Considering Online Counselling?

“Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.” – Vera Nazarian

I’ll admit I was skeptical too. A therapeutic relationship is essential to therapeutic effect and it seems counterintuitive that you’d be able to create and nurture this type of connection without being in the same room. However, what I’ve noticed, and what’s being supported by research, is that while there are certain elements that may be compromised by virtual meetings, there are a number of unique benefits that serve to significantly enhance both access to and quality of care.

With online sessions you are not restricted by geographical area to seek out support. Instead, you can be more particular with finding a counsellor whose areas of practice best aligns with your therapeutic goals, and with most counsellors making virtual options available, you have an extensive pool to select from.  Counselling is an investment in your well-being, and this enables you to make best use of this investment. 

Having counselling sessions online can also increase effectiveness and efficiency in therapy. Therapy has the potential to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, but becoming vulnerable is fundamental in doing the work necessary to heal. Revealing and confronting the parts of yourself you’ve worked hard to ignore/hide can be easier to do when you are in your own space, surrounded by the things that give you comfort. This enhances your sense of safety and can thusly increase your willingness to address difficult topics or to process adverse experiences. Safety is also furthered by the sense of anonymity many individuals feel when communicating online allowing for increased authenticity. This combination of anonymity and safety within the context of a therapeutic connection can facilitate profound therapeutic effect.

The biggest, and most compelling, reason that I have become an advocate for virtual counselling is that reaching out for help is difficult. Particularly when suffering with symptoms associated with depression or anxiety, the thought of adding another obligation is daunting. Getting help requires a level of effort or time we may doubt that we have. This increases the appeal of online counselling as virtual sessions require minimal effort and can accommodate your schedule. Accessing help online provides ease and removes many of the barriers that keep individuals from getting help.

So grab a coffee, curl up in your favorite comfy spot, and start your healing journey. Accessing the help you need is just a click away. 

“The most important trick to be happy is the realize that happiness is a choice that make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s like building a muscle.” – Naval Ravikant

Intentional Well-being… When We Need it Most

“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is.”-  Mandy Hale

How are you holding up while we collectively navigate COVID-19? Handling stress can be tricky at the best of times, however these particular times require more than simply reducing stress – we need to intentionally pay attention to our well-being.  A frequent state of tolerating stress, even when we do it well, can take a toll on all areas of our lives and over time it can erode our sense of well-being leading to a growing sense of frustration, fear, and futility.  

There are three main categories of activities that contribute to a sense of well-being: things that lead to a sense of accomplishment; things we do for the sole purpose of pleasure; and meaningful connection. Activity can be a powerful way to enhance mood and promote a sense of well-being.

Well-being is more than being happy and healthy. True well-being occurs when we perceive that we are moving forward. The stagnation of isolation and restrictions lends itself to a perception that we are being ineffective and restrained - it can make us feel trapped.  When we pay attention to our accomplishments, however small, we shift our focus to the things we can do as opposed to the things we can’t. Make a list of things that you can accomplish. We all have those nagging tasks that we convince ourselves that we’ll get to if/when we have more time. Write them down. Perhaps it’s organizing that overrun closet, clearing out the junk drawer, or deep cleaning various areas of your home. Maybe there’s a project you’ve been meaning to start – begin by itemizing the steps required. Things that contribute to a sense of accomplishment can include catching up on emails, coming up with a budget, or taking a course. Everything counts - even something we typically consider mundane such as making the bed, putting away the laundry, or doing the dishes. The key is intention. Take notice of the things you are accomplishing no matter how small or irrelevant they may seem. 

