5 Steps to Easing Your Panic Attacks and Anxiety

The Trance of Panic Attacks and Anxiety

Getting lost in panic attacks and anxiety is like being in a trance —half asleep, not fully conscious. We get hooked and controlled by worry and fear.

Anxiety and panic gets worse when we try to avoid it, pretend it’s not there, or run away from it. It also gets worse when we try to change and control it.

Anxiety SOFTENS when we stay with it, accept and allow it to be there, approach it with courage and compassion, and then re-engage with the present moment — with what’s important to us.

GET OUT OF THE TRANCE OF PANIC AND ANXIETY. Learn to wake up so you can start living the life you want, instead of the life that anxiety is pulling you into.

Learn to Stay A.W.A.K.E.

Use this AWAKE acronym to remember the 5 steps you can take to wake up from the trance you are in and stay present the next time you are experiencing panic attacks or anxiety.

AWAKE

A: Anchor with a breath. Anxiety can pull you into a storm of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. Like ships need anchors to stay put in the harbor, we need anchors to secure us too!

Focusing on slow, simple breaths can help you move back into your body and into the present moment instead of being lost in anxious thoughts/feelings, the future, the past. You already know how to breathe so don’t over think this. Just be slow and intentional, find your breath and focus on it: in… out… in… out...

W: What do you notice? What’s there? Where do you feel it in your body? As you breathe you will be aware of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, sounds, etc.  “What and where" questions help you simply notice and name your experience — instead of judging, analyzing, or trying to fix it with ‘why’ questions.

Simply say to yourself; “In this moment I am noticing the feeling of worry… In this moment I am noticing a thought about tomorrow. In this moment I am noticing the sensation of tightness in my chest…”

After you name your experience, move back to noticing your breath. Keep repeating this back and forth motion between focused breathing and noticing your thoughts, feelings, etc. This exercise is not an attempt to get rid of thoughts, feelings, etc. We want to notice and change the way we relate to them, not alter them. We also want to create a little bit of distance between the thought, feeling, etc. and the part of us that is aware of the experience.

A:  Accept and Allow whatever you are experiencing. Do not criticize, judge, or attempt to change or control your thoughts, feelings, etc. Instead make room for all feelings. Don’t fight thoughts.

Make room for everything, open a space to be welcoming and curious about your anxiety/fear/worry. Let go of the fight (trying to force the anxiety to go away or judging yourself critically for being anxious).

K: Kindness and compassion — Meet your anxiety the way you would meet a friend or family member in need, with kindness, gentleness, patience, understanding, and compassion. There’s a part of you that really needs your own help.

Anxiety often is attached to hurt, longing, and other emotional needs. What we often need most is kindness!

E: Engage (or re-engage) with what’s in front of you in the moment. Engage with your senses, with what’s around you (people, places or things), with the tasks you have to do, with whatever is next. Keep moving. Bring your anxiety with you on your way to what’s next in your day.

When anxious, there is a tendency to withdraw, avoid, pull away from life. Keep this impulse in check. Instead, engage and approach what’s next in the day — don’t avoid. Stay committed to living the kind of life you want, doing the things that are important and fun in your life! Don’t let your ‘worry brain’ keep you from that!

The Secret to a Happy and Healthy Relationship

Please enjoy this preview chapter from my upcoming book:

Real Love Isn’t Real Complicated: 8 Simple Words for a Happier, Healthier Relationship

Also feel free to click here for more tips and tools on love and relationship.

Making Love Easier

Real love doesn’t have to be real complicated. 

Yep, I said it. It’s right there in the title too. That’s a pretty bold statement, I know.

You’re thinking, “Not complicated? You haven’t seen my relationship!” 

The truth is, I probably have. As a therapist for three decades I’ve witnessed so much of what does and doesn’t work in relationships I could write a book about it. 

Hey wait a minute… 

If I were to write about relationships, I’d start by addressing the two things love needs most. 

It needs to be real.

And it needs to be simple. 

It needs to be real simple. 

After all, we’re drawn to things that are real and simple: the sound of kids playing, morning coffee, sunsets, laughing with a friend, a single tear, a blanket and a book…

Real and simple is love at its very best; in fact, it’s often how it starts and finishes. At the beginning you’ll find young love’s nervous first kiss; at the end, an older couple’s quiet arm in arm stroll through the park. 

Somewhere between the beginning and the end love got complicated. 

The couples who see me in my therapy practice are far removed from first kisses and quiet strolls. Less in love and more in pain, they’ve lost what once felt genuine and miss what once felt easy. 

Their stories are the same. Being together has started to feel empty, full of conflict, inauthentic. Talking has become a series of unsolvable riddles with traps, dead ends, and pitfalls.  

When love becomes labor; we get discouraged and feel like giving up. 

My challenge to you is not to give up, not yet.  At least not before you and your partner have tried a little harder to make love a lot easier.  

Love’s Pressure

Who’s idea was it to put so much pressure on love in the first place?

What if we eased up on the notion that we had to be such perfect partners and that love itself has to be so perfect? What if being imperfect was the key to cultivating real love in the first place?

What if what we needed was a ‘good enough’ kind of love and not the Hallmark channel relationships we’re expecting and failing at? 

Is it possible that we ask way too much of each other?

What if we asked for less instead and in the process made love less complicated, more accessible, more real, maybe even easy? 

And what if someone wrote about that! 

Now that’s an idea I could get behind and maybe even write a book about.

Maybe love can be that easy. Maybe real love doesn’t have to be real complicated after all. 

A Way With Words

The right words have the power to save your relationship. The wrong words can end it. 

Words are funny — too many can overwhelm your partner and keep you from being heard, too few can keep you from being seen. Choose the wrong ones and you’ll only wish you were invisible. 

If you want to make your relationship better, you’ll need to have a way with words.

When it comes to love and how we talk to each other, there’s a few things I’m certain of:

• words do matter 

• we use too many of them

• we use the wrong ones

• we keep the best ones to ourselves 

Using too many words gets in our way. We tend to use them defensively like shields, or as filler, hiding the real feelings and vulnerability underneath. Real love is about engagement, risk, and accessibility; you won’t need long speeches for that. 

Using the wrong words also has destructive consequences. We lean too hard on words that shut things down, escalate emotion, or push our partner away. These ‘wrong’ words become habitual. Without alternatives, we end up using the same words over and over again with the same ineffective results. 

Finally, there are times when our heart knows what to say. Filled with fear or self doubt we hesitate, remain quiet, and a magical moment is lost forever.

You don’t need more or fancier words to get more from love.

What you do need are the right words, said at the right time, so you can put your heart in the right place, and your relationship on the right track. 

The Secret to Relationship Success

I want to let you in on the two biggest secrets about love and relationship I’ve uncovered as a therapist for 30 years and as a married guy for 25. 

First, when you strip away all the noise, we love and hurt and heal just like we did when we were kids; genuinely —  with vulnerability, innocence, and abandon. 

If you want to find your way back to your partner, you’ll need to find your way back to something less adult and more childlike in yourself. 

I want to help you love, and hurt, and heal with the ease of a child so you can have an easier, more effective relationship as a grown up. 

Second, love isn’t random or mysterious. It doesn’t fall down from the heavens and it’s not delivered by an arrow from Cupid’s quiver. 

Love is action, a choice, a behavior, a willingness. It’s what you do, how you act, what you say. 

This is huge because if this is the case, love can be learned!

That’s my job, to teach you how to love!

So just how do we do that? 

We’re going to do it with words — small, but good words. 

I’m going to teach you eight of them at a time. We’ll go slow. It’ll be like learning a new language, the shortest, most basic language you’ve ever learned. 

You’ll soon discover that from words, actions follow, and so does your heart. 

I’ll walk you through a series of eight word prompts that you can use in the three most important areas of your relationship;  communication, connection,  and conflict resolution.

I’ll show you how and when to use them. I’ll explain a little of the psychology behind these words and how phrases so simple can be so essential. 

The word prompts are crafted to be easy to access, understand, and communicate. Limited to just a few words, they can quickly teach you how to have conversations that ease tension, reinforce intimacy, and resolve conflict.

I want you to return to what’s simple in love by learning eight simple words — words easy enough to learn in a day yet powerful enough to use for a lifetime. 

Who is This Book For?

If you are looking for practical, easy to learn, and simple to apply interventions for your relationship — interventions that you can use right now — this book is for you.

Real Love Isn’t Real Complicated (Real Love) is for those who want effective tools to improve the way they talk, connect, and resolve conflict.

I’m giving you the actual words to use — what could be easier and better tools than that!

Real Love is for people who want relationships that work and last; not perfect relationships, but ones where the imperfections are actually used to bring you closer, not further apart.

Not everyone who wants to work on their relationship is able or willing to see a couples therapist. There can be practical, financial, and emotional obstacles to reaching out and getting the resources you need. 

This book is for couples who need help right now but for any number of reasons can’t make it to the office of a therapist. 

Couples therapy may not be for everyone, but this book is! This is my therapy house call for you —  if you can’t find your way to me, I’ll bring help to you!

Naturally, Real Love is for people in relationships, but it’s also for individuals who want to learn more about what to do and how to be when they find one. 

Real Love is great for any stage of your relationship. 

It’s perfect for new relationships, for those excited and eager to learn the best ways to grow a love that can become strong and secure. You’ll set the stage for healthy habits around communicating, connecting, and resolving conflict. 

It’s also an invaluable resource for couples who have been together for a while but need something to help them re-energize, re-engage, and renew.

If you are in crisis or at a crossroads in your relationship this book can give you the skills you need to de-escalate conflict, access your heart, better respond to the heart of your partner, and then return to a love that’s easier. 

Real Love is not meant to be a substitute for couples therapy for those who need it most. I still provide therapy, still love it, and still see it work miracles. 

While some people can learn a lot on their own about how to make love better, others need the more comprehensive and concentrated approach therapy can offer.

This is especially true if couples issues are exacerbated by individual mental health issues, trauma histories, safety concerns, infidelity, and substance abuse problems — among other things. In these cases, while this book may be a helpful resource, you’ll likely need more than it can provide.

Whether you are seeking therapy or not, Real Love can be a first step for you, opening you up to the possibilities of change, reminding you that we all need a little help now and then, whether in the form of a book or a real human being.

I hope you’ll read and use this book. Love is worth it and love can’t wait. The time to learn and the time act is right now. 

How Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Helps with Anxiety

Steal Your Life Back From Anxiety

The worst thing about anxiety is that it tricks you into believing this shrinking life you’ve carved out for yourself is all there is. That’s a lie. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anxiety has stolen joy from your life. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help you steal it back. 

What if anxiety was more than a problem to be solved? What if it was a signal you’re not living the life you’re meant to? What if relating to anxiety differently could point you in the direction of your biggest dreams?

Teaching you to be in the present moment, putting what you value most in the foreground while allowing anxiety to recede to the background, ACT re-introduces you to a life you can love, not just endure. 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a relatively new off shoot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It combines aspects of CBT with new, evidence based interventions that can help develop the psychological flexibility skills required to address anxiety and re-engage with life.

ACT has two premises. First, accepting uncomfortable thoughts and feelings works better than trying to fight and control them. Second, by identifying and connecting to what gives life meaning and purpose, our emotional struggles become smaller while our capacity for living gets bigger. 

ACT offers a direction away from anxiety’s limitations toward the possibilities of a value rich life — a path where you can acknowledge pain while still committing to what matters most.

The roadmap is in the name — Accept, Choose, Take Action.

Accept  

Accepting uncomfortable thoughts and feelings is the cornerstone of the ACT philosophy.

Counter to advice that’s often given, ACT teaches you to turn toward emotional discomfort rather than away from it.

The ACT assumption is that thoughts and feelings are mostly beyond our ability to control. Our suffering related to anxiety comes more from the desire to change or get rid of what we experience than it does from the actual experience itself. Instead of managing our feelings, all we manage to do is feel worse.

