Navigating Change

Debi Levine, MS, LMFT

Storytelling in Families

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Telling stories draws family members close to each other. Family stories keep families connected and chronicle their history.

Susan Engel (1999) writes: “We all want to know who we are and how we came into our world. And we each learn this, in part, through the stories we are told about our beginnings. We reencounter ourselves constantly throughout life and confirm what we already know by telling, over and over again, one version or one aspect of the story or our life.”

Storytelling

  1. begins at birth
  2. helps children gain confidence
  3. helps to shape our view of ourselves, other people, and events in our lives
  4. helps us discover more about what we think, feel, or know
  5. tells us about the world, our cultures, and the values that hold our families together
  6. helps us process negative experiences which releases psychological tensions that cause physiological arousal when they are unexpressed
  7. reflects important family themes

It is important to provide opportunities for self-expression for all family members. Storytelling is one form of self-expression. Family relationships are most harmonious when both children and parents have outlets for expressing feelings.

Activities such as

  1. daily physical exercise
  2. painting
  3. cooking
  4. gardening

My husband likes to putter in the garden and perfect oil paintings. One daughter is a marvelous cook, always at ease in the kitchen, creative in ways that seem impossible to me. Another daughter expresses her thoughts and feelings through her organization and presentation of her home, showing remarkable skill and talent that I greatly admire. And, I love to dance, with ballroom dance taking firm hold at this stage of my life.

All serve as outlets to drain off tensions and irritations and provide people with additional sources of pleasure and feelings of competence. Wise parents provide children with a variety of outlets so they can develop many skills. My granddaughter is delighted by music and movement, showing an interest in dance recently. Her mother takes her to a Preschool Music and Movement class each Tuesday… These activities promote self-confidence and self-esteem, which increase psychological health. Healthy adults honor and respect each other’s styles of self-expression, and encourage healthy outlets. They do not discourage or attempt to sabotage that individual need for expression.

Research indicates that childhood leisure activities are more predictive of psychological health in adulthood than are the child’s own personality characteristics in childhood.

In what ways do you like to express yourself? Storytelling? Writing? Physical activities? Hobbies?

 

Stress Management for Women

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Have a couple of good friends who send me all sorts of funny and clever e-mail forwards…  Some of them make my day! This one recently arrived in my inbox, and I have no author to give credit, but thought it would make you smile… 🙂

*****

A young lady confidently walked around the room while discussing stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water. Everyone just knew she was going to ask the ultimate question, ‘Is it half empty or half full?’  She fooled them all and asked how heavy it was. The answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”

She continued “…and that’s the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later the burden simply becomes too heavy to bear and we won’t be able to carry on.”

As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest. When we’re refreshed, we can carry our burdens and we can deal with stress longer and better each time it’s practiced. So, as early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don’t carry them through the evening and into the night. There will be another day…“

  1. Accept the fact that some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue!
  2. Always keep your words soft and sweet just in case you have to eat them.
  3. Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
  4. Drive carefully… It’s not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.
  5. If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
  6. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
  7. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
  8. Never buy a car you can’t push.
  9.  Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.
  10. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
  11. Since it’s the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
  12. The second mouse gets the cheese.
  13. When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
  14. Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
  15. Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.
  16. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty, and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
  17. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
  18. Have an awesome day and know that someone has thought about you today.
  19. And lastly, save the earth….. It’s the only planet with chocolate!

Have  nice day!

What is Mindfulness?

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An inspiring yoga class earlier this week that focused on meditation and mindfulness has really helped me stay focused in the moment for many days. It has felt good to feel energetic, yet relaxed, calm, and organized. Reflecting back on this Friday afternoon I realize that I got an awful lot done during this week with less internal stress than usual. Sweet…

So what exactly is “mindfulness?” There is much written about it and many different perspectives to help with the definition and practice.

Here is how Rick Hanson, Ph.D. describes mindfulness. I think he does a nice job of explaining the concept and how it can help us as we go through each day…

1. Mindfulness is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

2. Mindfulness itself is sustained attention to something, typically with some meta-cognitive awareness of the quality of one’s attention. Mindfulness itself is morally neutral. A burglar could be very mindful. If people want, they can add other qualities to mindfulness, such as an attitude of acceptance and friendliness toward the objects of attention, such as toward whatever may pass through the mind.

3. Mindfulness itself does not try to change the objects of attention. But mindfulness is not necessarily the only thing happening in the mind! If one likes, one could add some effort, hopefully wise, to change the objects of attention. A person could be mindful of her stress and negative thoughts for a while; then she could both be mindful and make and effort to shift what is in her mind; finally, she could be mindful of the results in her efforts.

4. As you can see, a certain set of presumptions have grown up around mindfulness in the past few decades that actually are additions to the original idea promoted by the Buddha 2500 years ago. In particular, people talk as if an explicit stance against working with the contents of awareness is an innate feature of mindfulness, and it is not. I recommend reading my paper, The Noble Eightfold Path (Hanson), for more on this.

5. Mindfulness itself is always helpful. And sometimes it is useful for a person to drop any effort to shift the contents of awareness in any direction whatsoever; sometimes this kind of “choice awareness” alone helps negative thoughts release.

6. But often mindfulness alone is not enough. A lot of crud fills the mind, and it persists because the brain is a physical object that does not tend to change unless something changes it (in effect, Newton’s First Law). When you appreciate how embodied we are, and how much the brain is a learning organ that builds structure that maintains unless it is actually changed, you get very interested in effective and efficient effort. Since neurons that fire together wire together, keeping negative material in awareness can actually deepen its hold upon you.

7. In essence, there are two great elements in psychological healing, everyday well being and effectiveness and personal growth and spiritual practice: being with and working with (in Buddhism :Right Mindfulness and Right Effort). These are the two great wings that can help us fly.

Each wing has strengths. And the wings working together — mindfulness improves our efforts and it takes skillful effort to be stably mindful.

Then you can make a free and wise choice, moment by moment, as to what will do the most good for oneself, or one’s client — lean toward pure mindfulness or lean toward mindful efforts. Both are beautiful and help us fly.

Share your thoughts on mindfulness with us…