The holiday season is full of festivity, but it also has its costs.   Feeling the loss of a loved one, financial burdens, or loneliness can be make you feel like the world is celebrating without you.  And even for the most party hardy, the extra food, travel, expenses, and busy scheduling can take a toll. Before the Thanksgiving turkey is even digested,  plans are being made for the next holiday- shopping lists, travel plans, social plans, and meal plans. So, as we count down to the New Year, along with your other lists and plans, I encourage you to give yourself the gift of a Wellness Plan.

This blog post is inspired by Nelson Robles, MSW, a kind and gentle man who works with me at my clinic running our Depression and Anxiety group.  As the seats are filling up this time of year, Nelson helps each person in the group to create a personalized Wellness Plan.  What the member’s find is that instead of feeling a victim to the season, by focusing on a plan of wellness, it empowers them to take proactive steps to navigate through. It helps each person identify their vulnerabilities and develop options that can serve as protective factors for the stresses they face.

There are many ways to make a Wellness Plan, but one of the simplest is the Bubble Method.  Take a blank piece of paper and draw about five medium size circles with room to write inside them.  Then begin to label each circle with an area of your life that may be of concern during the month ahead.  For example, circles might be labeled:  food, money, exercise, anger, and work. Try to narrow your choices down to the top priorities.  If you have too many circles, that alone will be stressful.  Then, begin to brainstorm some ideas for each of the categories of how you can take care of yourself in this area.  Wellness is the key.  The plan is not about fixing all your problems,  the goal is maintaining equanimity through a challenging period of time.  Now write your ideas in each of the five circles, using an action word in the positive.  For example, “I will eat protein for two meals a day” or “I will take a break from my house guests by taking a solo walk in the afternoon,”  instead of “I won’t eat too much,” or “I won’t let my brother make me angry.”.  

Try to come up with a few action plans for each area that you are concerned about.  Start by choosing one or two to implement and then build up as the month goes on.  Try to prioritize the items that will give you the most pleasure or relief.  For example, walking with your friend will give you social time, stress relief as well as exercise.  This Wellness Plan will not only be your guide and your source of inpiration, it will help you check in with yourself and maintain your attention on what tends to get dropped or forgotten in the hustle and bustle.  Don’t lose you in the midst of the season’s expectations.  Plan your well being, and be well with your plan.

I love Thanksgiving, not only for the food, family, and football, but for the corny part where we go around the table and ask each person to share what they are thankful for.  It always makes me feel good to hear people acknowledge and appreciate the gifts we might ordinarily take for granted and makes me more mindful of things I might overlook.  As positive psychology research shows, this exercise of thankfulness is one we should definitely do more than once a year.  It turns out, expressing gratitude is a powerful tool to improve our sense of well being and to decrease depression and anxiety.  This weeks post will explore the benefits of a gratitude list (made famous by Oprah, who else), but will also propose a challenge to kick your gratitude up a notch for maximum impact!

Our brains have been wired to scan the environment for potential threat.  Therefore, in this modern world, where threats seem to be a continuous experience (a facebook post where you see you were excluded or an e-mail from your boss) rather than a one time predator, we can spend most of our day piling on worrisome layers.  We then reinforce the neural loop pathways for negativity and this can lead to depression and anxiety that really affects our quality of life.  The antidote?  We need to train our brain to find the good, balancing our world view of danger.  The gratitude list is one such tool, highlighted in the work of positive psychologists looking for simple ways to increase life satisfaction and happiness.  As many of you know, by simply listing three to five things each day that you feel grateful for you can significantly make a difference in your mental health.

But do you want to really feel the gratitude?  Martin Seligman, in his research on positive psychology, had a gratitude task so powerful, the effects lasted for over a month! (Compare that to your after dinner cocktail or piece of pumpkin pie).  It is called the Gratitude Visit.  First start by thinking of someone in your life who made a real difference to you but whom you never had the time or perspective to thank.  It is best if this is someone who lives near enough to you so that you can visit them.  Then, write a letter, of at least 300 words, expressing what, in detail, they did specifically that made a difference in your life, and how this mattered to you.  Then call them up and ask if you can come by.  Don’t tell them why until you are there in person, and then read them the letter.  It is quite a powerful experience and will make you feel, oh, so good.  If you can’t visit, at least make a time to read it over the phone.  (Mail or e-mail is not as good, as it limits the connection and contact.)

Kent State Professor, Steve Toepfer, replicated Seligman’s findings.  He reports that his participants “experienced enhanced levels of life satisfaction and happiness, as well as decreased symptoms of depression.”  Not only did participants feel better about life in general, but they felt a much stronger sense of social connection and decreased isolation.

So as the holiday season rolls forward and the days get shorter, try a new holiday tradition that costs you little and brings you a lot.  Write a letter and share it with someone deserving.  Your good feeling should last you into the New Year!

***Note:  While today is Cyber Monday, don’t forget about GIVING TUESDAY.  It is a fairly new tradition and a global movement fueled by social media.  You can give of your time, money, or other donations.  Last year, 700,000 people from 70 countries donated $116,000,000 worldwide.  Please, check it out:   www.givingtuesday.org  or   #GivingTuesday

I have to be honest, like a lot of people, it’s been a very hard couple of weeks for me.  As I woke up the morning after the election, I couldn’t get a memory out of my head.  It was several years ago and I was standing in the first few rooms of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Israel.  The walls were filled with articles and images of the early Nazi propaganda, blaming and scapegoating for the economic and social problems of Germany.  I kept thinking of the similarities with the slogans and chants and “ideas” of the current President elect, heart sick that our country would affirm him, let alone his ideas as “solutions” to our country’s problems.  At the same time this past week at the Health Center where I work, my patients were stressed and scared, worrying about a range of consequences from a family member being taken away to losing their health care in the middle of treatment, from the loss of their safety to the loss of their dignity.  The overall reality that our beloved country, which prides itself on freedom and human rights, could affirm such an attitude has made many of us collectively depressed.  So I have been thinking, feeling, and reading, and am writing this week’s post about what I can do to feel better.

I understand the fear and and anger that underlies the need to bully and scapegoat on an intimate level.  I worked as the Director of a domestic violence treatment program and I have sat with and talked for hours with people who abused their children or their partners.  I was able to find compassion for them when I saw the fear underneath the anger and the hurt and feelings of powerlessness that were so intolerable it led to aggressive behavior.  Most often, at some time and place, they were helpless victims, too, and never wanted to feel that powerless again.  Once they could understand this, blaming faded away, self awareness and compassion emerged and healing could actually begin.

In the short term it feels so much better to yell “build a wall”, shout “lock her up” and think that our lives would improve if we could claim our status as better and more powerful than someone else.  But in the long term it erodes our ability to love, to have connection, and to trust one another.  We project and reject our own vulnerability when we hate, blame, and scapegoat.  It never actually changes the reality of our situation, it only provides a false sense of power.  And it the long run, it breeds more hate and and fear as we worry that someone else may do the same to us.

Social scientists who have been exploring the effects of this election cycle have noted a significant erosion in social trust, which is our faith in humanity and the well being not just of yourself, but of everyone around you.  Moral distress does not respond to our usual stress reduction techniques (as many of us can attest) but requires a particular set of actions based in moral courage, moral elevation, and compassion.  One thing we need to watch out for is our feeling that because it is such a big problem, nothing we do will matter (the fancy term for this is “psuedoinsufficiency”).  You don’t have to do it all to matter. While our social problems are bigger than you, they also need you.  Moral courage involves believing in collective participation, and this means each of us doing something – write a letter, make a donation, sign a petition, any action helps.

Next, look for the good, also known as moral elevation.  When we witness acts of virtue we restore balance, promoting feelings of awe and gratitude.  When we look for the good, we actually can find it, even in the most uncommon of places.  Research shows this can actually reduce anxiety, loneliness, and increase social trust.  And if you feel up to it, simply by doing a small act of kindness, such as letting someone go ahead of you in line or asking if someone is all right if you see them stumble, you not only make yourself feel good, but it has a significant impact on other people’s sense of social trust.  Research shows that small gestures can have a very long and large impact in helping us feel safer and more connected to one another.

To those who did not vote for our President Elect, please don’t fall into helplessness.  Do things to counter the actions and expressions with which you disagree.  For those of you I have heard say, “I voted for Trump even though I don’t agree with what he says”, I implore you to hold to that.  Don’t be passive either. Hold him accountable for what you agree with and what you disagree with.  You need to act, too.  Let him know that you voted against Hillary (as many say) and not for racism and sexism and bigotry.  Our country needs us at this time of disconnection and fear. When we belittle and degrade, we hurt our collective good and erode the beauty and transcendence of our common humanity.  When we distrust, our physical and mental health suffer, and when we love, we are happier and healthier, not only as individuals, but as neighbors and citizens in these United States.

Do you have a big presentation, performance, or a difficult conversation coming up that is making you nervous?  I came across a quick method that research shows can actually help you feel more confident, and the crazy thing is, it only takes two minutes.  No, it’s not a drug or a drink, but it does quickly change your body’s chemistry, simply by altering how you are sitting or standing,

Researchers from Harvard University (so it must be true) the University of Washington, and the University of Oregon, and many other institutions have uncovered an interesting phenomenon about our hormones.  Higher levels of testosterone (in both men and women) lead to increased feelings of confidence, while lower levels of cortisol lead to decreased feelings of anxiety and an improved ability to deal with stress.  These hormones, it turns out, are particularly sensitive and fluctuate rapidly depending on your social, physical, and environmental circumstances.  One of the things that researchers found that can rapidly affect testosterone and cortisol levels is simply your body posture.  

Amy Cuddy, a researcher at Harvard, classified different body positions as either high power or low power poses.  High power poses were open and relaxed (wonder woman) and low power poses were guarded and closed up.  She measured testosterone and cortisol levels through saliva samples in research subjects before and after they took either the high power or low power pose for two minutes.  What she found was pretty remarkable.  The subjects holding the high power pose had an increase in testosterone of  20 percent and a decrease of cortisol of 25 percent.  The subjects in the low power poses had the exact opposite result, decreasing testosterone and increasing cortisol.  She put this further to the test by having subjects do either of the poses before or after a mock job interview.  Not only did the high power pose subjects feel more confident in the interview, but they were more likely to be selected as rated by the interviewers.

Behaviors and emotions are closely linked.  Notice that when we’re afraid, we tend to sit with our legs and/or arms crossed, hugging ourselves in a sense and pulling inward.  What this research suggests about body language is that we are reinforcing our fear by sitting in this closed position.  Just by standing up and opening up our posture we can influence our chemistry and our perceived sense of ourselves.  Notice that our most powerful leaders don’t merely think a certain way, but they carry themselves a certain way as well.

So, before your next challenging situation, take a moment, no sorry, actually two moments, to prepare yourself.  Put your hands on your hips, spread your legs apart, and keep your chin up.  Feel the power of the pose; take up space and expand your physical presence.  While you are at it, visualize yourself performing well and being relaxed throughout your challenge.  Bring your mind and your body together to boost your confidence, increase your stress tolerance, and be the best of you.

**For more information, check out Amy Cuddy’s 20 minute Ted Talk regarding her research on body language, hormone levels, and confidence.

Halloween offers the opportunity to dress up and pretend to be someone we’re not, just for the fun of it.  But what we don’t realize is that each of us in our daily lives also pretend to be someone we’re not. So I thought this would be a good week to write about the psychological concept of “the mask” and how we may use it both for our benefit and, at times, with considerable cost.

When we’re little we learn to mask our authentic self in order to please our parents and be compliant.  We avoid being shamed, scolded, rejected, or even hit by adopting a presentation of ourselves that is in line with what we feel is needed or expected.  Depending how strong the pressure from our family or community, we may get the message that our true self is not lovable or acceptable.  We become alienated from our authentic self, which can really interfere with our ability for true intimacy.  We wear our “good girl” mask or our “boys don’t cry” mask that covers over what we really feel and need.   Emotions that we tend to conceal are anger, disgust, anxiety, embarrassment, and sadness; all emotions that show and share our vulnerability, which is the foundation for real intimacy.

When we’re able to shed our masks, we come to learn that our true selves are indeed acceptable and our uniqueness is something to be cherished.  It frees up energy used to defend and cover ourselves to actually know ourselves and others better.  We also become more trustworthy because who we present to the world is more consistent with who we really are.

Once we become conscious of our masks, we can choose to use them when needed.  There are times when it helps to reach into our bag of disguises to fake-it-till-we-make-it.  It can be quite useful to have the “good mother” mask when we’re tired and have lost our patience.  And having the “tough as nails” mask or even the “be nice to authority” mask at hand can get us through some rough moments and difficult circumstances where we need to comply in order to persevere.

So as you parade around in costume this year, it might be fun to ask yourself what masks you will put down when the day is over and what masks might tend to stay.  Or maybe there is a new mask you can consider for a situation in which you need it.  Whatever masks you live with, what is important is to be able to distinguish the mask from who you really are underneath it.

So many of the people I work with, as well as my friends, tell me they’ve just plain forgotten how to have fun.  As our lives slowly fill up with increasingly heavy issues and responsibilities, we seem to lose the sense of what fun is and how to have it.  We find ourselves driving our kids to all of their fun activities, but we,ourselves, become a facilitator and not a participant.  Many people turn to alcohol as a way to lighten the mood, but this brings other complications and is just a way to mask our situation.  So in this week’s post I did a little digging around in the literature to see what I could find out about having fun again.

First, here are some ideas about what gets in the way of having fun so we can think about the barriers we face.  For many, we think we don’t have the time or the money to have fun.  We associate fun with doing something decadent or a big activity that takes time, savings, and planning.  But what we’ve forgotten is that fun can come in small doses.  Sometimes it’s just being in the moment with people we really enjoy.  Or we can take 15 minutes to half an hour of doing something we really love.  Another barrier is the feeling that to have fun, conditions need to be just right.  If we’re dealing with a parent’s illness or serious circumstance at work it’s easy to get pulled into a constant state of heaviness.  We confuse solemnity for seriousness.  And finally, we forget that being an adult, even an adult in charge, doesn’t mean we can’t go out on a limb and make a fool of ourselves every once in a while.  We are all quite capable of being silly at any age.

Children have fun because they are open to it.  I remember walking with my children amazed at how they found a good time everywhere around them.  The curb was a balance beam, the bug on the sidewalk was an amazing discovery, and the firetruck was a grand parade.  We are born with a complete understanding of how to have fun, but somehow, we unlearn it.  Children have fun because they feel the permission to be spontaneous. Fun is more of a perspective than an activity.  So, as an adult, we must retrain ourselves to know what we once knew.

One helpful practice that children can do so easily is to take time to be fully where you are.  Adults tend to be thinking about things we need to do or to be looking at our phones to answer e-mails.  Try at least once a day to stop, breath, and take in all the sights, smells, and sounds around you.  By doing so, you’re much more likely to notice something right in front of you that’s downright funny.  Another thing that kids do is try new activities.  They are constantly learning and being given the opportunities to be a beginner.  So we, too, should try something new just for the experience of it.  Take up a new hobby and be awful at it!  Cook a dish not for a dinner party, where you will be afraid if it comes out badly, but just to enjoy doing, even if the souffle drops or the cake slides off its layer.  My teen is great at DIY projects, mostly because she doesn’t care if it doesn’t turn out well.  It was just fun to try.  And sometimes the poor results are funnier than the good ones!

Being creative is a way to get in touch with our inner fun loving child. Build, paint, draw, make a sandcastle at the beach. Get dirty!  Nothing frees us up more than having sticky fingers or mud on your pant leg.  And find the beat, wherever you are.  Play Pandora while cooking, drum to the beat while driving, and find yourself an upbeat theme song.  Break the rules.  Every once in a while, go rogue.  Play a prank, get dinner out on a weeknight, or leave the Christmas lights up all year round, if you enjoy it.  As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, being a bit rebellious reminds us that we can break free when we need to.

If all of these still feel like too much, then just smile.  Children smile 400 times a day, the average adult smiles just 15.  (Yes, someone counted this).  Smiling releases hormones and brain chemicals that make us feel better.  People respond to us and reach out to us when we smile.  And if you can’t find even that bit of good humor, find awe.  Take a moment to see the beautiful color of the leaves in the Fall or follow ants to their ant trail.  Noticing the birds and the cloud formations can bring a sense of peace and a childlike sense of wonder.  Because on those days when we can’t muster the energy to have a little fun, perhaps we can still find a little joy.

I tend to be a broadcast junky, listening to political talk shows, the news, and even, as my family will attest, some pretty annoying sports talk radio.  It’s almost like an addiction, getting my fix of updates and opinions that raise my blood pressure and get me worked up.  But as the season changes and I think ahead to winter, the thought of holiday music makes me smile.  For some reason the sound of holiday cheer, however corny or predictable, lifts my mood. So with this week’s post I’m going to review how good music can be for us, in hopes of motivating me to tap my foot instead of clench my fist as the election approaches.

There is a huge body of research to support the psychological benefits of listening to music.  It reduces stress, increasing the activity of neurotransmitters and hormones involved in relaxation.  It has proven to be as effective as an hour long massage!  Music alters brain wave activities, creating the wave patterns similar to people who are meditating.  It can lift your mood and relieve symptoms of depression. (Although, sorry to say, heavy metal fans, your type of music actually made people more distressed).  Listening to music, especially without lyrics, helped people focus and improved cognitive performance including memory.  Especially for people prone to freezing up during high stress situations, listening to upbeat music prior  improved their performance (athletic as well as intellectual).  And for those of us prone to road rage?  Turn that dial and sing along to your favorite tune.  Listening to music while driving both increased mood and decreased the incidences of road rage.

