I follow the Washington Post on Instagram and this article popped up in June: 
This Mom Made a Few Don't Give Up Signs and Planted Them in Her Neighborhood. Soon, The Signs Went Global. 

Wow.

Saddened by talking to a friend about the rise in teen suicides, Amy Wolff came up with a simple idea for helping people find hope and connection: Print lawn signs with inspiring messages. It sounds so simple, and even trite, but it turns out they are helping people by reminding them of the worthiness, strength and beauty, often at the times when they need it the most. On her Instagram feed she shares quotes from people who have been inspired by the signs in their own lives, and those who heard from others what a difference the signs made. Every time one of these posts pops up in my feed I feel the power of the message in my own life and I'm grateful it is being shared in so many places. Isn't it amazing how often we need to be reminded of our own worth, strength and beauty? Internalizing this kind of message isn't a one and done. It's a practice that we must come back to, again and again, as we navigate the rough waters of life. 

​Follow Don't Give up Signs on Instagram, @dontgiveupsigns and visit the website to learn more, and buy signsm at https://www.dontgiveupsigns.com/ 

Here are a few posts from Instagram:

“A neighbor who has never spoken to me before in 12 years of living in an apartment next door to our home, who years ago I’d see shaking his head at my political signs as he walked by, walked by my yard a few months ago. I said hello. He said nothing in response, as usual. Then he stopped and said, ‘Is that a suicide thing or something?’ I just said, ‘What, the sign? It could be, or not. Just a reminder that you matter.’ He said, ‘This may sound weird but I wanted to kill myself yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and walking by your house always gives me a boost.’ I said, ‘I’m glad you’re still here’ as he walked off. I was blown away.” #youmatter From July 31, 2019

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, A therapist, her therapist, and our lives revealed is a guided tour through therapy. Lori Gottlieb invites us into her office to observe the gradual, often subtle, shifts clients make as they spend an hour a week on her couch. But she doesn't stop there. She also invites us to join her at her therapist's office where she shares her own process moving from "presenting problem" (boyfriend dumps her) to  becoming a wiser, more forgiving and empowered version of herself. 

This book is an easy read. Gottlieb's clear and engaging writing kept me turning the pages even as I neglected my to-do list and stayed up later than I knew I should. Like a master weaver she integrates her clients' stories with her own so that it becomes clear, chapter by chapter, that we are all united in our humanity. She makes it clear that by taking the time to sit with each other in the raw, and often painful place of authenticity, we also have the potential to reap great rewards in the form of greater intimacy, forgiveness and ultimately peace. 

Although the book travels through challenging territory, addressing themes of death, traumatic loss, abandonment and abuse, the overall message is hopeful and the book ends with a sense of satisfaction that everyone, thanks to therapy, is a little (sometimes a lot) better off than when they started. While this is not always the case in life or in therapy, and she surely intentionally chose case studies to present that would allow her to end on a positive note, I still finished the book with the overall sense that what we do in the therapy office, whether we are the therapist or the client, has the potential to be deeply transformational for everyone involved.

Here's an excerpt:
This- right here, right now, between you and me- isn't therapy, but a story about therapy: how we heal and where it leads us. Like in those National Geographic Channel shows that capture the embryonic development and birth of rare crocodiles, I want to capture the process in which humans, struggling to evolve, push against their shells until they quietly (but sometimes loudly) and slowly (but sometimes suddenly) crack open...

If you read my blog post about SoulCollage®, you won't be surprised to hear that I have been collecting old magazines from family and friends over the past several months. Mostly I just cut out the images I want, but an article in a 2013 issue of Scientific American MIND caught my eye. In Listening to Voices: A student's journey from "normal" to "schizophrenic" and back highlights shortcomings in how our society deals with mental health, Eleanor Longden talks about her experience hearing voices, being diagnosed with schizophrenia, struggling with the treatment offered, and then finding her own way to a kind of mental health that she believes is possible for others experiencing symptoms our medical system often rejects and tries to suppress. By befriending her voices, listening to their (metaphorical, not literal) messages, and integrating their wisdom into what was coming from her "rational" brain, she found healing from trauma and a meaningful connection with her emotions.  For those of you familiar with Internal Family Systems, I think you will find her conceptualization of the role of voices in her life to correlate well with the concepts in IFS. The article isn't available for free online, but her TED Talk is. Enjoy.​
(Thanks to Ted.com for the above photo of Eleanor.)

A few months into my clinical internship, while a graduate student in mental health counseling, my back started to hurt. Just a little bit. It wasn't the first time my lower back had given me trouble and I brushed it off as a minor nuisance caused by my new therapist lifestyle in which work = sitting all day. I felt confident that a little bit of yoga, stretching and exercise would resolve the issue as it had in the past.

