The Mental Emotional Health Blog

As I explained in a couple entries last week, I’ve been listening to The Secret on audio CD. Over the weekend, my mind shifted from just gathering the main message from the book to considering applications.

If a person’s thoughts attract things into their life, what about someone with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder whose thoughts tend to be repetitive? My guess is the author might say that the fear and anxiety a person with OCD experiences will magnify those feelings to the extent that they dominate functioning.  

Examples:   

Person “A.” feels the compulsion to clean the kitchen and will feel extremely anxious if she doesn’t clean the kitchen. By continuing to think, “I need to clean. I need to clean. I need to clean . . .”, she is feeding her own perceived need, and the anxieties that go along with it.

Person “B.” has an intense fear of germs, and he refuses to leave his home. If his thoughts are, “I’ll be contaminated if I go outside. I’ll be contaminated if I go outside . . .”, he may actually get physically sick if he leaves his home because he attracted sickness to himself.

These are only brief guesses at what author Rhonda Byrne might say about OCD. I am still getting through her book, and this is one of the ways I integrate what I read or hear into my thinking.

The subject today is about parenting and unconditional love, and is a follow-up to last week’s entry: http://mentalemotionalhealth.com/2008/03/10/where-discipline-and-love-connect/ . It is expected that parents love their children unconditionally, whether their children are infants, teens, or adults. For some parents though, unconditional love gets tougher for parents as their children get older. 

It seems the main reason I’ve heard for this is that as children get older, they become more aware of what to do or what not to do. Some parents start taking it personally when their child gets past a certain “age of accountability”, and then the child is disobedient or forgets how to show the proper attitude in every situation. In such cases you could say that parental love develops “conditions” as parental expectations increase.

Children do not have an adult brain with all of its functions, and teenagers do not have a fully-developed personality. Why then do we expect them to? For several years, a teen’s job is to figure out what life is about, and how they will fit into it.

I wish I remembered where I read this, but years ago I saw an article that suggested adolescence may last into a person’s mid-20’s. From personal experience that made sense to me. I still noticed myself trying to take the easy way out of certain things instead of applying my own skills and determination up until the age of 24. I count myself truly blessed to have parents that continued to love me unconditionally despite my hesitancy to grow up in my early 20’s. In fact, knowing that parental love was there no matter what was one of the main factors that motivated me to mature and take more self-responsibility.

So when it comes to parenting, remember that your children do not know everything yet about how to be a person. If conditions are attached to the love parents have for children, that will teach children to set conditions on their own love, in romantic relationships or as a future parent. But knowing that they are loved unconditionally allows them to explore and grow despite mistakes and missed opportunities.

What’s the most challenging part of assessing yourself? Being objective about it. Still, it is a great skill to have in order to grow as a person. In my thinking (pun intended), it is near impossible to not be at least a little subjective in viewing yourself. 

A subjective view depends on the subject (i.e. the person), and you can think of being subjective as similar to looking through your own personal lens that focuses or limits your perspective. An objective view focuses on the object, which is a reality-based observation without bias. So being objective is similar to looking without a lens. You see what you see; no more, no less.

I hope I don’t get too confusing here, but recognizing that you are being subjective helps you to be more objective. As a therapist I love the word “metacognition” because every day I train my clients to develop it as a skill, and try to use it myself. Metacognition is defined as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking processes” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metacognition) . The better you can be aware of how you think, the more accurate you can be in knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses, and how you learn best in any situation.

If you can analyze and manage your own thought patterns, you can manage your emotions since emotions are tied so closely to thoughts. People who are annoyed or frustrated can persuade themselves to become angry with their thoughts, especially if they convince themselves they have a right to be angry. People that have panic attacks can learn to calm down with self-soothing words to self, or at least can learn to not make their panic attacks worse.

So here’s an interesting activity: watch a commercial, and during those 30 seconds or so take notes or talk into a tape recorder. Record only your thoughts, whether they shifted around to different subjects or stayed focused, any memories that came to mind, etc. Then check your notes about an hour later and assess what you recorded. As you get more familiar with how the process works, apply it to several situations and see what you find. For me, some days I can shift quickly to metacognition without taking notes, and other days I need to take notes or I’ll forget most of what I was thinking. Don’t be discouraged if your note-taking or recording doesn’t keep up with your thoughts. Your mind is quicker than you can write or talk.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

As a therapist, I believe gaining and keeping the trust of my clients to be essential to the therapy process. I spoke with another therapist a few years ago and was surprised to hear him say, “I don’t care if my clients trust me or not.” Since I knew this therapist and respected his work with clients, I can say that he didn’t mean to imply that he purposely damages the trust clients have in him. Still, I was surprised to hear that trust wasn’t that important to him.

Trust is essential in the therapy room. Trust allows the sharing of very personal and sensitive information. Trust brings the client back whether a session went well or not so well. I also firmly believe that the more a client trusts a therapist, the more likely it is that the client will apply what he/she has learned in therapy.

In closing, here is a metaphor to consider. Trust in therapy provides the willingness for a person to approach the door of personal growth, and the motivation to return to that door as many times as needed before moving through that doorway toward the next door.

Have a great day!

There is an old phrase: You never stop learning. I agree with that. Even if you feel stuck in routine, like every single day is the same, your memories and experiences continue to develop. In therapy, it sometimes happens that a client has similar sessions over a long period of time where he/she talks about the same subjects or the same events, but then the focus takes a new direction.

One possibility is that people have limits to how often they discuss something before feeling the need to change the topic. Even repetitive things build on each other. For example, I like Snickers bars so I enjoy one once in a while. If I had one daily, I’d eventually tire of them because the experience itself builds up to a certain level. (Actually my stomach would build up at the same time.)

So the question is, what is the best way that you learn? Are you an observer who sits back and takes things in, or do you need to be involved in the situation? Some learn better by hearing, some by reading or seeing, and some learn actively (kinesthetic learning) . For me, I sometimes like a combination of learning styles,  but it also depends on what I’m trying to learn. The best way for me to learn Spanish was to read, listen to my teacher, practice speaking, and writing. By comparison, when I took golf lessons a few years ago to improve my golf swing (a fun, never-ending challenge), I listened to the golf pro talk about what I needed to adjust, but not much improved until I was able to physically feel the difference in my actual swing. By the way, patience is definitely a virtue. I have so much more respect for professional golfers after I learned how much goes into developing and maintaining a productive and consistent golf swing.

So pay attention to how learning happens best for you. Then you can apply that style to whatever you want to learn, and adjust as needed.

Keep moving forward, and grow as a person!