourself to reach your goals and achievements that you have established.  It can better help prepare yourself to face as well as overcome challenges. When we approach anxiety as a hindrance, it can become unhealthy. You can instead capitalize on it as more of a way to inspire your self-growth and to live a more authentic life.  According to Katharina Star, Ph.D., anxiety is another way people can be more empathetic towards other people’s issues and concerns, and help with how they interact with others. She also stated that individuals who struggle with anxiety are often more cautious thinkers, problem solvers and decision makers because they are often building-in “back-up plans” for when things go wrong. 

Bottom line, anxiety isn’t always bad and unhealthy when individuals experience it, it can be a way people thrive if they are able to recognize it, understand it, and know how to cope and properly channel the healthy aspects of it. People can still live fully authentic lives when experiencing anxiety, it’s when it takes control and we begin to panic, that derails aspects of our lives.

If you are experiencing at least 3 symptoms of anxiety, that have been affecting your ability to function on a day-to-day basis in a variety of settings (i.e.: school, work, home) and those symptoms have been occurring for at least 6 months in which you find it very difficult to control that worry and anxiety, please contact your local mental health provider and schedule an appointment with a professional who can help you learn how to regain control over your anxiety and transform it into a healthier form of anxiety for you. 

Asking for Help - Not Waving but Drowning

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

Not Waving but Drowning

By STEVIE SMITH

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

I believe this poem verbalizes well a common societal pressure. That is, the need to be happy externally, even if drowning internally. As we go through our day, met with multiple “How’s it going?”, we invariably are trained to answer “fine” or “great”, without the slightest thought. The question we’re left with is: how would anyone know I’m drowning, when I always give them a friendly wave?

Asking for help can be deceptively difficult. Frequently I hear from clients that asking for help shows weakness, or is shameful, or too vulnerable. So, we strengthen our resolve, buckle down, and soldier on at the expense of our wellness and happiness. We become run down, exhausted, and deflated. Imagine a balloon trying to remain the same size, while its air slowly leaks. We receive messages from our families of origin, our employers, and consumer culture that tell us to harden. But the harder we get, the more brittle we become. Rather than naming our need for help, we’re now drowning with work, emotions, schedules, and isolation. 

Ultimately, this issue of asking for help comes down to a person’s struggle with taking care of themselves. Wellness, self-care, asking for help, boundary setting, etc all live in the same neighborhood: taking care of the self. A former supervisor of mine offered this metaphor:

You board an airplane, take your seat, and the flight attendant begins the safety protocols speech. They get to the section on the oxygen mask. They say, ‘please secure your own mask before attempting to assist anyone else.”

Why is that? Well, you can’t help anyone if you’re dead. The same concept applies here, albeit with less grim consequences. How can we expect to function, let alone help others, when we run ourselves ragged?

To return to the topic at hand, one way of taking care of the self is asking for help. Seeking therapy is a form of this. I often name the courage it takes for a client to find a therapist. As we know, it’s hard to find help for ourselves- especially for our mental health. As if the unfortunate stigma isn’t enough, busy schedules and work demands can get in the way. If therapy is two steps too far for you, there are smaller ways to open ourselves to the help of others.

We don’t have to instantly open up and adopt this idea. Rather we can take smaller steps that feel safer. For example, if we have created a default answer of “fine” when asked “how are you?” by random people, then that may have filtered into closer relationships. Those relationships where it may feel safer saying “Actually, I’m struggling.” So, what if we remove the automatic ‘fine’ from our vocabulary? Rather, when asked by a close friend or family member, “how are you?”, we take that question for what it is: an out-stretched hand to a drowning person.

 I think it is unfair to view this poem as an indictment of those who misread the author’s anguish. Rather, I believe it is a call to stop waving when we’re drowning. To let those looking out for our safety, save us. Only from this place of moaning, cold death does the author finally feel safe saying she was much too far out all of her life. If only we, the onlookers, knew this we could’ve helped.

