Elizabeth Perkins LMFT, Psychotherapy

08/02/2022

THIS.

Sarah Ockwell-Smith] 💕

This is the crux of a lot of parenting problems.
A lot of what we see as positive traits in adulthood are considered difficult and naughty in young children. .
For instance, we call it “ambitious”, “determined” and “knows their own mind and isn’t afraid to say no” for adults - but those same personality traits are described as “stubborn”, “disrespectful” and “refuses to do what they’re told” in toddlers and preschoolers.
The real task parents have, is not trying to discipline away these amazing attributes their children have, but to raise them in such a way that they retain them in adulthood, while keeping safe today (and not driving parents to despair in the meantime). .
- Sarah Ockwell-Smith
Sarah Ockwell-Smith]

07/01/2022

Truth

Whether you ever get into therapy or not, whether you ever consciously do your personal work to overcome your relational trauma history or if you “stumble” into your healing (as I, quite frankly, did), be mindful of the ways that the good, healthy relationships in your life are helping you heal, and lean into those more.

04/03/2021

Loved this.

This video was developed to give a basic introduction and overview of how trauma and chronic stress affects our nervous system and how those effects impact o...

03/14/2021

https://www.facebook.com/493863364032774/posts/3773803532705391/?d=n&substory_index=0

It’s kind of a job hazard – when I talk about the realities of grief to non-grieving people, it’s never too long before someone says, “well, yeah, but eventually you have to get back to life, right? You have to eventually get over it.”

Get back to life.
Have you heard that phrase from people outside of your grief? Even people who truly love and care about you might be pushing you to get back out in to the world, live your life. They may even tell you you have so much to live for.

The thing is, the people who often say these things actually do have a life to go back to. They may be deeply impacted by the death of the one you love, but if their family is intact, if there is no gaping hole in their daily life, they just aren’t going to be affected the same way you are.

I don’t necessarily mean that you had to live with the person you’ve lost in order to be the most impacted by their death. Not at all.

What I mean is that, for many of us, the people we’ve lost were such an integral part of every single day, every single facet of our lives, there really is no “normal life” without them.

There is no part of our universe, our daily lived existence, that they didn’t touch.

There truly is no life to “get back to.”

Eventually, perhaps, new things will begin to grow around the crater that has erupted in the center of your life. The hole itself will remain. I don’t mean that as a downer, either. I mean that a central loss, a loss that shifts the axis of the universe, is not something that simply shrinks over time.

Getting back to life can't always happen inside grief. Instead, we can come to ourselves, to each other, with kindness and respect for what cannot be resumed.

We – you, me, all of us – will not return to the life that was. That’s simply not possible. What we can do is bow to the damaged parts, the holes blown in our lives. We can wonder what parts of ourselves survived the blast. We can come to ourselves, and our irrevocably changed worlds, with kindness and respect.

That’s the real work of grief – to show up with kindness, every day, many times a day. Somehow, if we don’t see it as “fixing” your grief, or “getting back to life,” it makes all that just a little bit easier.

How about you? How do you see the work of grief, for yourself? What could the phrase, “getting back to life” mean for you, if we take it out of the “get over it realm” and think of it differently? Let us know in the comments. Your ideas might help others who are really struggling with this one.

03/06/2021

I lost my mother-in-law to Covid19. I liked this description of how grief evolves-

02/11/2021

Love this for Home School HEROES and SHEROS

I’ve lost a year with my kids battling over school and I’m done.

My seven year old and I were in the midst of our usual asynchronous day battle. I had his writing homework in my hand from school. He’d written several full, well-thought-out sentences.

But he won’t do the same for me, at least not without a fight.

I told him he didn’t have to write about his best day like his teacher asked, he could write about his worst. He could write about whatever he wanted as long as he wrote a few sentences.

He said he’d get in trouble. He said he was doing a bad job in first grade. He was on the brink of tears but didn’t know why.

And it hit me.

Instead of getting frustrated and pushing the assignment, I sat down with him at his desk in his superhero bedroom.

I said “you won’t get in trouble and you can’t fail first grade. In fact, you’re kind of a superhero yourself.”

He sat up in his chair just a little and looked at me with disbelief.

I said, “Do you know that no kids in the history of kids have ever had to do what you’re doing right now? No kids in the history of kids have ever had to do school at home, sitting in their bedroom, watching their teacher on a computer. You and your friends are making history.”

A visible weight lifted from his seven year old shoulders, “What does that mean?”

I told him it means I haven’t given him nearly enough credit for rolling with the punches. I told him how proud I am of him and his friends. That kids this year are doing the impossible and they’re doing a really great job.

I apologized for not saying it sooner and more often. A little tear fell down his cheek.

We’ve thanked everyone from healthcare workers to grocery store employees but we haven’t thanked the kids enough for bearing the burden of what we’ve put on their shoulders this year.

We’ve said kids are resilient, and they are. But they are the real superheroes in this whole scenario for having ZERO say in their lives but doing their best to adjust every day.

