So one of my clients brought to my attention (and I’m able to tell you this because she gave me permission to blog about it) that she was feeling overwhelmed over the fact that she was getting married in a few months. Though this seems like a good thing on paper, I could tell by her distress that she was feeling overwhelmed by the stress and the pressure to get all the details squared away. She said she was getting pressure from all sides: mother, friends, family members, her fiancee. Everyone wanted her to manage the planning of the wedding, because after all, it was “her day.”

So we sat and discussed how we could make much of the planning of this easier, when it dawned on me: What if you broke the whole process up into pieces. After all, you don’t eat a whole pie at once, do you? You eat it a piece at a time, and even then, you eat each piece one forkfull at a time.

We laughed about the analogy, but it made sense, especially in this situation. So how could we apply it to her life? Well we had to divide the pie up into slices. So with the pie being her wedding planning, we separated the planning into 8 pieces, and named each piece. It looked something like the diagram below.

The idea behind it was she could take a piece a day, and “eat it.” Take one topic, and break it down in steps. Each step is a “bite.” I recommended actually having a piece of pie with each topic, but then I thought that probably wasn’t a good idea considering she probably wouldn’t fit into her dress. And how cool would that be, really?

Now I could have just sent her on her way, and gave myself an enormous pat on the back for being so smart. But then I realized I had to take my own advice yet again. Because there are times when I feel a bit overwhlemed (as I’ve stated here before), and when I do, having tools ready to manage them is not a bad idea.

So why didn’t I try this out on myself. So here’s what I came up with:

So for me, I have to consider taking a topic a day, breaking it down into edible bites, and then resolving each issue so that they’re not bugging me so much. Remember, there are some things you can change, and some things you can’t, so that makes a lot of difference with regard to how much you can “eat” and how much you can’t.

Sounds good, right? So here’s the thing, I’m not going to sit here and tell you about it and not give you the tools to do this yourself. So I’ve included a blank, really cheesy, done in Windows Paint style pie chart that you can use to manage your overwhelmed feelings. Give it a shot and let me know here if it works for you. Go ahead and tell me. I don’t bite. 

So now that I have my laptop back in my possession, I can finally get back to doing this regularly, as well as working on the WATER Method book. Since I last posted a number of things have happened that caught my attention, and I’ll be sharing them with you over the course of the next few posts.

For starters, I found out that my new child is going to be a bouncing baby boy. Cool, right? Everone was like, “you must be so excited!” Or they would start talking to me about how wonderful having children is going to be. You know what my response was? I was not very excited at all. In fact, my response was so lackluster, that my wife was very concerned, and wanted to make sure I was OK.

Probably not the best indicator that I was showing the proper level of enthusiasm, huh?

So we sat down and had a talk. She wanted to know what the heck was up with me, and why I was a bit detatched from the situation. Turns out I had two concerns: 1.) That child rearing is going to be a lot of work (and it is; whoever told you differently is likely your mum or dad, because they want grandkids anyway), and 2.) I was concerned about the financial strain that children inevitably put on the household (diapers alone will cost you an additional $200/month).

Now, being a therapist and having a penchant for knowing a lot about other people, it seems I missed the boat when it came to myself and my worries here. My wife, in her infinite wisdom shared with me something very solid. I won’t get into the whole conversation here, but the gist of it went something like this.

“You don’t know that its going to be difficult and hard. We have no idea whether or not our child is going to be difficult or easy. We just don’t know.”

So here I stand before you defying my own method of managing anxiety once again. However, I do so to prove a valuable point.

Just because we can’t see or even control the unknown, doesn’t mean we don’t want to.

The insanity of it all, is that we know that the unknown is out there. We know that we can’t control it. We know that even if we try our absolute best to control every aspect of it, it can still turn around and go in the opposite directon of what we really intended. So why do we try to hard to grab this concept? What drives us to get to this place where try to plan for what we can’t see?

In my humble opinion, such as it is, is that we do this because the alternative is not very appetizing. The alternative is doing nothing, and waiting for fate to figure out how its going to handle our lives. Planning for what we can’t see is like taking enough provisions for a camping trip (in case a bear shows up and eats your food), or making sure your sail boat is in tip top shape in case you weather a storm. We do this because we have the unique ability to live vicariously through others, see their mistakes, and learn from them. We do our best to ensure that life doesn’t turn out poorly, and if we can put in some failsafes to try to improve the odds in our favor, then so be it.

So what’s my point here? My point is that even though you can’t control the unknown, you can control what you do about the unknown.  The unknown might scare you to death (like this child rearing thing does for me to a greater or lesser degree), but recognizing that the unknown is something we can’t control right now, and letting the unknown go can be valuable. The unknown doesn’t go away, but the power we give it over our emotions can at least be decreased a little bit.

By the way, turns out I am excited about my baby, but I’m not expressing it appropriately. Not sure they’ve written a book on how you’re supposed to express this, but that just goes to show you that there are parts of my socially inept adolescence still hanging around in my personality. Who knew. 

On January 4th, PBS broadcast a show called “This Emotional Life,” which talked about different theraputic techniques and recent breakthroughs in mental health counseling and treatment. It turned out that my mother in law watched it; and the therapist I work with; as well as a bunch of my clients. In case you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and click the pic above to check out some of the excerpts from it.

The video excerpt above is about the dangers of some self-help. Dr. John Norcross makes a few points about self-help, and how only about 20% is based on actual research. Additionally, he mentions that there is a danger in the “power of positive thinking” and how people can use it to the extreme and say that calamaties that come their way are a result of their not thinking positively enough.

This actually reminds me a lot of some old school Christian thinking. If something bad happened to you, then you must have sinned in some way. However, if you’re grounded in reality in any way, shape or form, you would realize that everyone runs into difficulty, and some people’s difficulty is greater than others. It strikes me though, that positive thinking has its merit, and he even says in the interview that our Thoughts do have a lot to do with how we operate (which is a concept I talk about a lot here).

So I guess what I’m asking you to do is this: Watch the video and ask yourself if the self-help that you follow is backed by data of some kind, AND is the self-help you’re following potentially damaging? One thing that I’m going to do for sure from here forward, is actually do some research to see if my technique is either done somewhere else by someone else, and if there is research to show that what I’m doing here works.

Don’t get me wrong! I do have my education and 8 years experience to back me up on what I’m throwing out here. However, I think its important to be able to offer you current, accurate and valuable information on how to manage your stressors.

What do you think? Does your self-help work? What is it? Talk to me people.

I’m going apply the WATER Method to my own life, so you have a better understanding of what I do to keep it together and still gro people every day.

Let me start by saying that last week was probably one of the hardest weeks I’ve ever had. I didn’t say worst, because as bad as it was, life is still pretty good., and I have a lot to be thankful for. However, I have obtained a newfound appreciation for parents, and all the hats they have to wear.

Be that as it may, I’ll share with you the issues that have been stressing me out, and what I did to manage them.

Let’s start with my list of stressors.

- Cleaning my house
- Working on my own business
- Taking care of my wife, as she’s pregnant
- Making sure I’m good to my animals
- Managing the Finances
- Dealing with my own personal issues
- Keeping cool to manage other people’s issues

OK, so now that I have my list, the next step is to separate them into what I can and can’t change.

What I CAN’T change:
- My wife’s feelings
- Whether or not clients show up for sessions
- Other people’s issues (until we work on them together)
- My wife’s pregnancy (we ARE keeping the baby)

What I CAN change:
- Cleaning my house (Actions, Results)
- My Feelings & Issues (Words, Thoughts & Emotions)
- How I conduct my business (Actions, Results, & Thoughts)
- Taking care of my animals (Actions)
- Taking care of my wife, and how much I do it (Actions & Results)
- Keeping the finances in line (Thoughts & Actions)

See that? So what I do form there is take the things I can’t change and resolve that I can’t change them. No matter how hard I try, stressing out about them isn’t going to change those things from being beyond my control.

So by accepting that I can’t change them, and resolving this, I let go of them, and choose not to think about them (remember processing vs. stuffing?). Then I take action on the things that I can change, and utilize my energy toward making those improvements.

As a result, I’m more on top of my finances, my housework, and my wife and I have come up with ways to keep working together despite her staying home to sit on the egg.

Does this help explain the WATER Method better? Talk to me people.

If you’ve listened to a song within the last 10-20 years, you’ve probably heard this old saying. Time heals all wounds. Does it really? See, I’m not so sure. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve run into that hold grudges, have family members that hold grudges, and how time really hasn’t done much for the wounds that people have felt.

Do me a favor. Go to your next holiday gathering where there are family members that have held grudges for years, and some even decades, and tell them that time heals all wounds.

It seems to me that its time for:

CORRECTED FAMOUS SAYINGS!!

You know what these are: Famous sayings that people have said over time, that made a lot of sense earlier in life. They were short and sweet, and profound all at the same time. Some examples are Knowledge is Power, and Don’t Just Think You Can, Know You Can. If You Fail To Plan, You Plan To Fail. While these are all well and good, each of them have to take into consideration context. Each person’s life is not so eaily mapped out and resolved with each of these catchphrases. Heck, knowledge isn’t power, Applied Knowledge Is Power. Don’t Just Think You Can, Know You Can and Do What You Can.

You see where I’m going with this, right? So Time Heals All Wounds is one of those sayings that is just begging to be Corrected!

So here’s my correction: Time Heals All Wounds, But Only If We Allow It To. This comes down to choices. Choosing to forgive. Choosing to move on with your life. Choosing to be a survivor and not a victim. This comes down to Actions, the A in the WATER Method.

The more power we give to the wounds we’ve felt in life, the less we allow time to affect them. The less power we give over our wounds, the more we allow time to affect them. I’d love to come up with an equation for this, for you analytical folks out there, but I’m not smart enough to come up with one (though if you can think of one, send it my way).

So consider how much power you give to your wounds. If you’ve given them that much power, what can you do to remove that power from them? What have you tried?

I’m going to break one of my cardinal rules when it comes to talking about stuff. I hate to do it, but it seems to me that in the year and a half of me blogging I haven’t done one post about this topic.

I’m going to talk about religion and politics, all in one post.

Now if you’ve been reading me for a bit, you know by now that I’m a fairly balanced guy, and that even if I do have personal feelings or core values about something, that I don’t go letting my core values get in the way. I merely ask questions, and ask you to judge for yourself.

Moving right along, today’s topic is about the Holidays. More specifically, the schools in Massachusetts that don’t allow expression of Holidays, merely because the Holidays at this time of year involve some form of religious connotation. As a result, children perform boring depressing songs about snow, which is nice the first time it shows up, but if you live in New England, you get sick of it after a while.

Now, this is only from what I’ve heard from my clients, and other Massachusetts residents that I’ve spoken to, but it appears as though there is some unwritten rule about NOT being able to have any holiday cheer whatsoever in the schools. As I hear this, I realize that times have really changed since I was a kid (aaand I’m sounding old just saying that). Back then, we decorated the classroom for Christmas, and we had a trip from Santa Claus every year (one year, Santa was my dad) and he handed us puzzles and board games.  I don’t recall any discussion about Hanukkah, but if we had celebrated it, or at least learned about it, I probably would have been OK with it.

So what the heck has happened? I mean, I understand the side of the argument that says we can’t encourage any specific religious belief at school – separation of church and state and all. I get it. At the same time, how many people celebrate holidays without any real religious connotations to them at all? Just because people celebrate Christmas, that doesn’t mean they’re protestant or Catholic. Could you imagine witholding Christmas from you kids merely because you had a different religious belief? Of course not.

So what am I getting at here? My question here is: How can you exclude holidays from schools, and still encourage and celebrate diversity? Why not take the opportunity to teach kids about every religious holiday that takes place during that time, and show how cool diversity really is? Why does it have to be something that we shy away from, simply because we’re afraid someome might be offended? Heck, I make no bones about the fact that I’m a Christian, but I don’t shove my beliefs down people’s throats. You wanna know why? Because America is a cool place, and people have the freedom here make their own choices. That’s what makes America cool.

I guess this really comes down to core values, and really the bottom line here is that we can’t do much about what a few paranoid people are doing. I’m certainly not going to let it ruin my Holiday, but I suppose this topic got me thinking: My wife is pregnant, and as a result, it got me thinking about what my children are going to have to endure at this time a few years from now.

So rather than offer some suggestions, which is what I usually do, I’m going to ask you, my extraordinarily intelligent readers, to answer the question: Can Diversiy Coexist With Exclusion? Can we celebrate diversity, or is that just a cute thing to say? Is tolerance merely “tolerance of me?”

I’d love to hear what you have to say!

The holidays are coming, and for some of us, that means a lot of fun with family we haven’t seen in a while. It means spending time and sharing stories and eating food til we burst. 

But for some of us, that means a lot of stress and frustration around spending time with people that we may not like, and for some of us, really secretly despise.  I’ve realized that I haven’t put up something about holiday stress on this thing, so I figure now is as good a time as any. After all, if you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering how you’re going to get through the upcoming Thanksgiving, and forthcoming Christmas insanity.

Well, that’s what I’m here for. So let’s focus on the usual issues that people have to deal with over the holidays, shall we? Mostly this involves interacting with your family, right? You know what I’m talking about: Overbearing parents; aunts and uncles that make stupid comments about what you should and should be doing; grandparents that pinch your cheeks; and that one relative that always says insensitive things about your life and no one has the stones to say anything to them about it.

So what do you do about all this insanity? It can be really overhwelming even thinking about dealing with all these personalities in one room, not to mention adding in there all the food and drink that goes along with it.

Well, the good news is that large amounts of family only come to these events once in a blue moon. So at the very least you can deal with them in small doses. However, if things get especially stressful around these times, we need to have a battle plan in place.

OK, so here’s the Battle Plan. Simple, but Powerful.

1. Set Boundaries. If there are issues that are off limits, be very clear to your family that these issues are off limits. You can do this very calmly, and matter of factly. If you’re worried about what others will think about your boundary setting, remember that you are not in control of other people’s Emotions, but you are in control of how others treat you.

2. Manage the stress appropriately. The last thing you want on your holiday is a big argument about something foolish and ridiculous. So find ways to take a break throughout the day. Find little breaks in the action to relieve some of the stress. If you have to, put the stress aside for the moment, manage the situation at hand, and after the family leaves, do something to relax at the end of your day.

3. Remember that you can change your Emotions, not other people’s. Decide what you want to feel and be prepared for the usual barrage of nonsense that comes from some of these family members. Also, allow other people to feel whatever they want to, and separate yourself from their feelings. Pretend there’s a bubble around you, and that’s where everyone else’s Emotions stop and your Emotions begin. By setting that boundary with yourself and others, you can then keep your Emotions in check without allowing anyone elses Emotions to affect you.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all seen family get togethers go wrong. The key is whether or not you’re going to let it get to you.

One of my clients told me a story about a person who annoyed her a lot. It seemed everything about this person was annoying: clothing, hair, what this person said and did….all of it seemed to frustrate my client to no end.

We thought about how to handle this person. After all, other people’s WATER is all stuff we can’t change, right?

Then, as it tends to happen, we came to a remarkable conclusion.

What makes this annoying person any different than anyone else?

Moreover, we thought about all the people in the world, and all the information in the world, and how we really don’t care about it, because we don’t know a lot of it; those people and that information is meaningless to us.

So how could we put the annoying person’s WATER into the realm of the Unknown? How could we make that person’s WATER meaningless?

It then seemed clear that all we had to do was make that choice in our minds, that the annoying person’s WATER was meaningless, and it removed all the power that person had from the client’s life.

Anywho, I figured I would share this story to help you with stuff that annoys you. Maybe you need to put some of that stuff from the Known into the Unknown meaningless sea of information that has no bearing on your life. Couldn’t hurt, right?

I’ve often said that if a woman can multi-task, she’s normal, but if a guy can multi-task, he’s got ADHD. I am about to introduce you to a very strange and magical place that men frequent often, but women may be unaware of. I’ve run into a lot of clients and friends who go to this magical place, and one of my clients finally put a name to it, which I thought was pretty clever.

Its called the Nothing Box.

Now what is the Nothing Box? Its a place where men go when there is absolutely nothing going on inside their head. Jerry Seinfeld once said, “Wanna know what men are thinking about? Nothing. We’re just walkin’ around….lookin’ around.” This happens more often than we men would like to think, or even admit. At times, the Nothing Box serves as a valuable tool to focus on the task at hand.

Now how do I know that this Nothing Box even exists? Well for starters, I go there often. One of the more common places I go to my Nothing Box is when I’m driving. All I’m doing is focusing on driving, and that’s basically it. When my wife is with me, sometimes she’ll ask me, “What are you thinking about?” To that I respond, “Nothing.” I wish I were kidding, but that really is the case.

I’ve worked with clients that will go to their Nothing Box as long as they are focusing on a task that requires concentration. These same men will ignore their wives for sex, insensitive to their wives, and have ignored small innuendo during conversation because too many people are talking.

So how do you avoid the Nothing Box? Here are a few tips:

1. Be aware of the outside world. Don’t be so drawn into what you’re doing that the rest of the world doesn’t shake you from your concentration.

2. There’s a time and a place for your Nothing Box. Don’t go there all the time, just certain times when you don’t have to be conscious of others needs or Emotions.

3. Increase your capacity for awareness. Sometimes you don’t recognize that you’re in your Nothing Box until you’re already there. Use your Thoughts to consider when and where you are most likely to go to your Nothing Box, and decide whether or not you want to go there.

For you ladies, there’s some stuff here too:

1. Realize that your man may vey well have a penchant for the Nothing Box. Cut him some slack if he’s decided to be there. Its not because he’s not thinking about what’s important, it may just be that he’s a guy and can focus on only one thing at a time.

2. Educate your man about his Nothing Box. He may not even know he’s going there. Kindly letting him in to what he’s doing could help you understand each other better.

3. Give your man some time to be in the Nothing Box. He’s got to be there sometime, so give him a chance to be there. Talk about when might be a good time for him to go there, so that it doesn’t get in the way of stuff you need to do.

So let me ask you this: Have you ever gone to your Nothing Box? Ladies, do you have a story about your man and his Nothing Box? I’d love to hear it!

P.S. – This isn’t a new concept. Cindy Holman talked about it here, as well as Robb Lewis, and Carolyn McCulley. Check out their stuff on this topic and enhance the discussion.

If you’ve ever called yourself an idiot (like me), then you’ve probably kicked yourself for doing something stupid. More often than not, its probably not the first time that you’ve done it either. Why is this the case? Because humans are creatures of habit. This is nothing new really, but sometimes I wonder if we take the time to think about our habits.

Better yet, we probably don’t think about them in a way that changes our behavior. Well, that’s what this post is here to change.

Ever watch a movie that has a scary moment in it? I’ll admit I haven’t seen very many, mostly because I think horror movies are a waste of oxygen. Be that as it may, if you’ve ever seen something startling in a film, it probably had that desired effect the first time you saw it.

Meaning, see it once, get scared. See it again, and yawn.

Why did this happen? At first, you were scared out of your wits (for me, this was Bilbo trying to grab the ring from Frodo in Lord of the Rings). After the first time though, well, that’s just crazy old Bilbo grabbing the ring again.

You’ve seen it before, so the effect is lost.

But what if we looked at our Actions this way? Or our Thoughts? If we could recognize that anything we want to change has been done before, and that we’ve seen it play out in our lives over and over again, then we can change that scene and make it better. I mean, why have a sucky ending to your life? Make the scene and thus the behavior what you want it to be.

How do you do that? Here’s the breakdown.

1. Take a look at your negative habitual Actions, Thoughts or Words.

2. Look at the triggers that happen before those Words, Actions or Thougts.

3. Once you’ve set the “scene” you know when its coming. You’ve seen it before, so you know what’s going to happen.

4. Decide how you want your future to turn out, i.e. How you want to change things, and make an effort to change your future.

If you think about how you want your future to go, and how its been acted out in the past, you can change the scene by implementing a new script. The key is recognizing what happens before the problem issue, remembering how this event has happened before, and then deciding how you want the event to turn out in the future.

Do this enough times, and you can change your habits.