We’re now on Spotify!

Hi everyone!

We are sure you get busy sometimes, with little time to spare reading our blogposts. Here’s a surefire way you can keep up with our posts even when you are traveling, driving, or just busy with house chores!

You can now listen to our blogposts through our One Life Only Counseling Spotify Channel!

Yes! You read it right! Just search for us using the search words, “One Life Only Counseling!” and you’ll find us our channel: One Life Only Counseling!

I hope you enjoy it! We look forward to you following our One Life Only Counseling Spotify Channel!

What is One Life Only Counseling about?

At One Life Only Counseling Services, we work with individuals, couples, and families who are dealing with concerns such as anxiety, low mood, relationship difficulties, grief, trauma-related distress, problematic habits, life transitions, and patterns that feel difficult to change.

Our approach is grounded primarily in contextual behavioral science, particularly Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT).

Rather than beginning with the question:

“What disorder does this person have?”

we are more interested in asking:

“What is happening in this person’s life?”

“What is keeping this pattern going?”

“What has this behavior come to do or protect against?”

“And what might help create more workable ways of responding?”

We Look at People in Context

People do not develop problems in a vacuum.

The ways we think, feel, relate, avoid, cope, and respond are shaped over time by our histories, relationships, environments, circumstances, and the consequences of what we have learned to do.

This means that difficulties are not automatically signs that something is fundamentally wrong with you.

Often, patterns that are painful today once made sense within a particular context.

Counseling involves understanding those patterns without reducing the person to them.

You are more than a diagnosis, a test score, a symptom, or a difficult period in your life.

You are a whole person whose choices and patterns make sense in the context of your history, relationships, circumstances, and what matters to you.

Beyond Labels

Diagnoses can sometimes be useful.

They can help people describe common experiences, communicate with other professionals, access services, or identify treatment options.

But a diagnosis is not the same thing as an explanation.

Two people with the same diagnosis may have arrived there through very different histories and may need very different forms of help.

For this reason, we try not to stop at:

“What is this called?”

We also ask:

“How does this work in this particular person’s life?”

“What situations bring it out?”

“What keeps it going?”

“What changes it?”

More Than Test Scores

Psychological tests and assessments can provide useful information, but they are snapshots taken under particular conditions.

They do not capture everything a person can become.

A score cannot fully tell us how someone will respond to a different environment, a meaningful relationship, new opportunities, better support, or changing circumstances.

Assessment is therefore most useful when it helps us understand a person more clearly—not when it becomes a permanent definition of who that person is.

Counseling With a Clear Purpose

Good counseling should help you need less counseling over time.

Counseling is not intended to become an endless process of discussing the same difficulties without movement.

Our goal is to help you:

understand the patterns that keep problems going,
recognize the contexts in which those patterns become stronger or weaker,
develop more flexible and workable ways of responding,
clarify what matters to you,
strengthen your ability to make choices consistent with those values, and
gradually become less dependent on counseling as your own capacity grows.

Progress does not always mean that difficult thoughts and emotions disappear.

Often, it means becoming better able to respond to them without allowing them to determine the direction of your life.

Values Without Imposition

Counseling should not be about making you live according to your counselor’s values.

Our role is not to tell you what kind of person you are supposed to become.

Instead, we help you examine what matters to you, what your current patterns are costing you, and what kinds of choices might help you move toward a life that is more workable and meaningful within your actual circumstances.

Your culture, relationships, beliefs, responsibilities, history, and constraints all matter.

There is no single template for a good life.

Relationships and Couples Counseling

In couples work, we primarily draw from Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT).

Rather than simply deciding who is right or wrong, IBCT looks at the patterns that develop between partners.

Many recurring conflicts are maintained not only by what each person does, but by how each partner responds to the other over time.

Couples can become trapped in cycles of criticism, withdrawal, defensiveness, pressure, resentment, or avoidance even when both genuinely want the relationship to improve.

Counseling helps make these patterns visible so that partners can respond to each other with greater awareness, flexibility, and choice.

Medication and Other Forms of Care

Counseling does not need to compete with medicine.

Medication can be helpful for some people, and psychological support can be helpful with or without medication.

The important question is not whether one approach is universally better than another.

It is whether a particular intervention is helping a particular person under their particular circumstances.

When medical or psychiatric evaluation appears appropriate, we encourage clients to consult qualified healthcare professionals.

A Science-Informed Approach

Our approach continues to evolve as the evidence evolves.

We aim to use methods that are scientifically informed, coherent with our underlying framework, and responsive to the needs and circumstances of the person in front of us.