Two and a half years later, after seeing a sports medicine doctor, a DO, an acupuncturist and a chiropractor, engaging in physical therapy and daily stretching, the pain is still here. For the most part it is just a nuisance and it hasn't gotten worse, but it also hasn't gotten better in spite of everything I have tried. I'm still looking for solutions. Certainly stretching and exercise help and for now, I keep those self-directed (and free) exercises on board while I try different things. It occurs to me that I may find the most lasting relief from my own brand of movement therapy that incorporates the most useful of the things I've tried: basic pilates, yoga, stretching, core exercises, and better posture. Maybe a better chair? I'm aware that there may be a psychological component: trauma from breaking my leg twice as a child, attention to the pain leading to cognitive distortions ("my body is weak", "it's my fault I feel bad", "I'll never get better"), and even the possibility that I need to cultivate a sense that the universe "has my back" or I need to "grow a backbone" by cultivating greater confidence. There are a myriad of ways to approach physical health problems and the options can feel both hopeful and daunting.

 Like a Mother: A feminist journey through the science and culture of pregnancy might not seem like an obvious book for a mental health themed blog. Or, on the other hand, maybe it does? Maybe it makes a lot of sense. We talk about postpartum depression like it's a discrete thing that happens to some people (yes, men get it too) after a new baby is born. What about the idea that pregnancy, with all of its physiological and psychological effects on the mother, and on the entire family unit, actually causes changes and challenges that exist on a spectrum continually evolving over time. Existential and often paradoxical questions about what it means to bring new life into the world, realities of physical changes in the body, a whole range of psychological experiences (often including many mood states, not just depression) as well as cultural expectations all play into each person's unique experience of growing a family. Also, we need to take into account the harsh truth that pregnancy, birth, and life after can be dramatically different for those who have money and access to resource than for those who are poor, live in under-served communities, and, the statistics on this are clear, are not white. Increasingly we are talking about gender non-binary and transgender people having children in a medical system that does not always understand their needs. All of this will have much to bear on the mental health of the entire family.

After hearing an interview on Fresh Air with Angela Garbes, I decided to buy the book. For some reason, perhaps the tone of the interview, I thought it would be a light and intellectually stimulating read. In the end I actually found reading this book to be both inspiring and fascinating, and also hard. Everything she covers from the dramatic, and sometimes long lasting, physical changes to the mother's body, to the scientific community's inattention and relative lack of funding for this critical aspect of women's health, is eye-opening and intense. She doesn't sugar coat anything, and thank goodness, because what we are left with is a deeply honest look at what creating new life really means. So much of mental health work is about giving people a space to be witnessed and held while sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of human life. It is resources like this book that help us feel less alone when things get weird (or slimy, oozy, sticky and stinky). 

The following excerpt is a taste of Garber's writing. It shows how fairly simple and straightforward research helps us identify small interventions that can make huge differences in the lives of new mothers. If you like what you read, give the whole book a go. It will open your eyes, soften your heart, and hopefully help you, and your loved ones, feel less alone in the gritty, visceral, emotional and very human task of giving birth.

In the early 1980s, after fifteen years of working in labor and childbirth, [Penny] Simkin, a physical therapist by training, was considering a career shift. 

Full disclosure, I haven't finished this book yet. I'm only on page 87 but I read something on page 68 that I thought was awesome and I want to share it now. For those of you who aren't familiar with Brené Brown and her work, I recommend checking her out. Click HERE and HERE and HERE.

Brené writes, "What I've learned from the research and tried to put into practice in my own life sounds way simpler than it is: Give yourself permission to feel emotion, get curious about it, pay attention to it, and practice. This work takes practice. Awkward, uncomfortable practice." She goes on to describe how she actually writes permission slips for emotions and puts them in her pocket to carry into a meeting, or event, or new situation.

So let's think about this for a minute. What if we could give ourselves permission to feel what we're feeling at any given moment? I give myself permission to feel nervous about giving a presentation. I give myself permission to feel angry about a decision a co-worker makes. I feel guilty about saying no to a friend. Permission granted. I feel anxious for no reason at all. Permission granted. 

This doesn't mean we act on those feelings. It doesn't mean we are right and someone else is wrong. It doesn't mean those feelings make sense. It just means that in any given moment, the way we are, what we're feeling, is OK. Acceptable. Respectable.

Once the permission slip is granted and we are able to allow what we're feeling to be what we're feeling, then we need to use our skills to figure out what to do about it. This is where some deep breaths, writing it out, going for a walk, or a myriad of other emotion regulation skills come in. But what Brené captures so simply here is that the first step is always to accept first and work through second. By allowing our emotions first we give them the respect and attention they deserve and we are able to learn the important information they impart. 

One of the things I have noticed by practicing this myself is that I often ignore or reject emotions that seem to be contradictory and yet are arising at the same time. For example, I can feel happy AND tired after a positive social experience. If I think happy is the "normal" or "acceptable" emotion to be feeling I may ignore the tired feeling which also needs to be attended to. Here are some examples of ways I've given myself permission to feel everything...