 It is ok to feel you’re too far out. It is ok to feel like you’re drowning. There are those who want to help us, but only if we let them. When we don’t ask for help, we deny our friends and family the gift of being able to help someone they love.

The Role of Anxiety in Living an Authentic Life

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

To be brief, anxiety can suck. The persistent worry of imagined scenarios can plague the mind and exhaust the body. It can manifest as brief periods of pronounced worry, a baseline worry for all things, and even panic attacks. But I would like to offer a perspective that may be overlooked in coping with anxiety. That is, can my anxiety teach me something?

Specifically, can my anxiety teach me how to live an authentic, meaningful life? This question shapes Existential Therapy. At its broadest, existential therapy is the endeavor of understanding one’s existence in a therapeutic setting. This is done via an honest exploration of one’s freedom, choice, responsibility, meaning, and inevitable death. Existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom conceptualizes much of anxiety as death-anxiety (Existential Psychotherapy, p.189). That is, persistent anxiety can be explained as an underlying worry about a life without meaning in the face of approaching death. Death is what allows life to have meaning. If there were no end, then for what should we live? The finiteness of life can motivate, intimidate, and terrify. However, it is this anxiety that can be the canary in the mine of our life.

As we work, study, sleep, parent, eat, play, drive, and journey through life, meaning and purpose can slip through the cracks. Anxiety can creep in, seeming to have no definable impetus. Often enough the death of a loved one, or a diagnostic medical scare can bring perspective -- wherein we confront our death. But one does not need to wait for such a moment to ask these questions, such as “Why am I here?”, “What does it mean to exist?”, and “What is my purpose?”.

Anxiety can be that canary that alerts us of an inauthentic life. It warns of the finiteness of life, and the importance of living a life with meaning. This often manifests as a vague sensation of “running out of time”. Without meaning, one can find life pointless or trite. The finiteness of life no longer motivates, it terrifies. But if we listen to what our anxiety is telling us, perhaps we can redirect our lives towards meaning.

How does one do this?

An example from philosophy may be of use. In Frederick Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, Nietzsche offers the reader an aphorism he titles ‘The Heaviest Burden’. He proceeds to ask the reader: if a demon were to order that you must live this life in eternal recurrence, every moment, detail, pain, and triumph- would you thank him or curse him? (The Gay Science, Aphorism #341). So, do I live my life in such a way that were I to re-live this life on repeat, I would praise the demon with gratitude for the opportunity? Or would this prospect bring about the abysmal dread of re-living a meaningless life? It is this precise idea where anxiety comes into play. Am I experiencing the anxiety and dread of a life not worth re-living?

It is this question that can help steer us towards meaning. Do I live in such a way that were I to re-live this life on repeat, would I be in joyful contentment or in abysmal dread? This is a tough question with which to be confronted. However, we can use this question as a beginning: the moment one begins to ask “does my life have meaning?”. Rather than be frozen by the possible dread this question instills, one can frame this as the moment in which a new life begins. As always, Confucius said it best, “ We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”

Determining WHAT is meaningful is a personal journey that can take time to uncover. But knowing thyself was important to Plato for a reason. It is this existential journey of a human confronted with death, through anxiety, uncovering that which gives their life meaning.

To conclude, yes, anxiety does suck. But as we work to cope with it, let us ask -- What is this anxiety trying to teach me?  Anxiety very well may lead us away from the existential dread of an unexamined life, and instead towards finding a meaningful life worthy of repeating.

Sexual Trauma, Triggers, & The 24-Hour News Cycle

By Concentric Counselor Katie Ho, LPC, NCC

You can hardly escape today’s current social and political climate - it’s on the news, in your social media, overheard at lunch, and even for therapists, themes in session. For those who have experienced trauma in their lifetime, past or ongoing, navigating topics like sexual assault can be overwhelming, scary, complicated and sometimes even powerful. How we take care of ourselves and the people around us who may be struggling with the complexity of their emotions has to be part of the larger conversation. It’s clear that avoiding or minimizing discussions on sexual violence and quieting the stories of survivors is not the path to atonement and reconciliation. But as we create space and lift up the voices of those who have suffered, we must also take inventory of what comes up in us and tend to those parts with kindness, care and nurturing.

The #MeToo movement, local and national advocacy groups and social justice organizations have been and continue to create a platform for those who have been victim to sexual harassment and assault. While the stories and accounts of these traumas seem to be daunting all of the sudden for those who have been unaware, statistics and experts have known for some time of these experiences. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) estimates that 1 in 5 women will be raped in the United States in their lifetime, and that 1 in 3 women will experience some form of sexual violence. The majority of these acts are committed by acquaintances, partners or people who are known by the victim, and according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the majority of these events occur at or near the victim’s home. These of course are statistics, data and research gathered through reports from multidisciplinary agencies. There is undeniable value in knowing these numbers. And just as much, there is value in hearing the experiences and seeing the faces of survivors who have chosen to come forward.

As allegations and reports of sexual assault make the news, we are bombarded with information, opinions, commentary and even jokes on the matter. Survivors are subject to their own re-traumatization, which has an impact on psychological and physical health, triggered by both the details of these publicized allegations of assaults and non-believers who dismiss them.

In knowing that a trigger is a psychological stimulus that can be evoked through anything from sights, smells or sounds, it’s no wonder that the 24-hour news cycle is affecting so many people. Survivors are not alone in their strong reactions to the constant replaying and subsequent criticism, shaming or dismissing of survivor stories. Those who feel a connection or calling to the cause, whether it be through their empathic attunement or knowing a survivor, may also experience the distress and burnout that comes with the current climate.

So how do we take care? How do we balance the righteous anger and complexity of our other emotions, promote advocacy and change, all while healing and taking gentle care of ourselves? In doing this, one of the most important things to know is nothing can replace the support of others. So find someone, or a group of someones, who can help to support, validate and foster a safe environment for processing.

Find a tribe, or maybe even create one. Pay attention to your body, as our physical being can often tell us when stress is increasing and it’s time for tending and healing. Maybe that means physical exercise, movement, touch or a practice of progressive muscle relaxation (a quick YouTube search is all you need!). Set boundaries. Limit your intake of news and dialogue on the topic by knowing how much mental and emotional labor you’re able to give without overextending yourself. And if you find yourself overwhelmed, triggered or lost, use mindful grounding techniques to bring yourself back into your here and now. Feel your feet on the floor, describe and notice something around you, use your five senses to bring a consciousness into your physical environment and current moment in time and add in a quick reminder - “I am safe. I am in control. I am okay.”

A Thoughtfully Designed & Researched Blueprint of Your Relationship & Marriage

By Concentric Counselors Katie Ho, LPC, NCC & Jennifer Larson, LCPC, NCC

A large part of the human experience, including the joys, losses and challenges, gravitate around relationships. In social and cultural regards, finding a partner and committing to a person can be a marker of happiness, success or accomplishment. But like with any experience, obstacles lay ahead. All couples find themselves navigating conflict, life transitions or faced with heavy decisions, and the related stress that comes with these expected issues.

There are some couples, however, which continue to exist in this perpetual conflict - one that doesn’t appear to have any resolution and creates continual gridlock. Or perhaps there has been a significant breach of trust, or betrayal. Maybe communication is poor, and creates dysfunction during arguments or otherwise, or possibly there has been a traumatic event which has challenged the feelings of safety within the relationship. All of these reasons, and those that might even fall in-between, can be indicators that a couple may benefit from entering couples therapy.

Seeking couples therapy takes courage, as much as it takes hope - hope that the relationship can be repaired or healed, or maybe hope that both individuals can find strength in different directions. Using over 40 years of research, The Gottman Method - developed by Drs. John and Julie Gottman - has helped couples and clinicians create a blueprint of understanding the dysfunction within relationships and the need for building friendship, shared meaning and intimacy. This method was created to serve a deep need in helping find effective intervention for couples looking for repair, healing and happiness. It serves as a theory in which people are able to know both themselves and their partner on a more meaningful level, fostering intimacy, positive affect and skillful conflict management.