This does not mean mechanically applying techniques because they appear in a manual.

Techniques should have a purpose.

We want to understand what a particular intervention is intended to change, why it may be useful for this person, and whether it is actually helping.

Is One Life Only a Good Fit for You?

One Life Only may be a good fit if you are looking for counseling that is:

collaborative rather than authoritarian,
attentive to context rather than focused only on labels,
grounded in contemporary behavioral science,
interested in how problems are maintained rather than merely what they are called,
flexible enough to respond to your circumstances,
and oriented toward helping you become increasingly capable of navigating life without long-term dependence on counseling.

Choosing a counselor is ultimately a matter of fit.

Credentials, methods, and professional training matter, but so does what happens when two people actually sit down together.

Do you feel heard?

Can you speak honestly?

Can difficult things be discussed without being immediately judged or reduced to a label?

Does the work help you see your situation more clearly and respond to it more effectively?

Those questions matter too.

About One Life Only Counseling Services

One Life Only Counseling Services provides counseling for individuals, couples, and families using contemporary approaches informed by contextual behavioral science, particularly Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy.

Our aim is simple:

to help people understand what keeps them stuck, develop more workable ways of responding, and build lives that increasingly require less counseling—not more.

What happens when we biomedicalize mental health?

by Nathan Chua

If we were trained to look at the ads we see everywhere from our mobile devices to the busy highways we go through in our regular commute, we can pretty much sum up what they’re selling us in one word.  Would you like to venture a guess?  That new car, that shimmering bottle of beer (that in reality is rather bitter and awful-tasting), that outfit, or even that loan that you have to pay off in a matter of a month to 20 years, are invariably supposed to make us feel good!  So what in one word are they selling us?  Happiness!

Having this in mind, the helping-people business has not been above the culture of the times.  It is understandable that for about a century now, the field of psychology has devolved into an endeavor of classifying us into a set of symptoms or syndromes.  The goal then becomes removing or lessening the four out of seven or the five out of nine signs that you are, for example, a borderline personality.  This is what experts have called symptom-reduction therapies.  Let’s remove your anxiety and depression so you can start moving on with your life, at least to the level of “normality.”  To borrow from one of the pioneers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, it’s sort of like looking at how a fountain works by trying to figure out the different colors and patterns, and seeing how these can be explained.  

Unfortunately, such endeavors have only left places where people have been almost literally drugged out of existence.  It turns out that removing these “negative” emotions has a costly side effect: not feeling at all!  There has been no science to determine that there is a germ or microbe or gene that causes mental problems.  The drugs only serve to numb us–something that dead people can do better than we who are alive.  

Too much anxiety?  Well, here’s a drug to keep you relaxed.  Too much depression, well here’s something to perk you up.  It can go so bad as to make those who take these medications dependent on them.  As another expert has said, it’s become so prevalent that in their country, the chemicals that are used in these antidepressants are now found in their water.  Moreover, there are now drugs to treat the very side effects that such medications can create.  And with trained eyes, you can sum up what these drugs are selling in one and the same word again–Happiness!  The objective is to remove those feelings and thoughts first before you can start living a worthwhile life.  

Fortunately, the group of people that Dr. Steven Hayes has assembled, have come up with something called process-based therapy.  Dr. Kirk Strosahl who likened the way symptom reduction therapies work to explaining or addressing the phenomenon of a water fountain by the numerous colors and patterns that it makes, explains it this way:  That if we were engineers studying how this fountain works, we will see that underneath it, is a simple combination of processes that a few tubes combine to do, to make it look intricate.

I have seen it in the people I have met in my work, where they come in with glassy eyes, looking enervated and lifeless.  It breaks my heart to see this.  In my work, I would love to see the exact opposite happening to my clients.  I would love to see them bubbling with energy and enthusiasm for what life has to offer.

The culture nowadays provides for an environment where people (and that includes me) are unintentionally tricked into believing that life is about feeling good.  The meaningful life has become about having the right kind of car, job, or even partner.  Got this or that and you and I will be happy all the time.  Well, first of all, that goal is impossible.  Secondly, some of the most meaningful parts of life revolve around something we did that was hard and anxiety-causing.  

