self-help
6 Steps to Enhancing Your Self-Esteem
There are many things in life that we have to accept because we can do nothing about them. The one thing we can change is how we relate to ourselves.
As said in previous posts (Understanding Self-Estseem and How it Develops, How Early Experience Shapes One’s Relationship with One’s Self and Self-Esteem – a By-Product of How You Treat Yourself) we first have to realize we have developed a style over time. We need to become aware of what our style is. We may even develop different styles with different people and in different situations. The styles may be healthy or unhealthy. If a style is positive, such as respecting oneself, it does not need changing (other than to enhance what is already done). This can last a lifetime.
The styles that need changing are the ones that are unhealthy, such as not respecting, disparaging, negating, hurting, or judging oneself harshly. Many people have harsh inner critics, treating themselves in ways they would never treat another human being.
STEPS TO CHANGE
1) Become aware of your own personal style.
2) Build a solid foundation. Identify the positive interactions within yourself and choose to do them more often.
Scenario:
Wenda likes to try new things even though she gets anxious. The risks she takes are reasonable and safe. She encourages herself to keep taking risks by saying to herself. “ I can do this.” Afterwards, she gives herself credit. When it turns out well she says to herself, “Good for me. I did it.” If it goes badly, she says to herself, “OK, that did not go well, but I learned from it. At least I tried it.”
3) Change what needs changing. Identify the negative interactions and target them for change.
Scenario:
Wenda would not allow herself to accept compliments. She would dismiss, ignore, or deny them. She decided she wanted to receive compliments. She knew if she could take them in, she would feel better about herself.
4) Figure out new behaviours to replace the old ones.
This takes planning and experimentation. You cannot operate in a void. You need to replace the old way with a new way.
Scenario:
Wenda decided on 4 new ways she would respond when someone complimented her:
- Thank you.
- I’m glad you think so.
- It’s good to hear that.
- I appreciate your saying that.
5) The Choice Point.
This is the point at which you are aware you are (or are about to) treat yourself badly, and you mindfully decide to continue to do it, or you decide to do something different.
Scenario:
Wenda’s friend complimented her on her hair. Wenda, without thinking, replied sarcastically, “Oh yeah, right.” Suddenly, Wenda realized she had just done her old thing. She looked at her friend and said, “I mean, thank you.”
6) Practice, practice, practice.
Experimenting means that sometimes what you try will go badly. Expect those times to happen. Do your best to laugh them off, dismiss them, and learn from them. Encourage and support yourself to try again. Gradually, you’ll replace a bad habit with a good habit, an unhealthy habit with a healthy habit.
With care and concern,
Dr. Bea
Stop Managing Your Emotions and Start Processing Them
Most people have the mistaken idea that emotions are to be managed. When you process your emotions, they do not need to be managed, they naturally shift and change in healthy ways.
To make this shift, you need to understand the physiology of emotion. The brain and the body are complicated. The following is a simplification of the mind/body connection regarding emotion.
The right brain, limbic system, and the body create the emotions we experience. The left brain analyzes emotions, but it does not create them. We express emotions from our right brain; we talk about emotions from our left brain.
Emotions come in waves. When emotions are pleasant, such as experiences of contentment, satisfaction, happiness, and joy, people tend to breathe normally, rarely noticing the waves. Feelings do not stay the same—they come and they go.
What goes wrong?
When emotions are uncomfortable; such as experiences of high excitement, fear, grief, and loss, people change how they breathe, often without realizing it. As the emotion wells up, people tend to hold their breath and then shallow breathe. They shift into their left brain and start to question what is happening (What if? What’s wrong? OMG, etc.) Holding the breath blocks the processing of the emotion so the wave cannot crest, it cannot recede, and therefore, it cannot dissipate. Now the emotion has to be managed. Unprocessed emotions tend to build over time, like a stack of coins, as other situations create similar feelings. There is more and more emotion to manage. There is less and less energy to manage or wall off the emotions.
When emotions are distressing, such as intense love, fear, grief, and rejection, people get into the habit of trying to avoid them. What they are trying to avoid are the sensations of the feelings. The actual situation that created the distressing sensations usually gets lost. Now life becomes about avoiding the awful sensations. This complicates life because people become so focused on trying to avoid, they cannot live freely. Also, by trying to avoid feelings, people often behave in ways that create the very feelings that they are trying to avoid.
The breath is the key to processing emotions.
As an emotion wells up, breathing through the emotion allows it to crest and recede. At first, the waves may be intense. By breathing through the waves they dissipate and get smaller and smaller until, like waves on a beach, they are gone. There is nothing left to manage or avoid.
