News and Blog
Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT is now offering supervision via the Motivo online platform for Couple/Marriage and Family Therapy trainees! Visit here to see more about her approach and the services offered: app.wearemotivo.com/s/jessie-everts
In-person and online supervision can also be requested directly here. We are excited to join aspiring therapists who are empowerment-focused on their journeys!
Hello from beautiful Glacier National Park in Montana!
Another great study showed that just noticing nature in your everyday surroundings elevates both your mood and your sense of connectedness to other people. You don’t even have to be around other people to feel more connected to them! This is good news for introverts everywhere!
I hope you’ll share your experiences of nature making you feel more connected below!
Hidden Lake
Hello from beautiful Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada!
A study found that walking in nature versus walking in the city was associated with lower activity in the brain centers that lead us to ruminate and focus on negative emotions. This has been my experience – the more I walk through these mountains, the less I think about the past or future – I’m in the moment and it’s a beautiful one.
I hope you’ll share your experiences of nature impacting your mental health below!
View from the top of Sulphur Mountain
Cave and Basin National Historic Site
Bow Lake
In a previous post, we talked about how trauma and access to traumatic events is becoming more widespread as we become a more virtually connected and global society. Over 50% of US adults have directly experienced one or more traumatic events in their lives. They and all of the rest now have access to see traumatic events that happen around the world every day. The effects of trauma are not something that we can ignore anywhere – especially in our workplaces, where we expect employees to be able to perform to their very best potential every single day, regardless of what may have happened or be happening in their lives outside of the workplace.
It’s becoming so important to build trauma-informed and trauma-responsive spaces and workplaces, mostly because we don’t know what has gone on in another person’s life up to the point we hire or work with them. A workplace that is trauma-responsive is one that is as least triggering to anyone who has experienced trauma in their lives (again, that’s over half of us!), and is at best supportive of the mental health of all who enter/work there, even and especially those who have been through hard things.
Ways we can start to build trauma-responsive spaces and workplaces include:
· Demonstrating a clear commitment to mental health and trauma responsiveness by stating it overtly in workplace policies and handbooks.
· Communicating that employers/managers know about trauma and mental health, and have real, practical ways that they show employees that they understand and lead by example.
· Having someone from outside the agency do a walk-through to let you know how your physical space does/doesn’t support the needs of someone who may have been through trauma or have mental health issues.
Connect for more training/consultation on trauma-responsive spaces!
Next week, I’ll be off on a family vacation through some beautiful national parks in Canada and the US! I plan to post about Nature and Mental Health while I’m there, so stay tuned!
Why “Empower” Mental Health? We chose this term really deliberately. Empowerment is the foundation of our philosophy about mental health, and it might be helpful for you to understand why. Empowerment theory links “individual well-being with the larger social and political environment”1. Our own well-being is important, sure. Even more important is how we make ourselves well in order to best make our systems and institutions well. Second most important, empowerment means that we are seeing mental health as something that everyone has the capacity and capability for – we just have to find it and nurture it. This is very different from “traditional” models of mental health that are about identifying “risk factors,” “pathologizing” or figuring out what is wrong with someone, and diagnosing, blaming, labelling…all of the things that go along (either purposefully or as unforeseen side effects) with an idea about mental health that is focused on identifying and managing things that are going wrong instead of focusing on what is going right, what strengths and resiliencies someone has, and how they can get to where they want to be in life.
“Mental health” in that traditional model is just the lack of symptoms – that you don’t have insomnia, depression, anxiety, and maybe that you had to rely on someone else or a medication to get you to that point. Not having symptoms is great, for sure. It just might not be everything. From an empowerment standpoint, “mental health” is developing deep understanding of your true self – all of it, the things we see as “good” and “not-so-good” – how you got to be the person you are, the amazing things you have been through and conquered to get to this point, and how to tap into that personal power and awesomeness in ways that serve you best. Then, it’s about how you interact with the world around you to create positive change. Because once you feel your best and are able to act authentically from your powerful true self, the ripples can’t help but extend to those around you. That’s empowerment, and that’s powerful mental health.
For more information on trainings we can offer on this topic: https://www.empowermentalhealth.org/training
Watch for upcoming options to do therapy from this philosophy: https://www.empowermentalhealth.org/therapy. This page will become active the first week in September with exciting news!
Burnout, compassion or empathy fatigue, and vicarious trauma are all very real experiences. For those of us in the mental health field, we often hear so many emotional and tough stories that it becomes a heavy load to carry. As one of my sheros, Sharon Salzberg said, “People who regularly spend much of their energy caring for others can exhaust themselves to the point of burnout, a state typically described as a mix of stress, anger, depression, and frustration. To avoid burnout, caregivers need to practice self-care.”
It goes a little deeper, which is where it can be helpful to have some help and training in supporting the mental/behavioral health workforce in preventing burnout. “Self-care” has become a bit of a buzzword, and if all we do is encourage workers to “do self-care,” we support them taking a few hours or days off the job, but we don’t change their approach to the work that can ultimately change their burnout trajectory.
There are really three different kinds of empathy – Cognitive empathy, where we rationally understand how someone else is feeling; emotional empathy, where we take on the feeling ourselves; and compassionate empathy, in which we care for the person and are motivated to help however we can. Emotional empathy is the kind that most often leads to burnout – feeling others’ emotions (on top of our own) can weigh us down and expend our own energy and psychological resources on others, depleting our ability to use that energy on our own struggles. However, a 2017 study by Buffone et al. found that compassionate empathy was actually energizing, rather than depleting. Another researcher Tania Singer found that empathy activates neural pathways that increase negative emotions, while compassion activates totally different circuits that increase positive emotions and release oxytocin, a stimulating and relational neurotransmitter. This is why continual empathy can be draining and can lead to burnout. Compassion does not.
Practicing compassion – and I do mean “practicing” as in intentionally building up our compassion as a skill – can help us to deal with the stories and struggles of others without taking on their emotional burden. If we can develop compassion as a response in place of empathy, we can hear the stories as a call to action, rather than additional stress and suffering.
This is where “Self-care” really comes in – to practice compassion toward others, first we have to be able to feel it toward ourselves. We have to practice self-compassion – relating to our own emotional pain and suffering “with kindness and acceptance” (again, the great Sharon Salzberg). This is what self-care really is – caring for ourselves so that we have the resources to also care for others – including declining from taking on their emotional burden and instead transforming our emotional empathy into energizing compassion.
Therapy is evolving as a profession to meet the new and changing needs of our society. Traditional models of therapy were developed by European and white men to maintain their own power – the therapist was the “expert” who knew more about the patient than the patient knew about themselves. New models see people as their own source of power and expertise.
Therapy is no longer about giving advice or unraveling subconscious issues. It’s about a collaborative change process, and it is about a relationship.
This is the foundation of Empower Mental Health – it’s a new way of looking at mental health as a “we” issue instead of a “me” issue, and giving all of us the tools to address mental health in today’s world, in our own lives, and in the lives of those around us.
Here are some emerging aspects of mental health that have to be addressed in today’s world:
1) New means of connection – and disconnection – Social media gives us instant connection with others, but it isn’t the same as real, face-to-face discussion and relationship. We are in some ways more connected than ever, and in some ways much less.
2) New technology and ways of delivering therapy – you can connect with a therapist online only if that is what is most comfortable for you! Check for updates to our Therapy page to see when we have connections with online mental health support!
3) Changes in stigma – There is less stigma in younger generations about talking about your mental health concerns – hurray! However, there is still a lot of stigma around getting treatment for your mental health. We need to make therapy and consistent attention to maintaining good mental health part of our everyday conversations, too, so it’s as much about what you’re doing to support your mental health as it is about what challenges you might have going on in your life.
4) Diversity/Inclusion – We need more perspectives at the table if we are going to have solutions that work for more of us. Often this means, for those of us in the dominant culture, getting out of our comfort zone and seeking novel experiences and connections. The stress and/or anxiety of doing this personal work is real, and it is so worth it! Therapy can help us move through the uncomfortable feelings we might have related to expanding our views and horizons.
5) Mindfulness as an intervention for pervasive anxiety – Anxiety is the number one mental health concern in American society today. We all need tools to deal with anxiety, worry, stress, adulting, all of it. Mindfulness practices are the most natural and instantaneous way to combat anxiety – and they’re free! Many therapists utilize mindfulness in their therapy practice. If you have questions about finding a therapist who practices a certain model of therapy, ask it here!
Check out our new Gallery of Mindfulness Activities!
6) Opioid epidemic – The opioid epidemic is about pain pills, for sure. It is about how many prescriptions are out there, how accessible and overused they are, how pharmaceutical companies profit from their overprescription. But none of that fully explains the opioid epidemic. To understand why we are now in an opioid epidemic, we have to understand pain. Not just physical pain, but emotional pain – and how afraid we have become to experience pain. (Contact us for more information or training on the opioid epidemic!)
6) Globalization – In our digital world, we are connected to other parts of the world (virtually) in ways we never have been before. This is exciting because we have access to more information about more parts of the world. This also means we see tragedy almost as it happens. We see the aftermath of violence visually instead of just reading about it. We take on worldwide trauma instead of being removed from it – this brings up new and different mental health concerns than existed when we were more geographically isolated.
7) Gender and identity fluidity – The respect for self-identification of gender and sexuality that is rising in our society is wonderful, and also creates new challenges for families, children and teens, as well as organizations and businesses. Working with all of these groups can help with inclusion, acceptance, and relationship that can withstand differences where we maybe didn’t see them before.
8) New family formations – Families are changing! Marriage rates are down, divorce rates are up, couples are having fewer children, and many more families have multiple adults in the workforce, all of which are major changes over just the last few generations. Traditional models of therapy were based on a two-parent family with a married male and stay-at-home female parental figure present. These models have to expand to be able to best empower families that look different and may connect differently – families today face different challenges, and are still striving to stay connected.
9) Politics – As much as therapists might not think this is their arena, it is starting to be a regular topic in many therapy sessions! We need to be able to help people navigate their reaction to controversy, as well as the relationship strain that many are feeling as politics become more divisive.
We offer training and consultation on any of the above issues, connect here!
My new favorite saying – “What it feels like is more important than what it looks like.” This is a quote from my yoga teacher today, about half way through my 230-hour yoga teacher training. It applies to yoga and it also applies so much to LIFE. What it feels like is more important than what it looks like.
I’ve been to a lot of “Super-cardio-yoga” classes where there were definitely a lot of participants who cared a great deal about what the yoga poses looked like. What a different experience to do yoga when you care most about what it FEELS like. By the way, the best thing to wear to do yoga when all you care is what it feels like is your pajamas. Yoga pants are so much more about how it looks that now they’re the fashionable choice of moms everywhere, and for the most part we’ve given up the ruse that we wear them to do yoga in.
Yoga when you care what it feels like is mindful. About ease and developing strength and challenging yourself, not comparing yourself to the person next to you. It’s you and your body, getting to know each other - limits, edges, proportions, and all. It’s not about the perfect warrior pose, it’s about how it effing feels to stand like a warrior in YOUR body.
And wow, in life. What it feels like is more important than what it looks like. How it looks like we’re getting by is just a scratch on the surface of how we’re actually doing, inside, and what it feels like to be alive, to face challenges, to do hard things (or to not do them).
Just had a baby? What it feels like is so much more important than what it looks like. It feels big and important and heavy and sometimes painful and like a lot of responsibility. We feel all this pressure to look like we’ve got it together, mamas. Let that pressure go. Focus on what it feels like. Ask for help when you need it. Tell someone how you’re feeling. Maybe it’s someone you know in your life who is a great listener and supporter. Maybe it’s a therapist. Let someone know. When we say what we’re feeling it becomes real for us. Another quote I love is “I know what I think when I hear what I say.” Thoughts are running around up there in our brains, and we might not even be consciously aware of them until we say them out loud.
In a relationship that doesn’t feel right any more? What it feels like is so much more important than what it looks like. We want people to think we’re in a good relationship because we think it reflects well (or poorly) on us. What “reflects” on us is others’ wishes for their own lives or insecurities. We don’t need to bear that weight. What does it feel like? Getting in touch with our inner world tells us so much of what we need to know about what to do. Our reality is subjective. It has always been. What we feel is our reality. Rather than discounting it or devaluing it, let’s give it the credit it deserves. What it feels like (whatever it is) is more important than what it looks like.
Self-reflection is the basis of most kinds of therapy and also most meditation practices – the ability to look inward, recognize how you are feeling and why, and then make a conscious choice of what to do next based on your knowledge of past, present, and wishes for the future. It’s a pretty powerful thing, if you think about it. However, in a fast-paced and information-loaded world, I think we are less and less encouraged or even taught about how to self-reflect. Think about your childhood: if you’re like me, you were a child during a time when there were not smart phones or tablets, and so the ways you spent your free time feel much different from the ways children do now. I used to sit and read and just think for hours on end. Now, my six-year-old and even my three-year-old get bored with playing with toys after a short time and their impulse is to ask if they can play a game on the tablet.
Teaching yourself (or your kids) to self-reflect necessarily starts with a conscious effort to slow things down. We have a lot of reasons and maybe some excuses why this is hard to do. However, when you do take the time to sit quietly and look inward, it allows you to recognize, and maybe spend some time with, the feelings that are propelling your actions automatically throughout the day. You can start this process of slowing down with a few short reflective questions:
1) What am I feeling? – go beyond the first, most obvious responses of “happy,” “sad,” “angry,” there are probably several layers of feelings you might be able to recognize. Sit with it for a while and just let the feelings wash over you and through you.
2) What things have led to the feelings I’m having now? – identify if you can the reasons behind your feelings. Recognize when assumptions or judgments might be playing in to your feelings, i.e. when you feel someone was being passive aggressive in that meeting at work, or you think that you’re feeling a certain way because you’re stupid or someone else is – when our feelings are based on assumptions or judgments, they may not actually be based in truth.
3) What can I let go? - Let yourself feel the experience of letting go of a feeling that you don’t think is helping you. You can do this visually, by imagining the feeling as a object (whatever speaks to you most) and visualizing it lifting from your shoulders and flying away. Or you might decide to mindfully focus on something else to replace the feeling. Either way, you are moving from self-reflection to mindfulness, which are so linked that this is a natural progression and one that really helps us practice something that will help us make change in our lives.
Reflecting on your feelings is the first step toward creating a change – we can’t change something we don’t see or recognize. And there is benefit in just the seeing – when you take time to look inward, you will get to know yourself better. Knowing yourself better allows you to see where your strengths and your weaknesses are – and we all have both! Knowing your strengths and weaknesses allows you to find environments and life situations where you can be and feel at your best.
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