I often use the following vignette to give my clients a new perspective towards life and what it is that we come to therapy for:

“If you look back at a graduation ceremony of a child, or a wedding, or any of these momentous occasions, don’t you at some point want to shed a tear?  Why?  Is it because raising a child and putting them through school was always happy and joyful?  Is culminating a long-term relationship during a wedding all just about having fun?  Or was it more like, you went through a lot of hardship and trials and somehow made it through together?  The most meaningful and purposeful moments were hard, full of ups and downs, and of unpredictable and anxiety-causing moments!  The tears would mean you somehow pulled through and made it!  You did the hard thing, the brave thing!  That’s why you come to me for counseling.  Not just to be happy but always pursuing that which gives you purpose and meaning, until you breathe your last!  And that’s how that wiser part of you says you were meant to live.” 

Goals of Counseling: What is it all about anyway?

by Nathan Chua

I remember a person who shared with me that she had been with her therapist for several years.  She felt it helped her in terms of managing her anxieties and anger issues.  She went on to share that she needed her weekly sessions to get some relief from all the emotional struggles that go on during the week.  This type of counseling is called supportive counseling which certainly has its place in the field.  In my graduate studies, I can certainly attest to the fact that I used to do this type of work in dealing with my test cases to begin my training in listening or counseling skills.  With this person who shared her experience though, the weekly sessions have become a psychological crutch, just like taking a break from her cares for at least an hour a week. *

Counseling work is more than just being supportive.  The goal is more about having clients learn, as experientially as possible, skills that can be brought to their everyday lives.  The counseling room becomes the lab where these skills are introduced and tested.           

I don’t really mean to be simplistic here but I thought the title can help us focus on knowing what goes on inside the work I do and its ultimate goals.  If we come up with something that would make it simpler and more understandable, then we would have done a better job in assisting people in appreciating what all these working sessions are for.  

If you wish to change the way things are in your relationship with your partner, then you need to try different things.  In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy linggo, we call that expanding behavioral repertoire.  It is also referred to as flexibility skills.  If you start a conversation with your spouse with a criticism or a “You” statement every time, you are more than likely to get defensiveness in return.  And so on and on you go with the circular arguments that often lead you to ultimately just avoid each other or get into a massive shouting match.  

Unfortunately, we are the creatures who think that we can do the same things over and over again and come up with the results we want, even if the evidence clearly shows the contrary.  We like to follow rules and rule-following becomes the dominant reinforcer of our behaviors, and not the actual contingencies that show up.  We can see this if we break down the process of how people get hooked to the slot machine or some form of gambling addiction.  Although it is true that there is a one in a billion chance that you might hit pay dirt, the addicted person is not aware of the consequences happening as they continue this obsessive behavior.

Taken in these terms, we in this helping profession are after you getting out of your comfort zones.  Comfort zones are places where we want to end up that give us the short term feel-good moments.  Being able to analyze your spouse and find out what’s wrong with them, can give you that sense of accomplishment that you know something they don’t.  Getting that high in front of a slot machine when you win a small pot can be intensely rewarding at the moment.  However, the long term consequences eventually show up.  You no longer become the spouse you want to be.  The more you criticize your partner, the more they snap back.  Slowly eating away at the relationship you once thought will go smoothly through the years.  The more you gamble, the more you end up piling up debts and spending countless hours unable to do anything else that could have otherwise been spent more productively and meaningfully. 

I’d like to borrow a phrase from a book to help you, my readers, understand how counseling works.  The work is about being comfortable with the uncomfortable.  Maybe it’s time you tried another approach to your spouse, even if it feels embarrassing or extremely “so not you.”  Maybe you need to sit with those urges to gamble and find out what really is behind the pull towards the addiction so that you can find alternatives to spend all that energy on.  To paraphrase a well-known ACT therapist, Kirk Strosahl, maybe there’s something more important here than what you feel. 

If you are like the person I discussed in the first paragraph of this post, then be wary.  That’s because the counseling work is making you feel comfortable!  If you start to do things that are uncomfortable with the help of your counselor, then you might be on the road to being comfortable with being uncomfortable.  That’s also when you know that your work with your counselor is worth all that time and energy.  Maybe you’re on to trying something different that moves you towards what I regularly use in my discussions with my clients: being the person you want to be, and living the life you want to live.

*The example here is an amalgam of different cases that do not refer to any person in reality.

Running Towards the Vaccine: Overcoming Vaccine Hesitancy Revised Version

by Nathan Chua

I recently came upon an article on my newsfeed that someone had a really bad reaction to the vaccine.  I can’t remember if she had either died or gone through some really frightful and horrific struggle to survive.  Asked whether she regretted taking the vaccine, she had an interesting response.  No.  

Now I am not here to talk about every single reason as to why some people are either hesitant or completely opposed to having the shot, but I am here to share with you some way that those of us who are willing to take the vaccine can encourage those who have yet to decide.  

First, there is really little use to argue about how safe the vaccine is.  We all have that confirmation bias in which we tend to believe what we want to believe.  Secondly, it is true that one could die not because of the virus but the vaccine, just as the lady I talked about in the beginning of this blogpost.

So how can we encourage a friend who’s afraid of needles, even more so a needle with a newly-developed drug, to go out there and take something that we can’t really guarantee to be 100 percent safe and effective?  What can our knowledge of the human mind tell us about what motivates people to do some things and not others?  Well, we can start with knowing how our minds can trick us into believing that some things, like taking a risk to get vaccinated, are beyond our capacity to do.  Ever woke up one day with your mind telling you that you’re too tired to get up?  Stay a few more minutes, don’t worry you’ll wake up with no time lost for work.  Well, you know what comes after.  There’s a good chance that you’d end up being late for work or just waking up with just enough time to call in sick.

However, what if we were to say that this urge to stay in bed happened while your bed had just caught fire?  Wouldn’t you jump out of it faster than a rabbit being chased by a cat?  Or if I were to say that you should get up at exactly six o’clock this morning otherwise I would kidnap your loved one and you’d never see him or her again, would you still follow the rule your mind is giving you that you’re too tired to get up?  So if it were important enough, we can certainly break such rules for the sake of saving our own life as well as a loved one.  

So what other things can someone tell a vaccine hesitant friend about why it is beneficial to them that they take it?  If you look at the example above, it tells you that you and I are capable of doing things out of the ordinary when faced with something that connects us with our values.  

Guess what the girl in the article said when asked why she didn’t regret taking the vaccine?  She said she was willing to do her part to end the pandemic that cost the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world, including her loved ones.  As human beings, we are capable of doing things beyond what logic can explain.  We are the most successful species on the planet because we cooperate to a degree that not even the ants and bees can match.  The more we do things that may not be good for ourselves but good for this and future generations, the more we thrive and extend our existence on this finite planet.  It’s part of our evolutionary DNA.  They’ve done studies that have found that societies where people are more cooperative end up becoming more successful in promoting social well-being.  

Is it true that the vaccine can have lethal side effects?  Yes, of course!  But it is also true that we are unique in our ability to do things as crazy as sacrificing our own safety to save another human being, our pets, and our planet.  

So if you have a friend who is still hesitant to take the vaccine, ask them if deep inside they see that in their own small way, they can be part of a story that ended the pandemic and brought us back to what life used to be regardless of the end results.

You can also ask your friend, “If you had a dear friend or loved one who lived in another country and was very ill, wouldn’t you take the next plane out to have just a few moments with them even if it would cost you some? And by doing so, is there a likelihood, albeit slim, that your plane may crash and you’d die in the process of wanting to say a few last words to this person?” If the answer is, “Yes, you’d go,” then what’s stopping you from getting the shot!

In action movies (and we love them, don’t we?), we’d see the hero fighting the enemy in that one last fateful battle.  We’d see the hero lose their weapons one by one and sometimes even get severely wounded by a lethal strike from the enemy, and yet keep fighting on with whatever is left in their arsenal.  

The science is still imperfect, but it’s all we have left to fight this pandemic.  You and I can ask our hesitant friends, “Like that hero we pay to see in those movies, would you be willing to join in the fight with whatever is left in our arsenal?” 

Grief Counseling Module with Russ Harris

Nathan just finished another training module with renowned author and ACT therapist from Australia, Dr. Russ Harris!

What is in your “born-again experience” and how can you make your newfound spirituality last?

by Nathan Chua

Growing up exposed to faith traditions, I remember always looking forward to spiritual retreats.  Not only do I get to have time off from school or work for free or at a discounted rate, I also get to meet new people or have more bonding opportunities with friends or schoolmates.  However, it is often a big question among retreat-goers as regards how long the effects of such a religious experience will last into their mundane lives.  Of course, being in a situation where everybody is smiling and having a break from the usual busyness of life, provides an idyllic setting that makes it easier to be kinder and more loving.  No doubt there are doubts if there is an actual spiritual side to any one of us.  Maybe we are just ordinary folks not really destined to consummate lives that are anything close to the clergy who facilitate these events.

Well, what my fellow retreat-goers and I couldn’t figure out in those days, I think some good ol’ science has posed an answer to.  In most other approaches I have encountered in my more than a decade’s long journey into counseling, I think ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy stands out as unique in its inclusion of values into what I thought was supposed to be a valueless undertaking.  Before 2019, I used to think that my job was confined to helping people find a way out of their mental miseries and the rest was up to them.  In ACT though, there is that very powerful component of pursuing a values-based life.

So how do spiritual retreats work?  Why do they have such an impact on us?  How do we keep that spiritual revival going in real world settings?  To answer the first two, these retreats function as a way to help us get back in touch with our values.  These values are chosen patterns of behaving that are consistent with our deepest aspirations for ourselves.  These values never actually leave us, they just become obscured when life as we know it, gives us the challenges of work and the important but difficult relationships we have.  

Our minds have evolved into an evaluative, problem-solving tool that takes over when challenges to these values are present.  Your kid starts to act nastily towards you.  Your boss makes a comment that you found offensive.  Your spouse forgets your birthday.  How are we supposed to still be kind and loving in these situations?  

Dr. Steven Hayes mentioned in one of his talks, that the problem-solving mode of mind can be described as analytical and predictive.  In other words, it wants to find out how we got into such a situation and how we can get out of it quickly and painlessly.  And these modes of mind are focused on the past and the future; unable to recognize what’s going on in the present.  Our minds pretty much work in a way that suggests we take the fastest way out of troublesome thoughts and feelings that come along at work and in relationships.  For example, the recalcitrant child is making us feel angry and frustrated.  The problem-solving mode of mind figures out how we got to this point by thinking that the child has been spoiled, and then suggests the quickest way to solve the spoiled child and get out of our frustrated feelings is to just try to control the child by yelling and screaming at them.  Goodbye sweet, kind, and loving us that came out of the retreat!  It is easy to see how these spiritual revivals are only as good as the few days or the few weeks after.  Simply said, it is more likely that we live out or become aware of our values or what is truly meaningful and important to us, when the situation is well-protected from the challenges of life outside these exclusive retreat enclaves.

And how do we keep the spiritual fire burning when like all good things, the retreat must come to an end?  In ACT, I have learned quite a few ways to do it.  The first step however is to get out of the mindset that all good things are about good feelings.  A good way to challenge this “good feelings equals good life” idea is to notice the not-so-good feelings that come with living our values.  Anything important to us usually comes with a price.  If it were easy then we wouldn’t really care about it.  We hurt because we care.  Our sadness from a loss is because we loved.  We get angry because something has violated our sense of justice.  We experience anxiety because there’s something worth our trouble that we want to accomplish.     

As we keep our final destinations in sight, committing to something also involves taking small steps towards them.  After having been able to return to these values, we can take action no matter how small in that direction we go.  Make it a point today to call a friend you haven’t reached out to in a while.  Go buy ice cream for your kid just because.  Stand up for yourself and don’t take a sip of alcohol in your weekly gathering with your alcoholic friends.  Small steps to break your patterns can put you back in touch with those values you cherish and also understand that situations, thoughts, and feelings have no control over you, but you do.  Start doing the uncomfortable stuff and then take time to savor the results as a reward.  It will likely be worth all the struggle! 

Every so often I do get some calls inquiring about whether I do a faith-based approach in my practice or not.  I welcome anyone and everyone from all faith traditions to come see me.  I’d rather spread the word that I am inclusive, not exclusive.  Why?  Because while we may be subject to different rules of faith, we are all subject to the same rules of science.  For me, there is no conflict.  In fact, what I am learning now from ACT as an evidence-based approach to therapy, just showed me how much traditional faith-based practices have been affirmed by the science behind ACT, albeit thousands of years late.

I always feel a sense of sadness when people turn away from what ACT science can do for them, without first investigating if it is in sync with their faith.  I hope, if you’re one who is looking for a faith-based approach to therapy reading this post, that you give me and this science I use, a chance to help you because it has tremendously helped me.  Call or better yet, text me.  I’d love to go on a journey with you towards a more meaningful and purposeful life you may have yet to experience!

A Life Worthy of Your Suffering

by Nathan Chua

“There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I recently heard a podcast interview of Kelly Wilson, one of the developers of ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  He had a well-known quote that the interviewer eagerly mentioned at the beginning of the program, which went something like this, “Values and vulnerabilities are poured from the same vessel.”

One thing that really drew me to ACT is it’s probably the only type of therapy I know of that blends values into a practice which used to be for me, more about symptom-reduction.  Much of my work before ACT was focused on this.  Getting clients to get over their problems or to understand the roots of their symptoms for them to finally start moving forward.  For example, my goals were more about helping an angry person be less angry, or a depressed person become more engaged and alive, or a shy person to be more assertive.  It was more of that feel-good about one’s self type of approach.

ACT however, therapy does not have such goals of symptom-relief.  In fact, one of the best ways to start ACT in my experience, is to have people get back in touch with their values, or qualities of being that were and are still within them, and they still aspire to demonstrate in their daily living, but have long neglected due to this overemphasis of having positive thoughts and feelings, not just most of the time but at times even all the time!  We often assume that our values leave us.  The reality however is that they often get relegated to the background and are far from our consciously pursuing them.  

So what you may ask has vulnerability got to do with our values?  It is in our values that we find the scariest parts of ourselves.  As the old ACT expression goes, we care where we hurt and we hurt where we care.  If one of our deepest aspirations for ourselves is being honest, it will be very scary to be honest.  Loving someone means getting in touch with that part of us that’s most vulnerable or hurtable.  Aiming for success means feeling those anxious moments as we pursue uncertain ends.  As one of the developers of ACT once expressed, it is about learning how to feel good rather than feel good.  

We can choose our suffering.  We can suffer because of all the efforts we make to eradicate our difficult thoughts and emotions.  Kelly Wilson has a name for this that really struck me and served as my inspiration for this piece.  He calls it valueless suffering.  Put in other words, we can ask ourselves, “Do we really want a life dedicated to feeling better or getting rid of depression or anxiety or what not?”  Now how is that going to look on top of our tombstones?  Here lies Nathan, he worked really hard to feel good about himself!  

The other option is that we suffer for what we believe in and what truly matters to us when we leave nothing but our memories behind.  This is when we suffer because we choose justice over injustice, love over fear, freedom over safety, etc., in other words, our values over shortcuts.  

Let me leave you with this quote from Viktor Frankl:

“Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in the camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” Viktor Frankl

Living our values is going to be hard, and we are bound to fail at times.  But one thing I can guarantee, it will be rewarding unlike any other thing we may have experienced, and I can guarantee it will be rewarding…up to that very last breath we take

How to be OK even when everything else is not

by Nathan Chua

Multiple deadlines, challenges at home and at work, you’re about to lose your job, someone in the family has a serious ailment, pressure is coming from all sides…life happens and is coming at you like a savage beast hungry for a fight to the death!  These are the times when people come to see me.  The world has turned against my clients and there seems to be nothing they can do that has succeeded in changing anything.  In fact, the more they try the worse the outcomes become!

It is also during these moments that our minds go on overdrive, drilling judgmental thought after judgmental thought into our consciousness.  The key here is to reach a level of awareness of what is within or outside our control.  If you ever wondered what it is that makes us feel that we are living ineffectual lives, it is our misdirected efforts to control that which is not subject to control.  

Just be the human being that we had become through billions of years of evolution!  We have an assortment of wonderful tools inside our nervous system.  Turning against these evolved functions, is like working against gravity.

Ultimately, what happens to us in life is not within our control, but our responses are.  The goal of psychology as a field of scientific study is to bring to bear what it is that makes us live ineffectually and then find ways to change or interrupt that process to get us moving towards a different, more effectual, and more life-enhancing direction.  So it really does not matter as much what happens to us, as how we face them.  How we handle ourselves in those moments is where we can bridge the gap between what we are and what we aspire to be.

The question we could keep in mind is, “Did we handle it well?”  Here’s a paraphrase of Dr. Darin Cairns words reminding us that we can be okay even when everything around us tells us we’re not.   

“I can’t promise you everyone’s going to like you.

I can’t promise you that people will always know you exist.

I can promise you this, if you like you at that time, if you liked how you lived it, then you’ll like that you were true to what you believed in.

That you liked how you handled yourself in terms of whatever you value, then you’re always ok.

You’re ok when you’re popular, you’re ok when you’re alone, you’re ok after a breakup, you’re ok when you’re scared to death, and you’re ok when you’re hurting. 

You don’t have to stand tall but you do have to stand up.  You don’t have to think that you’re better than anyone, you don’t have to have anyone praise you, but you do have to be willing to exist for you.”

So to you my friend, I can say that no matter how dire your circumstances are at this moment, take a look at yourself ahead of you by a year or so, and ask yourself, “Would your future you like how you, the present you, handled the situation?”  I hope that brings you back in touch with what truly matters for you in each and every moment that comes.  No matter how not okay these moments can get, you can be okay knowing you stood up for you! 

Listen to the podcast version of this post on Spotify! Click here!