And if that hasn’t sold you, how about the health effects?  There is an even more established body of research on the many health benefits of music.  Music eases the intensity of perceived pain and improves outcomes in chronic pain treatment.  It has been used effectively to treat insomnia and improves the quality of sleep.  It helps people stay calm pre and post surgery.  Soothing music has proven to increase blood flow in blood vessels and promote healing.  (Shout out to my dear friend who plays her harp in the cardiac intensive care unit.  The hospital is so sure of its role in patient care, it actually pays her for her time there.)  Playing soft music during a meal slows people down and causes them to eat less and upbeat fast tempo music helps people run faster and increases stamina during a work out.

Ok, have I convinced you or myself yet?  Maybe this is a bit abstract.  I just need to remember how good it makes me feel to turn up the dial and belt it out while in the shower or driving in my car. Suddenly, I’m not thinking about the bills or the to do list.  Instead, I’m born to run, partying like it’s 1999, and feeling it’s a wonderful world.  I never feel as good as that after the evening news!  Like talk, music is cheap, but it’s also good for your heart as well as your soul.

I was attending religious services to observe the Jewish New Year and was struck by some commentary at the bottom of a page containing a prayer for peace.  It pointed out that the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, is derived from a root word, slm, which actually means “whole” or “complete.”  The commentary went on to explain that this translation inferred a much more active meaning to the concept of peace.  Rather than being the absence of hostility or conflict, peace as wholeness involves an active process of coming together.

I loved this idea.  In order to create peace, the active sense of the word, it requires work.  Wholeness or completeness is only obtained by recognizing all voices and finding a resolution that incorporates both of the people or nations involved.  Peace as wholeness is not achieved by silencing a group or an opinion, rather true peace is created by incorporating needs and ideas. In this way, peace is inextricably linked to respect, fairness, and justice.  

I believe this is not only true for finding peace between peoples, but within ourselves.  Inner peace is a dynamic process, rarely achieved by cutting off your feelings or ideas or pretending you are a certain way only.  When we can open our tolerance to the full experiencing of our needs and fears, desires and dreads, we become more complete.  We have less anxiety and more self compassion.  We do not need to numb ourselves or uncontrollably act out what we attempt to deny.  We live more fully and authentically when we make peace between our own inner conflicts.

Peace obtained without wholeness rarely lasts.  Whenever I work with couples, the work doesn’t truly make progress until both partners feel heard and respected.  When one member feels overpowered or submits, the conflict will re-emerge in another form.  The same is true for inner peace.  Stuffing our anger or avoiding our pain only tends to reroute it.

So this holiday, as I say blessings for my loved ones and the country and world for true peace, I‘m thinking a little differently about it.  Rather than blessing them with it, I have to take more responsibility for it, offering more wholeness within my relationships and creating more completeness within my community.  And as our Presidential election approaches and with the country so divided, I will not only need to pray for peace, but reach out to the “other side” to create it.

Last year I attended an intensive training in the art of Motivational Interviewing, a technique proven to be very successful in working with “difficult populations,” such as people with addictions and/or trouble with the law.  Now, a year later, there is one phrase that has proven so valuable, it alone was worth the price of admission.  It is the reminder that when viewing our options to change, we can always “choose to do nothing.”

Huh?  Yes, doing nothing about your situation is indeed a choice.  And for a lot of people, when we reinforce to them in a non-judgmental way that doing nothing and staying just the way they are is an acceptable option, it reduces the fight against making a change.  Suddenly, the motivation to change stops coming from the outside, and a person has the opportunity to evaluate their own ambivalence.  If you are lecturing me about why I have to change my diet, human nature will make me want to eat more, just to maintain my sense of control and power.

If, however, after exploring why I may want to eat healthier and feeling the decision to make a change to live my own values is totally up to  me, I might actually give it a try.  In fact, what I have found for myself and in working with people making difficult changes is that after exploring their own very real reasons for wanting to change (not a partner or a doctor’s), when offered the choice of not yet doing anything to change, the option seems ridiculous:  “Why would I choose to do nothing?”

By acknowledging that not changing anything is a choice we make, the source of power comes back to us. It opens the door to a variety of options and actively engages with what we want and what we feel capable of doing.  It also tends to break the black and white thinking that tends to get in the way of change:  that we have to give up everything in order to be successful.  Maybe we don’t feel ready to stop drinking, but we do feel ready to read up on the health effects of drinking or attend one AA  meeting, just to check it out.  When we recognize that our behavior is totally our choice, we don’t have to stay stuck in order to prove we are in control.

Simply put, when it comes to change, if I know that I can choose to do nothing, I am more likely to choose to do something!