Cynthia Odell LMFT

07/08/2019

Think back, way back. Go all the way back to the first day of summer vacation at the end of say 3rd, 4th or 5th grade.

What do you remember feeling? Free? That the feeling that the summer stretched on forever? Did you dream of all the adventures you’d have? Climbing trees? Building forts? Bike rides and picnics? Catching fireflies? Fishing?

Children have an amazing ability to be free. They are present in the moment and that moment is endless. They are full of big dreams and adventures. Each one is bigger than the last.

They take everything at face value and are so grateful for all the little things, like bugs and worms. Dirty faces, bruises and skinned knees are the admission ticket for their really big life.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a child? What can you do today to be that present in this moment? What are your big dreams?

Feel the wonder. Feel that spirit of freedom.

Now that’s something to be grateful for.

07/03/2019

Unconditional Acceptance…

That phrase is bandied about but what does it mean and how does it apply to therapy?

Unconditional acceptance is unqualified, favorable reception. It means that there is no judgment or condition set. In the therapist’s office it means the client is accepted just as they are.

There aren’t many places where one is unconditionally accepted. It seems there is always some benchmark against which we are judged. In school we are judged based on grades and behavior. From a medical perspective we may feel judged by the numbers on the scale or by a test result. At church, temple or synagogue it might be about how often we attend service, and whether we devout enough. Then there’s family that judges on many standards, some of which are never defined. Friends are another story altogether.

In a therapist’s office one is accepted just as they are, no justification or qualifications required.

What would that feel like? How awesome would that be?

07/01/2019

Taking back control…

Anxiety is reportedly a major cause of distress for many individuals. It is responsible for reduced quality of life, diminishing one's ability to enjoy life and be present when it matters. It gets in the way of of daily life that for some individuals can lead to an inability to work. For some this can become so severe that the thought of leaving the house is overwhelming and incapacitating.

Anxiety and depression stem from two different sources, but have similarities. Anxiety often is the result of worry about the future, while depression is a focus on the past.

For many people they believe that what happened in the past is guaranteed to happen in the future. They spend lots of time and go through lots of mental gymnastics trying to figure out how to prevent this feared outcome. For others, they project negative, dire outcomes with little reference to the past at all but still spend lots of time and energy trying to avoid an outcome they fear is guaranteed without any basis in fact.

Overcome with anxious thoughts and its accompanying physical symptoms, is it any wonder that those afflicted take little pleasure in life because they can't stop worring long enough to look around and get a different perspective.

Talking with a therapist provides an opportunity for one to begin to understand the source of these feelings. Therapy is a safe place to get a new perspective. Techniques and strategies, such as breathing and meditation, learned in therapy are helpful to manage the effects of the anxious thoughts.

Combinations of one's new awareness and perspective along with stress reduction strategies can assist individuals to regain control of their lives. Now that’s awesome.

Check it out and get back to me about what you discover.

Cynthia Odell LMFT is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with a focus on Systems Therapy in the Morris County, NJ area.

06/19/2019

Building your dream house

Imagine you want to build the house of your dreams. You’ve got fabulous plans drawn by an excellent architect. You bought a beautiful piece of land to build on, you have the right amount of lumber, hardware etc. You have everything set for the project. Off you go, you’re ready to begin.
You pull up to the site and unpack your car. Tool box, plans, lunch. Yup, you’re ready.

The first thing you do is lay out your plans. You see lots of shapes, lines, dashes, squiggles, symbols and characters that look like another language. So, that might be a problem. But then you think, “No wait. I can just look at the picture and I know I can figure it out.”

Confident you open your tool box. Inside you find you have a pencil, a hammer, and a saw. “Ok,” you think, “I’ve got everything I need,” and you take the first piece of lumber and begin to saw.

I can imagine if you’re reading this you’ve already begun to see the flaws in this plan.

How does it tie in with therapy? Good question.

Many people walk into a therapist’s office with a vision of who they’d like to be or what they’d like to achieve. The therapist is sort of like an architect. He/she has the skills to help you draw up the plans that are right for your project.