Things that we do simply for pleasure nourish us and contribute to a sense of enjoyment. We often minimize these activities or avoid them due to the potential guilt associated with self-indulgence. We sometimes believe that we need to earn them, that they are rewards we gain only after we do the “real things”, but that’s not true. These activities are essential to well-being. They are how we show ourselves kindness and self-compassion. They remind us that we are deserving and worthy. Again, make a list. Items may include a leisurely bath, going for a walk, or picking up that novel you’ve wanted to read. Maybe it’s watching that movie, show, or documentary that you’ve heard good things about. You could listen to music or treat yourself to a favorite meal. Pay attention to the little things – that first sip or coffee, snuggling with your child, or playing with your dog.  This list is a way to notice, or invite, pockets of bliss into your day. 

Connection is essential to well-being and the category that has been most affected by the pandemic. Humans are social beings and as such the drive for connection is hardwired. Without meaningful connection we feel vulnerable. We are missing our loved ones, and it’s easy to get caught up in a sense that an important right has been taken from us. However, there are ways to stay connected. Perhaps not ideal, but, again, if we focus on what we can do rather than what we can’t, we can positively impact mood and well-being.  Virtual connections have become easier than ever, and with some creativity can be both satisfying and rewarding. While regular calls, texts, emails, and video chats are a great way to keep up to date with our loved ones (or to reconnect with those we haven’t with in a while), we can enhance those connections by creating shared experiences. Arrange to watch the same movie or read the same book with your bestie – or even host a virtual book club. Find a recipe that is new to both you and your loved one, then create it, and eat it, together virtually. Perhaps there’s a board game you can adapt to play online.  You may find that there are several activities that can be modified to respect the recommendations of distancing. There are ways to stay connected without technology as well. Write a letter or send a card – this lets your loved ones know that you’re thinking of them by providing a tangible reminder. Acts of service can also be strengthening to our bonds and can be done without contact: run errands for your loved ones, who may be more vulnerable; offer to help with yard work or maintenance; donate to food banks. Acts of service remind us, and the people we help, that we are not alone. Make your list of ways to connect – from small ways like sending texts or making calls to more creative ones.

Creating a sense of well-being in the face of adversity is an intentional necessity. You now have 3 lists of ways to become more aware of the various ways we cultivate a sense of well-being by paying attention to accomplishments, pleasure, and connection. Every day, ensure that you are noticing/completing at least one item from each list. Many of these are activities that we already do everyday, but we do not intentionally acknowledge them and contributing to our well-being. We are already paying attention to our struggles (brains are wired to be vigilant around perceived threat), but it takes conscious effort to objectively acknowledge – or create - balance. 

For some, staying happy, healthy, and whole in the midst of chaos may take more than simply adding or acknowledging activities associated with well-being. For those who have noticed that their mental health has declined, or that unhealthy coping strategies (substance abuse or addictive behaviors) have become concerning, you may need help.  Please contact your medical health professional, or counsellor, to find out what type of support is available. We are all in this together, and it is needless to suffer alone.

“Your brain constructs your reality based on what you pay attention to. When you learn to manage and direct your focus, you have the power to improve virtually every aspect of your life.” - Ruben Chavez

In Defense of EMOTIONS

“What you resist, persists.” – C.G. Jung

Emotions are commonly thought to be the things that impair our judgment or have a dangerous potential to overwhelm us. They are to be kept at bay and controlled at all costs - unpleasant products of the human condition. We are urged to fight them for dominance of our very being. Control them lest they control you. We push them aside, intellectually invalidate them, distract and numb ourselves with activities or substances – anything and everything just so that we don’t have to feel what we don’t want to feel. This approach often does us a profound disservice and takes a considerable toll on our relationship with self and others.

Emotions are instrumental in healing. Your feelings tell you a lot about yourself – particularly about what’s most important. Paying attention to emotions helps you to better navigate your world. They are the biological expressions of a compilation of conscious and unconscious perceptions of our environment or situation – cues to how best to respond given our histories, knowledge, and goals. Emotions serve as our compass. Suppression of emotions impairs this compass and leaves us struggling to navigate our own lives and contributes to repetitive patterns of behavior.

