Developing courage, curiosity, and compassion
To live well with biological and psychological sensitivities that make you vulnerable to anxiety and depression, you have to change how you respond to your symptoms. Where you used to respond with avoidance, self-criticism, fear, you must learn to respond with courage, curiosity, and compassion. The mind is too mysterious to know it completely, but living by these values will reduce your suffering.
You are actually suffering
I want to teach you to observe and understand your emotional patterns, so that you can see it for what it is when it occurs and get out of it yourself. You learn a way of relating to yourself that doesn’t prevent emotion from occurring, but alleviates the suffering you have about the experience of painful emotion over time. Because it is an entirely different way of thinking about your mind, it will take some time for you to practice enough and work out the details enough to be out in front of the pattern on a regular basis.
The ordinary nature of well-being
What this means for the treatment of emotional disorders is that we have to work together to intentionally create circumstances that trigger your emotion with an attitude of curiosity and compassion, so that we can observe what’s happening and figure out the stuck points. We need to give you the opportunity and practice feeling something uncomfortable, deciding whether it is a threat, and then proceeding with confidence in your decision. We want you to expose yourself to emotion to learn how to love yourself, not to make it go away.
Treating emotional disorders
What this means for the treatment of emotional disorders is that we have to work together to intentionally create circumstances that trigger your emotion with an attitude of curiosity and compassion, so that we can observe what’s happening and figure out the stuck points. We need to give you the opportunity and practice feeling something uncomfortable, deciding whether it is a threat, and then proceeding with confidence in your decision. We want you to expose yourself to emotion to learn how to love yourself, not to make it go away.
The bio-psychosocial model of emotional disorders
You didn’t choose the brain you were born with, but how you respond to it is your responsibility. A bio-psychosocial model understands the limitations of each type of interventions as well as respecting and celebrating how different interventions can build upon one another. Regulated brain chemistry, psychological flexibility, and strong social support are all necessary components of emotional wellbeing.
Starting your psychotherapy journey
If you’re seeing me, I’m assuming something happened, either due to your biological vulnerabilities or your life experience or both, that prompted you to avoid some part of your internal experience in a very specific way that is amplified the experience. We’ll discover that together and help you relate to it differently.
Why I maintain hope
I maintain hope because I’m curious about how life will turn out and I value courage, compassion, and connection. In general the mystery of life seems meaningful to me.
Hopeful self-talk
I can’t control nor perfect my consciousness. There are forces working on me and in me that I am unaware of and I’ll never have full awareness. Rather than trying to control and perfect my consciousness, I can be humble before the mystery of human life, and enjoy my exploration of it.
A reasonable philosophy of recovery
A reasonable philosophy of recovery is one that assumes that you’ll get re-sensitized. You’ll get anxious again and you’ll avoid again. You’ll have another intrusive thought and you’ll do something to neutralize it. You’ll have a low mood and have trouble maintaining participation in the activities you value. The resilience of your recovery is marked by how quickly you return to relating effectively to your internal experience, rather than by the absence of thoughts, feelings, or sensations.
Discovery meaning in your recovery
It isn’t your fault that you have the biological vulnerabilities or the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that maintain your illness. Your suffering is unavoidable. It is your responsibility. The way you respond can further reinforce your suffering with shame, self-criticism, and hopelessness. Or, it can give you a sense of meaning. It can make you feel courageous, curious, and compassionate.
An introduction to hope
Change as a fact of life is an experiential truth. Try to show me a thought, feeling, or sensation that has never changed in any direction in a single organism. Everything changes.
Compassionate recovery
Tomorrow is different than today. Your brain and mind will be in a different state and you have the chance to respond differently to whatever shows up.
My present is a gift
The present moment is a gift even and especially when you feel anxious.
Self-compassion is understanding and staying with my experience
Consider thinking about self-compassion as an attitude where you are willing to stay with your experience and relate to it with openness and curiosity, rather than criticism.
Self-compassion and self-criticism
Numbing out our undesirable thoughts and feelings also numbs out desirable feelings like joy, trust, connection, compassion, affection, playfulness, and creativity.
Self-compassion in everyday life
It takes humility and courage to accurately assess where you are and commit to the next step. Your emotional disorder was created, intensified, and maintained by a cycle of fear, resistance, and avoidance of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. The skills you need to step out of this cycle are the opposite of what you’ve tried so far.
An introduction to self-compassion
When it comes to relating effectively to emotions, turning towards your experience means observing that experience mindfully — floating through it mindfully — and not doing something to make it worse. You don’t have to be particularly warm and fuzzy about this. Just notice what’s happening, don’t criticize yourself, and don’t add anything that will make it worse.
Uncertainty is an opportunity for confidence
This is why your emotional disorder is a gift. Because you have to practice observing yourself, you get to develop a strategy for how you’re going to relate to yourself. Because you purposely experiment with yourself in smaller moments, you have the chance to develop a much deeper confidence in yourself that can carry you at all other times in your life.
Uncertainty is a neurological opportunity
The neurological opportunity is that you have the opportunity to do the opposite to change that pattern. Not only should you do the opposite in the exact way that the avoidance is showing up, but this is why we want to think about exposure as something that is frequent, flexible, and willing. It’s just like learning to walk and then run by practicing, getting good at it, and getting reinforcement through the feeling of confidence.
The role of intolerance of uncertainty in all anxiety disorders
Intolerance of uncertainty is the tendency to react negatively on an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral level to uncertain situations and events.