Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A., LMFT
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Your Mind is Built from Experiences.

1/26/2017

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I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

--Walt Whitman

Much as your body is built from the foods you eat,
your mind is built from the experiences you have. 
The flow of experience gradually sculpts your brain, thus shaping your mind. 

Some of the results can be explicitly recalled:
This is what I did last summer; that is how I felt when I was in love. 
Most of the shaping of your mind remains forever unconscious.

This is call implicit memory, and it includes your expectations, models of relationships,
emotional tendencies, and general outlook. 
Implicit memory establishes the interior landscape of
your mind-
-what if feels like to be you-
based on the slowly accumulating residues of lived experiences.

In a sense, those residues can be sorted into two piles:
those that benefit you and others,
and those that cause harm. 


But, here's the problem. 
Your brain scans for, registers, stores, recalls,
and reacts to unpleasant experiences;

it is like velcro for negative experiences
and teflon for positive experiences.


Consequently, even when positive experiences outnumber negative ones,
the pile of negative implicit memories naturally grows faster. 
Then the background feeling of what it feels like to be you can
become  glum and pessimistic.

Negative experiences do have benefits:
loss opens the heart, remorse provides a moral compass, 
anxiety alerts you to threats, and anger spotlights wrongs that should be righted. 

Do you really think you are not having enough
negative experiences? 


Emotional pain with no benefit to yourself or others is pointless suffering. 
And pain today breeds more pain tomorrow. 
For instance, even a single episode of major depression
can reshape circuits of the brain to make future episodes more likely.


The remedy is not to suppress negative experiences;
when they happen, they happen. 
Rather, it is to foster positive experiences
--and in particular,

to take them in so they become
a permanent part of you.

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Giving of what I have of value to the world.

1/22/2017

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You may experience frequent strong, noisy emotions. 
It is going to be hard to hear your true enduring voice, your vision,
buried underneath that noisy emotional racket.

Engineers call this the search for the signal in the noise.


Taming those emotions on your own,
now and then, is the key. 
If you are limited to the vision that others' acceptance and love
are what you must have to be happy
and to calm those emotions
you may never move beyond that to find what satisfies you,
besides emotional support. 


The question is, who are you? 
If you do not get to know yourself and invest in building that self,
then there is nobody for you or others to become interested in getting to know.


An antidote for the emotional pain of feeling regularly deprived
and in need of more love and nourishment from the world
is to remember that you yourself have important gifts to give
and that you may be neglecting to give them
when over focused on feeling in need.


Make an inventory of what you have to offer
and see whether or not you are actually giving those things. 

Some things like a sense of humor, cooking, the capacity
to inspire,
playing music, computer savvy, mechanical know-how, singing,
emotional support, stories, paintings, or anything
that might make the world a better place for others.









Taken from Leaving Lonliness
David Narang, Ph.d.




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The Failure of our Partner to Respond Scrapes our Emotional Raw Skin.

1/18/2017

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We are all vulnerable in love; it goes with the territory. 
We are more emotionally naked with those we love and so sometimes, inevitably, we hurt each other with careless words or actions. 

While these occasions sting, the pain is often superficial and fleeting. 

Almost all of us have at least on additional exquisite sensitivity -- a raw spot in our emotional skin -- that is tender to the touch, easily rubbed, and deeply painful. 

When this raw spot gets abraded, it can bleed all over our relationship.  We lose our emotional balance and plunge into demon dialogues.

What exactly is a raw spot? 

It is a hypersensitivity formed by moments in a person's past or current relationships
when an attachment need has been repeatedly neglected, ignored or dismissed
resulting in a person feeling emotionally deprived or deserted. 
These are the universal raw spot points for lovers.

These sensitivities frequently arise from wounding relationships
with significant people in our past, especially parents who give us our basic template for loving relationships; sibling and other members of our families; and of course past and present lovers.

Sometimes raw spots arise in a happy relationship

if we feel especially emotionally deprived or deserted. Raw spots can occur during big transitions or crises --- having a child, becoming ill, the loss of a job. 

It is when the need for support from our partner is particularly intense,
but it does not come. 

Raw spots can develop when a partner seems chronically indifferent,
producing an overwhelming sense of hurt that then infuses even small issues.











Sue Johnson - Hold Me Tight

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Why Mindfulness?

1/15/2017

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Mindfulness is focused on helping you. 
Moment by moment, to be aware of what you are experiencing, including your thoughts, emotions, physiological experiences and related needs. 

Mindfulness can be defined as becoming aware of and engaging your current experience to be alive right now.  Experiences with mindfulness can be used to help you create now what you may have needed from your childhood.

Mindfulness mimics emotionally responsive parenting. 
It is the child's parent who labels and thus helps the young child to recognize her or her emotions and emotional needs.  For example, "You look sad, do you need a hug?"  Also to tend to the child's physiological state and physical needs, "It looks like you stomach hurts.  Let me get you something to feel better." 

This is a natural developmental path which is the basis for a secure attachment. 
Many of our parents were not aware of their own emotional needs yet to comfort us as children.  However, one can recreate and develop a secure attachment. 

Mindfulness practice can help one create parts of yourself that were missing

Mindfulness changes the brain, similar to changes in which a secure attachment brings. For example, research found an increases in brain mass in areas of the brain believed useful in building emotional stability, learning, and memory after only eight weeks of a focused meditation program.

Your relationship with yourself is the foundation of your relationship with you as an adult.  In building the quality of this relationship yourself first, you can then greatly increase your ability to building satisfying, stable, loving relationships with others. 


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Being Human Requires Courage Because Humans are Imperfect.

1/12/2017

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Bliss engenders empowerment...
We also embrace our imagination and creativity.
Today we refuse to be victims
of past issues any longer.
We can leave toxic shame where it belongs,
in the past. 
We become the artistic creators of our lives. 
We take risks. 
We go after the things we really want.

Open yourself to the awesome unlimited possibilities
of our human nature. 
Such possibilities are modeled by the
magnificent outpouring of human creation. 


Our great musicians
were limited by the laws of the musical scale,
but within those limits the variety of their compositions
are almost unbelievable. 

Our great painters
were limited by their canvas,
but walking through a museum of fine art
can be an awesome
and overwhelming experience.


Within our human limits, there are still miracles to come. 
You are one of those miracles. 


Being human requires courage. 
It requires courage because human beings are imperfect.  
You need the courage to be imperfect. 
The courage to be imperfect
engenders a lifestyle characterized by spontaneity and humor. 
Stop walking on eggshells and be imperfect!
Take more risks, feel freer to explore, be creative,
and laugh more! 
 Taken from: Healing the Shame that Binds Us
John Bradshaw


As the poet Robert Frost would have it,
"Ride easy in the harness."

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January 08th, 2017

1/8/2017

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"Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that
it is not fish
that they are after."

Henry David Thoreau

To spend one's whole lifetime
waiting for life to come to us...
thinking that if we just
quiet our minds we will find peace...

waiting for life to make us happy...
could there be a greater waste?

That is not to say that serenity and peace
are not found in fishing.


The beginning in our search
is in the quieting of the mind. 
That is just the beginning though.

As we quiet our minds
our answers will come. 


Listen to the answers. 
Sit still.
Yes, Listen.
Surrender
Lean into life
rather than fight against it.

We will know what right action steps
are to be taken,
for happiness and peace.
Pay attention.
Discovery, meaning, awareness.


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    Author:
    Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.
    Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist


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