Coping With the COVID-19 Pandemic

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This is such an unknown time that can easily cause anxiety for many people. Below are a few quick tips to try as we are all navigating the unknown together. Remember, it is okay to not feel okay; look for ways to increase your sense of control in a time when so much feels out of control; and use social support to increase feelings of connection.

Gratitude

  • 3 things you are grateful for every day for 30 days

  • Write a letter to someone sharing how he/she has impacted your life & share it with that person

Music

  • Powersong- find a song that makes you feel empowered, strong, and happy and listen to it every day focusing on how good you feel when you hear it

  • Power Play List- Compile your/your family’s/your teams/your friends powersongs to create a power playlist

Boundaries

  • Limit exposure to news, do not check news/texts/info/social media about COVID-19 except at specific times throughout the day (i.e. no more than once every 3 hours)

  • Be direct with family and friends if they are sending information that is overwhelming to you

Increase Sense of Control

  • Create routine/structure as much as possible

  • Mindfully breath (in through nose and out through mouth slow and controlled) to focus on learning how to control your breathing

Staying Healthy

  • Find positive news stories to balance with all the negativity (i.e. the penguins at the zoos and aquariums walking around freely)

  • Drink water, get movement, make healthy food choices, use social support including online platforms (i.e. Netflix party, virtual game nights, online support groups) and engage in intentional self-care including giving yourself permission to feel all the feelings

WooSah Song

This post is part two of the Power Song post. I recommend starting with a power song then applying the same concept to a woosah song. What is a woosah song? So glad you asked!

A woosah song is a song that makes you feel calm, relaxed, at peace, comfortable, and safe when you listen to it. Using the same principles as the power song- you pick a song that evokes these feelings of relaxation and listen to it daily, intentionally for two weeks at least once a day. When you listen to the song daily, focus on how good it feels to feel calm, safe, comfortable, and relaxed. Listen to it mindfully, with minimal distraction. After you have done this daily for two weeks, you now have a woosah song to use as needed for relaxation. Now you can create a whole woosah play list to use anytime you want to feel relaxed. 

Power Song

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Power Song

Pick a song that makes you feel powerful, happy, empowered, inspired, and overall good.

After you have your song chosen, listen to it mindfully every day for two weeks. Mindfully, meaning not while you are doing the dishes, not while you are driving, not while you are doing anything else except listening to this song and focusing on how it makes you feel.

There are two main reasons for this intervention: One, it makes you practice mindfulness (being present in the moment). When we are being mindful, we are not depressed about yesterday or anxious about tomorrow. Two, it creates a positive emotional experience to this song so that in the future when you are having a tough day, you can play this song and your brain will remember this positive experience you have created.

After you have mastered this with one song, continue to add songs, eventually creating an entire power play list.

Discovering Your Love Language

One of the services offered at Innerworth Psychology is couples counseling. Knowing both your and your partner’s love language can be an invaluable tool to help improve your communication, understanding, and overall satisfaction in your relationship.  http://www.5lovelanguages.com includes a free quiz to find out your love language. The premise behind the love languages is that there are five basic ways we communicate that we love and care about people. The five languages include physical touch, gifts, acts of service, quality time, and words of affirmation. By learning what your partner’s love language is you can begin to look for times he/she is expressing love in his/her language. You can also be intentional on expressing love to him/her in his/her language.  Knowing your love language can not only help you communicate and understand your romantic relationships but also other relationships in your life. 

Purpose and Vision

“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl is a book that left a strong impression on me when I first read it. It left an even stronger impression on me the second and third time I read it. After reading it, I began thinking about the importance of purpose in life. I have come to believe that as humans, we all have an innate need for purpose in our lives. This purpose may be spiritual or religious in nature, it may be personal in nature, or it may be a combination.  Businesses  managers often talk about knowing your “why.” Your “why” in life or business is what keeps you going. It is what drives you to succeed. At times throughout life, one might begin to lose this “why” and may begin to feel lost or off balance. During these times it is essential to re-evaluate purpose in your life.

Sometimes this feeling of misdirection may feel overwhelming or even hopeless. This is when it can be valuable to create a vision board.  What is a vision board? www.makeavisionboard.com defines a vision board as “a tool used to help clarify, concentrate, and maintain focus on a specific life goal.” A vision board can be words, quotes, pictures, symbols, or anything that is inspiring and motivating to you. Some people create these on a poster board using a combination of pictures, quotes, words, and symbols to visualize goals and remember their “why.” Other people write letters to themselves as reminders for these goals and “whys.” There is not a right or wrong way to create a vision board. The important part of it is that it means something to you; that it is inspiring to you.

If you find yourself feeling off balance or lacking direction, I challenge you to create a vision board of your own. Look at it everyday for one month. Keep thinking about the board throughout the day, focusing on your goals. Pay attention to how you feel during this month. Notice anything different?

Encouragement

You may have noticed the tagline on the Innerworth Psychology website and/or on the back of the business cards: Strengths-Encouragement- Growth. In an earlier blog I talked about what strengths based therapy means at Innerworth Psychology. Today I will talk about what encouragement means and why it is included as a tagline.

Encouragement is directly related to empowerment at Innerworth Psychology. Therapy services often focus on providing encouragement in order to create a sense of empowerment. The best part about encouragement…anyone can provide it!

Surround yourself with people who build you up, people who help you believe in yourself and your dreams. Pay close attention to how you feel around people in your life. Identify those people and those times when you feel strong, encouraged, and excited about life. Intentionally spend more time with those people and in those situations. Ask yourself if you are one of those people to the people you care about in your life. Do you let them know you believe in them, you support them, you genuinely care about them?

Watch what happens when you seek out those people to spend your time with. Watch what happens when you are one of those people to someone you care about. As you begin to lift others up and feel lifted up by intentionally spending time with people who are encouraging, you will likely learn how to provide that same belief in yourself and encouragement to yourself.

Encourage those around you. Be encouraged by those around you. Learn how to encourage yourself. 

Making Choices and Decisions in Life

Many people struggle with making decisions. Some people worry about making the wrong decision or have a difficult time making big decisions. Sometime this can leave people paralyzed which ends with them choosing to not make a decision at all. They may instead stay exactly where they are. Today I want to share one of my favorite quotes that can aid in making choices in life. “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears” Nelson Mandela.

This quote resonates with my approach to decision making. I have found that when people make choices out of fear, they end up creating the situation they are fearing. For example, someone who is afraid they won’t get elected to a position, chooses to not run for that position. This results in the outcome they were afraid of (not getting elected). Another example, someone is afraid they will be lonely if they leave their current relationship. This likely results in them staying in the relationship and feeling lonely because they are not satisfied (again the outcome they initially feared).

How do you change the way you make choices? You start by asking yourself what are you afraid of and what do you hope to happen in your life?  After you have identified these two aspects, decide what you can put into action to create or come closer to creating your hopes.  This is not a guaranteed way to always make the best choice, but it certainly feels much better when you have made a decision because it is something you truly want instead of it being something you are scared of.

I challenge you to look around your current life and see what decisions you have made based on fear versus those you have made based on hopes. How did those choices work out for you? Is there a current decision in your life you have been avoiding? Try to focus on what you hope to happen and see what choice that presents for you. 

What is therapy like?

There are many misconceptions about what therapy is and what it is not. Today I would like to very briefly address what therapy is like at Innerworth Psychology. If you have read my earlier blog “What Does Strengths Based Mean?”  then you may already have an idea about the therapy process at Innerworth Psychology. Here the focus of therapy is self-awareness, self-understanding, growth, encouragement, empowerment, and self-acceptance. During therapy, any concerns or weaknesses are discussed, acknowledged, and validated; however they do not become the sole focus of the therapy hour. Instead, the focus of therapy is learning how to understand yourself in order to facilitate self-acceptance. It is also focused on self-awareness which leads to growth and feelings of empowerment. In other words, discovering Innerworth. The ultimate goal of therapy is for the client to feel empowered to handle life on his or her own. 

What does this mean for a family or couple who is coming to Innerworth for family or couple’s counseling? First it means learning how to validate one another. (More about validation in a future post). Then it means incorporating self-awareness and self-understanding with understanding other family members or your significant other. It is the philosophy of Innerworth Psychology that understanding leads to acceptance which leads to happiness. Not sure what all of this means for a current concern, question, or struggle you, your relationship, or your family are going through? Feel free to give us a call today at 417-413-4434, so you can find out more information about this approach to therapy and decide if it may be the right fit for you, your relationship, or your family. 

What is Love and Logic® Parenting all about?

Love and Logic® Parenting is a parenting philosophy that focuses on allowing children to grow through their mistakes and learn from the consequences of their choices.  Have you ever found yourself in a power struggle with your child? If so, you may find some of the techniques of Love and Logic® valuable. One way to decrease power struggles is to provide choices with limits (one of the techniques taught by Love and Logic® based parenting). Choices provide a sense of shared power and lead to increased confidence in making decisions. Some brief tips on how to provide choices with limits includes: 
•    Provide only two choices. 
o    DO- do you want to use the blue cup or the red cup?
o    DON’T- do you want to use the yellow cup, the pink cup, the glass cup, or the plastic cup?
•    Use close ended choices. 
o    DO- do you want to sit by your sister or your brother?
o    DON’T- where do you want to sit?
•    Use choices in a non-threatening way.
o    DO- do you want to do math or reading homework first?
o    DON’T- Do you want to do your homework or go to time-out?
•    Keep choices in line with the child’s age and developmental level.
o    DO- do you want to have carrots or apples for a snack?
o    DON’T- When do you want to eat dinner?
•    If the child does not choose, then you make the choice. 
o    DO- do you want to choose or do you want me to choose?
o    If no response, okay I’ll choose for you. 
•    Always use choices you are okay with and willing to follow through on.

Often when children feel they have a sense of power and control they do not reach for it in other places. By providing choices throughout the day you give them that sense of power while teaching them they are capable of making choices. If you are interested in learning more about what Love and Logic® based parenting is and if it may be right for your family give me a call at 417-413-4434.

What does strengths based mean?

If you’ve read about my philosophy/orientation to therapy you have seen the phrase strengths based. I often get asked, what does that mean? For me, strengths based services mean focusing on identifying and understanding strengths in order to overcome weaknesses and/or struggles. A huge part of my guiding philosophy is that self-understanding leads to self-acceptance and self-acceptance leads to an increase in happiness, a decrease in depression, and a decrease in anxiety or other emotional concerns. Strengths based does not mean ignoring the struggles. From my experience in the therapy room I have discovered that when the session time is spent focusing solely on things that are going wrong, people tend to leave the session feeling discouraged and even hopeless about their future; however when the session is spent acknowledging the struggles while also acknowledging the strengths that have been used to overcome past struggles, people tend to leave the session feeling hopeful and encouraged. It is because of witnessing this hope instilled in people when they are able to see some of their strengths that I continue to use a strengths based approach throughout all of my clinical services.