Tag Archives: self improvement

Anxiety, Blog, Edmonton Healthy Lifestyle, Edmonton Mental Health Program, Edmonton Weight Loss, Healthier You, Healthier You Challenge, Mindfulness, Self-Esteem, Stress

Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is one of the most important ways to improve our relationship with ourselves.

Society has taught us to be perfect, work harder, achieve more,  and be the best at everything we do.  While it is great to have goals in life to help us grow and develop, many people struggle with not knowing when to stop.  When our self worth depends on being “better” than others, we become anxious, insecure, and self critical.  This competition and frequent self judgement can lead to social isolation.  This self-criticism gets in the way of our brain’s social wiring goals – which is to belong and be loved.

Self-compassion is not artificially boosting ourselves up, being too easy on ourselves, or giving up.  It is the actually the opposite – the source of learning, empowerment and inner strength.  Our performance after failure can also be improved through self-compassion, and it helps us maintain peace of mind throughout the day.  

Kristen Neff, one of the leading researchers and practitioners in the field of Self-Compassion says, “Self-compassion soothes the mind like a loving friend who’s willing to listen to our difficulties without giving advice, until we can sort out our problems for ourselves.” 

Self-compassion involves facing mistakes, failure or insecurity in a different way.  Self-compassion involves treating yourself with the same support, kindness, and concern you would show to a child, loved one or close friend.  When facing with struggles in life (which we all experience), self-compassion involves responding with kindness rather than harshness and judgement.  For example, “Mallory, that sucks you’re struggling with feeling left out.  It’s OK to feel that way and many people would feel the same.”  I like to use my name my self-compassion statements (see my tips on positive self talk).  If you would like to learn more about self-compassion, here is a Ted Talk by Kristen Neff I highly recommend.

How Can I Get Better At Self Compassion?

Kristin Neff also has some free guided Loving Kindness Meditations as well – that are a great way to learn how to speak to ourselves differently, especially if you have no idea where to start.

And finally, here is a Self Compassion Exercise that I use with clients and myself, to practise self compassion.  It often does not come naturally, so we need to have a script to repeat to ourselves – until it becomes automatic.  If self-compassion is something you want to work on in your life, you can start practising either a meditation, repeating your own personalized self-compassion scripts (set an alarm), and use the worksheet.   You can also personalize the worksheet to situations in your life that you are currently facing (feel free to get some ideas from family and friends too).

Anxiety, Edmonton Healthy Lifestyle, Edmonton Weight Loss, Healthier You, Healthier You Challenge, Stress

Declutter Your Mind: Change Negative Self-Talk to Something Helpful

The way your talk to yourself in your mind, otherwise known as self-talk, can have a major impact on your life, from your confidence to your decisions.  Research has shown that a lot of our self-talk is negative, and works against us, rather than helping us.  These negative thoughts often create feelings of frustration, irritation, anger, hopelessness and disappointment.

 

WHAT IS ‘SELF-TALK’?

You might not always be aware of it, but we all have self-talk.  Self-talk is a positive or negative running commentary about our life.  Our self-talk often happens without us noticing because we are often on ‘auto-pilot.’  We are so accustomed to our regular patterns of thinking, that we don’t reflect on how our thoughts are influencing us.

 

Changing Your Negative Self-Talk Can Help You:

  • Feel better about yourself
  • Boost your confidence
  • Improve your social life
  • Feel more in control of your life
  • Be more optimistic and effective in life
  • Improve athletic performance (researchers found 11-15% improvement with positive self talk)
  • Improves academic performance
  • Decrease school and work absences

 

Tips

  • Self-talk works best when it is scripted ahead of time and practiced.  (ie – If I am frustrated with myself when doing a race or workout – I regularly say “Mallory, you are enough, you are strong, and you are working hard).
  • What works for each person is a matter of personal preference – so make sure your new changes are personalized for you.
  • Addressing yourself by name is found to be more powerful than ‘I’ statements – (i.e. Mallory, you are going to have a good bike ride, all you need to do is start).

 

Negative Self-Talk Personalities

 

 

 

  1.  The Worrier

…. creates anxiety by imagining the worst-case scenario and scares you with ideas of upcoming disaster. The worrier often over-reacts to the first physical symptoms of panic (such as sweaty palms, tightening chest or increased heart rate) and recycles thinking of over-exaggerated fears. The worrier is always vigilant and watching with uneasy anticipation for any tiny sign that trouble is ahead. It over-estimates the odds that something bad or embarrassing will happen and imagines scenes of failure and disaster. The worrier’s favorite expression is “what if…” Our self-talk from the worrier’s perspective will say “Oh no! My chest feels tight. What if I panic, and lose control.” “What if I’m alone and there is no one around to help me?” What if I do something that is really embarrassing?” This fear can immobilize a person and keep them from really living, because of the anxiety that it produces.

 

2.  The Critic

…is the part of you that is constantly judging and evaluating your behavior and promotes a low self-esteem. It tends to point out your flaws and shortcomings at every opportunity. It emphasizes your mistakes and reminds you that you are a failure. It tends to ignore your positive qualities and emphasizes your weaknesses and shortcomings at an unproportional amount. The critic generates anxiety by putting you down for not being able to handle your symptoms of fear or anxiety, for not being able to go places that you previously were able to go, or for having to rely on someone else. It also loves to compare you to others with you always falling short. The critic’s favorite expressions are: “What a disappointment you are!”, “That was stupid”, “Can’t you ever get it right?”, “I am unworthy of others”, or “I am not good enough”.

 

3.  The Perfectionist

…is a close cousin to the critic because it is less concerned about putting you down, but relentlessly tries to push you to do better, and is rarely satisfied. It promotes chronic stress and burnout. It keeps reminding you that you can always do better and you should be working harder, your efforts are not good enough, you should always be pleasing, competent, and should always have everything under control. The critic’s favorite expressions are: “I should… I have to …”. It wants you to be the best and is intolerant of mistakes or setbacks. It tries to convince you that your self-worth is dependent on external indicators such as : work/school/job achievement, money, status, acceptance by others, or the ability to please others. The perfectionist pushes you into stress, exhaustion and burnout.

 

4.  The Victim

…is the part of you that feels helpless or hopeless and promotes depression.  It believes that there is something inherently wrong with you, and there must be something deprived, defective or unworthy about you.  It generates anxiety by assuming that you will never be cured, and assumes the road to recovery is way too steep because you are not making any progress. Victims feel as you are stuck and things will never change, no matter what you do. The victim’s favorite expression is: “I can’t”, and “I never will be able to”. “I have had this problem too long and I will never get better”, “I’ve tried everything and nothing ever seems to work.”

 

Countering Negative Self-Talk

The best way to stop the effects of negative self-talk is to counter it with positive, self-compassionate, and supportive statements. It starts by writing down and rehearsing statements that directly refute and invalidate your negative self-talk.  Remember, your negative, anxiety producing, self-statements have been reinforced for years, and it will take some practice and time to get rid of them. You must slow down your automatic thoughts, and really pay close attention to what you are saying to yourself. These four sub-personalities will help you to decipher which is your favorite way to generate anxiety.

Some of your expressions are simply bad habits and you don’t want to be deceived by them any more. Some are deep seated and you still believe that they are true. You can weaken the hold of your negative self-statements by exposing them to the following questions:

What is the evidence for this?

Is it always true?

Has this always been true in the past?

What is the realistic percentage of this really happening?

What is the very worse that this could happen? What would you do if the worse did happen?

Are you looking at the whole picture?

Are you being completely objective?

 

After noticing the negative self-talk thoughts in your mind, another way to improve your headspace is to add positive coping thoughts. Examples of coping thoughts might be:

  • Stop, and breathe, I can do this
  • This will pass
  • I can be anxious/angry/sad and still deal with this
  • I have done this before, and I can do it again
  • This feels bad, it’s a normal body reaction – it will pass
  • This feels bad, and feelings are very often wrong
  • These are just feelings, they will go away
  • This won’t last forever
  • Short term pain for long term gain
  • I can feel bad and still choose to take a new and healthy direction
  • I don’t need to rush, I can take things slowly
  • I have survived before, I will survive now
  • I feel this way because of my past experiences, but I am safe right now
  • It’s okay to feel this way, it’s a normal reaction
  • Right now, I am not in danger. Right now, I’m safe
  • My mind is not always my friend
  • Thoughts are just thoughts – they’re not necessarily true or factual
  • This is difficult and uncomfortable, but it’s only temporary
  • I can use my coping skills and get through this
  • I can learn from this and it will be easier next time
  • Keep calm and carry on

 

 

Sources

“The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook” by Edmund J. Bourne, p. 164-168.

Helmstetter, 1982; Stranulis & Manning, 2002

 

Anxiety, Blog, Couples, Edmonton Career Counselling, Edmonton Healthy Lifestyle, Mindfulness, Relationships, Self-Esteem, Stress

Core Values: Improving Our Relationship With Ourself

 

Something I work with almost ALL OF MY CLIENTS on, is improving our relationship with ourselves.  This starts with changing the way we evaluate our worth by exploring our core values.  There are many factors that influence how we evaluate our worth including:

  • Society values
  • Family values
  • Our experience growing up
  • Pressures such as perfectionism, making money and the focus on beauty
  • Need for approval
  • Need for control

One thing we know in psychology, is that people tend to be happier, have fewer psychological issues (like as anxiety and depression), and have a more consistent positive experience in life when they use INTRINSIC VALUES to evaluate themselves, vs EXTRINSIC VALUES.

EXTRINSIC VALUES (the ones we want to avoid when possible) include factors such as achievements, compliments, approval, and social media responses (such as the amount of “likes.”  There is a big difference of using EXTRINSIC VALUES as a motivator or goal versus using them to evaluate one’s worth.  A common problem people experience when using extrinsic values to evaluate themselves, is they can be doing everything well, and not be getting the feedback they need.  Extrinsic values are often out of our control and we don’t get accurate feedback because we rely on others – such as a boss (who may not be good at giving positive feedback), society (that often has ulterior motives such as to sell us something), or an arbitrary assessment (such as a test that focuses on a small proportion of your knowledge). 

WE ARE MORE THAN OUR ACHIEVEMENTS, JOB, MONEY, ATTRACTIVENESS TO OTHERS, POPULARITY, and STATUS.

 

So………what are INTRINSIC VALUES and how do we integrate them in our lives?

INTRINSIC VALUES are values that tell us about who we are.  These values are typically consistent throughout our adult lives (and often developing in childhood and adolescence).  There is no intrinsic value that is better than the other.  Here is a Intrinsic Values worksheet that I give out to help prompt thinking.  There are many more values a person can use – but Intrinsic Values list will help you get started.

 

Activity

From the list, choose 5-10 values that are true to you.  This may take a few read overs to go from a larger list to a smaller list.  

A way to tell a true value vs. “nice to have traits” is that if you were to get $500 000 to no longer have that value, would you take the money?  For example, I like being tidy and I know society values it (and those around me), but I would take the money to no longer be tidy.  However, I would not take the money to no longer be kind, helpful or hardworking.  So these are my true values.  Also be aware of the pull towards values that society values – that may not be as true to you.  

Societal values are constantly changing – and remember, this is about finding your own PERSONALIZED values, that tell us about what influences your thoughts, feelings and behaviors.  

Questions to Ponder

  • After looking at the list, is this someone you would want to be friends with?
  • Does this give you any new perspective about why you enjoy certain people, and why others seem not to be a good fit in your life?
  • Do your values give you any new deeper insight about a value conflict when you have been upset or hurt?

Incorporating INTRINSIC VALUES Into Your Life

  • Each week or two (set an alarm), rate yourself from a scale of 1-10 of how much you incorporated these values into your life.  A lower score does not indicate poor performance, it means that may be a value that may need expressing or nurturing in the next coming weeks.  Likewise a 10 does not mean perfection, it means you utilized that trait highly during that time period.
  • The above activity is also good to do when you are feeling down or upset.  If you are upset with another person, focus on yourself, and notice what the situation says about you, rather than being judgemental of someone else.  
  • When working on a new goal, such as a healthier lifestyle, studying for a new career, or trying something new, be extra purposeful of using these INTRINSIC VALUES along side when evaluating progress.  For example, put a sticky note with your values on the scale to prompt you.

Blog, Edmonton Healthy Lifestyle, Edmonton Weight Loss, Healthier You, Healthier You Challenge, Mindfulness

Week 4 – Happiness and Living Life With Intention

 

This week’s Healthier You Program, we are working on advancing the understanding of mindfulness while being more exploratory and experiential.  (AKA – Let’s Play!)

 
Step 1: Watch this Ted talk: 
(it is about 10 minutes long)
 
Step 2: Go for outside either for a walk, or sit on your backyard deck.
 
Step 3: See if you notice anything differently after watching this video that you have not noticed before.  It could be more detail in an image.  A touch (i.e.. the wind)   How the trees are moving.  A smell.  A sound.  Anything that catches your attention.
 
Step 4: Take 3 pictures each of 3 different things you notice around you that you normally don’t pay attention to
 
* You can do this exercise as a family, couple or individually (but please discuss your experiences together and share your photos with one another).
 
 
 Happy Experiencing!
 
Couples, Edmonton Healthy Lifestyle, Edmonton Weight Loss, Healthier You, Healthier You Challenge

Week 3 – Identifying & Navigating Through Potential Roadblocks

An important step in making healthy lifestyle changes for the long term, (that most people don’t do), is to identify the roadblocks that may limit success.  When introducing an exercise program and a more active lifestyle, it is easy to get derailed and go back to what feels comfortable – especially when a person is tired or has something more appealing they would like to do (Edmonton Oilers game anyone?) 

When it comes to healthy eating, it is often even easier to experience a lapse, as unhealthy tempting options are everywhere – especially because we know through research, that humans only have so much will power.  This is why it is very important to have an honest discussion with yourself – what have been the reasons in the past that I have stopped my healthy changes?  

When other people are around, is it difficult to not follow the crowd?  When you are tired, do you tend to go for the unhealthier choices?  Do you get bored and unstimulated, and stop your routine?  Are you a poor planner – and when life gets busy, you tend opt for unhealthy convenience?  Do you not make yourself a priority and have a difficult time setting boundaries for yourself?  

These questions need to be constantly evaluated.  Most people experience lapses from time to time when making healthy lifestyle changes.  However, it is important to be aware of these roadblocks, and preplan what you will do to prevent them from being ongoing excuses.  Catching a lapse, or even preventing a lapse – ultimately PREVENTS A RELAPSE.  

  • Note – a lapse is temporarily reverting to previous behaviour (i.e. poor eating and not exercise during christmas holidays).  A relapse is a long-term regression to previous behaviour.

Here is a Common Eating Roadblocks handout I use to discuss common barriers to success.  It is also helpful for people to make a similar own personal handout for their own healthy eating roadblocks as well as exercise roadblocks.

Blog, Couples, Healthier You, Healthier You Challenge

Week 2 – How to Create a Mindfulness Practice – With Food, Life and Relationships

If you had an opportunity to take a pill, that would have many benefits including:

  • Decreases stress
  • Improves cognitive function
  • Increases the brains ability to control emotions and decreases reactivity
  • Improves sleep
  • Increases our immune system
  • Decreases risk and severity of depression & anxiety
  • Decreases blood pressure, and decrease risk of stroke & heart attack
  • Increases brain neuroplasticity – the brains ability to change
  • Increases brain gray matter – which is related to slowed brain aging and increased memory and concentration
  • Improves relationship satisfaction, improves responses to conflict, improves empathy and acceptance of ones partner, and promotes attachment
  • Reduces pain intensity and unpleasantness

How much would you pay for this pill? The bad news is that a pill doesn’t exist – but the good news is there is a mental exercise that can give you these benefits – called Mindfulness.

Mindfullness is complex to describe – but imagine yourself sitting near a river and watching the flowing water. Mindfulness is watching the flow of thoughts, feelings, ideas, judgments and habits as they come and go. Mindfulness is really about where your mind places your attention – and with practice, it gives you move control over emotions, thoughts and experiences. For example, when playing with kids or a pet, is your mind in the moment, or are you thinking or things you still need to complete today?

A great exercise to try to see how mindLESS we can be, particularly with food, is this mindfulness exercise:

(Make sure you have a healthy food item available such as a strawberry)

Now, I know it would take forever to eat a meal with this approach.  But it truly shows us how much we miss in our day-to-day eating. We miss pleasure – intense flavors, beautiful shapes and details, and delightful smells.  These queues are very important in signaling to our brain that we are full and satisfied.

We can apply mindfulness also to our every day activities.  I developed the below mindfulness handout with information, and ideas for incorporating mindfulness into your daily life.  How many of these tips are you willing to try?

Mallory’s Mindfullness Handout

(click on the above link for the handout)

 

Audio Mindfulness Exercise Adapted from:  Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn (2007). The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness. New York: Guilford Press.

Blog, Healthier You, Healthier You Challenge

Healthier You Psychology Program – Week 1

Motivation, Defining Success, & Intro to Healthy Thinking About Food

 

Are you ready for healthier changes in your life?  Wonderful!!!  

When starting any changes in your life, it is absolutely critical to ask the question: What does success look like?  Most people will answer “weight loss.”  However, it is important not to let the scale dictate everything.  With my “Healthier You” Program, I need you to be aware that measuring weight, while certainly can be a part of measuring success, it is not the all, end all.  And if weight is the all, end all for you, it has too much power over you.

This winter, a few months after having my son, I eventually got back into exercising and was doing really well with a regular strength program and going to spin class for cardio.  After a few weeks, I was feeling energized, stronger and was proud of myself for investing in exercise after everything my body had went through.  I was even really ENJOYING my exercise routine.  However, one day, I mindlessly stepped on the scale, and saw that I had not lost a pound.  I immediately felt frustrated, defeated and my motivation plummeted.

It took me about a week to change my negative self-talk and refocus.  But I did learn a very important lesson…  that I needed a better way to measure success to immunize myself from my disappointment autopilot self-sabbatoge.  

My suggestion for people who want to make healthier changes in their life such as exercising more or improving their diet, is to create at least 3-5 other ways to measure success other than weight.  Before weighing yourself, it is critical to check in with these other variables (you can use a scale of 1-10 to evaluate).  Other ways to measure success may include: energy levels, how many times you exercised, how many days you have activity, healthy food choices, how many times you avoided unhealthy food choices, how you feel, or even how healthy you were this week overall.  

Another important component my Healthier You program, is to really look at the reasons WHY you want to change.  Here is a sample worksheet that can help you get started:

  • Note – not all healthy lifestyle changes need to involve weight loss

I often suggest to have several copies of your reasons, and review them at the beginning of the day, and during times when you normally struggle (perhaps mid afternoon or mid evening?).  If you are contemplating giving in to an unhealthy impulse, read these reasons for inspiration.

And the final part of this week’s program is to start being aware of your thoughts – with a focus on your relationship with hunger (as hunger is a very difficult feeling for many of us).  Here is a handout that can give some examples of unhealthy thoughts to notice, and some examples of healthier counter-thoughts:

 

Best wishes on your own journey and keep checking back for more program information.

Anxiety, Blog, Communication, Relationships, Stress

Why don’t you like me: When approval seeking becomes a problem

 

Are you a people-pleaser?

We all want approval.  We want our partners to think we’re attractive and funny, we want our bosses to think we’re intelligent and hard-working, we want our friends to think we’re fun and dependable, we want our children to think we’re cool parents…and the list goes on.  It’s perfectly normal to want to be seen in a positive light, but for some people, approval-seeking can become an automatic and unaviodable behaviour that severely impairs one’s functioning and well-being.  This might sound familiar to you because it’s something that you’re currently struggling with, or it might be a problem that you’ve noticed in others.  Either way, it’s important to recognize when approval-seeking has become an oft-used crutch, and to take steps to reduce this maladaptive behaviour.  As Bob Marley said, “you can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool everybody all the time”.  The same goes for pleasing people – sooner or later, one of your approval-seeking attempts will inevitably fail, and you won’t feel very good about yourself.

At this point, you may be wondering, how can you tell whether approval-seeking is a problem in your own life?  Some potential clues to watch out for include extreme anxiety at the thought of any potential conflict or disapproval from others, altering your own opinions or behaviour because you perceive that someone disapproves, acting contrary to your values and beliefs in order to please others, apologizing excessively, and finding yourself afraid to say ‘no’ to any request made of you.

On a clinical level, approval-seeking can sometimes be indicative of an underlying diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, but more commonly, the behaviour can stem from many different roots such as childhood bullying or insecure attachment.  Approval-seeking behaviour, many argue, is learned rather than inherent; therefore, it can also be ‘un-learned’. If you feel that this behaviour may be a problem in your own life, there are a few strategies that you can employ to try to reduce it:

Start by identifying: Are you aware of when you’re engaging in approval-seeking behaviour?  Sometimes, this behaviour can manifest in rather obvious ways (for example, doing things that you don’t want to do in order to gain approval), while other times, it may appear more subtly (for example, you might find yourself paying someone an insincere compliment).  Dedicate a few days to paying close attention to your own behaviour – don’t judge or criticize yourself, simply notice the patterns that emerge.  Pay attention to your own thought processes, and try to identify the areas of life (or the specific social situations) in which you tend to seek approval.

Move on to questioning: Now that you’ve identified where your approval-seeking manifests, you can move on to the harder work: questioning why you’ve been engaging in these behaviours.  The reasons may not always be clear – as mentioned earlier, approval-seeking often originates as a result of childhood experiences that you may not recall completely – but just do your best.  For example, if you find yourself spending your Friday night at a club with your friends even though you’re exhausted and were dying to spend the evening curled up on the couch with popcorn and a movie, ask yourself why you went out.  Were you scared that your friends would be disappointed in you if you bailed? And if they were disappointed in you, what would happen then?  Take the time to really interrogate your own beliefs and motivations – you might gain a lot of insight.

Tell everyone: If you feel comfortable, try explaining your quest to decrease approval-seeking to your friends and family.  Saying something like “I’ve noticed that people-pleasing behaviour has become a problem for me, and I’ve decided to work on it – so you might notice me saying no to things more than usual” can go a long way in setting the social stage for your behaviour change.  If your friends have been forewarned that you might say no to their requests sometimes, you might just feel more comfortable doing so.  If they truly care about you, they’ll almost certainly understand.  If you want to take it a (brave) step further, you can even try asking your loved ones to point out to you when they notice you seeking approval.  This last tactic runs the risk of hurting your feelings, however, so make sure to be cognizant of that.

Engage in self-care: You’ve been worrying yourself sick about pleasing other people, so it’s likely that you haven’t given much thought to taking good care of yourself.  Try using the time you gain back as a result of decreasing your approval-seeking to engage in some good old-fashioned self care.  Queue up your favourite Netflix show, sink into a hot bath, catch up with your significant other, read a book, plan a trip, or do all of the above – just make sure to take time for yourself to fully relax, and turn off your phone while you do so!

As always, it’s important to consider the valuable and often-neglected option of sourcing the help of a Psychologist to help you examine the reasons behind your approval-seeking behaviour and help you work to reduce said behaviour.  Above all, remember to be kind and patient with yourself when you’re trying to reduce approval-seeking behaviour.  This kind of big behavioural change definitely doesn’t occur overnight, and for many of us, this behaviour has been with us since childhood, so treat yourself with kindness and appreciate the small victories.  You’re doing something good for yourself just by reading this article – and before you know it, you’ll be enjoying a new sense of control over your life and toasting to your people-pleasing past.