Intense emotions – be it anger, sadness, anxiety, or even happiness – are usually responses to how our long held beliefs (about self or others) are being either confirmed or refuted in a current situation. For example, if we perceive a rejection it may cause a stronger emotional reaction if we have wounds around our worth or lovability.  Having a greater understanding of both our patterns and our wounds reveals what we need in order to heal. Our emotional triggers inform us about our wounds. Our wounds reveal our needs. Our needs often expose the sense of connection, validation, and safety that had been unavailable when we were most vulnerable.

Paying attention to our emotions is a fundamental component of wellbeing. The more intense the emotion, the louder it is trying to speak to us. Facing old wounds can be scary – if it were easy we wouldn’t go to such lengths to avoid them. Doing so with a counsellor, gives us the opportunity to not face them alone. Instead, we team up with someone trained and skilled in exploring our unique histories and identifying not only our wounds but also how these wounds contribute to the patterns of behavior driven by our emotions.

Emotional regulation is an important concept in mental health. There are numerous skills and strategies to keep emotions from spiraling into something that contradicts the type of person we want to be.  Emotional regulation is essential, but a huge (and often undervalued!) way to achieve sustainable regulation is to increase awareness around emotional wounds. Once we understand, we gain the ability to meet an emotion with objectivity, curiosity, and compassion. We learn to notice emotions and can then determine which old wound had been activated, then objectively assess the current situation giving us an opportunity to respond appropriately rather than habitually.  Further, once we are able to this for ourselves, we start to recognize that others are acting on their histories as well. Instead of being triggered by their triggered wounds, we can then stop the defensive pattern and meet the situation with insight and compassion. Loosening the hold our experiences with adversity and trauma has on our current responses is a key component to attunement and ultimately our vitality.

 “Feel it. The thing you don’t want to feel. Feel it. And be free.” Nayirrah Waheed

Talking?! Pfft!!! What good will talking do? PART 8: The Speed and Amount of Unconscious Processing

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung

We are often guided by our intuition and validated by a sense of serendipity. Being able to understand immediately – without conscious reasoning - is an invaluable and essential skill. This innate inclination is tough to articulate, yet it’s something that we’re all familiar with. Though vital, it is important to recognize there are times when our unconscious processing can work against us – especially in those with a history of trauma, abuse, neglect or those who grew up with an absence of attuned caregiving. Sometimes our current experience can resonate with our past adversity, and we interpret this familiarity as feeling “right” and use this sense of rightness to condone the behaviors of not only our selves but also others. This is both common and tricky to recognize and as such “the speed and amount of unconscious processing” is included on the list of eight problematic aspects of functioning that cause an individual to consider counselling from Cozolino’s book The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain (2010):

1)     The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress

2)     Divergent hemispheric processing

3)     The bias towards early learning

4)     The tenacity of fear

5)     The damaging effects of stress hormones

6)     The speed and amount of unconscious processing

7)     The primacy of projection

8)     Unconscious self deception

Due to our expanded cortexes, much of how we process information relies on the speed and amount of unconscious processing:

"While it takes approximately 500-600 milliseconds for an experience to register in unconscious awareness, the amygdala can react to a potential threat in less than 50 milliseconds. This means that by the time we have become consciously aware of an experience, it has already been processed many times in our more primitive neural networks, activating memories and triggering implicit memories organized by past learning. This unconscious backdrop shapes the perception of what is being consciously attended to and constructs our experience of the present moment." (Cozolino, 2010, pp. 312-313).

This is important to consider for two reasons: 1) as a society we place emphasis on an assumption of free will – this lends itself to the belief that reason and intent are enough to modify behavior and that an inability to do this is a comment on character; 2) traditional therapeutic approaches focus on merely altering negative thoughts and behaviors without addressing the underlying contributing factors. What needs to be understood is that 90% of input into the cerebral cortex is attributed to internal/unconscious processing. It is this rapid and reflexive response grounded in past learning that perpetuates cognitive distortions and has the potential to keep individuals frightened, withdrawn, and confused. This is also why triggering memories of adverse events has such a profound effect on current functioning. Fostering an ability to question one’s self-defeating (potentially incorrect) assumptions is a key predictor of positive outcome in psychotherapy.

Counselling is the process of questioning thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions. Of looking at behavioral patterns and illuminating motivations. Therapists work collaboratively with clients to explore their impulses with the hope of integrating current experiences and responses with memories, emotions, and urges.  Talking with a counsellor is a way to discern whether your intuition is helping to guide you or if it’s keeping you stuck in old patterns that no longer serve you.

“Unconscious of your story, you are in its grasp; but with consciousness, an alchemical process begins: The solidity of the complex dissolves and you can open up to the arrival of a new archetype, the birth of a new cycle of life. In the shadow, then, lies our myth and our fate.” - Connie Zweig

References

Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY

Talking?! Pfft!!! What good will talking do? PART 7: Divergent Hemispheric Processing

“When a person has access to both the intuitive, creative and visual right brain, and the analytical, logical, verbal left brain, then the whole brain is working… And this tool is best suited to the reality of what life is, because life is not just logical – it is also emotional.” – Stephen Covey

As with everything and anything, extremes can lead to problematic functioning – the brain is a prime example. Divergent hemispheric processing occurs when either the left (conscious, linguistic self) or right (somatic, emotional self) cerebral cortices dominates executive control of conscious processing. Evidence shows that the left hemisphere typically takes on the function of moderating states of arousal and social connectedness - sometimes rejecting information coming from the right and resulting in dominance of one hemisphere over the other. This is extremely common and why divergent hemispheric processing shows up on Cozolino’s eight problematic aspects of functioning that cause an individual to consider counselling from his book The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain (2010):

1)   The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress

2)   Divergent hemispheric processing

3)   The bias towards early learning

4)   The tenacity of fear

5)   The damaging effects of stress hormones

6)   The speed and amount of unconscious processing

7)   The primacy of projection

8)   Unconscious self deception

This disruption of proper integration and balance between the two hemispheres can produce problematic effects. In more severe instances, the overinhibition of the right hemisphere by the left can result in alexithymia (an inability to recognize and articulate emotions), while an underinhibition can result in over emotionality, magical thinking, or even auditory hallucinations. Typically, we see this in issues around mood regulation, as this is a skill dependent on integration and balance of the left and right prefrontal cortices.

This is particularly common when trauma has occurred in early development and is a frequent response to abuse, neglect, or a lack of attunement in childhood. When this happens, hemispheres can grow to be less coordinated and integrated (resulting in problems in affective regulation and positive social awareness) or it can also be possible to develop fewer connecting fibers (decreased lateral integration). As discussed in previous posts, the left and right prefrontal cortices are biased toward positive and negative emotions, and an imbalance of the two can result in extremes of depression and mania. The good news is that neuroplasticity offers an opportunity to contend with these effects and heal.

Therapists seek balances in hemispheric processing by drawing out the conscious and unconscious realities of both hemispheres by encouraging overintellectualized clients to become aware of and explore their feelings, and alternatively to provide tools to build cognitive skills in clients presenting with an overwhelmed by experience with anxiety, fear, or depression. This is a critical step in vitality, a competency directly impacting our ability to attune, and at the core of being able to regulate and respond to whatever complexities exist in our unique lives.

