Author: annemcc

How Events From the Past can Affect us Emotionally in the Present

annemcc Adults and Couples, Mental Health, Teenagers

How Events from the Past can Affect Us Emotionally in the Present.

‘When some feature of an event seems similar to an emotionally charged memory from the past, the emotional mind responds by triggering the feelings that went with the remembered event. The emotional mind reacts to the present as though it were the past.’

(Daniel Goleman,1996)

Sometimes something happens in the present and our emotional reaction to it seems bigger than we would have imagined it to be. It can seem like the emotional reaction is somewhat out of proportion to the event and this can leave a person bewildered as to why. If someone is critical, for example, or if someone is annoyed with you, can it take days to get over the critical remark or do you feel devastated if someone is annoyed by something you have done?

At times, the criticism or annoyance directed our way really does hurt a lot if what we have done or said to result in the criticism or annoyance was done with good intentions. But sometimes our emotional reactions are more related to events that happened in the past, rather than the event happening now. We all have life experiences that are stored in our memories and minds and even if we don’t remember them in an accurate way, we still have some emotional memory of it. For example, if a person was criticised a lot as a young child, even if they don’t remember it, they will have an emotional memory of it stored. This emotional memory is stored often in a person’s sub-conscious and can be triggered if a small but similar event takes place. If we react strongly to something, we can sometimes work out quite quickly that our response is related to past experience. This can then free you up to separate out the two events, the one from the past and the one from the present, putting in perspective what is happening emotionally for you right now and having more choice about how you wish to react. Our emotional responses to situations are not a genetic inheritance. We can work on our level of emotional intelligence and become more aware of how we do and how we wish to react to things that happen in life.

The present is now and despite the emotional memories we all have stored, now is the situation at hand. Make a choice about what you believe and while all that happens in the past shapes how we think and what we believe, we can control to a large extent how we choose to focus our mind. The present is not the past so the next time your emotional reaction to something seems huge; ask yourself if something else is being triggered. It can all be worked through.. And this includes unresolved  pain from the past too. Remember always… the present is not the past.

 

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How Does Mindfulness Work?

annemcc Adults and Couples, Mental Health

How Does Mindfulness Work?

‘You see, I think everything’s terrible anyhow. And I know, I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.’

Daisy in F Scott Fitzgerald’s, ‘The Great Gatsby’

If you start the day by listening to the news or if you sit down to watch it in the evening, it can be quite hard to believe that things aren’t indeed ‘terrible’. Life is sometimes tough and no-one is immune to the difficult times that life can bring. But life can be wonderful too, sometimes for sustained periods and sometimes for shorter moments too.

When the dominant talk is of doom and gloom it can be harder to really experience the brilliance of life, particularly if the brilliance is for brief moments. If you feel fed up for example, with a lack of daylight and the seemingly endless dark Winter nights, you might not register the beauty of the stars. Looking up may even seem irrelevant when there is so much that seems to indicate that we should be looking down but Winter passes and the stars are out for less time once the Spring arrives again. Being mindful of how each moment has the potential to contain something great can be a way of thinking that brings our focus to the beauty of being in the present moment.

The practice of mindfulness is a way to train ourselves to live fully in the present, really experiencing the time right now. Research suggests that if practiced, mindfulness has the potential to greatly enhance the quality and experience of life. Dr Sara Lazar at Harvard Medical School has identified four core aspects of how mindfulness works. The first is attention regulation. This involves training the mind to overcome distraction and according to researchers, this ability to still the mind helps a person feel less flustered and ‘all over the place’ or in mindfulness ‘speak’….more centred. The second aspect of mindfulness relates to having a good awareness of your own emotions and the emotions of others. In order to develop empathy, it is important (essential) to be able to sense how you are feeling first.