We closed his school-issued laptop and spent the rest of the day playing. This was supposed to be temporary and here we are a year later still trying to hold our head above water.

This is our home and I won’t turn it into a battle ground anymore over something we can’t control. Something that no longer makes sense.

Hug your little superheroes today and don’t forget to cut them the slack we’ve given everyone else.

12/19/2020

❤️😁

TIP on calming anxiety.

The Change Triangle teaches us that anxiety is a signal indicating that underlying core emotions are pushing up for validation. Two or more core emotions, like sadness and anger, often arise together. Experienced together, these emotions may feel overwhelming.

What can we do to reduce our anxiety?

When you notice you’re anxious, take a moment to try to name your underlying core emotions. Scan your body very slowly and gently for the emotions inside. You can have opposite emotions at the same time. In fact, that often adds to the anxiety because of the internal conflict it creates. Ask yourself:
👉Do I sense sadness?
👉 Do I sense anger?
👉 Do I sense fear?
👉 Do I sense disgust?
👉 Do I sense joy?
👉 Do I sense excitement?
👉 Do I sense sexual excitement?

As you find and name ALL the underlying core emotions inside, imagine each one separately with lots of air and space between and around each emotion like the picture shows. You may have to imagine that you grow bigger internally so you can accommodate all that you feel inside.

Holding each emotion separately not only calms anxiety, but sets the stage for moving through emotions to feel calmer. Emotions have to be processed one at a time since each core emotion has a specific program that pulls for an action. That action is meant to be adaptive and is perceived as an impulse.

For more on how to work with emotions to prevent, ease, and heal symptoms, pick up a copy of “It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect With Your Authentic Self“(Random House). VISIT LINK to read or listen to the beginning: http://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/537514/

For more on how to use emotions to gain greater wellbeing, visit hilaryjacobshendel.com or the Change Triangle YouTube channel.

Photo credit: Page 167 of “It’s Not Always Depression: Working the ChangeTriangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self” (Random House).

12/13/2020

❤️

Think about the things that we say to somebody when we hear that they're having a hard time. We tell them to be strong. We tell them, "lean on your happy memories." We tell them, "they wouldn't want you to be sad."

All of those things carry a connotation of stop feeling the way that you're feeling and get back to being your old self, to being happy, to not making other people uncomfortable with your emotions.

I talk a lot about this in grief related to death, but I think we can also see this across a lot of other situations in this culture. The chronic illness community is big for this one. There's the idea that any pain or suffering or limitation you're experiencing is because you're not trying hard enough, or because you're not thinking the right thoughts, or you're not being positive. We spit out any number of things to each other with good intentions, usually trying to make the people we care about feel better or not be down.

But the reality here is that the way that that lands for people is corrective. It makes people who are going through a hard time feel like they can't tell the truth about their experience.

Think of it this way, every time I tell you that I'm in pain, you tell me it's not that bad, you're not fixing my pain, you're just telling me I really shouldn't talk to you about it.

When somebody is depressed, when somebody is sad or struggling with something big, our impulses to fix it, and that's not working. There's a reason why you can't cheer up your depressed friend. There's a reason why you can't cheerlead a person who is having suicidal thoughts. We're trying to solve the wrong problem.

A more effective approach is to acknowledge that they're in pain, to respond with listening and with curiosity. "I'm sorry that's happening for you. That sounds like a really rough place to be. Do you want to tell me about it?"

How about you? Have you experienced the difference between someone trying to cheer you up and someone acknowledging your pain? For our support people - what ways have you found to acknowledge your person's pain? Others in this community can use your ideas.

12/10/2020

Polyvagal Theory widens the perspective on managing kids’ challenging behaviors.

11/20/2020

“I use the word defenses to define the myriad of ways we all avoid painful, uncomfortable, or conflicting emotions. Defenses are there for a reason. They act as emotional protection. At the time they were created, something happened that made us feel too overwhelmed and too alone to manage and process our experience.” Read on:



https://www.hilaryjacobshendel.com/common-ways-to-avoid-emotions

11/06/2020

Great thread ❤️🤓

Cringing at certain words or phrases is in grief. There are things people say all the time, without giving it a second thought, usually as way to express something in a vivid or exaggerated manner, that can become grief land mines after loss.

Even though these things aren't meant literally, if they describe how your person died or if someone says something like, "I almost died when I saw...." or "If they don't get here on time I'm going to kill them" — when you've lost someone, these turns of phrase can be very upsetting. It can be outright triggering or it can feel like that someone is inadvertently making light of your experience.

If any of these things no longer feel like "just an expression," you aren't being too sensitive. The world is full of things connected to your grief. Language matters. And you're completely normal.

How about you? Are there words or expressions that now rub you the wrong way? The more we talk about this stuff, the more we tell the truth about what grief is really like, the more people realize they're not alone.

10/20/2020

These are great! Thanks for making them- http://www.silvykhoucasian.com/online-programs