“When the brain is whole, the unified consciousness of the left and right hemispheres adds up to more that the individual properties of the separate hemispheres.” – Roger Wolcott Sperry

References

Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY

Talking?! Pfft!!! What good will talking do? PART 6: Unconscious self-deception

“Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when emotions are stirred.” Carl Sagan

Self-deception is undeniably adaptive. It is one of the most efficient ways to mediate anxiety and otherwise lessen negative emotions such as depression and shame – without it we are at risk of doubt, hesitation, and demoralization. There is arguably a further benefit to self-deception in that we are better able to deceive others and make it less likely to give away our real thoughts and intentions. One common form of this is when we promote the illusion that “nothing is wrong” and “everything is fine”. While self-deception provides obvious benefits, it can also backfire. It has the potential to obstruct objectivity, restrict an ability to attune, and can strain our connections to others. This defense mechanism, intended to decrease anxiety, can also perpetuate anxiety – when faced with evidence incongruent to our self-deceptions we can be sent into states of panic, confusion, disillusionment, and distress. This is why self-deception joins Cozolino’s (2010) list of problematic functioning that can cause an individual to seek counselling:

1)   The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress

2)   Divergent hemispheric processing

3)   The bias towards early learning

4)   The tenacity of fear

5)   The damaging effects of stress hormones

6)   The speed and amount of unconscious processing

7)   The primacy of projection

8)   Unconscious self-deception

What is becoming overwhelmingly clear is that self-insight has not exerted much pressure on natural selection. Particularly, in times of stress thinking has not only become more automatic, it becomes self-serving. It is increasingly known that both secure-attachment and ego strength are associated with an ability to hear feedback, accept limitations, and resort less to reality-distorting defenses.

In therapy, interpretations, clarifications, and reflections offer an opportunity to challenge biases and create alternative perspectives. Therapist and client engage in reality testing exercises, and while the definition of “reality” is often complex, we learn to broaden our perspectives and allow for a better understanding of the many facets of any situation. Self-awareness has become increasingly valuable as a means to navigate a social climate that is ever-changing and more than ever an ability to effectively and appropriately attune is a cornerstone to our vitality and a life worth living.

“Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.” – David Bohm

References

Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY

Talking?! Pfft!!! What good will talking do? PART 5: The tenacity of fear

“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” – Bertrand Russell

Fear is an unpleasant emotion experienced in response to a belief that someone or something is dangerous, painful, or threatening. In the absence of imminent, actual, realized physical harm, fear functions as a protective product of our thoughts and imagination – a way to contend with uncertainty or a reaction to our triggered memories. It is important for us to remember that fear is most often a perceived threat in that it is generated as a possibility, not necessarily a probability. The tenacity of fear thusly shows up as item four on Cozolino’s eight problematic aspects of functioning that cause an individual to consider counselling from his book The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain (2010):

1)   The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress

2)    Divergent hemispheric processing

3)    The bias towards early learning

4)    The tenacity of fear

5)    The damaging effects of stress hormones

6)    The speed and amount of unconscious processing

7)    The primacy of projection

8)    Unconscious self-deception

The tenacity of fear makes behavior and thinking more rigid. Under “normal” circumstances, the amygdala (the area of the brain associated with perceiving and processing emotion) and prefrontal cortex (decision making and moderating behavior) share executive control of the brain, allowing reason to collaborate with emotion. In times of distress and fear, the amygdala hijacks the brain and suppresses input from the prefrontal cortex. In the face of physical harm, this is extremely adaptive – it makes perfect sense to act first, think later. However, as is the case with many items on this list, evolution has shaped a brain that errs on the side of caution, and as such is prone to generalize experiences and signs of danger. It is not only a propensity for reactive thinking that becomes problematic; a persistent state of fear can also result in resistance to taking risks and learning new things and a tendency to resist change. These rigid patterns of thought and behavior are reinforced by our very survival and it can be challenging to remain objective. This has the potential to impair openness and trust even in loving relationships.

Therapists contend with this by creating therapeutic safety with warmth, empathic caring, and positive regard. In counselling, therapists act as “amygdala whisperers” and work to reactivate networks of new learning in the hippocampus (the area of the brain associated with consolidating information and enabling memory) and prefrontal cortex. Individuals learn to overcome fear not by erasing or invalidating traumatic memories, but rather by building new connections that serve to inhibit triggering autonomic arousal. Mediating fear is a critical component in our ability to become attuned and once attuned we are able to invite and embrace vitality.