The third component of mindfulness relates to emotion regulation. By allowing feelings and emotions that might normally be avoided to come up, be expressed, and therefore processed, mindfulness can help a person build up their capacity to bear undesirable feelings such as hurt, sadness or fear. The final element that I believe is the key to successful mindfulness is that it can change a person’s perspective of themselves. With practice, mindfulness can lead to a less static or less definite definition of one’s self and it can lead to the realization that we are constantly in a state of evolving. A more fluid existence is believed to lead to less stress and potentially more enjoyment of what’s happening in any given moment. An awareness of how we change all the time makes each difficult moment more bearable and each great moment more precious. So if I could transplant myself into Daisy’s world, in the first chapter of The Great Gatsby, I would ask her why she was cynical. You’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything? How about not going or doing but just being…. how about just that? Just for a moment, just to stop and be?

www.annemccormack.ie

How to Impact Positively on Children’s Self-Esteem

annemcc Adults and Couples, Children, Mental Health

Impacting Positively on Children’s Self Esteem…..

‘Whether you think you can or you think you can’t…you’re right.’      Henry Ford

Beliefs shape our reality. Whether we think we can or we think we cannot is down to belief, not facts, but when a person holds a belief with strong conviction, it can feel as if it is a fact. We all have beliefs… about the world, about how the world is, about people, about ourselves. Some of us believe we are lovable and deserving of love, some of us believe we are not. Some believe that financial success is essential to  happiness, others believe it absolutely is not. Some believe that to rely on others will lead to disaster. Others believe that close bonds are always worth the effort, even if people sometimes let you down. There is no right and wrong when it comes to beliefs and  while we may not even be fully aware of what it is we believe, make no mistake about it… our beliefs are the thing that influence us most, not just in terms of  how we think about things but what actions we take or don’t take, how we make decisions and how we live our lives. And our believes were most likely developing many years ago, when we were soaking up what was happening around us, absorbing by osmosis into our unconscious minds the stuff that became beliefs.

Becoming conscious or aware of this fact then brings up the question of how we can influence the beliefs that children and adolescents are forming about themselves and the world. They too most definitely  forming beliefs about themselves and the world  and this process is a very active process when you are very young. When we are very young, we learn a lot about ourselves and the world through our experiences particularly  with those close to us. Children develop core beliefs about themselves based on their experiences in the world so for example, a child who is listened to when he has something to say will most likely be developing a belief such as ‘I deserve to be heard’ because that is what his experience is teaching him. He will grow up believing that he has the right to express himself and be heard and will more likely not hold back when he has something to say. If the people closest to a child show them through their actions that they are deserving of love, respect  and care, the child will grow up to believe they are deserving of love, respect  and care. This will then set their expectations when they enter adult relationships and they will enter adult relationships believing that they deserve to be treated well. While this belief may not be apparent on the surface, it will be there, deep down, where all of us hold our core beliefs.

From around the time children start school, they are very well able to engage in conversation. One good way to start to encourage children to become conscious of what it is they believe is to ask them direct questions about beliefs.Questions such as…’what do you believe people like about you,’ ‘what do you believe is more important, to be kind or to be popular,”what do you like about yourself and why’. These types of questions bring what may be happening on an unconscious level up to a conscious level. By becoming conscious, we become aware and even for a child, this process of becoming more self aware can lead to greater self-esteem.

Ask a child what they believe about something. Ask them why. Their core beliefs are forming so you have lots of opportunity to influence them and steer them in a direction of endless possibility. You can influence how they see themselves and see the world.What a gift.

Communicating in Couple Relationships

annemcc Adults and Couples, Mental Health

Communication in Couple Relationships

‘I have grown too strong, to ever fall back in your arms..’

Stress and strain can impact not only on how a person feels about themselves but it can impact hugely on how you experience close relationships too. Feeling too strong to ever fall into the other persons arms is not necessarily a good thing if that other person is there beside you for the long haul and yet often when stresses build up, couples can feel like there is a distance between them, a distance they did not wish for or want and one therefore that can be hard to understand. And while in certain aspects of life the distance is not that obvious, in other ways it can feel like it would take a quantum leap to bridge the divide. But it is possible to find a way forward and to bring the closeness back.

Having an awareness of the importance of negative emotion can be key in figuring out how to bridge the distance. Negative emotion can have the effect of pushing a person away (psychologically) or drawing them close. Drawing them close can be an important part of what creates the context for intimacy.

No-one is happy and positive all of the time and relationships can be enhanced if we learn to deal with negative emotion in a way that brings a partner closer, rather than tending to push them away. In order to understand how this happens, it is useful to reflect on the fact that negative emotions happen on two levels; Primary and Secondary.

Primary emotions are deeper, more vulnerable emotions such as sadness, hurt, fear, shame and loneliness. They are feelings everyone feels at some point but sometimes we don’t reveal these feelings and therefore they don’t get expressed. These feelings however, are worthy of expression and expressing them to a partner has been proven to have the effect of drawing a person closer. Secondary emotions are the more reactive emotions such as anger, jealousy, resentment and frustration. These secondary emotions occur as a reaction to primary emotions and expressing them can have the effect of pushing a partner away. If anger or frustration is expressed, it can cause the other person to want to move away from you as they can then also feel angry or upset. Sometimes it is worth the risk to express vulnerability especially in a relationship that you wish to be an intimate one. No matter how strong you believe you should be, there is a value and strength in allowing vulnerability to be revealed. Vulnerability matters as do close relationships.. if you want closeness, risk being vulnerable.

 

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How we Create Our Reality…Some Ideas from Narrative Therapy

annemcc Adults and Couples, Mental Health

How we Create Our Reality

‘A story emerges as certain events are privileged and selected out over other events as important or true.’

David Epston, Narrative Therapy Centre, Toronto

 

Imagine you know someone well from seeing them on TV, hearing them on the radio, reading about them in the newspaper. You form an impression of this person based on certain information. Perhaps the story you form about  them is one of where you view them as kind, where there kind and caring deeds lead you to perceive them a certain way or perhaps the media has vilified them and you see them through the lens of some scandal they have been involved in. The impression you develop creates a story in your mind about this person; incidents add up to bear witness to the kind of person who believe them to be. This process happens with our sense of ourselves too. We privilege certain information about our lives and develop a certain view. Sometimes it is a good story, sometimes not so good but we all develop a story or narrative about how particular aspects of life are.

Things happen a certain way and therefore, we often think things are a certain way. And why not believe this as to a certain extent it can be true. Events do shape us and impact on us but this is never the full story. In order to be reminded of the level of control we can have over our reality, it can be useful to reflect on some ideas from narrative therapy. Here are a few….

Certain aspects of what happens in our lives get brought into focus by us and this is what creates our reality. Sometimes by privileging certain information or events over others, we begin to believe that because we see something in a certain way, it is a certain way. We can believe that our story about someone is absolutely true for we know that certain events happened but we can’t always know the context, we can’t always know the reasons why and we don’t always know what meaning was intended by what someone said or did. So therefore, our version of the truth is only ever a version of it, one among many.

In coming to know the truth, narrative therapy would suggest that by talking together we create truth by privileging certain information. We determine what form the truth takes and often we have conversations in our mind that determines truth because of the strands of information that are privileged. Take, for example, a person who believes it to be true that no-one cares for them. While this may be a very real experience for someone, holding this to be true will be part of what can stop a person noticing how others are caring for them. Feeling down and telling yourself the story that this is the way it will always likely be makes it much less likely that you will notice information in the world around you that tells a different story.

Ideas matter and stories do to… stories and ideas about you, others, the world around us. They all become real by being talked into existence so dig deep for new ideas and new stories if you wish to change your world. Thinking and talking differently can open up the possibility of a new world. Start to privilege new ideas and you are making space for a new reality to emerge. A new truth is waiting in the wings if you wish to claim it…. take the chance.

Managing Stress..and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

annemcc Adults and Couples, Children, Mental Health, Social Media, Teenagers

Managing Stress

‘They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.’

Andy Warhol

Whether you agree with the perspective above or not, it certainly is a perspective or view that is worthy of reflection. It is a perspective that gives people a lot more power than we sometimes believe we have.

In relation to stress, it often can be the case that it is circumstances outside of our control that seems to cause the stressful feeling to arise. But, if this is the case, does that mean that a particular method cannot be employed by a person in order to lift the weight of the stress off? Surely getting soaked in the rain doesn’t mean a person has to stay wet until enough time passes for them to eventually become dry again. We change our clothes and dry our hair and in those simple actions, we change things. So how about some action to combat stress? How about finding a way to let go of stress when circumstances land it on our plate? Stress, like so many other feelings that can overwhelm us, can be processed so that it doesn’t have a grip on us. Here is one possible route towards taking control of stress and it involves a Cognitive-Behavioural approach.

 

Research supports the assertion that cognitive-behavioural therapy works effectively when dealing with feelings such as fear, anxiety or stress. This model of therapy highlights the link between how we think, how we feel and how we behave. How we think influences how we feel and how we feel influences how we behave. With overwhelming stress therefore, the resulting behaviour may be lying awake at night tossing and turning instead of being able to rest and sleep. In order to have different behaviour, the feeling needs to change and in order for the feeling to change, some focus needs to go to what thoughts are in the mind, as the thoughts, according to Cognitive Behavioural Theory are influencing the feeling. Trying to change your thoughts is not that simple though, particularly thoughts that seem almost automatic. Ways of thinking can become well ingrained.

Therefore, the first step but not the only step is to begin to monitor your thoughts. Paying close attention to how closely linked our thoughts and feelings are requires effort. Then working to figure out why the thoughts are there is the next essential step in combating the stressful feeling as this process of working out what is influencing your thinking gives insight into what beliefs you hold. Beliefs influence how a person thinks, and yet sometimes beliefs that people hold are not that obvious even to person themselves. Uncovering them at least gives you a choice about whether you wish to hold on to that belief or not. Not knowing it is there means you have no choice to keep it or let it go. Sometimes when stress hits, it can feel as if there is nothing you can do to combat it but we really do quite often have more power than we realise. Taking control of your mind by managing your thoughts is a skill that takes practice and it can be done. The ultimate power is the power of mindset…that is what I believe.

www.annemccormack.ie

 

The Importance of Being True to Yourself

annemcc Adults and Couples, Children, Mental Health, Social Media, Teenagers

 

‘ You may think you stand alone because you chose to be true to you. But, by doing so, you actually attract people to you who will truly respect who you are.’

Anonoymous

 

I don’t know how many people find it hard to be true to who they are. It can be a difficult thing to do because when you stand for something and it differs from what another person may think or believe, it can become apparent that your differing stand point can create a distance between you that might not otherwise be there. So what do you do? What if what you fundamentally believe to be right is not what someone else believes? What if what the other believes is a view you just cannot hold… what if what you believe to be true is part of what is your essence and the other just doesn’t seem to appreciate or respect that. And what if you feel you want to blow the whistle on something..something you know is wrong and something that goes against what you believe to be right? Do you go forward and take a step to intervene or do you hold back? Often, by taking a stand a loss of some sort can be felt but is that enough reason not to stand by your convictions?

Often in life, people have different views. You don’t have to listen too long to the news to know that deeply held views and beliefs can lead to conflict, war and intense pain and anguish. And even regarding war and peace, differing views exist. Some see the merit of war, some the futility and brutality of it. Some dedicate their entire life’s work to  making peace, some see peace  as an impossible dream. In all of our lives, moments arise when we need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions. Large questions like what it is we stand for and smaller ones such as what to do in relation to a matter that may come to your attention and that you believe to be wrong. I know that for some, a passionate belief in something can become lost inside and never given a voice  because to say out loud what you really feel about what might be happening or what someone might be doing can cause alienation or even threats and intimidation. Sometimes too, the idea of intervening or taking a stand can seem daunting, especially if the person or thing you wish to take a stand against is a bully or has power to wield in some way. It takes courage to stand up for what you believe is right and it can at times cause you losses but in the end, it is my belief that being true to yourself is the best way forward. People will always hold different views but if you believe something is wrong or someone is acting in an unjust or unethical way, then it is ok to say it. Be true to yourself. Even if it means you in some sense may lose…. at least you know that you had the courage of your convictions and that you stayed true to beliefs you hold dear. There is only one unique  you…. and not everyone is going to see things your way but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a stand and say what it is you wish to say. One voice can be all it takes sometimes to point out what’s not ok. One person can change things…..maybe it will be you…….

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Making Things Happen for You

annemcc Adults and Couples, Mental Health, Teenagers , ,

 

‘We cannot make time stand still, nor can we prevent the unexpected happening, but what we can do is accept what is going on in our lives and consciously take steps in the direction of where we want to go.’

Mark Pollack, Making It Happen

 

I meet people often who feel there are things they cannot do. It gets them down at times, sometimes very down because telling yourself you can’t and believing that you really can’t do stuff means your choices and options are limited and everyone likes to feel they have choice. We do have choices about most things, more than we often realise, and we make lots of choices, sometimes choices that we are not even conscious of making. One of the choices we make is in relation to what we choose to believe we can and cannot do and here is (one of) the reasons why I believe we sometimes choose to believe ‘I can’t’….

Imagine being in a cage and beginning to realise that you are in one. This could be a cage of your own creation, one that exists in a very real way in your mind, a cage where despite your needs being met, you having food and shelter, you being in charge and you having things to occupy your time,it’s a cage all the same and it makes you feel ‘caged in’. It can feel like the things you wish to do are being done outside of the cage are therefore for you, these things are not possible. You believe there are things you absolutely cannot do, decisions you cannot make. You tell yourself ‘I want to but I can’t’.

An experiment was done on the process known as institutionalisation and the research subject was a lion. After years of living in a cage, this cage (which was real) was opened and the lion was presented with the opportunity to leave and be free. You can guess what happened next…. The lion stayed in the cage with the door wide open. And while I have no idea why, I would imagine that the researchers  were right in their conclusion that the lion had become institutionalised. Existing so long in the cage, the lion found it impossible to even imagine living anywhere else, even a place he may possibly have longed to go. He stayed in the cage,  a place where he felt safe, where he continued to exist never knowing what it was like to live free.

Imagine that cage has been created in your mind. And while there are things you may wish you could do, choosing to believe that you can’t keeps you psychologically ‘safe’ but also stuck. Choosing not to imagine that it’s possible to walk away from the place where the bars surround you means you don’t have to take the risk as to what might happen if you choose to be bold and do the things you really want to do. Staying safe and stuck means no-one can threaten you with judgement or opinion and that prospect can give people  a sense of security which can be hard to give up. All of the things that have made us feel ‘safe’ are put at risk if we start to rattle the bars but this in no way means that it can’t be done. If the cage for us is only real in our minds then it is within our power to dismantle it. If you really, really want to do it, it can be done, no matter what ‘it’ is. It, anything can be done. There is no shame in becoming institutionalised or in feeling stuck but recognising that it is possible for this institutionalisation or stuckness to happen to any one of us can shed light on the question of why we may say and believe ‘I can’t’. Uncovering some of what might be going on for us at an unconscious level is often the first step in moving from a position of ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can’t just yet’…. it is often the choices we make at an unconscious level that have the most bearing on how we live out our lives and as these choices are unconscious, it can feel like we didn’t make a choice at all. But we do choose, a lot of what happens, a lot of the time. Someone once said that life is either a daring adventure or nothing…. make your choice….. What do you believe?

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