Do you ever get a good idea and then watch it quickly mature and flourish in your imagination? You are reading from your newly published book to an enthusiastic crowd! You are being interviewed on Fresh Air! You are invited to give a TED talk or, if you're a therapist, you see your schedule full of beloved clients whose evolution and growth feels deeply rewarding while your bank account fills with well-deserved inflow of money. When the fantasy fades, you are back where you were when you started: full of good ideas, and with the glow of fruition still a long way off.

There's where you are now, there's where you want to be, and there's everything in between. It's in the space between the dreaming phase and the successful outcome phase where we spend most of our time, and where we can struggle to stay motivated, inspired, and focused. Lynn Grodzki's book, Building Your Ideal Private Practice: A guide for therapists and other healing professionals, offers a bridge between vision and final product. She guides us through the nuts and bolts of advertising, handling money, building an online presence, keeping clients, and other aspects of running a private practice. What is so magical about the book is how she integrates these practical tools with meditations, positive affirmations, and intuitive exercises that help to clarify vision, develop an abundance mindset and engage our creative, passionate, playful sides so often left out of the day-to-day realities of running a business. When I feel stuck, bored, discouraged, or unclear, I open this book and am reminded of the possibilities inherent in each moment, and the practical tools that will help make those possibilities a reality. I highly recommend this book.

Here's an excerpt:
Send Love to Your Practice
Years ago I developed a meditation to enhance therapists' feelings of goodwill and love toward their businesses. I teach this same meditation in almost every presentation or workshop I lead because it does so much good so quickly providing therapists with a quick antidote to fear-based thinking. In the space of the five minutes it takes to complete the meditation, I see therapists make a shift. As they contemplate sending love to their businesses, their faces change. Furrowed brows become smooth, tense jaws lift up into soft smiles, hunched shoulders relax. Here's a written transcript of the meditation. Ask someone to read it to you or make your own tape. Then sit back, listen, and send love to your practice...

I love beautiful things, especially beautiful art, so I get excited at calendar buying time (aka, December). It's a chance to purchase 12 prints of images I like and hang them on my wall to enjoy throughout the year. Usually I try to stick to one or two calendars I hang in my home and office... but this year, I found myself buying a third. This one, Nikki McClure's 2018 offering, had to come home with me. I'll tell you why: The art is beautiful and inspiring; but more than that, the words chosen as a theme for each month remind me of what I do, daily, in my therapy practice. (Click on the calendar image to follow a link to Nikki's website).

Here are my thoughts on each month's theme:
​
January: RECTIFY- We repair our mistakes, apologize, make right what we made wrong. We let other's know where they have harmed us. We heal our relationship with ourselves, halting self criticism and embracing a more loving way of relating to our experiences. 

February: RENEW- We let go of what is over, set free what needs releasing, and clear out our closets to make room for the new. We forgive. We shed our skin so our new, bright, shiny coat can be seen. We plant seeds, dream, scheme and find inspiration in life's incessant insistence on creation.

I can't remember how I heard about this book. I think it showed up while searching online for something else. Regardless, I bought it on a whim and put it on my Books-To-Read pile. When I finally picked it up, I was hooked by the first page. In honest, compelling, and remarkably lucid language, Keira Van Gelder tells the story of her evolution from self-proclaimed "mentally ill, suicidal drug addict" to grounded, self-aware, hopeful, connected woman. The book is sometimes fun to read, and sometimes hard. She doesn't pull any punches as she shares candidly about suicide, self-harm, anger, depression, overwhelm, broken relationships and powerlessness. Her experience navigating the mental health system is challenging, and even harrowing, until she finally finds a diagnosis, treatment center, and modality that fit her needs. Most importantly, Keira's story shines a very human light on the possibility for recovery from one of the most feared and stigmatized mental illnesses: borderline personality disorder. 

Here's an excerpt: 
In DBT group Simon explains that emotions serve a purpose. "Despite how horrible they feel or how much trouble they seem to cause, they do important things for us: They communicate. They motivate. They self-validate. They give our lives richness and meaning." As the season turns, I try to find meaning in my intense loneliness without concluding that I'm a pathetic loser. My work at the office remains steady, challenging, exhausting, and occasionally satisfying. My walks to work become my mindfulness practice.

I just finished reading Option B: Facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. The book tells the story of the sudden death of Dave Goldberg, Sheryl's husband, and her family's process of rebuilding their lives after. It strikes a nice balance between personal narrative and how-to manual for overcoming hardship and building resilience. Adam Grant's contribution, as a psychologist and educator, rounds out the story by providing research and relevant advice for moving through a period of pain and struggle and reclaiming joy.

One of the tools they talk about is the Three P's. The following excerpt explains how this tool can be useful in getting out of the stuck places our mind takes us in stressful circumstances:

We plant the seeds of resilience in the ways we process negative events. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P's can stunt recovery: