enabling Archives - Amazing Health Advances

This One Word Will Improve Your Mental Health & Relationships

AHA Publisher — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 07:00:28 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #270) and blog, I talk about how life is not an “either this or that” game. Rather, it is an “and” game, which means that it is normal to hold two or more opposing ideas or feelings in your head at the same time, even in your relationships, and accepting this will save you a lot of mental distress! I decided to do this podcast in response to a social media post I put up recently: “A person can have good qualities but still be toxic for you, and you can still love that person while not needing to maintain close proximity for a season.” We all need to realize that our relationships are not a zero-sum game. They are not about “either this or that”. As I mentioned above, life is an “and” game. It is common to hold two opposing ideas at the same time, especially when it comes to the people in our lives. For example, you can love someone but need to pull back a bit so you aren’t enabling them or supporting toxic behaviors that harm them. Or, there may be someone in your life who you love very much, but something they are doing is triggering what you are working on in your own life, so you need to temporarily create some space or set up some boundaries for yourself. It is not unusual that someone may be toxic for you right now where you are at—this doesn’t mean it’s a permanent thing, nor does it mean you are a bad person. It’s normal for situations and relationships to change over time. One example of this is when your children grow up. Adult children, for example, need to “invite you in”—you shouldn’t just assume that your adult children want your advice and so on. We literally rewire our brains at each stage in our life with our mind, which is why it shifts in relationships and situations take some getting used to and feel strange at first. (Remember, it takes around 63 days to rewire a thought pattern!) These changes are especially important in a relationship. When you recognize you need to reduce proximity to a toxic person or situation, for instance, understand it will be awkward, challenging, uncomfortable and maybe even a little painful. At the same time, it can also be temporary, and it may be necessary for healing, developing healthy relationships and achieving optimal mental health. This is often true for both parties in a relationship—this kind of space gives you perspective, which lays the foundation for true healing to take place. Of course, in a relationship, you do need to have some parameters so that the space doesn’t become avoidance. Toxic avoidance can increase anxiety, so the creation and explanation of boundaries in a kind way are key. Open, honest and empathic discussions about what is causing your distress, how a person is triggering you and what you need to be a better person are key! Your goal should be to move from reacting towards responding. So, how do you do this? First, I recommend getting to the root behind your thoughts, feelings and behaviors through mind management. To this end, I recommend doing a Neurocycle, which is a way to harness your thinking power through mind-management that I have developed and researched over the past three decades, to identify where you are at and whether you need this kind of space in your life. (Any task that requires thinking can use the Neurocycle, which means everything can, because you’re always thinking!) This process has 5 steps: First, calm the brain down by breathing deeply. I recommend breathing in for 5 counts and out for 11 counts, and repeating this technique 3 times (for around 45 seconds). Then, 1) GATHER awareness of the emotional and physical warning signals your body is sending you about the person or situation, such as tension in your shoulders, feelings of anxiety or snappiness. Embrace these signals, don’t judge them and don’t try to suppress them. (Spend around 30 to 45 seconds on this step, but not too long as you don’t want to ruminate on the negative.) Now, 2) REFLECT on how you feel: ask, answer and discuss why you are feeling the way you do. Use specific sentences, like “I feel this tension because …”. Sometimes, you may have to distinguish between a person who is toxic and a person who simply triggers you more than other people do, so observe yourself interacting with this person and how you react (that is the “when, what, where, how and why”). Do this for around 1 minute. After reflecting, 3) WRITE down what you feel and why for around 1 minute. This will help you organize your thinking, and give you insight into what your body and mind are trying to tell you. Then, 4) RECHECK what you have written, looking for your triggers, thought patterns and the “antidote”. For example, you might notice that you start snapping and speaking louder when asked something simple by a certain person, as though this is the straw that broke the camel’s back and released all your pent-up tension and anxiety. In this step, you can think about what to do to prevent this from happening in the future. Lastly, take action. I call this 5th step the ACTIVE REACH. This can be a positive statement that validates your feelings or a boundary you put up to give yourself time and space to process how you feel. But remember to explain why you need a boundary; try to get a “neutralizing person” involved in the discussion if necessary and say things like “I am not going to listen if you yell” or “we can talk about general things but not deep emotions until I am in a better place”. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