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back form life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” – John Lennon

References

Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY

Getting Attuned Up for the Season

“As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December’s bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to who we are worth the same.” – Donald Westlake

We are halfway through the 8-part series around problematic aspects of functioning that cause an individual to consider counselling, but I feel that it may be timely to take a bit of a break and start thinking about the upcoming holiday season. Some of you reading this may respond with “Argh! NO! Too soon! TOO SOON!”... however, it's a professional hazard to advocate for attending to situations before they become bigger (scarier!) issues. Though it is not quite December, both retail and media are in full swing – this can trigger a full spectrum of emotions ranging from excitement to dread.

While many equate the season with family, friends, and cheer, others greet the season with anxiety, which then can amplify feelings of loneliness or disconnect. This also has the potential to be the season of other not so comfortable feelings: guilt, inadequacy, under-appreciation, overwhelm, mental (and physical!) exhaustion, etc.

I’ve always suspected that this is why gratitude and compassion have become such a huge part of the season. With good reason! Both compassion and gratitude are powerful tools in vitality. Negative thoughts have a way of snagging our attention. This is one of those evolutionarily driven adaptations that can aid in our survival, but may not necessarily be universally applicable or helpful.

Gratitude focuses our attention on the good and can serve to shift our focus and offer a more balanced outlook. When we practice gratitude, we more immediately recognize all the things that are going “right”. Gratitude is not about invalidating our negative feelings or experiences; rather it is about facilitating balance and objectivity.

Similarly, when we nurture compassion, understanding and connection offer an opportunity to ground those thoughts that may be ruminating and contributing to feelings of distress. It not only gives us permission to authentically feel and be, we create a tendency to extend the same courtesy to others. In my practice, I consistently use compassion-based exercises as a foundation to health and healing.

So, this post is a reminder of two (somewhat cliché, but fundamental) things:

1)   Be kind to yourself: it’s ok to feel whatever you feel, breathe, practice self-care

2)   Be kind to others: your kindness is contagious (especially this time of year), also it is not always possible to be aware of others are going through – erring on the side of kindness is always the right thing to do

 “I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.” – Fred Rogers

Talking?! Pfft!!! What good will talking do? PART 4: The primacy of projection

“You’ll always be disappointed when you expect people to act like you would.” – Unknown

Few things are as satisfying as that feeling that we “get” another person, and that they in turn “get” us. It is that desired experience of attunement. There is obvious comfort in this – not only does it reduce the effort necessary to understand and be understood, but it also enables an improved ability to predict behavior and respond appropriately. This lends itself to a social reprieve and we can drop our guard without the pressing need for hyper-vigilance in order to ward off problematic miscommunication. It offers both ease and a sense of safety. However, this type of connection occurs organically more rarely than we’d like.

Individuals frequently seek psychotherapy as a way to explore and manage experiences with disconnect. This sense of disconnect often underlies distress - particularly if the struggle to comprehend the thoughts and actions of others is significant. This speaks directly to the seventh item on Cozolino’s list of problematic aspects of functioning causing an individual to consider counselling:

1)   The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress

2)   Divergent hemispheric processing

3)   The bias towards early learning

4)   The tenacity of fear

5)   The damaging effects of stress hormones

6)   The speed and amount of unconscious processing

7)   The primacy of projection

8)   Unconscious self-deception

This attribution bias has the potential to interfere with our ability to connect with others. Mirror neurons enable us to live in complex social networks by allowing us to learn by watching others, anticipate/predict the actions of others, and relate to others with emotional resonance and empathy. However, possessing the neural circuits to generate theory of mind can also complicate brain functioning with the primacy of projection. We are quick to think that we know the motivations and intentions of others.