When a couple is seeking therapy, there can sometimes be an already significant level of distress present. In their research, the Gottmans found that on average it can take up to 6 years before a couple will seek therapy! This can mean there is a long history of experiences, life phases or challenges that have a need to be explored and understood. Partners may feel overwhelmed, flooded or unsure of where to even begin the healing journey. This highlights the need for a trained couples therapist, equipped with scientific evidence-based practices and the skills to empathize equally with both individuals to help navigate that process.

In working to repair and strengthen a relationship, much like with building a house, there has to be certain core foundational components. The Sound Relationship House from the Gottman Method explains that at its roots, marriage and relationships need to be built on friendship. The essential components of friendship are described as ‘Building Love Maps’, ‘Sharing Fondness and Admiration’ and ‘Turning Towards’. In the first mentioned, to build a Love Map means to truly understand know your partner’s internal world.

People’s internal world changes over time; who are the current people they are involved with, what are their immediate and long-term hopes and dreams, ambitions, or experiences from childhood that may be playing into their current situations. Asking open-ended questions, remembering the answers and actively listening promotes genuine connectedness and friendship. Sharing fondness and admiration, and turning towards your partner, are other components to strengthening and building the friendship of a marriage or relationship. They focus on scanning the environment for what one’s partner is doing right and engaging in appreciation, affection and respect. Additionally, the last level of foundation in ‘turning towards’ describes opportunities for couples to accept and receive bids from the other partner for emotional connection.

The higher levels of The Sound Relationship House include ‘The Positive Perspective’, ‘Manage Conflict’, ‘Make Life Dreams Come True’ and ‘Create Shared Meaning’. These levels of building a healthy relationship are built upon those above-mentioned ideas of friendship. They encompass skills necessary to navigate conflict and life changes, promoting positive affect and a deeper understanding of their partner’s underlying values and dreams and building a life of meaning together. Couples therapy addresses both the necessity for positive connection and friendship, while also acknowledging the dysfunction which makes that task more challenging.

Construction of homes need to be buttressed and supported by its internal supports otherwise houses would collapse.  The same is true of intimate relationships. Every relationship or marriage needs the supports and pillars of 'Trust' and 'Commitment' for stability, safety, and security.  If the 'Trust' or 'Commitment' reinforcements on The Sound Relationship House have been significantly damaged, the relationship can feel shattered and even decimated requiring much repairing and rebuilding.  Sometimes a relationship can be so damaged so that we tell couples relationship #1 has been damaged as if a hurricane or storm came barreling through wiping out your home.  The devastation and trauma is real, but with hope, commitment, and efforts, we can help you re-build relationship #2 as in the case when people experience great natural disaster in their communities requiring building home #2.  Some feel as though it requires blood, sweat and tears, but building relationship #2 can be done collaboratively with the support and care of a highly, skilled and trained couples therapist.   

Having the skills to identify and change maladaptive communication styles and behaviors that plague relationships is of equal value. In our work at Concentric Counseling & Consulting and using the Gottman Method, we incorporate the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - which is a metaphor in describing what can be a predictor for the end of a relationship. These include criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. In working with couples to address these maladaptive behaviors, the couples therapist will explain the antidotes, or remedies to address these bad habits in the work towards building healthier ones.

The goal for any couple is to promote understanding, connection, love, growth, and healing. That can look differently for every couple, as every couple experiences their own unique set of challenges and circumstances. The benefit of seeking a therapist trained in a data-driven theory and method such as the Gottman Method is that interventions and treatment plans are tailored to that couples’ needs through the use of thorough assessments and a framework that has been built based on research. The process to having a better, more enjoyable and healthy relationship takes commitment and hard work, but the reward exists within both the outcome and the journey.

For more information on The Gottman Method and services offered by Gottman-trained therapists at Concentric Counseling & Consulting, visit https://www.gottman.com/ and www.concentricchicago.com/couples-marriage-counseling.

Men, Loneliness, and the Substance Substitute

By Concentric Counselor Myron Nelson, LCPC

We know it is true when we take stock of our lives, although it is easier to simply ignore. We do not have the same number of friends that we used to. We definitely do not have the same number of close friends, friends we could call in an emergency. Whether it is technology taking up more of our time, a culture that promotes handling problems on your own, or some other reason, it is clear we do not connect in the same way.

Due to factors that will be explored in this blog post, half of the population is more vulnerable to the Great Friend Migration. Men, myself included, are bombarded with societal forces that encourage segregation. We are instructed to cope with problems silently, internally. Isolate yourself or be shamed. We are taught to detest emotions, push them down or aside but do not let them grow. Best to not spend time with other people if we are in an emotional state.

Consequently, our problems grow bigger, the stress becomes heavier, and the emotions continue to build up until we are neck deep. Keeping quiet and keeping it to ourselves, we fall deeper into our own thoughts. Expecting that other people do not want to be burdened with our issues. We drift apart from friends because we do not know how our problems could possibly fit into their lives.

What’s next? We turn to something that can help. Something that makes us feel better, it’s reliable, it’s dependable, it does not judge us, and it does not share our secrets. Alcohol and other drugs can become a refuge for emotional pain. They can buffer feelings of anxiety or depression and temporarily give us the mask we want to keep the facade going.

Alcohol and drugs can slowly become something we depend on but that dependency is dangerous. What starts as a solution to the problem becomes its own problem. Substances attempt to fill the void that other people used to, but they will never be enough. Substances can never talk back to us and make us feel cared for and understood. They cannot debate options with us and challenge us to be better. Substances offer complacency but relationships give us acceptance and growth. It takes courage and a leap of faith to connect with another man and share your problems but it is truest the solution.

The irony is, that we all want to lean on each other but are scared to lean first. It is society’s expectation about men and men’s expectations about society that propel this problem into an epidemic. When we let our predictions go and venture into reality, it’s clear that other men feel the same way we do and we can meet each other with compassion and caring.

Men are not inherently isolating and society is not inherently cold. Expect that other people feel the way you feel. Expect that as a man you will experience things that other men experience. Expect that others want to know about your struggles because they want to be able to lean on you too.

If you find yourself experiencing The Great Friend Migration, convincing yourself that filling your loneliness with substances is better than the alternative - opening up, reaching out, and relying on a male friend, I encourage you to stand up to your shame, choose connection, and lean it to a friend.

Is Your Saw Dull? A Self-Care Mandate Is Your Sharpening Tool→

By Concentric Counselor Stacey Kiran, LSW

This blog post goes out to anyone who has said to themselves recently, “I really need a break.” or “I have no time to relax!” I am here to tell you – Your time has come! Huzzah! I am going to provide all readers with a Relax and Self-Care Mandate.  My purpose for this mandate stems from learning the importance of self-care in graduate school. During grad school, students are told to 'take care of yourself' so often, it felt like a mandate.  And I often found myself thinking, “I wish someone would have forced me to take care of myself before grad school, I could’ve used it then, too!”

Are you feeling burnt out from the grind of work and life?  Noticing negative effects of this routine in your personal or even work relationships? Do you feel you are missing out on some understanding of your your family or friends' experiences? If you answered yes, you may be experiencing empathy-deficit for others.  Also known as compassion fatigue in the field of counseling and therapy.  

Maybe you will need to first ask yourself “Is empathy important to my relationships?” If that is a question that is hard for you to answer, I am going to point you to the Queen of Empathy, Dr. Brene Brown. She has a short, fun cartoon for you to watch on the importance of empathy, check it out here. 

The article Self Care as an Ethical Imperative offers the story of a person sawing down a tree with a dull saw. Try to tell that person to take a moment to sharpen their knife and they say “I don’t have time to sharpen it! I am too busy sawing!” Well, you can easily imagine using a dull saw will wear on that person, making that person feel depleted and disconnected. This same story applies to many people.  I am sure you may feel like you are a personal or professional lumberjack in your life.  For example, caregivers (including therapists) are in the role of taking care of others, but may feel too busy to take of oneself.  Or people who are not necessarily in the helping role, but who go through the daily grind may feel there is not enough time to nourish oneself. 