The post This One Word Will Improve Your Mental Health & Relationships appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

The Difference Between Being Patient Vs. Enabling Toxic Behavior

AHA Publisher — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 08:00:51 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #249) and blog, I discuss the difference between enabling and empowering someone. Simply put, enabling is doing something challenging for someone else, while empowering someone means helping and supporting them as they complete the challenging task. Think of those school projects you did as a child; enabling is your mom doing the whole project for you, while empowering is your mom helping you do your own school project. Enabling teaches the person being enabled that someone else will always fix or solve their issues for them, or make the consequences go away. When someone is struggling with an issue, they can quickly become reliant on the person or persons who are enabling them, instead of developing the self-regulation needed to heal and move forward. There is often a fine line between enabling and empowering someone. This makes it hard to know what the best thing to do is in any given situation, especially if we are trying to help a loved one. So, how do we know when we are approaching that line? Of course, most of us genuinely want to help others. That’s one of the many beautiful qualities of being human! As a mother, when I see my children in pain, I am heartbroken and want to absorb their pain and take it away—I often do not want to let them suffer or face the consequences. But, in most cases, I cannot and should not do this, as it can end up causing more harm than good, crippling their own ability to handle life. We need to recognize there is a certain level of “messiness” and pain involved in life—this is inevitable, especially when you’re trying to help those you care for. It can be very complicated and hard to do. How do say no? When do you need to say no? What if you don’t want to hurt the people you care about? Could saying no damage the relationship? Are you fearful of what they might do if you don’t step in and take on the burden? One thing that has helped me in my life is using my 5-step Neurocycle mind-management technique to examine a situation to help me deal with all this messiness, manage my emotions and find out if I am helping someone I love or enabling them. First, I gather awareness of the situation: I become aware of a situation I am (or were in), including the emotional and physical warning signals I experience as I think about this situation. Am I feeling feeling unhappy, frustrated, confused, wary or angry? Do I feel heart palpitations or stomach pains? Tuning into these warning signals, responding to them and questioning them will take you deeper into your own mind and help you recognize the difference between enabling and empowering in this situation. This allows you can make the best choice for you and your loved ones. Then, I reflect on these signals: In this step, I essentially put my thoughts and feelings on trial and ask, answer and discuss them to find out what the physical and emotional warning signals are telling me about whether I am empowering or enabling the person in my life. Here are some useful questions I use to guide my thinking in this step: Is what I am doing keeping someone from having to face the consequences of their own behavior, or is it pointing them in the direction of facing the consequences and therefore teaching them how to self-regulate and build up their mental resilience? Is the help I am giving taking away an opportunity for this person to do something on their own, gain self-esteem and improve their self-regulation, or is it giving them that opportunity? Next, I write down my thoughts: This helps me regulate and organize my thinking. I then recheck what I have discussed and written down: I reread what I wrote to find patterns and triggers and to reconceptualize the situation so I can make better choices moving forward. Here are some questions I find useful in this step: Do I have a pattern of enabling this person? Do I feel conflicted when I help them? Do I resent the person I am helping because they don’t seem to appreciate it, or they haven’t used the help to improve their situation? Are my expectations fair? Did I create this situation? Why? I then take action to remedy the situation (I call this an active reach): The active reach is a summary action, like a period at the end of the sentence, that you can do to help you gain mental peace and change to toxic situation into a positive one. When it comes to enabling someone, this doesn’t mean you must stop helping them altogether. It just means you should find better and healthier ways to empower them—to show them compassion, empathy and love in a way that will do them good rather than harm. Here are some active reaches to help you move from enablement to empowerment: One of the best ways to empower someone is to approach every relationship you are a part of with a healthy sense of your own boundaries. If you balance kindness with being able to say “no” when you or the other person is stepping over these boundaries, then you will be in a better position to help someone without enabling them or creating a toxic situation where they fully depend on you. Recognize that each person must take full responsibility for their own self-care (emotional, physical and spiritual), with the knowledge that no other human being can do this for them. When you cannot help yourself, it is of course healthy to ask for help, but we all need to learn how to do so without feeling entitled to this help. For more help on managing your mental mess using the Neurocycle technique, listen to my podcast(episode #249), preorder my new book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess (and receive exclusive bonuses!) and check out my SWITCH appand our most recent clinical trials. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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How to Unwire Addiction & Toxic Habits from Our Brains, Why Focusing on “Willpower” is Ineffective and Counterproductive