By facing a feeling and breathing through the sensations of an emotion you will learn that you can handle it. Knowing you can tolerate and handle difficult sensations, will free you up to make the decisions that you want to make. You are less likely to experience difficult feelings and, because life can be difficult, when you do, they won’t last as long.
Embrace all the moments of life. The capacity to experience the full range of emotions, from the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy, creates a sense of being fully alive.
With care & concern,
Dr. Bea
3 Tips For Changing A Fight-Flight-Freeze Instinct
By Bea Mackay, Ph. D.
We all have different ways we react to stressful situations. For example, when someone directs anger towards you, your instinct might be to fight back and protect yourself—or maybe you feel like leaving the room (flight) because you are uncomfortable.
- Do you fight?
- Do you leave the space (take flight)?
- Do you freeze in your space without knowing what to do?
If the angry person is your boss, you might want to hide (freeze) from embarrassment or fear of being fired.
These reactions (fright, flight, freeze) can happen because stressful situations evoke emotions, expectations, and uncomfortable sensations in the body. How can we process our emotions during these stressful times?
Don’t just survive — thrive emotionally
In all the species, basic survival methods have become instinctual—built into the DNA over thousands or millions of years. The organisms that survived passed on their genes to the next generation, and so on.
These survival behaviours are so ingrained in human DNA that people’s bodies and minds behave as though their fears are life-threatening even though they are most likely not.
Here are three steps to help you process your stress response—not just react
STEP ONE—Become Aware
Awareness is the first step in changing emotional and physical habits. Taking time to recognize uncomfortable sensations in your body is an important step.
For example, when someone feels anxious and they don’t take the time to recognize this feeling, they can drag this feeling on through the day. This feeling can affect your mind flow, muscles, posture, blood pressure, etc. We cannot process feelings/sensations if we don’t take the time to feel the discomfort.
This discomfort can be a headache, shoulder tension, stomach issues, or any specific body sensation that emerges when emotional stress takes over. Become aware of these sensations in your body the next time your emotions take hold of you.
STEP TWO—Try Not to Analyze
People are strongly motivated to understand why and how they came to feel what they feel. Trying to understand this may even evoke positive change.
However, understanding alone does not induce change because people do not know what else to do; they often get stuck analyzing and rethinking with the hope/intent to get the change they seek. What they do not know is that understanding is not necessary for change.
To shift from thinking to sensing, you need to interrupt the thoughts and focus on the sensations in the body.
Typically, people do not want to address unpleasant emotions because the sensations/feelings might be intense.
The sensations/feelings that are not processed build up over time and highjack personal energy, which serves in managing our emotions. This managing, or analyzing, can be exhausting and can affect our health and relationship with ourselves and others.
Catching yourself in the act can lead to different neural pathways and new ways of being.
STEP THREE—Process Emotions, Breathe
If an emotion is not allowed to flow, it will build up. It takes personal energy to block or stop the flow of emotion. Eventually, something will give. The person will either live a limited life or have an emotional breakdown; they will either implode or explode, cry, or have outbursts of anger over tiny incidents, such as spilled milk.
This emotional blockage leads to exhaustion and an inability to function, which is often what a mid-life crisis involves. A person’s way of operating in the world developed over time no longer works, but they do not yet have a new way of being; therefore, they stay the same.
They use so much energy to manage their emotions that there is little energy left to function in daily life. Processing these sensations helps to promote emotional freedom and personal growth.
Personal growth leads to healthy relationships.
Sensations come in waves.
Breathe through the waves.
Breathe through the sensations.
By breathing through the waves of sensations (deep, slow breaths), personal energy will realign and flow in the same direction.
Sometimes, during this shift, the biggest temptation is to avoid feeling the sensations (a twinge, some nausea, a slight headache, etc.) and immediately shift back to thoughts to figure out why you feel this way.
However, it does not matter why! It also does not matter who, what, when, where, or how. What matters is that they are having these sensations and need to stay with them.
What is, is.
Thriving Emotionally
When we stay with the sensations and breathe into them, we process them; we create new neural pathways that precipitate new sensations, and therefore, we evolve emotionally and create healthy and productive change.
As we reconnect with our bodies, we feel more connected to ourselves. When we connect to ourselves, we feel more connected in relationships.
To live happy and healthy lives, one needs to thrive emotionally, not just survive. Next time you sense an uncomfortable feeling, take the time to acknowledge your feelings/sensations and breathe through them.