For example, the more you focus on not having worried thoughts, the more you become obsessed with worry. The more desperately attached you are to the need to feel confident, the more disappointed you become when confidence fails you.

When we fight against what we experience rather than accept it, we become engaged in a battle of tug o’ war that can’t be won. We become exhausted, discouraged, and more anxious. The only victory lies in dropping the rope. 

When we let go of the fight, then soften, and embrace what we feel; our anxiety diminishes. Acceptance of our experience enables us to take a step closer, see it for what it is, understand its nuances, offer it compassion. 

Choose 

Choosing a committed life direction gives ACT its heart.

What do I want my life to be about? What do I value? What gives life purpose? These profound questions have the power to clarify our vision, shape our actions, and connect us to our dreams.

Too often, we get caught up in chasing feelings. “I’ll be happy when I feel less anxious, more secure, more control.” Turns out feelings are hard to catch. They’re faster than we are. 

Instead of chasing feelings, ACT encourages chasing meaning instead. Feelings come and go but what you value is an anchor that endures over time.

Anxiety makes us lose sight of what’s important. Attempting to manage discomfort, we pull away from the life we used to love. Painful loops begin. The more anxious we are, the more we contract and avoid in an effort to feel better. The more we avoid, the less meaningfully engaged we are. Less engagement leads to more isolation and anxiety, leading to more avoidance, and more misery.

Disrupting this loop begins with a commitment to choose to live boldly again. Having a clear and valued life direction can give us the courage we need to risk moving forward — alongside anxiety and fear.

Take Action 

Taking action gives ACT its power.

We can’t think and feel our way to a richer life. If you want to overcome anxiety and move in the direction of what you long for, you’ll have to use your hands and feet — you’ll need to get off the couch, you’ll need to act. 

Acceptance of the thoughts and feelings we can’t change is only part of the ACT story. There’s so much that we can change and do have control of — our actions. 

ACT offers a perspective where life is defined more by what we value and how we act than it is by what we think and feel.

The actions we take are determined by what we’ve decided is important to us. We become the central actors in our own life. This sense of agency lessens the impact of anxiety. It’s hard to be swept away by worry when you’re engaged with your life’s work.

When we get in the driver’s seat, acting and living in line with who we want to be, anxiety moves to the backseat. Even if it’s still there, it has less power. It’s not driving anymore. By taking committed action, related to what we value, we are.

CPR for Your Worried Heart: Hope for Viral Fear Lesson #3

CPR: Compassion, Purpose, Risk

To find your way through your fear of this coronavirus you’ll need a strong and healthy heart. The heart is where we find compassion, direction, and courage. All three are required to sustain us in the darkest times.

When flooded with anxiety, though, we lose heart. We can become lost and frozen. A kind of heart attack ensues. We become gripped by worry, feeling more dead than alive.

To resuscitate this dying heart you’ll need to use CPR — Compassion, Purpose, and Risk

When you are feeling overwhelmed, lost, and afraid or when you are feeling like some essential part of you is in trouble, use this CPR acronym as a way to repair your broken heart.

C — Compassion

Love is the strongest medicine there is for fear and anxiety.

Compassion is nature’s Xanax. Nothing soothes quite like it. It works as well for the loudest cries of the newborn as it does for the quieter tears of any child, teen, or grown up. If you’ve witnessed a loving mother in action, you’ve seen this magic take place. There is real, and often immediate, comfort in being held, being touched, being loved, being seen.

It’s not surprising then that CPR begins here. Like access to an anchoring breath, always there to ground you, your ability to pause and find self compassion can be an essential tool to help you live alongside worry, anxiety, and fear.

Overwhelmed in a crisis, like we are now, powerfully negative and self critical feelings can take over. We can start to feel inadequate, cowardly, defective, insecure, and ashamed. Since these feelings are so uncomfortable, we tend to avoid and wall them off. That’s not good because then they attack us subtly from inside. They feed our cycles of anxiety and depression.

When you find yourself feeling broken, pause and bring an intention of kindness and compassion to your deepest pain. It might be hard to locate the pain at first. We often hide behind irritability, anger, or blame. If you are feeling these things, take a breath and reflect for a moment. Gently peal back your anger. Just a few layers down you’re likely to find a more vulnerable part of you, tired of fighting, that just wants to be accepted.

Self compassion is a challenge because while it’s easy to affirm the parts of ourselves we feel good about, it’s much harder to love the parts of ourself that we see as unlovable — but those are the parts that need your help the most right now!

So how do we do this?

If you’re struggling with this notion of self compassion, you might need a little help.

I encourage people to practice visualizing ‘images’ of love and compassion so that they can call on them when needed.

• Create in your mind’s eye a memory of compassion or love.

• Think of a time when you felt loved, held, supported. Think of a time when you gave love to another. How did it feel, what sensations did you experience in your body?

• If it’s hard right now to come up with an actual memory, you might imagine instead how you’d be there for a family member, a partner, a close friend in desperate need. How would that feel, what body sensations would you experience?

• For those who really struggle with self compassion, you might try visualizing a smaller (4 or 5 year old) version of yourself. It’s much easier to love something we see as more vulnerable and innocent. Imagine a time when that ‘younger you’ felt deeply wounded, alone, scared. What would you give to someone like that? How would you instinctively respond to the pain of that little you? My guess is you’d respond with love and compassion! Reflect on how this might feel and the sensations in your body.

• As you sit for a moment with these memories or images, focus on their felt sense and on how your body takes in these experiences of compassion. Your felt sense might one of acceptance, calm, kindness, allowance, affirmation, understanding. Your body might experience a kind of loosening, a relaxation, a warmth as you let go and as you feel held by love and compassion.

• Be creative and visualize this love as a kind of benevolent presence. Maybe it takes the shape of a cascading warmth; relaxing, holding, and enveloping you. See it perhaps as a bright and loving light, a serene picture from nature, the kind face of someone who loves you (past or present) who has a loving arm around you, maybe use the image of a spiritual/faith icon that’s important to you.

• Practice pausing, noticing your pain, then visualizing and calling on these soothing images in times of need.

Once you’ve gotten good at self compassion, it’s time to give some of that away!

I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s no shortage of need out there. It could be as close as your living room or as far away as the other side of the globe.

Love is so many things. It’s a feeling and an experience. It’s also an action. We love through acts of kindness. See a need, meet a need. Look around you and give wherever you can because the more you give, the more you receive in return.

Compassion can also be demonstrated less ‘actively’ with a few words of encouragement, a smile, a kind and quiet presence. Sometimes people just need a compassionate space where they can share their fear and pain. Your task here is to listen, validate and reflect what you hear, offering love and compassion though listening.

The last essential element of compassion is allowing love from others.

We often push away what we need the most. Afraid of being too needy or feeling too vulnerable we tend to hide away and not let those who are there for us give us the help we need.

In the same way that it is important for you to be there for yourself, and be there for others, it is also essential that you let in love and compassion from the real people in your life.

As noted above, love is calming and healing. Being loved by a close other can go a long way toward regulating your pandemic activated and out of whack nervous system. Love and compassion are the bedrock of attachment. Trusting and loving each other helps us emotionally regulate and helps us move forward, together.

P — Purpose

To get through anxious times, we also need to be able to take courageous action.

But what actions should we take exactly? In the absence of direction, we can act for the sake of acting (like mindlessly buying massive amounts of TP), more to distract us from our fears than anything else.

You can do better than that. In a crisis it’s more important than ever to take actions that are tied to the heart of who you are. Because feelings come and go, we can’t rely on emotion to motivate us. We are up one day, down the next. We need something more enduring.

To persevere over the long road ahead, you’ll need to live from the heart, from what gives your life value, meaning, and purpose.

It’s time to remind yourself, or maybe explore for the very first time, what your life is for in the first place. Getting in touch with what you value, what your purpose is leads you in the direction you need to go.

If you value family, then that will inform what you might do to make sure that they are taken care of materially, emotionally, even spiritually.

If you value patience then that will inform the way in which you go about the tasks of your day.

If you value equality and generosity then that might move you to see what you can do for those less fortunate in your own community.

If you value physical health then you might get out for a walk or a run.

Meaning and purpose can be the big existential “what’s this all about anyway” kind and the small “how should I live each day” kind. It’s important to be in touch with the deepest parts of your purpose and the more mundane.

Take a moment and write down what gives life purpose, value, and meaning in each of the categories below. Then rank order each of the categories. See if you can come up with some basic actions or goals that might be connected to what you find purposeful and valuable in each category. Compare those actions with the actions you are currently taking on a daily basis. Do they align? Are they drastically different?

1. Family

2. Romantic relationship

3. Friends/Community

4. Physical Health

5. Spiritual Health

6. Education

7. Job/Vocation

8. Recreation/Hobbies

9. Pets

10. National and global identity

11. Environmental

Living a purposeful life connected to your heart can be a powerful backdrop to each day. Reminding yourself when you feel fatigued of what you are living for, can give you the strength you need to get up and do it all again in spite of the challenges.

R — Risk

Even with compassion and purpose by your side, it’s still hard to move forward in the face of fear.  

We want to shelter in place emotionally, avoid what is uncomfortable, and hide out in the safest places. While this is a good anti-viral strategy for ‘flattening the curve’ of potential coronavirus damage, it’s not such a good strategy for learning how to live alongside your fear of the nasty virus in the first place.

Sometimes there is no way but through. That’s why risk is also a fundamental tool to help you through the darkest times. These aren’t reckless health risks I’m addressing here. These are the day to day risks you’ll need to take to stay engaged with life, family, and community.

Risk means that you’ve acknowledged that this new life can be scary but you are committing to moving forward anyway.

Risk means turning toward the things that scare you and not away from them. Avoidance stategies do not work well in normal times. They work even less well in times of crisis. If your head is in the sand you can’t see what needs to be done, you can’t see those who need your help, you can’t see those that are there to support you. Avoidance makes fears worse, not better.

Emotional and relational risk is important here too. We can’t get through this alone. In a crisis, it’s easy to get caught up with yourself and feel that if you admit your fear and vulnerability and share that with the people you are closest to, you’ll all collapse together. In my experience, it’s keeping this stuff in and then having it eventually spill out all over the place that is most alarming and unsettling to the people in your life. Sharing our fear and worry together helps us digest it together. We can do together what we can’t do alone.

CPR for your worried heart is about exercising compassion for yourself and others. It’s about finding purpose to strengthen your resolve and inform the actions you take. It’s about risking to stay engaged in life and with others.

CPR can help you move forward, not vanquishing fear, but living a brave, inspired, and heart healthy life in spite of it.

Creating Some Distance From Anxiety: Hope for Viral Fear Lesson #2

Strengthening Your Immunity to Anxiety 

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first…

We can’t get rid of anxiety. Whether it’s of the coronavirus or some other stressor in your life, anxiety is an essential human experience. Like sadness or anger, it’s here to stay. It communicates danger and readies us to respond. We need it to survive, so we need to learn to live with it. 

Learning to live with today’s heightening anxiety is a little like living with this virus itself. We’ll ultimately survive this pandemic by building immunity. We’ll survive our anxiety the same way. 

In the viral world, we inoculate ourselves to harmful invaders by being present and mixing with them (mixing with inert versions of the virus in the case of vaccinations). In mixing with foreign substances, the body learns. It learns to recognize and respond appropriately. It learns not to over react and learns not to under react. 

Similarly, easing your anxiety of the coronavirus will require that you stand toe to toe with your fear, mixing with it, acknowledging it — without minimizing or exaggerating — inoculating yourself against it. The more we practice this, the stronger our immunity, and the better our ability to be resilient in the face of worry, fear, and panic. 

Now the good news…

We can increase our capacity to stand toe to toe with fear by creating a space between the very heart of who we are and the part of us that experiences anxiety. This can then empower us to accept anxiety and fear instead of being taken over by them! From there, we can choose how we respond to this crisis, proactively.

And we do this by learning how to just notice…

Just Pause, Notice, and Accept 

The first and easiest thing you can do to start building your immunity in the face of anxiety is to practice the art of noticing.

You need to learn how to just pause and notice all the noise that’s going on in your head.

You need to learn how to just pause and notice what your body is sensing and experiencing.

You need to learn how to just pause, notice, and be with all the feelings you are having, one moment to the next. 

Noticing includes bringing an attitude of acceptance to what’s there. The key here is that you won’t try to change or control what you are noticing. You’ll do the opposite — you’ll bring an intention of acceptance to whatever you encounter. You’ll allow it to be there, make room for it, embrace it!

I know this must sound absurd, underwhelming, even counterintuitive. You’re feeling big fear so you are looking for big medicine. You think, “these thoughts and feelings are so uncomfortable, shouldn’t I try to combat them or get rid of them somehow?”

The unequivocal answer is NO!

The more we try to change or rid ourselves of anxious thoughts and feelings, the more they end up controlling us and the stickier they get. In fact, anxiety and fear often start to ease the moment we stop this battle, stop trying to manage them, the moment we begin to see them — from a distance.

Like our coronavirus strategy, we need help ‘distancing’. We need to create some distance between ourselves (the observing you, the enduring you, your center and core, the essential you — the heart!) and the thoughts, feelings, and bodily reactions the heart of you is experiencing. Six feet isn’t required here, just a sliver is all you need to start to see that you are so much more than your worry and fear. 

We’ve been told a lie over the years. The lie is that we are our thoughts and feelings. That’s not true. Thoughts and feelings can be an aspect of what we experience, but they are not the truth of who we are. They don’t have to define us, they don’t have to dictate our actions. Reactive thoughts and feelings don’t have to be in charge. 

Increasing our observing and noticing muscle strengthens our ability to access the heart of who we are, the essential and vital part of our being. This can ultimately give us the power we need to make healthy, deliberate, and informed choices — taking our lives back from our reactive autopilot and from our anxiety, fear, and panic.

Here’s an exercise called MIND WATCHING to help you practice this skill. Try this a few minutes a day. Those of you familiar with mindfulness practices will recognize this.

Mind Watching

• Find a comfortable and quiet place to sit down. Place hands, palms down, on your lap.

• Notice and focus on your breath, don’t control it, just notice it.

• Soon you’ll be distracted by a thought, maybe an intrusive or uncomfortable thought about this virus. Notice the thought, even name it, “thought about the virus.” You might imagine this thought as a puffy white cloud in the sky. It’s there to see, but slowly moving along with the breeze.

• After you name your thought, return to the focus on your breath.

• Before long you might be distracted by a feeling, maybe worry or fear. Name the feeling “worry” or “fear.” Again, maybe imagine the feeling as a cloud moving slowly along in the sky.

• Return to your breath focus.

• Before long you might be distracted by a sensation in your body. Name the sensation as you experience it, “tightness in chest,” for example. You might bring an intention of acceptance and warmth to that part of your body.

• Return to breath.

• Repeat.

The goal in this exercise IS NOT to get rid of or change your thoughts, feelings, or body sensations in any way. The goal is to notice them, even accept, allow, and make room for them, just as they are, but from a distance, the distance of your observing self.

Keep practicing moving back and forth between breath and experience. Remember, we are not trying to focus on our breath in order to avoid the mind or body. We are simply learning that we have the ability to move back and forth between breath and experience. We have the ability to focus our attention with intention.

In moving back and forth from what we experience to an anchoring breath we begin to see that we have the capacity to observe, from a distance, what we are experiencing instead of being reactively taken over by it.  

Your breath is always there, a reliable anchor. Like a boat anchors itself in the harbor to steady it in the midst of a storm, your breath can anchor you in the midst of the storm of changing and unpleasant thoughts and feelings.

We don’t have to change anxiety, we have to change the way we relate to it.

Distance Creates Freedom

One of our greatest human gifts is our ability to be aware of awareness. We can think about thinking. The Mind Watching Exercise will strengthen your ability to see that with a little focus, you always have access to this observational, “meta,” part of you. From there you can observe what’s going on, from a distance. From there, reacting less, you’ll have more freedom to choose how you respond. You can even choose to respond to your fear with kindness and compassion! (more on that later)

You might think of this observing part of you as your wiser self, the most essential and compassionate part of you that’s enduring over time — your heart!

In my next post I’ll help you explore this heart I keep referencing. To ease our anxiety we will need to get back to the heart of the matter. We’ll need to get back to who we are, what we value, what’s meaningful and important to us. Turns out the best way to address anxiety is to start living again!

Transforming Worry to Action: Hope for Viral Fear Lesson #1

Worry at the Epicenter 

A patient asked me the simplest question the other week, “How are you dealing with all this coronavirus fear?” No pressure, easy enough right? After all, I’m an anxiety therapist who’s been treating worried and panicked people for decades. I paused. Embarrassed, my mind drew a blank. Seems like a therapist should have a well thought out answer to the question my clients are asking the most right now, “how do we deal with our fear of this seemingly unstoppable virus?” 

The truth of the matter is, up to that point — a week or so before the US woke up to the new social distancing reality following the example of China and Italy — I’d largely been dealing with viral fear like many of those in the Seattle area, ground zero for the COVID-19 virus. I’d been buying disinfectant wipes, paper products, and food; obsessively following the news; washing my hands religiously; and trying desperately not to touch my face — oh yah, and worrying a lot!

I was at a loss for words with my client because I had temporarily lost myself. I imagine many of you have lost yourself too these days. When overwhelmed and flooded, we put off dealing more directly with our primary feelings. We can end up instead addressing them through obsessive disaster prep and over identification with our worried thoughts and feelings.

I’ve done some work on my own anxiety in the last few days. I’ve paused to be more mindful of my own experience; I’ve reached out for support to friends, family, and colleagues; and I’ve reminded myself of what I already know to be effective in dealing with anxiety — self awareness, intentional action, and compassionate connection with self and others.

I’m not a physician, epidemiologist, first responder, or 3M factory worker doing 18 hour shifts manufacturing face masks. I’m a psychotherapist though and am pretty good at putting people more at ease by helping them understand anxiety and how to live alongside it. So I thought I’d do my part and try to offer some relief the best way I know how — teaching you something about anxiety by teaching you something about yourself. 

My hope is to offer you some comfort in this crazy time by giving you a few tools to gently lead you back to who you are, moment to moment. Once there, you’ll have more power to relate to anxiety and fear more deliberately and with more kindness. From there you’ll also be reminded of what you already have that you can offer others — in whatever way your talents allow. In this way, you can transform worry into compassionate and intentional action. Maybe then we can all begin to spread more healing and less virus.

The Miracle of Intentional Action 

One of the best ways to manage your anxiety is to act with intention instead of re-acting unconsciously. Reactivity isn’t always a bad thing. The oldest, most primitive parts of our brain enable us to react without thinking. This works well in a crisis; for example, you need to escape a fast moving vehicle while crossing the street or the jaws of a rapidly advancing dinosaur in prehistoric times. Our legs move without us having to tell them to move, this saves valuable time and gets us to safety. 

This doesn’t work so well in periods of prolonged stress — like we are experiencing now with this viral pandemic. Our nervous system doesn’t easily distinguish acute from chronic stressors, though. We can end up in a place where our brain continues to tell us what to do even if it’s against our own interests. 

This involves the way our body responds to stress (accelerated heart rate, increased blood pressure) but it can also involve the thoughts and feelings we are having too. We can end up with a whole host of “mental scripts” running in the background that we don’t control. These thoughts are often around our worst fears and harshest judgments. In turn, these thoughts can quickly influence feelings we might have like worry, sadness, anger, or helplessness. Things can go south quickly when our body, thoughts, and feelings are all bound together in a mutually and negatively reinforcing cycle of anxiety.  

When bodies, thoughts, and feelings build negative momentum in this way, we start to run on autopilot. We don’t act, we re-act. In the face of the coronavirus scare we can start to stockpile excessive supplies we don’t need, tunnel into obsessive thoughts that aren’t helpful, and be overcome by waves of feelings that we can’t control.

The remedy for all this reactivity is intentional action. 

Acting with intention means bringing conscious aim and purpose to what you do. You might think of intention as getting back into the driver’s seat, being the pilot of your life, flying directly, instead of defaulting to autopilot. This is important because when caught up in anxiety, we can get stuck in an autopilot existence.

Reacting from fear, our autopilot tends to take us in directions that are opposed to what we actually value, what we care about, and that are not in line with who we truly are.

There are some relatively easy and concrete things we can begin to do to learn to stand alongside our fear instead of reacting to it. Things that will help you get back to the driver’s seat so you can effectively live in viral times, taking care of yourself emotionally as well as being more available for your family and friends. In my next post, I’ll go over how to create some distance from fear so you can live more fully even alongside worry and anxiety.

Saving Face in the Digital Age

TECHNOLOGY AND ME

For about a week or so in my late twenties I flirted with becoming a Luddite. Computers will ultimately destroy what’s most human in us, I thought. We need to fight against this onslaught of technology. However, just like the college Peace Corp fantasy, my biggest passions tend to come in short bursts. I’m too lazy to be an idealist.

I got my first iPhone from my wife after my cheap, bottom of the line flip phone was destroyed in a Diet Coke accident. I didn’t really oppose technology at the time, I just didn’t get what all the fuss was about. That changed.

I understand now the fascination and desire for technological innovation. I binge Netflix, listen obsessively to podcasts, FaceTime family thousands of miles away, learn guitar licks on YouTube, and have been able to create this very website precisely because of the magic of the Digital Age.

Still, at times when I am lost in my own screens, or even worse, when I look up and notice that my wife, two daughters, and I are sitting in the same room oblivious to one another with heads bent down, hypnotized by devices -- I get nervous.

George Orwell’s bleak quote from 1984 said it best,

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

— George Orwell, 1984

becoming a Ludd-LIte

To keep faces boot free we need a new ‘Ludd-lite’ philosophy, one that maintains the importance of the human face even as we use technology to work more productively, create more passionately, communicate more effectively, or just have fun. 

We don't need to rail against technology, we just need to be mindful of its consequences. Consequences to us socially and psychologically, but maybe more importantly, consequences to the integrity of the human face itself.

Time spent looking down at screens and away from the colorful faces all around us, robs us of something vital. The more we lose ourselves in digital spaces, the more we lose sight of our precious human faces -- and with them, something distinctly human and joyful. 

This face of ours is a unique membrane. At the surface it's the intersection and expression of our thoughts, feelings, and physiology; but at the same time, it points to something so much deeper. 

saving Face

I'm obsessed with faces. It's likely why I'm in the counseling profession. As a child, like many I imagine, I learned to read faces long before my first book. I still love to read as I work as a therapist today. 

Faces are sacred. Bright, beautiful, wistful, sad, angry, bored --  at every moment, they silently reveal our inner most being. Who we are and how we are reside first and foremost in the face. In their immediacy, availability, and vulnerability faces are the most authentic expression of our humanity.

They are the leading edge of our encounters with one another. They hint at mysteries just below the surface. Faces have the power to draw us in. With or even without our consent, they display our mood, our secrets, our character, our essence, our spirit, our soul. They express what words can't or won't.

The most relational organ we have, they are an essential instrument of intimacy and connection. As powerful as they are fragile, though, faces need our protection.

My task as a therapist in the Digital Age is pretty simple. It's about saving face -- and maybe in the process, saving our capacity for more intimate and meaningful connection with each other -- even as we live alongside the technology that serves us and benefits us in so many ways.

---

How can I help? Schedule your first session or set up a free phone consultation.

Call 425.326.1690 or email  joe@joebutlertherapy.com

7 Essential Tools for Better Couples Communication

---

---

Learning effective ways to dialogue with your partner can help you feel closer to each other, be better problem solvers, and keep conflicts from escalating out of control. I often start my couples off learning these tools.

1. Say Yes to 'I Statements':

'I statements' are the first communication tool I learned as a counselor. It's still the most effective tool I know. I've used it to help five year olds negotiate recess conflicts. It works equally well with forty year olds arguing about money, sex, or how to load the dishwasher. If you want to immediately increase your chances of being heard, express you concerns with an 'I statement':

• “I Feel ____ When ____Because ____”

• "I feel sad when you pull away from me because I want us to be closer.

• I feel mad when you criticize me because it makes me feel like you don't value me."

By focusing first on our own experience, 'I statements' keep us from attacking, blaming, and criticizing our partner. This is a good thing because when we feel attacked, blamed, and criticized we close our ears and harden our hearts. 'I statements' help us talk about what we have control of -- our own thoughts, feelings, reactions -- and keep us from attempting to control what we can't -- our partner. 'I statements' increase opportunities for dialogue and decrease the likelihood of defensiveness. 'I statements' help us identify our unique reactions to a particular behavior of our partner. This tends to reduce defensiveness by making things less personal and emotionally charged. 

 

2. Say No to 'You Statements' and to Over-generalizations:

When we are upset it's easy to get caught up in our emotions. In an effort to be heard, we can feel the need to escalate the situation to get our partner's attention. "He's not getting it! He'll only listen if I turn up the volume," we think to ourselves. Increasing our volume usually has the opposite effect, though. Strong and emotionally charged statements filled with blame, accusation, and exaggeration can take over. These statements often start with 'you' and rely on words like 'always' and 'never'. 

• "You always make excuses..."

• "You never listen to me..."

• "You do that all the time!"

The problem with 'you statements' is that even if you're right, you won't be heard. 'You statements' make others defensive. They're likely to pull away, protect, or attack in return. Next time you want to get your partner's attention, use an 'I statement' instead.

Don't overgeneralize. Try being specific and cite concrete examples addressing how a behavior has impacted you. Talk about one thing at a time, don’t pile on. Less is more, be succinct; when we go on and on, our partners start to drift away or become increasingly defensive. Our point gets lost.

3. Lead with LOVE, positivity, and curiosity

If you begin a conversation with your partner with a list of complaints and disappointments, you're likely to lose out on any chance to connect before you've even begun. Focus on the positive ways you want your relationship to be. Focus on what you hope for in the future. Be aspirational about the relationship itself instead of only looking at the negative behaviors of your partner.

• "I love it when we ______"

• "I remember us being so happy when we spent more time ______"

• "I want a relationship we can feel good about, one where we have fun, trust each other, and are really connected."

If you do need to address behaviors, focus on what you've appreciated in the past, focus on what you do want, not on the behavior you don't want. 'Relationship talks' can be really scary for people. Leading with empathy, kindness, and understanding can help set the right tone. Bring that with you alongside your frustration and desire for change.

• "I remember that time when you _______, that made me feel so safe, I felt so close to you"

• "I like it when you _______"

• "You are so good at _______, when you do that it helps me ________"

• "Conversations like this are hard, it's difficult for me too..."

• "I want to have this talk because you are so important to me. I believe that if we work together we can work through these difficult feelings..."

Instead of demands, ultimatums, and critical statements, use questions. Bring an attitude of curiosity and openness when looking at your relationship together.   

• "I wonder what gets in our way of _______?"

• "What are some things we could do together that would help us?"

• "What do you think is happening when we have arguments like that?"

• "How can we do it differently?"

 

4. Speak for Yourself, Not for Your Partner

Talk about your experience, your feelings, your thoughts, your behaviors. Don't speak for your partner or make assumptions about what they think or feel. If you want to know how your partner feels, ask. Don't analyze, mind read, or play therapist (that's my job!). Share who you are with your partner and allow your partner to share who they are with you. Many communication problems begin with the assumptions we make about the inner world of the person we care about. Be aware of the tendency to project your own feelings onto your partner. Be patient, receptive, and curious. 

5. Safety and trust are a must

Close, healthy, and secure attachments are founded on safety and trust. While there are lots of things we can do positively that can enhance that, there are behaviors that can quickly erode it was well.

• No shouting

• No finger pointing (literally)

• Don't encroach on the physical space of your partner when angry

• No swear words

• Be careful with sarcasm

• No aggressive physical contact

• No intimidation

• No violent behavior (throwing things, breaking things, slamming doors, fist pounding)

6. Time Outs Aren't Just for Kids

Dialogue is impossible when we are over-stimulated. Know your own boiling point, the point when your emotions are so strong you can't constructively dialogue with your partner anymore. Have a prearranged agreement to take breaks when either one of you have reached your boiling point. Have an agreed upon ‘time out word’ to use to indicate you need a break. Come back when blood pressures are down. Time out strategies must include an agreed upon length of time after which you return to continue dialogue and repair. Repeat as necessary. 

7. Listen for Understanding

Listen responsively with body language: eye contact, body turned to partner, head nods. Mirror what you heard, literally word for word if you have to. Focus on naming the feeling your partner identified. You can repeat back to them the 'I statement' they used (you statements are ok here!). Ask your partner if you got it right. 

• “Sounds like you felt hurt when I didn’t include you … You feel abandoned when I don’t talk to you ... Is that right?

Try to check the need to respond to, defend, or explain each point your partner brings up. This will prevent you from really listening. Your turn will come and your partner will be more present if they feel listened to, validated, and understood first.

 

 

"this just isn't me..."

When practicing these communication tools with clients a frustration I ofter hear is, "This doesn't sound like me, I don't talk like this. This is therapy-speak..." While it may be true that these suggested 'techniques' go against your natural way of speaking, I remind couples who are struggling that the way they currently talk to each other isn't working. Trying something new (even if it feels foreign) might well be worth the risk. Over time and with practice, I find that couples learn to use these tools as guidelines that help shape how they interact more than robotic lines they repeat to each other.

 

Tools are Just the Beginning

In the end, communication tools are just that, tools. They work to enable opportunities for intimacy and connection, but they aren't the intimacy and connection themselves. Real intimacy in a relationship happens in time through patience, vulnerability, and commitment. Real intimacy happens as we better understand ourselves and our partner and the negative cycles we get into. Behind these negative cycles there are just two desperate and emotionally clumsy human beings, longing to love and be loved, unsure how to get there. 

 

surprised by intimacy

Intimacy is mysterious; it can sneak up on us. I've seen the look of surprise on a couples' face as they seemingly bump into a beautiful moment of closeness together almost as if by accident. These moments are fragile, though. They're drowned out through the noise of arguing. They're starved by the silence of emotional distance. These moments are best cultivated when we're able to communicate with each other with more acceptance and compassion, less criticism and control. 

I encourage you to use these tools so you can change the kind of dialogue you have in your relationship and increase opportunities for intimacy and connection. Conversation between you and your partner can move from something you dread and avoid to something you long for and enjoy.  

---

How can I help? Schedule your first session or set up a free phone consultation.

Call 425.326.1690 or email joe@joebutlertherapy.com

Why I'm A Therapist

Youngest of Seven

Born the youngest of seven in a large Catholic family in Seattle, I was raised in a house way too small for the nine people, dog, and cat living there. This made escape from each other impossible, but learning from the experience inevitable. The lessons learned there are a large reason I am a therapist today!

Big on love, laughter, chaos, and anxiety my family taught me that life is full of wonder and pain -- you don't get to have one without the other. We live best when we're able to embrace life as a whole, making room for all of it -- not just the easy stuff. 

I also learned that being seen is the most powerful medicine there is. What we want more than anything in life is to be recognized -- for who we really are. By some cruel trick of human nature, though, this also tends to be one of our greatest fears. I became a therapist to help others face this fear and dare to be seen. I believe this is what heals us and makes us whole!

From my own journey I discovered that living our life today starts when we can make sense of the life behind us. It helps to know our own story if we want to be in charge of writing the next chapters. We don't have to wallow in our history, we just need to understand, accept, and learn from it. 

People want to live a life they can really love, not one they have to endure. Unfortunately, we often discover that what we long for most in life is tangled up with some of our deepest fears and anxieties. Ultimately, I became a therapist because I understand this conflict. I am deeply passionate about helping others face these worries, fears, and anxieties so they can get closer to a life that's meaningful. 

Dancing Stars

Good therapy has the power to create great moments. Moments where everything you thought you knew about yourself is turned upside down. This can happen with tears, with laughter, or even in silence. This happens best when we enter into this journey together, both working, both risking to listen to your pain and allow it to point us in the direction of your greatest healing. When we face the darkest, most chaotic parts of who we are, something new and joyful can be created.

“You have to have a little chaos in you to give birth to a dancing star.”

— Nietzsche

I am a therapist because I want to help you understand the chaos and anxiety in your life so you can love more fully, laugh more deeply, and give birth to your own dancing star. 

---

How can I help? Schedule your first session or set up a free phone consultation.

Call 425.326.1690 or email joe@joebutlertherapy.com

A Little About Therapy

Funny Business

Therapy is a funny business. Why in the world would anyone sit down with a complete stranger and tell them their life story? Why would someone share things with a therapist they wouldn't share with their closest friends or family?

Still, people do it. I've done it. And believe it or not -- it works.

After 25 years in the helping profession, I continue to be amazed by two things:

1. the courage people show as they take giant risks to reveal who they are, and

2. the capacity of the human heart to recover from the deepest hurts and make sense of the most profound pain

Whether you realize it or not you'll bring something essential with you to your very first therapy appointment -- the human instinct we all have that pushes us to grow. We have this in spite of our fear. Some part of us wants a richer and more meaningful life, even while we are afraid of what it can take to get us there. 

 

First sessions

I see this tension play out often at the start of my work with people. First sessions in therapy often unfold like this: 

Siting down carefully on the couch, you survey the new surroundings and look up cautiously.

Unsure about where to look exactly, you move your eyes from mine to the floor and back again as you think about where to start. You rehearsed this a few times at home but it feels different now -- a lot harder. 

Before any words come out, you're overcome with emotion. 

It's been a long time since you could just be yourself.

You've been holding it together forever; holding it together for your friends, for your co-workers, for your family, for your partner.  

Pretending has been exhausting. 

You feel relief as the powerful emotions you always knew were there begin to leak out, unexpectedly. This feels surprisingly good -- but it also feels scary and unfamiliar. 

The bigger part of you wants to be reached. Even though you've become an expert at hiding, there's a hope inside you that 'being found' just might be worth the risk.

Anytime we try something new it can feel scary and unfamiliar. Growth and fear always go together.

We stop growing, though, the moment we let our fear trick us into believing that this smaller, carefully hidden version of ourself is all there is.

 

become more of who you are, not less.

My greatest wish for you in therapy is that you become more of who you are, not less.

I believe that much of the pain you feel -- your anxiety, depression, loneliness, or anger is a signal that you aren't living the kind of life you want to be living. 

Our attempts to manage that pain lead to avoidance strategies like hiding and pretending. The hiding and pretending keep us further away from a fuller life. This leads to more pain and then more avoidance strategies. 

We get stuck in a cycle that limits us and makes us unhappy.

What if turning toward the pain was a way to get out of this cycle? What if a more authentic you was behind the hurt?

We do this in therapy by: 

• noticing what we are experiencing instead of avoiding it

• turning toward and understanding the undesirable parts of ourself we used to run away from

• tending to these parts with acceptance and compassion

• learning more about what we value, desire, and wish for

• taking the action needed to move us toward what we really want in life

With understanding, courage, and a hopeful invitation we can be who we are and step out into the light of day. 

---

How can I help? Schedule your first session or set up a free phone consultation.

Call 425.326.1690 or email joe@joebutlertherapy.com