AHA Publisher — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 07:00:17 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – The human brain is designed to be habitual—this has helped us survive over the centuries. But what happens when we build toxic habits that hold us back? How do we overcome negative thinking patterns that keep us stuck? In this podcast (episode #206) and blog, I speak with social psychologist, bestselling author and podcast host Dr. Amy Johnson about how we can find true and lasting freedom from unwanted habits, how to not be afraid of change, how to build new habits based on insight, not willpower, and how to help someone change without becoming an enabler. As Amy notes in her book, The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking Any Habit, a thought is essentially our ability to have an experience. This experience can be either good or bad; what is important it how we react to the experience and take it in. If you are dealing with a recurring issue or addiction and nothing has helped you so far, it is not because you are broken or there is something wrong with you. The solutions you tried could not fix you because you don’t need fixing in the way you think you do. Your brain is like a machine; it is demanding that you do something or act in a certain way because it has been conditioned by your behavior (which often happens unintentionally). It is not something that needs to be fixed; it needs to be shifted and changed by your insight and understanding. You control the process—it does not control you. You are not bound by your past. You are free to be who you want to be; you don’t have to walk around in fear and shame. Indeed, overcoming a bad habit or addiction is not about making something go away or stop. It is about learning how to be free of the urges to act or think in a certain a way, separating yourself from them and observing these desires as an experience, not a necessity. This deep insight will increase your self-compassion, helping you recover, readjust and overcome what you are facing. We need to see our urges as moving, changing experiences that we don’t have to act on or believe. If a thought or desire comes back, this doesn’t mean we are still sick or we have failed; it is just a passing memory. We don’t need to fear it, because we understand that it is a fleeting experience, not an illness or disease. Essentially, where we direct our energy, the brain follows. This becomes a bad thing when we take an experience and make it a part of our own narrative, rather than letting it move through us without latching onto it. The more energy we give this habit, the more room we give it in our mind and life. Overcoming bad habits and addictions means shifting your mental energy away from the thoughts behind these habits—they are slowly dying, even though they may still affect your behavior in some way. The key point is that the habit or addiction no longer owns you. Breaking a bad habit is not about elimination, it is about shifting your energy away from the habit. Where your mind goes, your brain and body follows! When it comes to breaking a bad habit, if you just focus on your willpower, you keep giving the bad habit mental energy by thinking about it constantly, and it stays alive. So, what’s the solution? When you are dealing with a toxic thought or habit, it is tough to do much in the moment, because this is often when we are at our weakest—it almost feels like we have been hijacked by our thinking. It is far more important to focus on the bigger picture and the insights you will gain before and after, which help you move forward. In the moment, the best thing you can do is let go and let the feelings move through you so you can “reset” instead of pushing away or numbing your feelings. When you are calmer, you can start accessing the wisdom of your experiences. If someone you love is battling with an addiction or toxic habit, help them explore this. Be with them as they try to discover who they are and how their experience works. Be present and help them see that they are not broken or ill. Help them gain insight into what their experiences are telling them. Have those deep, hard conversations—this will allow them to tap into their natural wisdom. Don’t see the person as broken or ill; don’t just assume that they are doing this to upset you or make your life difficult. See the truth behind their behavior and know that they are doing what they do to cope; they are in pain and are afraid of facing their experience. This article has been modified. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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