Author: inspirecounsellingnz@gmail.com

Stress has got a lot of bad press in recent years. So much so that whenever I ask a client what comes to mind when they think of stress, I invariably hear comments like; “It’s bad for you”, “Stress can make you sick”, “Stress can kill!” It’s hardly surprising that they’re coming to see me – people are stressed about being stressed!

But here’s the thing. Stress isn’t all bad. It can actually be very helpful to us. It’s how we think about it that matters. Let’s take a closer look.

Did you know that there are two kinds of stress?  One is really helpful and necessary to our survival. It gets us out of bed in the morning, preparing for work or school on time and meeting deadlines. The other can be debilitating and detrimental to our health and wellbeing because it has become chronic and dominant.  They are known as Eustress (think useful stress) and Distress. Let’s take a look at Eustress.

The stress response is your nervous systems alarm. It alerts us when there is danger or threat. If you think of the smoke detector in your house, an effectively functioning one will activate when it senses smoke and then deactivate once the smoke clears. In the same way, our nervous system alerts us when there is threat or danger and once activated it releases chemicals into our body that will help us to get out of danger either by facing it, running or freezing. This is commonly known as fight/flight mode.

When it is operating optimally, the alarm will enable us to rise to the challenge before us be that stepping back from the curb when a car suddenly comes whizzing around the corner, standing in front of your class to give a speech or working to get that assignment finished by its due date. With the alarm activated, we are better equipped to focus our attention, we have an increase of motivation and energy and our senses are heightened. This enables us to think and react fast. We’ve all heard stories of people recalling feats of seemingly super human strength under pressure saying “it was the adrenaline!”

Yet, we seem to have gotten stuck in the thinking that this is bad for us. So when for example we find ourselves about to talk with the boss about that pay rise, we perceive the normal stress response of increased heart rate, sweaty palms and maybe jitteriness  as being a bad thing. How’s that going to make you feel about talking to your boss?

Jake, was a 9 year old boy who hated giving speeches at school. His mother reported that he would worry for days before speech day, lose his appetite, feel nauseous, sleep poorly and become moody and easily upset. He hated feeling jittery and out of sorts in the days before, and once in front of the class he would feel his heart pounding, his mouth go dry, his palms sweating and he would feel jittery and shaky. He then had difficulty recalling what he wanted to say and often fumbled his cards. This coupled with the fear that his classmates would laugh at him often left him feeling paralysed.

Jake and I spent some time talking about smoke detectors. He learned how his body has one of its very own that could help him to give speeches. When he learned that those physical sensations he felt in his body were the stress response and could actually help him to focus his attention, give him energy and motivation, a light came on. He realised that the stress could be his friend and help him rise to the challenge of standing in front of his class.

I spoke next with Jake and his mum the week after speech day. He proudly recounted how he coached himself leading up to speech day and on the day itself, reminding himself that stress was his friend and there to help him. With a smile on his face he told me that his speech went without a hitch.

Jake is great evidence that how we think about stress matters. If we think stress is bad for us, it will be. However, if we choose to change how we view stress and instead see it as a helpful and empowering friend, then we will get to enjoy its many benefits.

Do stress well.

Do you have someone in your life who doesn’t seem to think very highly of themself? Do you struggle to hold yourself in high regard? Always putting yourself down, blaming yourself and focussing on your weaknesses?It may well be that low self-esteem is the issue.

Low self-esteem is when a person holds negative beliefs about themselves, dismissing or overlooking evidence to the contrary.

They may feel that their true self is weak, inadequate, inferior or lacking. They are plagued by uncertainty and self-doubt and their thoughts about self are often unkind and critical. They focus on the negatives to the neglect of the positives and have difficulty feeling any sense of self-worth.

These negative beliefs express themselves in what people think, what they say about themselves (self talk) and how they act. So self-doubt, self-blame, being critical of self, discounting positives and focussing on weaknesses will all be present. Self-consciousness – that thinking that says “what will people think?” will be present and over sensitivity to criticism and disapproval from others, will lead to people pleasing. The person with low self-esteem may find they have difficulty speaking up for themself (say sorry lots) and avoid challenges and opportunities.

So where does it come from? We are not born with low self-esteem. It develops as a result of experiences in life and most usually these occur in either childhood and/or adolescence. If these experiences have in the main been positive and affirming then our view of self will generally be positive and affirming. Likewise if our life experiences have been largely negative and undermining then then our view of self will likely be negative and undermining. In some cases it can lower in adulthood as a result of experiences such as job loss, long term illness or workplace bullying.

To better understand low self-esteem, let’s take a look at what healthy self-esteem is. Healthy self-esteem is reflected in a generally positive view of self and sense of self-worth. It is not the polar opposite of low self-esteem, in fact the polar opposite, whereby one excessively focusses only on their positive attributes and strengths to the neglect of their weaknesses can be equally as unhelpful as low self-esteem. Neither extreme is helpful.

Healthy self-esteem is balanced. It acknowledges both positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses as being part of what it means to be fully human, fully alive.

Can I change it? Make it better, healthier? Yes you can! You see, the beliefs we hold about ourselves (and the world in general) are in fact opinions. And opinions can be changed. It may take some dedication on your part and even the help of a professional to help you identify the thinking patterns that are keeping you stuck and to develop skills to grow some new ways of thinking, but with practice and consistency you can make meaningful change.

So in a nutshell, a person who has low self-esteem is someone who holds negative beliefs about themselves. These beliefs are opinions not fact and opinions can always be changed. You can “grow” your self-esteem to reflect a healthier and more balanced view of self and as a result an eminently more enjoyable life will follow.

Have you ever chased a rainbow? I have. The first time I saw the glimmering end of a rainbow, I scooped up my spade from the sandpit as I darted past and then scurried through the gate at the back of the yard and into the park where I saw its ending shimmering on the damp green grass in the middle of the field. I didn’t make it far before my small child legs gave up exhausted. I chased one or two more rainbows after that time, fuelled in all likelihood by the reading of far too many Enid Blyton fairy stories. All again with the same outcome; disappointment and no pot of gold.

 Not too many years later and as a somewhat wiser child, I liked to think (I had given up the fairy tale notion of pots of gold and spades) I had formulated a plan to get myself to the end of the ever elusive rainbow. I was older, stronger, could run faster and longer than before and this coupled with determination, I was sure next time would get me there. The day of the plan’s execution dawned like any other. I was hanging out with my younger brother, riding our bikes on the concrete driveway – down and up and around the letterbox when one of us spotted a rainbow. It was close.  Its bow arced across the sky in all its glory and it looked like it finished – it did finish – right in the centre of the park behind our house.  Game on! We dropped our bikes and took off. This time we were going to get to the end!

 I’m sure reader that you can see where this is going. We ran to the centre of the park and the rainbow was now three quarters of the way across!  When we reached three quarters it was at the farthest side. When we reached the far side of the park it was over the fence and in someone’s back yard. Well we jumped right over that fence (don’t tell my mother) and kept on doggedly chasing that rainbow’s end! We went through that someone’s garden, then down their long driveway until we reached the busy main road. It was at this point that my dream gave way to the disappointing reality that the end of a rainbow can never actually be caught. It’ll keep moving and shifting, ever elusive. Teasing with promise and then shying away. With this realisation, I walked home the long way around (I didn’t want to risk getting caught in someone’s back yard), dragging my feet in disappointment.  My brother, bless him, decided to forge on and went through a few more gardens and back yards before he reached the same conclusion and returned home.

Happiness is a bit like that rainbow. When happiness is our goal, our end game, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; when we focus on it, make plans to get it and chase it down, we too can find ourselves one day standing there defeated and disappointed by the realisation that it can be not just elusive but fleeting as well.

Now happiness has a couple of different meanings. The first is that happiness is an emotion: a sense of contentment or pleasure. It feels good when it is present and so it is no surprise that we want it and chase after it. However, like all emotions, happiness comes and goes. As humans, we are created to experience the full spectrum of emotions both the pleasurable and the difficult.  To want only happy feelings 24/7 is like expecting blue skies and sunshine every day. Yes, unrealistic. So to be fully human, fully alive and to experience life in all its richness is to experience all emotions.

The other meaning of happiness is a sense of wellbeing, joy or contentment in a life lived rich and full of meaning. When the outworking of our lives reflects our values, beliefs and all that we hold dear, a deep sense of contentment and meaning follows.  This is happiness. This is not a fleeting emotion, it is a profound sense of a life lived fully, with meaning and purpose. This happiness will bring with it many pleasurable feelings, it will also bring difficult and painful ones like sadness, fear, anger or loss. And this is all normal. It is what it means to be human and fully alive.

In a nutshell: When we focus our attention on the pursuit of happiness – like chasing rainbows for the pot of gold – it can leave us feeling unsatisfied, disappointed and depressed. To live a life of meaning and purpose, one that is in line with our values and all that we hold dear – this is what brings true happiness.  Pursue this.

I’m training to run an endurance race and as I take this journey, I can’t help but think about our greatest endurance event of all – Life.

Each of us journeys our own unique path in life. Some journeys are short, others long. Some easy and others so difficult we might wonder if we will ever complete them. Hurt, broken relationships, trauma, anxiety, depression and loss are just some of the challenging journeys that come along.

So, let me explain some of the similarities.

Endurance events are run in the mind – Sound weird? My running coach once said these words to me and they hold true for everyday life too. Our thoughts have a tremendous impact on our experience of the journey, how we perform, and the results we achieve. What we think, can hold us back from achieving our full potential or enable us to excel.

Cultivate positive expectancy – Believe in yourself and your ability to see this through.  You are capable of far more than you think you are.

Edging out of the comfort zone – Endurance events will take us outside of our comfort zone – sometimes way outside – and as we approach its edges and step beyond its limits, the brain will activate its alarm signals (fear and anxiety) in an attempt to keep us inside the confines of its comfort zone. (You can read more about this in our blog, The Value of Leaving Your Comfort Zone)   Acknowledge these emotions and take heart because their presence means that you’re making progress toward your goal.

Set a pace that you can maintain for the long haul – This is not a sprint. If you look at life like an endurance race then you will understand that if you approach it at 100 miles an hour every day then you will burn out fast. 

It’s okay to slow down and even walk – When endurance running, maintaining energy is key. There will be hills and maybe even mountains and trying to run these will be a waste of energy when they can be walked just as efficiently conserving energy for later.  Give yourself permission to slow down on those uphill days.

The body needs nutrition – Take appropriate fluids and food for the run and eat regularly. These are the fuel that will keep your engine running and energy levels up.

Rest well – Recovery is vital, especially after big training sessions. Recovery days allow the body to rest, recover and re-energise for the next run. Some days are tougher than others and it is okay to allow yourself time to rest and recover from them. You will come out stronger as a result.

Self-Coach well – Am I being a great coach to myself, encouraging, motivating and inspiring along the way? Hearing “You can do this!” “Wow, look at how far you’ve come!” and “You’ve got this!” are powerful resources that can keep you going.

Training buddies make all the difference – Friends make tough runs more fun and help us get out of bed in the mornings when we don’t feel like it. Likewise, as social beings we all need people around us to encourage and motivate one another.

Turn off the chatter – “Random thinking is the enemy” says ultra-runner Scott Jurek. Be aware of the chatter going on in your mind. Is it helping or hindering? Unhelpful thinking will slow you down and inhibit progress.

Be mindful – Being immersed in the present moment, giving attention to what we can see, hear and feel as we run can improve our running performance. When did you last take a moment to be truly present?

Take small steps – Building endurance takes time. Similarly in life, we don’t have to get “there” all at once.

Talk to an expert – Experts have skills and knowledge that we don’t and can help us when we are struggling or feeling stuck. For you this could be a Coach or Therapist. We readily seek out experts to fix our car, house and computer and maintain warrants of fitness for our vehicles. So what’s the difference with our mind and body?

Celebrate success – No matter how small, celebrate it! It is still a step in the direction you want to go.

Like an endurance race, day to day life has easy moments, tough ones and those in between. Sometimes you will cruise along “in the zone” and at other times you will find yourself slogging uphill. All are normal parts of living a full and meaningful life. Enjoy the easy moments and adjust your pace when things get tough.

Strong emotions such as anger and anxiety can be an indicator of underlying unresolved issues. This is what Jane and John discovered when they found themselves struggling in their relationship.

When high stress from a demanding job resulted in John becoming emotionally unavailable in his marriage, Jane noticed feelings of increasing anger towards him. She was annoyed that he forgot to do things which he said he would do, he left the disciplining of the children to her and their conversations had shifted from “deep and meaningful” to mundane. Jane’s description of their marriage was, “it’s like we’re flatmates these days”.

Jane wisely chose to seek help before the anger turned to resentment – a much more destructive emotion.

With the help of her counsellor, Jane was able to use the anger she felt as a motivator to identify the issue and make some positive changes. She identified also that her marriage was of immense value to her and worth putting the effort in to overcome their present struggle. She acknowledged that John needed her support and compassion during this stressful time. In session, Jane was able to put together a plan for how to communicate with John; expressing the problem, unmet needs, how she was feelings, how it was affecting her and how it was impacting their relationship.

The resulting conversation fostered increased understanding and empathy for one another. Jane’s action provided them both the opportunity to talk, take stock and make some decisions that were of great benefit to both their relationship and John’s work. John grew in self-awareness and learned to better understand the anxiety he was feeling about work and developed skills to express it in a healthy way that was of benefit not just to his marriage but in his workplace and other relationships too. They both learned that whenever they feel a strong emotion – anger in in this situation for Jane and anxiety for John – they can use it as an alert that something is out of balance. Then they can take a closer look at what is happening in their lives and relationships to determine what it is and how they can deal with it in a positive way.

These days, John and Jane schedule regular marriage time. They have coffee or dinner dates and talk about issues early – before they even become issues sometimes. They have learned that frequent conversations like these keep them accountable to one another and foster greater intimacy.

Your comfort zone is just that – comfortable. A place your brain has defined as known, measurable and safe.

The brain likes familiar. It likes to operate its autopilot mode and fulfil as many tasks as it can with as much ease as possible. But the autopilot can be a hindrance when we allow it too much control – especially when it comes to taking ourselves outside our comfort zone. (Read more about the autopilot on our blog Growing Metal Toughness).

Approaching the boundaries of our comfort zone will put the brain on alert. It will activate its alarm signals to tell us that we are entering a “no go zone”. Red lights flashing “you shall not pass!” will capture your attention. Fear and anxiety will raise their heads above the parapets, firing warning shot thoughts such as “this is scary”, “I don’t like this” and “let’s go back” and causing uncomfortable physiological changes such as shallow breathing, increased heart rate and sensations like butterflies or churning in the stomach or a lump in the throat. This is simply the brain trying to keep us on familiar territory – maintaining the status quo.

But here’s the thing –

The brain is flexible, movable and adaptive – a dynamic organ. It is constantly responding and changing to the information our minds feed it. So if we feed it new information, it will change to accommodate it. By stepping outside our comfort zone we find ourselves entering a new and larger space that holds potential for new opportunities, life and growth. When we embrace the uncomfortableness, we increase our mental toughness and grow.

So next time you take yourself into unfamiliar territory, take notice of how your mind, emotions and body are reacting. Acknowledge the presence of any unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings and recognise them for what they are – the brain’s attempt to keep you in the familiar. Then remind yourself of your choice – growth

 

Painful thoughts – none of us are immune. They pop into our head and go round and round like a bunch of chattering monkeys on a merry go round at the fair.

It’s well and good when the thoughts are enjoyable and helpful but what if they’re not?

Everybody who enters my counselling practice is there because the chattering monkeys have been riding the fairground rides of unhelpful thinking for so long that they have become stuck in stress, anxiety, low mood or depression.

We don’t intentionally plan for this to happen. I can’t imagine that anybody would upon waking in the morning, stretch and say, “today I’m only going to think thoughts that will bring me down and depress me!”

So let’s take a look at how it happens.

The brain – brilliant organ that it is, is a meaning making machine. It is like a great big filing cabinet sorting experiences, sights and sounds into the drawers that it thinks fit best. The more data we produce on any one given topic (thinking about it, reading about it and talking about it for example) then the bigger that file will become and the more meaning the brain will attach to it.

The brain is also a pattern finding machine. This means that is continually on the lookout for patterns that it can make sense of and file away into those meaning/cabinet drawers. What creates the patterns? Repetition.

Repetition occurs as we think about, dwell on, mull over, read about or talk about something. There’s a saying: wherever your attention goes, grows. So the more attention we give to those thoughts that we don’t like, then the more of them we will get.

So next time those chattering monkeys are giving you grief, it could be time to take a look at what patterns might have formed and decide what you are going to do about them.

To live a full human life is to experience the full range of human emotions.

Somewhere along the way though we got the idea that only “good” and “positive” emotions are acceptable to feel. When difficult and painful emotions surface, we often suppress them – bottling them up or putting them under the rug so that we can feel “better”. This can be because as children we might have received direct messages of disapproval or shame by being told “Big kids don’t cry”, or we might have taken on indirect messages as we observed our parents habitually holding in their emotions. Messages such as these can lead to life beliefs that emotions must always be contained, controlled or hidden to avoid disapproval or rejection from others. Some people hold a fear that if they don’t control their emotions at all times, then they will be out of control and that thought is anathema to them.

To better understand painful emotions, let’s take a closer look at how the body processes pain. Our bodies are designed to use pain to keep us safe. Pain communicates to the body that we need to protect an area or rest it to allow it to heal. When we sprain our ankle, for example it hurts every time we move it. This is because the body is telling us that rest is required so that the healing process can take place. We learn very quickly that a stove element when turned on is hot and will burn if we touch it. Some of us learn this by being told by our parents. Others learn the lesson the hard way! So in a physiological sense, pain is our friend.

Our feelings are like the weather, continually changing: at times very pleasant, at other times extremely uncomfortable. What would happen if we went through life believing “we should have good weather every day – this rain is seriously disturbing”.

Along the way somewhere, we humans decided that all pain and not just physical pain needed to be avoided. So if any emotions are painful, then these should be avoided too. Unfortunately, this isn’t the way we were meant to function. Expecting only so called “good emotions” would be like expecting only sunny weather every day.

To try to avoid painful or unpleasant emotions, we have developed all sorts of clever little tricks. These are called coping mechanisms and we use them when we don’t want to feel unpleasant emotions. Coping mechanisms are any behaviour that a person uses to avoid, ignore or deny feeling painful emotions. They help to distract us. Common coping mechanism are:  eating, music, T.V., reading, computer games, exercise, work, study, hobbies, sex, pornography, gardening, cooking, gambling, drugs, alcohol, smoking, sport, blaming others, criticising others, positive affirmations, constructive problem solving, vigorously defending your position, pretending it’s not important, and minimising the problem or telling yourself “it could be worse”.  In the short term, some of these coping mechanisms may seem very helpful and they can be when used in a healthy way, but when used as long term avoidance measures, they can become your own worst enemy and can lead to depression, anxiety, compulsive behaviours and in some instances addiction. All because we didn’t want to feel an emotion that we deemed to be “just too hard”. Avoidance doesn’t work.

To live a full human life is to experience the full range of human emotions – joyous and painful alike.  So next time your emotions are doing a dull, rainy day, acknowledge them and ask yourself what you can do to help yourself through the rain.

We all have them. We notice them flowing through our minds. We share them with others. Some are pleasant and some are not. They help to shape our view of the world and others. So how do we put our finger on just what a thought is? Thoughts can be described as a sequence of words or pictures that convey information. They can also be described as events in the mind. If they are true we call them facts but thoughts also include judgements, theories, goals, dreams, fantasies, predictions, memories, assumptions, ideas, opinions, daydreams and beliefs. Imagine a radio being on in the background. It is always playing, pouring out its information, music and news. Sometimes the music is soothing and relaxing, sometimes there is a talk show playing – perhaps with an opinionated and critical host. We all have our own radios playing in our minds. Some people know it as their inner voice, others call it their inner critic. Sometimes our radio’s volume is soft and sometimes it plays so loudly that it can seem impossible to give attention to anything else.

The thing with thoughts is that they want our undivided attention. When they have our undivided attention, we may call it being focussed, lost in thought or being a million miles away. This kind of thinking can lead to great creativity.  However when its unhelpful thoughts that have our attention, we can call it worrying, stressing out, rehashing the past, ruminating or being anxious or preoccuppied. The thing is, when we get caught up in these kind of thoughts, they can begin to take charge. Remember how they want all of your attention? Well when they have it, then they have free reign to weave whatever stories they like. Usually these stories will be ones that are critical, self defeating and unhelpful.

Thoughts can be true, they can also be untrue. Often untrue thoughts will make a most compelling argument for their truthfulness, convincing the mind that they must be fact.

Facts about thoughts

• Thoughts are merely sounds, words, stories or bits of dialogue
• They may or may not be true
• They might or might not be important
• Thoughts are not orders – we don’t have to obey them
• They may or may not be wise – don’t automatically follow their advice
• Thoughts are never threats – even the most negative of thoughts in and of themselves are not deeply disturbing or frightening.
• We can choose what attention we give to them

Remember, thoughts are stories, events in the mind – they are not you.

 

Critic or Coach.

Which one are you listening to?

It is easy to distinguish between the two – one leads you towards the life you want and the other leads you away from it.

The critic will tell you: “I always stuff up”; “Nobody loves me”; “I’m worthless/stupid/useless/a failure”; “I’m no good at relationships/with money”.

The coach will use words like: “You can do it!”; “I believe in you”; “You’ve got what it takes”; “What a great start”; “Look how far you have come, now let’s see how far you can go”.

Athletes choose coaches for their skills and expertise in bringing out their best performance – they want to improve and win. A great coach encourages and inspires an athlete to strive and achieve – even when it’s tough – especially when it’s tough.

If a coach is not serving them, then they find another one who will.

What’s the quality of your inner coach?

Is it encouraging and inspiring you – or is it time for a change?