The Mental Emotional Health Blog

Sorry I haven’t posted in a few days, everyone. I usually try not to let more a day or two pass between entries here. But on to the topic of the day . . .

For some people, a lot of thought goes into making a decision. For others, maybe not. Today I want to present a method for making decisions.

If we aren’t viewing a situation or problem realistically, it will often be a challenge to address it accordingly. Realistic thinking is one way you could describe the concept of mindfulness, which has been quite popular in the mental health world lately. Basically it is a conscious awareness of “This is what is happening right now”, or, “This is the actual situation”. Once you have the reality of a situation established, add a positive or negative perspective to your perception. It’s like looking objectively or rationally, then looking subjectively. I would say politics uses this method but it’s done backwards. It seems in election years, the positive or negative ”spin” is created before an event or another candidate’s statement is even looked at.  Obviously that can prevent one candidate’s campaign from viewing anyone else’s point of view realistically. 

Anyway, once you assess realistically, and then characterize a situation or certain aspects of it as positive or negative, form a realistic plan to deal with it. Once you have a plan, assess how much effort you will probably put into it.

To list the steps simply:

1. Realistically assess the situation or problem (This is how it is.)
2. Decide whether you will use a positive or negative perspective (This is how I choose to feel about it.)
3. Form a realistic plan (This is what I can do.)
4. Commit to use the plan or not (I will do this or I won’t.)
5. Reassess the situation, as in step 1 (Where are things now?)

To use a specific example (hypothetical, by the way):

1. My spouse said this to me this morning in a loud voice, “You didn’t make the bed again this morning.” It’s true that I forgot to make the bed for the 3rd time this week.
2. I feel bad/negative because I keep forgetting to make the bed before going to work.
3. I could leave a bright green post-it note on the wall next to the bedroom door for myself saying, “Make the bed.”
4. I choose to make the note tonight just before supper so I don’t forget to.
5. <1 week later> I made the bed 6 days in a row, until the note fell off the wall and I forgot this morning.

At this point, #5 can become #1 and the process can be repeated until the problem is resolved or the situation is improved. And for those of you who like abbreviated reminders, the process could be: Realistic assessment, Positive/Negative, Realistic Plan, Commit, Realistic assessment, or  R, + -, RP, C, R  .

I hope this is helpful and if any of you try it out, let me know how it works for you.

I started The Mental Emotional Health Blog a couple months ago, and it has been enjoyable. Just last week I completed my 50th entry here! I had many reasons for starting a blog: clearing my mind after therapy, expressing random thoughts about mental and emotional health (big surprise, huh?), and attempting to improve and draw a little attention to my writing. Another reason is to start connecting to other writers/bloggers all over the world. You see, I love reading other people’s perspectives in my own quest to learn and grow.

But today, I invite you to start your own blog if you have any interest in writing or sharing your ideas with the world. You can actually do it for free at http://wordpress.com/ . Wordpress has plenty of information to help get you started and to keep helping as you continue. You have the choice of either using their free service, which will have “wordpress” as part of your website address with limited features, or you can download Wordpress to your own website if you have one. I wanted to have my own website and didn’t mind “investing” a few bucks, so that’s the route I went. But even if you decide to go the free route, the limited features at Wordpress are certainly enough to allow you to create your blog presence.

The flexibility of having a blog is amazing, and I know I will still be learning more about that for a long time. You can write once daily or once a month. You can link to sites you like and think other people might be interested in. You can sell stuff, you can review products, and you can also “monetize” your blog, which means you have the potential to make money from having a blog (if interested, check out http://www.johnchow.com/). But most important, you can express yourself and your thoughts. Introduce yourself to the world. The people who want to learn about you and the subjects you write about will eventually find your writing.

Go for it. You have something to offer!

This is one of those small but important everyday topics. So take this entry any way you want, I guess.

Some people just have terrible breath, and it does affect people around them. It doesn’t seem easy for people to point it out to others for some reason. I suppose it’s one of my faults but whether it’s a small meeting, a therapy session, or just a conversation in a hallway, I distract myself and do my best not to cringe. I even exhale a little more forcefully than I inhale in order to clear some of their stinky breath air away from my nose. It seems some people are just oblivious to the odor seeping out of their mouth when they talk.

