Category Archives: Tips of the Month

5 Strategies To Use When You Begin A Comeback

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The truth is that at some point, life will knock you down.  Bulldoze you to the ground, kick you while you are there, and then it will rain or shine (depending on what seems least appropriate) for days on end until you can’t even bear to look out the window in the morning.

Sunrise or sunset?

Sometimes this happens subtly, like with depression that creeps in over days or months. The kind of knockdown that slowly chips away at your happiness, mostly unnoticed by you, until one day you realize you are on the ground and don’t know how you got there.

But sometimes being knocked to the ground happens so swiftly that you can’t even remember your life when you were standing up.  Breakups, job loss, death, and other traumas can change your life instantly.

So, can you restore yourself to the faded glory of the life you knew, even after it has been cracked from substance abuse, or death, or unemployment, or a breakup, or an illness?  And if so, how do you make a comeback?

A lot of us see promise in fresh starts, clean slates, resolutions and willpower.  But I’ve been learning over the years that to make real progress, there need not be a new beginning.  Especially in the early months, when just existing in your new world feels like it must be some sort of accomplishment.  In order to evolve from where you are now, you have to bring with you where you’ve been.

Really, it’s not that bad to bring the past with you.  Who among us wouldn’t be just a bit lonely without memories of who they were in college, or their first relationship, or starting out at a new job — even though these events and incarnations of ourselves might be [gratefully] in the past?

I believe that closure, and leaving the past behind, is a myth that puts pressure on the comeback and deceives us and others.  More about that another time.  Let’s begin with some strategies that work if you are feeling ready for your own comeback.

  • Little comforts might seem like no match for your recovery, but do them anyway.  You cannot be too nice to yourself.  A cookie, a movie, a handful of flowers — they will not resurrect your life.  But over time, habits of self-soothing work.
  • Process your feelings with safe people.  Safe people are those who can handle your feelings, understand they are in the context of your life’s lowest moment, and simply be with you without impulse to change, argue, or take offense.  If you haven’t found these gems of people in your personal life, find a therapist, or at the very least, a community [online?] who shares your experience.
  • Take care of the core things.  Eat well, exercise, sleep, etc..  If you come to my office for help with something, I want to be sure you’re addressing the basic checklist on your own.  What is the point of making a comeback from a divorce if you end up with a dependency on alcohol?  Try to be sure the bucket you are filling up isn’t being punched out with holes on the other side.
  • Surround yourself with a support team who knows that just because you are occasionally back to work/tennis/laughing doesn’t mean that sadness is far away.  It takes a support team with immense capacity to abide with you during your dark time.  It takes even more capacity to be with you on the way back.
  • Don’t be afraid of the sadness that remains.  It is part of your comeback, another layer to who you are, and has given you humility and capacity.  Let feelings be with you when they arrive.  They will ebb and flow.  Pushing away feelings like grief and anger will only result in them turning on you (in the form of depression, anxiety, sleep issues, etc.)

A true comeback exists — we do them throughout our lives — but they are never as clean as the before and after photos make them seem.  Above all, have faith — things will appear insurmountable.  The goal is to embrace life’s good and bad and envelop mistakes and losses as part of the new version of yourself. I wish you luck on this road to the next installment of who you are.

What Messages About Yourself Are You Sending To Others?

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One of the most powerful advantages of solution-focused therapy is its ability to give the client control of his or her therapy.  A client learns to see himself through his strengths, and not weaknesses; he learns to apply useful tools he already uses in an area where he never thought he would need them.

I teach my clients that this same control we have over our own solutions also applies to our relationships with others.  Over the course of therapy we see ourselves transforming into people of skills and strengths because we have been focusing on how we treat ourselves.  It is also true that our family, friends, and coworkers learn how to treat us by what we teach them.

[The ONLY exception to this is behavior one exhibits following the experience of an extreme trauma.  We must allow that those who are suffering will deviate from their usual selves and hope that with proper help they will return to their typical abilities and capacities.]

Every day our actions are setting an example of how we want to be treated.  We are always communicating our desires with others, even when we are not saying something directly.  When we arrive late to a coffee date with a friend, or when we agree to accept an assignment at work that belongs to someone else who is “too busy”: these are messages we send out into the world about what is acceptable to us and what is not.

Our friend learns that being on time when meeting may not be important, and possibly that we do not value her time, either; our supervisor takes a perhaps unconscious but careful note that we are OK with accepting more work that isn’t ours.

he can't talk, but he's telling you something

Perhaps neither of these assumptions that the friend or supervisor has made is wrong – in this case, you would be doing an excellent job of obeying the golden rule.  However, what I see in working with clients is that people want their work life to be less stressful, their friends and family to be more supportive, and for themselves to have more power over their own happiness.  We cannot ignore the messages we send that are compliant with behavior we don’t want to perpetuate.

Luckily, the antidote to these issues is simple from a solution-focused mindset.  You can look to your life to see where you have healthy and well-respected boundaries.  You wouldn’t dream of being late to your son’s piano lesson?  Your employees always show up to Monday meeting on time?  You and your partner fight fairly and listen to each other?  Each of these areas shows that you have good boundaries and respect.

Some clients feel uncomfortable at first about teaching others how to treat them better.  It must begin with understanding that we deserve better treatment ourselves.  This is not an easy concept to grasp if you have been struggling with depression, addiction, or guilt.   Practice asking yourself a few questions:

  • What is difficult for me about making this request or giving this person feedback?  Imagine yourself saying to someone, “Hey, I notice when we meet up I always am waiting for 15 minutes.  Should I allow more time in the future?  Or do I rush you when making plans?”
  • How will my life change when I am able to consistently implement this new boundary or request?  Imagine your life when you and your partner agree that you will no longer argue in the car and instead will wait to find a place to talk and listen with no distractions.
  • What will I do when the person responds with surprise to my new request? Perhaps you’ve decided to tell your boss that you will no longer be taking work projects home on the weekends. Can you respond with other ways that you are going above and beyond as an exceptional employee?  Practice sitting with the feeling of knowing that someone else is initially ruffled by your new boundary. They will adjust to it, or you will come up with a suitable compromise.

When you are able to understand the messages you have been sending to others about what behavior is acceptable around you, you are then in control to change the situation.  Acknowledging our own role in others’ poor treatment of us is the most difficult step.  Remember to stay consistent; persistence when making behavior change works!

Buzzword: Build Your Social Capital

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We’ve heard before how important it is to have a support system of healthy relationships.  I’ve described it as having a garden of friends, each useful and beautiful in his or her own way.  

What isn’t often recognized is the importance of our daily interactions with those we don’t count as part of our support system.  Recently a story from the totally amazing Greater Good Science Center described this positive effect as a result of moms who put kids in daycare.  The brief pleasantries while picking up and dropping off eventually constitute an important interpersonal connection.

Similarly, exchanging short conversations with the check out clerk, the parking attendant, and the mailman are all ways that we can increase our social capital.

Think of social capital like a bank account; it is the collective value of all social relationships.  When it’s full, you are buoyed by comfort of connection.  You are not going to call on your spin class instructor when having a bad day, but knowing that a familiar face is waiting is a reminder to your psyche that you are not alone.

The key I like to focus on is NOT how big your network is.  This is not about quantity of Facebook friends.  Social capital is more about developing a disposition to develop and maintain these connections.  Therefore, we can use opportunities to practice this often.  Did you bank any social capital today?