Once the plans are drawn the therapist will help you interpret all the squiggles and symbols in a way that make sense to you. Working with a therapist helps you develop the perfect set of plans to build your dream house that is really the life you desire.

Another flaw in this original picture was the builder’s tool box. It was pretty empty; only a pencil, hammer and saw. It takes many more tools just to hang curtains, let alone build a dream house.

The therapist is the individual who can help you fill up that tool box to build that dream house. So, the therapist will teach and model ways to effectively communicate so that others will listen. He/she will coaches you on how to tolerate discomfort that feels like anxiety and distress. The therapist will guide you through the process of acquiring skills and strategies to manage life effectively.

So, go ahead and dream, dream BIG. Then check and see if you have the plans and tools to build your dreams. If not, find a good therapist and fill up your tool box for life.

06/17/2019

Here I go again, being grateful...
Listen to the conversation the next time you sit with family or friends. I bet it will have a focus, at least for some measure of time, about ‘what I want but don’t have…what I have but don’t want…dissatisfaction with something going on personally, at work or the state of the economy/world/politics.’

Listen closely. The underlying message usually will have a theme, that when totally distilled speaks of entitlement and/or judgment. “I should have this,…I don’t deserve that…Did you hear what XYZ said.” You get the drift. I know you’ve been part of this conversation at least once, I know I have.

Listen more closely and the tone will seem to actually change to sound more like the whining buzz of a mosquito, annoying, and maybe even painful to hear.

What counteracts entitlement? What will erase judgment? Gratitude.
Gratitude isn’t something to just be left for Thanksgiving dinner. When practiced regularly, habitually, being grateful for anything and everything, large and small, you will notice a shift.
You will begin to notice how truly gifted you are, how blessed with abundance. I’m not talking about stuff and things here, I’m talking about true abundance.

Today I filled a page with a list of things I’m truly grateful for, beginning with my pets and moving to the peace of mind I experience when I shift my perspective through gratitude.

I’ve said it here before, begin your own list with just three things. Check in with yourself during the day to see what your experience is and how it is different. Then re-read it before lights out at bedtime. If it works out well for you, you can then decide if you want to do it again tomorrow with a challenge… each day expand your list, without repeating anything, except maybe expressing gratitude for the ultimate Source in your life.

I think you’ll like the experience

06/14/2019

Going to the dump…

Well, I guess I’m old when I can remember going to the dump every Saturday with my father. It was a place to go and drop the rubbish every week. We’d collect it in cans and then he’d load them into the trunk and off we’d go.

The dump was a curious place. It was somewhere that recycling took place before it was a thing. Old bicycles left would be taken away to be refurbished and re-gifted. It was a place for men to chat, where they would solve the problems of the world in an hour. It was a place where we added to pollution by burning the garbage, constantly and slowly. The dump was an interesting place.

So, what does this have to do with therapy? I guess my analogy comes from Dan Millman’s book, “The Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior.”

In the story there were two main characters, one the student and the other, the teacher. At one point the teacher tells the student to “take out the trash.” The student grumbled, complaining he had already taken out the trash.
The teacher tapped him on the forehead and said, "take out the trash."

We carry a lot of stuff around in our heads. Our minds are the most amazing recording machines. Nothing ever gets erased or deleted. We may not be able to recall everything at will, but yes, it’s all there.

Most often what we do we recall is all the ‘bad’ stuff, what I’m referring to as ‘the trash.’ It looks like all the times we were hurt, we lost, we were rejected and abandoned. All the times we failed or were judged and felt unworthy. I know you have that stuff in your head, because I’ve got it too.

At one time that was all I could think or talk about. Now, not so much. I made a practice of “taking out the trash” regularly with a trusted professional, a long time ago. I got objectivity and distance from "the trash" as I learned to evaluate its importance in my life. I learned to figure out whether those memories were helping me or hurting me.

What trash do you need to take out? Find a trusted therapist to talk to and see how much clearer you feel for the experience.

Cynthia Odell LMFT is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with a focus on Systems Therapy in the Morris County, NJ area.

06/13/2019

What’s the big deal about therapy?

If you’ve never been in therapy you might wonder what the big deal is. Why would someone want to sit in a room with a stranger and tell them “stuff?”

Have you ever met someone for the first time and you told them practically all of
your entire life story? For some reason you felt safe and comfortable enough to confide your secrets. Perhaps you were just overflowing and they were a friendly set of ears. Maybe you didn’t worry about being judged so you just allowed yourself to be real.

Well, each one of these IS a benefit of therapy.

A therapist is someone skilled and practiced in listening, objectively. The therapist is an educated set of ears that will listen without judgment or criticism. When was the last time your family or friends did that?

A therapist is objective. He or she has totally different perspective on what you tell them then you have, they aren’t involved.

It’s sort of like a view of traffic from a hot air balloon while you are stuck in traffic. All you can see from your car is the other cars stopped and creeping along beside you. From the higher perspective, the therapist can see what’s tying up the traffic, when it clears and where the next exit is. The therapist has a different perspective.

A therapist provides a safe space to ‘dump’ your stuff. He/she will help you unpack all your stuff, in your time. They can help you sort through and decide what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

These are just the first of many benefits of working with a therapist.

06/10/2019

Mirrors...
Mirrors are interesting objects. Do you know that mirrors are EVERYWHERE? Most people will easily name the usual places to see mirrors… the car, the bathroom, dressing rooms but, if you look more carefully, mirrors are all around us.

Take for example the next person I meet. That individual is a mirror for me. So how does this mirror-thing work?

Well, if I notice something I like about an individual, that’s cool. That lets me be comfortable and become friends with this person. That’s because at a deeper level, probably a level I'm not even aware of, I recognize those positive traits and characteristics because they belong to me too and I like those parts of me.

Now, if I notice something in someone else that I don’t like, then I’m probably not going to want to get to know this person. I might even develop big angry, negative feelings toward this person without even knowing them.

What I’m really reacting to is the part of me that I don’t like, the part of me I’d rather hide or reject.

Mirroring and the resulting feelings provide lots of good, rich information. It provides the opportunity to take an inventory.

What do you like about yourself? What you’re proud of and happy with? Those are the parts of us that shine like a beacon, attracting others to us. Those are the parts that we easily make public and that’s a powerful magnet!

The flip side of the inventory is to discover where there is room to grow. What do I need to hide from others? What part of me do I keep rejecting and denying? Why? What is that doing to me? Is it doing anything for my benefit?

So, next time you sit talking over coffee, be mindful of what you are reflecting and what is being reflected back to you. This can truly be fodder for growth. It’s all good.

Get back to me as you start blossoming.

06/07/2019

I read something inspirational and enriching every day. I'm currently reading, "The Wisdom of Sundays Life-
Changinng Insights from Super Sould Conversations" by Oprah Winfrey.

In my reading yesterday on page 188 Daniel Pink wrote, "What is your sentence?" He went on in the conversation to further explain. This was rich material to ponder deeply.

Here is what I came up with as my sentence...
As a therapist, I'm here to help my clients re-write their story so it ends the way THEY want it to.

What is your sentence?

06/05/2019

Do you go with the flow?

For a long time I was in the middle of the stream, swimming against the current. I spent so much time, energy and effort trying to get to where I was going, thinking I knew the only right way.

That was A LOT of hard work. I was often exhausted and frustrated. I spent so much time and energy trying to “get there” that by the time I was “there” I had forgotten why that destination was so important in the first place.

Yes, I have to get my lessons many times before they stick.

So now when the going is rough I think back to a time when I went river rafting. We were told that if we fell into the river to pick our feet up, turn our head down stream and go with the flow.

Richard Bach in his book, Illusions, uses a parable to say that the river knows where it’s going.

Most times I can float in the current. The times when I’m like a salmon swimming upstream, I remember to pick up my feet, turn my head down stream and float. I have total confidence the river knows where it’s going.