As for me, I try to keep gum, mints, and a toothbrush in my desk at work. Following lunch or after I drink coffee or soda, I definitely try to get rid of some of the yuck taste. I’ve heard that certain spices such as ginger actually help fight bad breath, but I haven’t tried that yet. So far, people haven’t complained to me too much about my breath. But (and this is for those of you I see regularly at work or in my personal life) please let me know if my breath stinks. I won’t be offended. I don’t like making people cringe for any reason.

Anyway, here is a nice little article on the subject: http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/bad-breath-exposed .

So if your physician tells you that you suffer from halitosis (bad breath), it is not a fatal condition. Without treatment it might kill your social life, though.

Do you ever feel like your energy has just drained out of you? Sometimes it is due to lack of sleep, or a frantic schedule. For me, the emotions involved in being a therapist tend to drain me. Usually it isn’t the clients or the sessions though.

I’m talking about the part of therapy outside of the sessions. This involves writing progress notes, completing diagnostic evaluations, writing letters, and treatment planning. It’s a necessary part of the job, and I benefit from the “administrative” end of therapy.  Documenting my sessions and treatment planning help me remember where I am and where my clients are in the process. Writing out my “therapy thoughts” also help me clarify what actually happened and what it might mean. Making phone calls also isn’t too bad, and writing letters on behalf of clients almost always help them feel better. So I have clear reasons for doing all those things outside of sessions.

It’s just that I like listening and talking with people that need help in one form or another. I want to be a person that provides hope and encouragement. For most of my clients, I am one of the few people (with some, the only one) in their life who always has kind words to say, who tends to not blame or criticize, who doesn’t call them names or use sarcasm, and is someone who clearly wants to help and encourage.

So when I’ve just connected with someone, listened, and given them some hope or a new perspective, it often feels too minimizing to write that down. There are documentation words and phrases that can accurately summarize what happened in a session, but leave out the emotional feelings and amount of energy expended. So many times, the words just aren’t there to express the depth of a session. Plus, I am always concerned about privacy of records and some detail just doesn’t need to be in a person’s chart. Anyway, writing down what I talked about with a client seems to cheapen the experience, and that bothers me.

Go figure, I get emotionally drained. Hopefully this is somewhat interesting to all of my wonderful readers. But if not, I felt the need to get it out anyway. And it is not a subject I hear discussed very much from other therapists/counselors/social workers.

By the way, I take enough care of myself that I am stable and okay, even when drained.

Have a great day, everyone!

My previous post distinguished between Repressed and Suppressed memories, and I have some more to say on the subject of memories. Some people do not believe that repressed memories exist (seems more the case with males than females for some reason).  In my professional opinion do repressed memories exist? Absolutely.

Repressed memories happen most often around a traumatic event or situation. I have shared the following ideas and metaphor with people that have been through trauma and have reported blocks of time missing from their memory:

The mind is like a huge house with many doors. Some doors are open just about all the time, and some are closed but aren’t locked. Sometimes when something happens the mind doesn’t feel you are ready to deal with, certain memory doors become locked and hidden. After a period of time, maybe even years, some of those hidden doors can be “found” and opened. The mind decides you are more prepared to start trying to make some sense of a traumatic or intense event. This can start with dreams, nightmares, brief glimpses of memory, or pretty much the whole memory all at once. In talking with other people that have experienced the sudden retrieval of memories they weren’t aware of before, this can happen when a person is in a good place in life. It’s almost like the mind says, “Okay, now you’re doing better and you’re stronger. Let’s try to figure this memory out.” That can be distressing. Maybe for the first time in years they feel healthy, happy, and relatively comfortable. Then a memory comes back and nails them.

If a repressed memory does come back that is distressing and will not go away, you can practice suppressing the memory. Suppressing is more or less choosing to put a memory out of your mind. I plan to list some ways to do this in a future post.