So, I ask you, "How's your saw?" Finding yourself too busy or depleted to pause and sharpen your saw?  In graduate school, I was taught the role of a therapist needs to take time for self-nourishment. If you don't take care of yourself, you can't responsibly help others.  Relax and Self-Care Mandate. 

Then from Mandate to Practice.  Let me get to the point here - I am talking about moving away from a Mandate to a Practice. It’s not like I never heard the term Self-Care before grad school. But, in grad school, the phrase Self-Care began to mean something much more to me than “Go to an exercise class.” It meant ask yourself, "Am I feeling okay?"  "What is my body telling me I need?" And, be honest. Because if you are not feeling okay and you ignore it, you could burn out at work or at home or burn the candle at both ends. What is the cost of you continuing your life while still burnt out? The cost is the energy you could be curating and nurturing that can go in to a better tomorrow, a better you, and better relationships.

Many people reach out to therapy to improve themselves and their relationships.  If you want to better your relationships– start by relaxing. Sounds counterintuitive? Well, like non-nourished therapists who cannot responsibly help their clients, can you take care of your loved ones if you are depleted?  Be fully present?  Can you be empathetic towards the people you care about? 

In grad school, I kept finding myself think I want empathy in my personal life, not just my professional. I want to be present in my personal relationships.  I want my loved ones to present to me!  Why should this only be taught to grad students in the field of social work or counseling?  Or to therapists? It shouldn't be reserved for a select few.

So, I want to pass along this important information by first giving you a Relax and Self-Care Mandate.  Followed by a simple, but yet effective step-by-step guide to help you move into Relax and Self-Care Practice.                                                                                                            

1. Ask yourself, “How do I feel?” – You can ask yourself this question at anytime: every morning, or when you notice yourself doing something you don’t particularly like (i.e. eating an entire large pizza), or when you are doing something or know you will soon be doing something that is stressful (visiting family, perhaps). And this is a good one, if you find yourself fighting against something that usually helps you (i.e. listening to music when sad or going to yoga after work – be aware of those feelings! Listen to them!)

2. Listen to yourself. Closely. Carefully. With compassion and non-judgment. Judging yourself will only prolong your path to feeling good or better. (Hint – You can tell that your Critic is speaking in this part of the Practice if you feel small. Your truest, most helpful answers here will always make you feel more open, not smaller.)

3. Ask yourself, “What do I need?” – non-judging is the name of the game. And dare to dream! You can also pose the question “What is standing in my way of feeling however you want to feel. (This is a concept from the book I recommend, Focusing by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D.).

4. If you can’t hear the answer, then close your eyes. Often when I cannot hear an answer, I just need a break to think about it and to listen, carefully. Think about it. If you can’t hear an answer about what you need for yourself, then chances are that you can’t hear others’ needs. And, you can't be as present in life. So take a break until you can get an answer.

5. Follow through. Your answer appears to you, and now you need to connect, commit and follow through. For instance you find yourself wanting or needing a break or vacation. Let's say you have no PTO. Find a way to give yourself the break, even if it's taking an afternoon off.

And, in closing, I want to remind you – when things get shaken up (could be due to a stressful life event, positive transition, recurrent memories, trouble in relationships), our Relax and Self-Care Practice may need to begin to include the use of a professional therapist.  I invite you to utilize the tools and guide I have learned for my own Relax and Self-Care Practice. Following your internal instincts of what you need is not just good Self-Care, it is, ultimately, being true to yourself, which may feel foreign in a life of meeting others’ expectations.

It is possible to follow your own voice, meet your own needs, and be true to yourself in a life of others’ needs. And, if you have children, loved ones, or employees looking to you for example or direction, you may model to those little ones, loved ones, or employees that it is OK and appropriate for them, too, to take care of themselves. So, get out there and sharpen your knife.  Engage in your Relax and Self-Care Practice.  And, start enjoying your life!