Our neural circuitry does not seem to favor self-awareness - rather, projection has adapted to become automatic. This makes sense when you consider how the competency to automatically project functions as an efficient way to lesson anxiety while self-awareness alternatively requires effort and generates anxiety. Our very identity can then get confusing as it emerges from this interweaving of “automatic theories of others” with “understanding of ourselves”.

Our own self-inquiry is skewed by, and interwoven with, our individualized implicit assumptions – making it a questionable ally in sense making. Psychotherapeutic processes promote questioning of judgments and assumptions made in personal histories and invites inquiry into thoughts of others that may in fact be autobiographical. Attunement is at the heart of connection, and talking with a counsellor is not only useful in exploring our beliefs and projections, but also as a way to invite empathy.

“In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth.” - Don Miguel Ruiz

References

Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY

Talking?! Pfft!!! What good will talking do? PART 3: The damaging effects of stress hormones

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” – Lou Holtz

As a compliment to last week’s installment on how stress suppresses our language and predicative capabilities, I chose to discuss the fifth item on Cozolino’s eight problematic aspects of functioning that cause an individual to consider counselling from his book The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain (2010):

1)   The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress

2)   Divergent hemispheric processing

3)   The bias towards early learning

4)   The tenacity of fear

5)   The damaging effects of stress hormones

6)   The speed and amount of unconscious processing

7)   The primacy of projection

8)   Unconscious self-deception

The damaging effects of stress hormones are well documented. Stress itself is adaptive, however overexposure to the stress hormone cortisol can have debilitating consequences. The evolution of a large cortex enables memory and predictive capacities, however this also creates the ability to imagine endless possibilities and anticipatory anxiety that is difficult to distinguish from reality. This contributes to the trigger and release of cortisol during stressful situations. One of the actions of cortisol is to regulate energy dedicated to the protein synthesis required for both neural growth (learning) and in immune system (overall general health). The potential for compromised brain maintenance; learning; and immunological functioning make psychotherapeutic inventions to regulate stress a key therapeutic target independent of diagnosis or goals.

Chronic stress is extremely prevalent, but few realize the impact of stress on their vitality. We’ve come to accept stress as a “normal” part of the human condition and often fail to acknowledge seemingly common ailments as being related. Here are some warning signs that an overexposure to stress hormones may be affecting you:

·      Frequent irritability with episodes of anger

·      Anxiety attacks

·      Jaw clenching or teeth grinding

·      Frequent colds and flu

·      Weight gain principally in the mid-section of your body

·      Waking tired despite adequate sleep hours

·      Difficulty falling asleep, waking between 2:00 and 4:00 am, often restless with racing thoughts

·      Constant worry or fear about life

·      Heart palpitations, high blood pressure and heart disease

·      Slow recovery from illness or injury

·      Bowel irritability or irregularity

·      Frequent headaches and migraines

·      Poor concentration and memory

·      Feeling overwhelmed at work or at home

·      Depression or episodes of despair or weepiness

·      Irregular menstrual cycles

·      Reduced libido

·      Fertility issues

Not only are we vulnerable to the worries of our present, our past often contributes to and compounds reactions thus impairing our ability to cope with stress effectively.  Present situations unconsciously tap into thoughts or emotions associated with any adversity previously experienced – this is part of a process where our brains rely on past experience to prepare for, and minimize the effects of, similar situations. Again, as discussed in previous posts, overgeneralization can work against our ability to respond appropriately to the current circumstance. Further, in some instances, the stress reaction itself is unrelated to current situations – rather, it stems from a perceived threat or stressor from the past that no longer exists in the present (this is common with individuals who have experience with trauma).

Talking with a counsellor not only helps to gain perspective on the thoughts and emotions implicated by triggered stress hormones, it also helps to explore new ways to cope and more effective ways to process. Awareness offers an opportunity to expand our perception to more actively and intentionally seek solutions to decrease the effects of overexposure to stress hormones and to restore vitality.

 “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James

References

Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY