I was just on the radio with the lovely Leslie Irish Evans of Peeling Mom Off the Ceiling, talking about how to use a simple technique to change your emotional state in as little as five minutes.

Listen in to hear about my background and stay for the demo of Emotional Freedom Technique.

But what can I do? I don’t live in the South and I’ve already donated money. I’ve signed petitions and written my letters to the editor.

Then it seems like my heart tells me that I can do something more: I can visualize healing for the ocean and our community. And beyond that, I can lead a visualization experience for people like me who want to help but don’t know how.

But Here’s Where I Get Divided. . .

Another part of me remembers an episode of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother where the character Robin, a pragmatic New Yorker, has a strange moment of meeting another part of herself.

She has recently returned from a post-breakup trip to Argentina, where she fell in with drum-circling, communal-eating, hippy folks. As she returns to New York and her regular life, she starts to feel the pull between who she was on vacation and who she normally is. In a dream, she walks out into her living room to confront the dreadlocked version of herself.

This hippy part says, accusingly, “What about the important things, like…lying on the beach and thinking about peace? Don’t you care about thinking about peace?”

Is Visualizing Just Lying Around and Thinking About Peace?

There’s research that suggests using your brain to imagine an activity can actually make you better at that activity (for example, weight-lifting).

But does that mean that visualizing a larger change, like a clean and healthy ocean, for example, will make a difference? Or am I just soothing myself with a fairy tale?

What Science Doesn’t Know. . .Yet

There aren’t many research studies that can offer proof of the power of visualization or prayer on a large scale. Even though the movie “The Secret” features a woman saying she cured herself of breast cancer using visualization, how can we know that’s what made the difference? How do you measure whether something external (another person’s health, a World Cup game, or even an ongoing tragedy) is affected by something not tangible?

I can’t prove it to you, anymore than I can prove it to myself.

So what do I say to the skeptical part of me who thinks I might be acting silly and wasting time?

It Can’t Hurt

Focusing my positive thoughts and images of well-being on someone or something that desperately needs it certainly won’t make it worse!

I’ve seen and heard of positive results coming through after participation in visualization and prayer. There are so many stories, both commercial and local, that speak to the power of visualization. “The Secret” is just one example of people testifying to the idea that visualization can bring you anything you want.

People report having found lost wedding rings and gotten unexpected checks in the mail. A few celebrities, like Scott Adams, even speak to the power of visualization in their careers.

The skeptical part of me can at least get behind the idea that “positive thinking raise(s) your consciousness to possibilities so they can snag your attention” (Harvard psychologist Carol Kauffman).

It Says “I Care”

More than anything else, I think I keep visualizing and leading people through visualizations because it’s a way that we show our inner parts that the situation matters to us. We’re letting ourselves know that this IS a big deal, that it’s worth spending time on, and that we do crave change.

And how else can we start to create change, if not by declaring that we care?

There’s Hope in the Intentions of Others

I’m not the only one who feels a call to organize people in visualizing and praying for the gulf, by the way. Deepak Chopra, James O’Dea and other spiritual leaders have put together a set of three telephone and internet gatherings, which they’ve named “The Gulf Call to Sacred Action.”

I’ve signed up. And I may still lead my own kind of visualization ritual here. That’s me serving the best I know how.

Have you had an experience where visualization helped the outcome? I’d love to hear about it in your comments.

Learn from Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, aka “Shrink Lady” of MyShrink.com, in the first part of her Brain Wise series.

In it, she describes what happens for folks in therapy, successful and otherwise. She reveals how the brain learns to stay out of “crisis” or “freeze” mode in successful therapy so clients can experience staying in the flow of life.

I loved her pictures and explanation, and I think it’s a great way to understand why certain therapies and therapists work for you, and why others don’t.

Check it out: http://www.myshrinkmembers.com/brain-wise-series/

Recently I experienced a big shock—the kind that most of us don’t encounter very often.

I was with a friend when I discovered evidence of a physical disaster near my home. I did not, at that time, know any of the details, nor did I know what kind of impact it might have on my own life.

Now, normally, I am a person who likes, even needs, to process my emotional impact verbally. In other words, I really like to talk things out. (What else would you expect from a professional therapist, right?)

But in this circumstance, I found myself unwilling to talk about my inner workings at all. My friend who was with me was even a little frustrated. She couldn’t understand why I shut down. I didn’t even know, myself.

So What Happened?

Later though, as I recovered from the feeling of shock, and that first big emotional whallop, I had some insight into my own process.

Usually, I am pretty grounded. I know how I feel pretty quickly, and I’m agile and adaptable, able to examine my shifting thoughts and feelings within a few minutes.

When something like that shock hits me, though, I don’t know how I feel. I hear lots of my inner parts giving all different kinds of feelings and ideas. I can feel my Core Self listening to them, kind of like a trained cop handling tens of panicky witnesses.

And I discovered that the reason I didn’t want to talk about these thoughts and feelings as they came up was because I didn’t want to commit to any of them. I could’ve explored any one of those thoughts and followed it down the rabbit hole, getting worked up about a particular story.

In that vulnerable state where I still wasn’t grounded enough to know what I believed, I sent up my boundaries so that I could calm the riotous crowd inside me until I knew what thoughts and emotion I decided to allow to fully exist.

How’d I Do That?

This may sound like some kind of zen mentalist magic, but the truth is that anyone can learn to do this.

In her book Emotional Alchemy, author Tara Bennett-Goleman talks about “the very latest research in neuroscience–including the neurological ‘magic quarter second,’ during which it is possible for a thought to be ‘caught’ before it turns into an emotional reaction.”

It’s so much easier to nip a feeling in the bud, before it really takes root and spreads throughout my system and I have to go digging up the entire weedy garden.

Dr. Carl Jung knew, more than fifty years ago, that such mindfulness was possible. I’m so grateful to live in an age where the tools to achieve it are so readily available.

Check out more in Emotional Alchemy.

A date stands you up.
She obviously doesn’t like you.

Your colleague gives you a dirty look across the room.
Your last email must’ve really pissed him off!

In so many places in our lives, we see a behavior and automatically make a meaning out of it. Everything from a glance to an email gets snappily run through our minds and attached to a reaction or feeling.

Part of this is biological. As animals, we’re built to rapidly process information so that we can react quickly, if need be. It’s how survival instincts work.

However, most things we’re reacting to aren’t life-or-death level situations.

Here’s how I work with my own brain to stop getting so upset by all these little situations. I call it “Alternate Stories.”

Every time something happens that starts to get me feeling negative, judgmental, sad or angry, I tell myself an alternate story about what might’ve been going on for the other person.

For example, say a person cuts me off in traffic.

My first response is to think, “Hey, look out, jerk!” And then I could proceed to get mad, feel my adrenaline rise, and start tailgating that car, just to show him he can’t treat me like that.

But before I take any action or speak, I think to myself, is there any other possible reason that guy could’ve made that lane change right in front of me?

…Maybe he’s on the phone hearing news that someone in his family just had to go to the hospital and is totally not paying attention.

…Maybe HE’s trying to get to the hospital because he’s having chest pains.

…Maybe he’s had a horrible day and his wife left him and he’s totally disconnected from anything besides his own pain.

…Maybe he’s just had a bug fly into his eye.

…Maybe he really looked in his mirror and thought he saw no one there.

…Maybe he’s really nervous on the freeway and just made a mistake.

…Or maybe he really is a jerk.
Maybe, but I just can’t know. As you can see from my list of maybes, there’s no way for me to know what’s going on with anybody else as they do whatever it is they’re doing.

(Sure, I may have really good guesses sometimes, but the point of this is this: none of us can EVER know for sure what’s going on with anyone else. Unless we ask them…and sometimes even then, we can’t be sure.)

Going through some alternate stories whenever I feel reactionary helps me to remember that I can’t know what’s up with that other person. And that sometimes my behavior could look just as annoying to someone else, even if I didn’t mean it that way at all.

The power of the Alternate Story technique is that it reconnects me to my compassion, my sense of “oh, yeah, sometimes I do that, too.”

If I don’t know for sure that he meant to run me off the road, it’s easier for me to allow space in my heart for him.

And at the same time, it helps me to un-attach from my belief that I KNOW anything. In this place of unattachment, rather than having to soothe my hurts or calm my anger, I am free.

Try it and see what you think. I’d love to hear your comments!

I’ve been “organizing” my stuff for pretty much my whole life. It’s a running joke among my friends. In a lot of ways, I have my internal stuff together, but I’m pretty sure the external struggle is mirroring something internal. Do you have any suggestions on how to start identifying what’s in my way?

And on another front: Although, I know what I need to do to lose weight (more exercise, better food in the right amounts), I struggle and continually fall into bad habits. I love many kinds of sports and exercise, and I love healthy food, so there is no hardship to living well in this way. Again, I’m wondering why I keep getting in my own way.

– GT

Well, GT, on the first one, I would like a little bit more info. What do you mean by “organizing” your stuff? You mean you clean house frequently? Or that you have a strong desire to sort through material things on a daily basis? Or something else?

In any case, I’d say that if you feel like this external behavior is really about something inside you, you’re likely right.

The first thing I’d suggest is to be aware next time you feel compelled to “organize.”

Just stop. Breathe in a few slow breaths. And ask yourself, “what do I REALLY want right now?” And then just be. Wait for an answer to come. Don’t *try* to figure it out. Just wait and listen to your heart.

And in truth, this is the same answer I’d give to your second scenario, especially when you’re thinking about eating something unhealthy (I do this a bit too often myself). Stop. Breathe. Ask and listen.

I think that many of us seek therapy because we’ve never learned how to do this, or because we keep forgetting. We need someone who is in the space with us, watching us have our reactions, to remind us to stop, breathe and listen.

Sure, we therapists do other stuff, too, but this is a big part of it. One of the most crucial things I learn again and again from my clients is that the answers about what you need come from within YOU.

Thanks for the questions, GT!

Anyone else out there have questions for the therapist?

There’s one moment where Elliot says this:
“…but relationships? I always heard that relationships were easy. That even when they were hard, they were easy.”

I remember watching that for the first time, and thinking who the hell has SHE been talking to?!

Let’s get this clear, right off the bat here: relationships are hard.

Sometimes, when the clouds clear up and the planets are aligned, we have some smooth days together. Nobody gets triggered, everybody is peachy happy keen. And yeah, at the beginning of a relationship, all the stories are new, the chemistry is super fresh, and the things that will later feel irritating are easy to overlook.

But if it’s the not the very beginning of your relationship, and all the stars are doing their own thing, well, you’re going to have to work in your relationship.

Actually, I lie. What’s closer to the truth is that you’re going to have to work inside yourself for the sake of the relationship.

What feels hard about relationships is how they urge us to change ourselves. To compromise or sacrifice…or more often, fight AGAINST compromise and sacrifice.

Working on yourself–learning to pause when you start getting sad or angry or depressed, learning to listen more to your inner observer, learning to stop yourself from saying something defensive and to instead acknowledge you made a mistake–that’s the hard stuff.

But it’s also the great stuff. Most of the time, I think self-work just feels hard because we don’t know where to start and we don’t know what to do. Things always feel hard when we aren’t happy and don’t know what will fix it.

If you just take a step though…find a book to get some wisdom or ides, start a daily affirmation practice, journal about your conversations with your partner to try to find patterns…you’ll discover that the payoff is incalculable.

Hey, I’m addicted to self-work for a reason. And if you need help finding a place to start, I’m here.

Partly, I attended to get more training in work I deeply respect. And partly, I wasn’t sure why I was going, but I knew something in me needed support. I was having some conflict in a close relationship. Someone I care about deeply was really struggling and I was struggling to know the Right Way to help.

In my anxiety to help my friend, I was offering all kinds of tactics and techniques. You know, the “what about trying this?” or “how about you think of it that way?” or even “let me do some EFT or healing or process work with you!”

My friend wasn’t interested in any of this, but instead felt frustrated and pushed away. Now, I’m a therapist and healer, so you can imagine my own frustration at not being “able to help.”

As I’m sitting at the constellations training a day later, another workshop participant brought an issue forward that closely resembled my own. And the facilitator brought up the most useful concept in that moment. He said, “In judging this person, you are not respecting them or their path.”

Oh.
Right.
This thing I can do so well with my clients (who are not intimately tied to my personal life) is SO much harder to do with my friends, family and spouse:

Respect their path.

Everyone gets exactly what they need in exactly the way that they need it. I may have two hundred tools for transformation, but that’s not meaningful to the person who needs to find their transformation in the two-hundred-and-first way.

The journey a person takes to healing is unique. It is sacred. And it is absolutely personal. When it comes to my friend, I forgot that.

As I came out of my workshop, I called my friend and apologized for not respecting her Way. I metaphorically bowed to her process and her path. And this created a deeper bond between us, as she felt finally heard, held and understood, and I felt a release of me trying to help shoulder her burden.

What a relief and what a blessing.

I offer thanks to all my clients, past, present, and future, who continue to help me learn this Way of Being. Peace be your journey.

So how long is “feeling better” gonna take already?!!

I have good news and bad news on this one, my friends. Bad news first.

It will take longer than a cheeseburger. Longer than your internet download. Longer than most anything you could purchase with a “one-click-buy.”

This is also the good news.

What?

Yes, it is good news that your healing will take longer than some kind of instant gratifcation. I will tell you why, but first I’ll tell you how.

Let’s start with the fact that your particular healing is custom-made. It is completely, 100% tailored for you–your body, your mind, your heart. And as you know, customized work takes extra time because of the hand-crafting.

This isn’t machine-made, off-the-rack, or one of millions made in bulk. This healing is one-of-a-kind. It has to be, because otherwise it wouldn’t fit, right?

Then, speaking scientifically, which I’m terrible at, you’ve got a bunch of stuff inside your brain that tells you how to behave on a regular basis (we call that “patterns” in therapist lingo). And that stuff needs to be rewired if you want to have healthier patterns of behavior.

Would you really want that rewiring job to be a hasty one?! Nope, cause you’d probably end up thinking you could drink through your toes or something.

Also, there are likely a lot of aspects to why you’re not feeling great. So even though therapists and healers like me can help you get results pretty quickly (compared to the days of Freud and early talk therapy), it just takes some time, and more than a couple sessions to identify the things that aren’t working for you.

Yes, you have more than a few Things That Make You Feel Bad (TTMYFB). You might not feel them because, well, humans are geared to only be able to consciously hold a couple painful issues in their mind/body/heart at a time.

If you were aware of every single of of your TTMYFB, you’d probably overload your circuits. Therefore, these things just come up a few at a time, so they’re manageable. Trust me, it’s actually a good system. Your mind/body/heart is actually a marvel of engineering.

What about the “why”?!

Right, right: “why is it good that healing takes time?”

Because, whether you’re into believing this or not, our lives are about learning (and experiencing joy, but that’s another post). If you’re done learning, you’re done living.

If you’re still practicing and learning and repairing your past and present self, you still have a good reason to hang around in this lifetime. And I see that as a good thing.

It’s almost like having a conversation with me yourself, except that I’m edited to sound more succinct than I really am.

You can see the video on the WWISH website.