Tag: Psychotherapist

Mind Rules

by Nathan Chua

Don’t touch that!  Don’t go there or you’ll hurt yourself!  These are just some of the rules that anyone who grows old enough will learn perhaps during the early childhood stages.  Such rules are important to ensure our safety and survival.  It is precisely this capability that allows us to not always have to rely on our experience to know that something can threaten our physical safety.  This has made us as a species such a success.  In fact, so successful that we dominate the planet!  Ever wondered why such helpless beings as we, with no enlarged fangs or sharp claws, can keep menacing predators away?  We have built cities to surround us and keep us away from such threats.  Otherwise we’d be dinner for some of them!

These rules however, only work when we are dealing with computer problems, external threats of a physical nature, and when we want to fix a leak in the house.  Our minds are pretty useful when it comes to such problems.  Unfortunately, our minds are also unable to discern when these rules are handy, and when they are less helpful or even unhelpful.  In ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) linggo we call this phenomenon fusion.  It is when we fuse with our thoughts that we run into trouble.  Fusing means we either fight away these thoughts or we follow what these thoughts say we should do.  

In the first nine years of working in this field, I can see the parallels between this perspective and my work regarding emotions.  We need to be able to feel our emotions because they can serve as a guide for better living.  From a cognitive behavioral standpoint, it gives us another angle from which to view such phenomena.  Why do we explode in anger?  Or shrink our lives into depression and anxiety?  Where have we learned this strategy that the best way to live our lives is to shirk our unpleasant emotions and grab on to the pleasant ones.  The rule states that emotions are bad for your health; get rid of bad feelings.

Here are some ways that we fuse with our thoughts about emotions.  We fuse with the idea that some emotions are bad and that they need to be eradicated.  Feeling good is not a valued outcome in life.  There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to feel good, but our emotions shift constantly throughout the day.  Having that feel good target in our lives can only lead to one frustration over another.  

And because we have these evaluations about our feelings, we also derive a new rule that tells us that feelings can become causes of our behavior.  As children, it was quite normal for parents to believe that being able to predict their child’s feelings meant having more control of the child’s behavior.  They would not want the child to be angry because anger normally leads to physical altercations.  

Sadly the rule that some feelings are bad or that some feelings can cause us to do something bad takes its roots from here.  The results of such rule-based decisions about our behavior can be constricting to life.  Here are some examples:  

  • I need to feel confident before I can mingle with the people in this party.
  • I can’t exercise if I feel lazy.
  • I feel depressed so I have to go get some comfort food.

Dr. Russ Harris has a great example of how we can actually see that these rules aren’t true, and even if they were true, they’re not helping us live the lives we are aiming for.  If someone pointed a gun at you and told you that you should not feel anxious, how successful do you think you may be?  But if someone did the same thing to you and told you to sing and dance while a gun is pointed at your head, you’d probably be more successful.

So next time your mind gives you these thoughts that somehow you should get rid of “bad” feelings first before you can get on with your life, stop for a moment and see how helpful or unhelpful this thought is.  Are your feelings stopping you from applying for that promotion?  Are your feelings stopping you from calling that person you want to date?  Are your feelings telling you that you’re a loser when it comes to losing weight?

The key here is to learn how to handle such difficult feelings that come with life’s challenges, more effectively.  We normally do great when things are going well in our lives.  It is when we encounter the harsh realities of life that living our lives the way we want to, becomes a challenge.

Letting Go!

by Nathan Chua

It’s become a buzzword nowadays.  Let go!  And be free!  However, what does letting go really mean?  Where is the wisdom in this?  Does it mean that we should just throw up our hands in surrender?  Submit to whatever life throws our way?  Does it mean just going with the flow and not pursuing what we want?

In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a better life is one where the process is itself, the outcome.  Outcomes can be very unpredictable.   We may choose to develop a romantic relationship with someone but end up being rejected.  We can burn the midnight oil and yet fail in a job application, a promotion, or an important exam. 

The first step to letting go is to understand what we can and cannot control.  For example, an angry spouse, or a recalcitrant teenaged child with the accompanying unpleasant thoughts and feelings that these important relationships bring, are hard to control.  As our focus moves towards controlling our feelings and thoughts and the significant people in our lives, many of us eventually discover how far we have gone away from the person we had always wanted to be.  Some of us may have had experiences of these rude awakenings.  I know I have!    

Letting go means that we can drop the struggle with things that are outside of our control: our own thoughts and feelings, circumstances, and other people.  A popular metaphor is the tug of war that happens in our heads.  We are constantly drawn towards fighting this war between how we want to be and how we don’t want to be.  It feels like an angel and a devil taking up space inside of us, with each one pulling on either side of the rope.  We desperately want the angel in us to win this war!  We get trapped in this perpetual struggle, unaware about the only way we can end this war within, which turns out to be simply dropping the rope, or dropping the struggle, or letting go of the struggle!

The Chinese Finger Trap provides us with an excellent metaphor of letting go:

So in the psychological sense, letting go is about letting go of the struggle with our own thoughts and feelings that come with what life brings to the table for us.  Let life be as it is and treat it with a sense of wonder.  

Allow these unpleasant thoughts and feelings to go through you and start to choose what actions you would like to take in dedication to your lifelong values.  Values are shown by the choices you make that bring you to what you wish to stand for in any given moment.  Live according to what is in your control and let go of your struggles with pain, in order to find out how rich and meaningful life can be, even with all of its pains.       

Values vs. Virtues: What’s the difference?

by Nathan Chua

Have you ever felt like an outcast where people seem to have their morals in place and you have not?  Do you sometimes feel like a misfit in a deeply religious group?  Everyone around you seems sure of what is judged to be right or wrong, good or bad, and you are left out not knowing why you feel restless about such strongly held beliefs.  

The good news is, you are not alone.  How many of us have felt like we held certain values that go against what is commonly accepted as correct and acceptable to the culture and society?  Many!  

The key here lies in how we understand the terms that we use.  We often think that there must be something wrong with our values since they don’t jibe with what is held out to be correct by society.  I am not saying that I have the official definition of the terms I will be using here.  This post is only a means to help you, my dear readers, find a place of comfort where your values can find legitimacy no matter how outlandish you think they might be. 

Let me use a couple of terms that a foremost expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy uses to distinguish two words that are normally taken to mean the same: values and virtues.  

A value is something that can be summed up in one word.  If it needs to be said in more than just one word, then it turns into a rule or a virtue as we are using it here.  One can hold being loving, caring, compassionate, accepting, assertive, etc as a value.  Once it turns into, “I have to be loving all the time,” then it becomes a rule.  Values are meant to be held lightly and as a kind of being in every moment, but nonetheless, can be pursued determinedly.  

Here’s a metaphor to give you an idea what a value is.  If you ever liked mountain climbing, you would know that your goal of reaching the top is separate from the process of reaching it.  You climb a mountain with the goal of reaching the top, but the goal is not just about reaching the top but to experience the process of reaching the top.  In other words, you may or may not reach the top, as mountain climbing can be a rather risky activity, but it doesn’t matter as much as simply climbing the mountain.  If you hold on too much to the goal of reaching the top to gain a sense of accomplishment or belonging, then you lose the value of experiencing the journey itself or the activity of mountain climbing.

Virtues on the other hand, sound more like goals or rules to follow.  Again, I am not talking here about a dictionary definition.  This is about distinguishing two ideas to help us understand how values-directed and virtues-directed living can be distinguished from one another.  Virtues have a sense of conformity in them.  It can come in the form of a statement like, “I should be nice, otherwise people won’t like me.”

So here is how it works in our daily experiences, a value may not be accepted as a virtue in certain cultures.  For example, you may have the value of being assertive, but the culture may not see that as a virtue.  You and I can run into some conflicts with these types of long-held beliefs about what is acceptable or not.  

I am quite sure that you have been in some rather difficult situations before wherein you had this feeling that you were doing right by your own conscience, but seem to be unwelcomed by many.  Fear not!  Anything that we hold as important will come with the pain of not finding it manifested in our own lives as well as the others around us or in the larger community even.  If we care about equality of opportunity, we will find pain in seeing ourselves and others that are not given such opportunities.  When we care about life, we will find death fearful.  When we care about friendships, we will feel anxious and awkward in social situations.  When we care about people who have disabilities, we will care about accessibility of public places.  

So take heart my friends!  For anything that grieves you from the pain of past experiences, you will find something beautiful inside you that you may have failed to see.  You may care about the rights of oppressed groups because a part of your history tells you that there is a person there behind your eyeballs that saw that oppression in the past!  For any kind of past sufferings you have experienced, you will find a gift.  And that gift may very well be love, which in the end sums up much, or even all of what we’d like to live for anyway.

What makes our difficult emotions more difficult?

by Nathan Chua

All of us go through this.  We feel some anxiety, sadness, anger, and so on and seem to dig ourselves deeper into the abyss of unpleasant emotions.  

There is a reason why we see ancient traditions of meditation where wise people sit for periods of time.  Part of the exercise is to be able to stay with difficult thoughts and the feelings that come along as they sit.  In fact the type of meditation that is referred to here is called just sitting.  

Contrary to the logic that we so often use so well with problems that are external to us, our struggle lies not in our difficult emotions, but with how we relate to them.  As kids, we were trained by our parents or other guardians to show mostly feelings that are labeled as positive.  These are rules we learn early when we are first taught to listen to and recognize words that refer to positive or negative consequences to our behaviors.  Mom and dad don’t like it when we are sad and crying because such feelings attached to the behavior get in the way of a quiet night watching a movie or a party with friends.  Your crying loudly in church or a friendly gathering doesn’t allow for the adults in the room to focus on what is going on.  

As a result, we learn to judge our own feelings as bad and in turn judge ourselves as bad too for having such unwanted emotions.

Dr. Russ Harris gives us a list of how our mind judges our feelings and make them worse:

  • “Why am I feeling like this?”
  • “What have I done to deserve this?”
  • “Why am I like this?”
  • “I can’t handle this!”
  • “I shouldn’t feel like this.”
  • “I wish I didn’t feel like this!” 

The key here is to be able to describe our feelings instead of evaluating them.  Evaluating our feelings means we begin a struggle with them and think that the only way forward to doing that important project is to get rid of such feelings.  Let me be okay first before I go on with my day and my plans.  I will only go for that promotion or approach that person I want to date when I feel confident enough. 

Unfortunately, these judgments against our own feelings become invisible barriers that stand in the way of us pursuing that very thing that would make us feel like we are living in accordance with what we aspire to be.  We go from a natural pain that life gives us when we end up in tough situations, to a manufactured pain or a pain that we create for ourselves wherein we become entangled in a war inside our minds…while precious time ticks away.  Eventually, that promotion goes to someone else at work or that date gets involved with someone else.  

Describing our painful emotions on the other hand, allows us to approach difficult feelings with curiosity.  As we do so we are more able to allow such feelings to hang around for a while and then come and go as they please.  Note though that we have no control over how long or if these unpleasant feelings will stay or not.  The more we try to control them and want to get rid of them, the more they linger and make us end up being at war with our own thoughts and feelings.  

Just remember, we are not our histories, they are just a part of us.  Hating our own past and wishing they were different means being at war with something we can learn from.  Our histories can either enrich our lives or be our worst enemies.  We just have to choose. 

One Life Only Counseling Services provides an evidence-based, transdiagnostic approach to counseling with proven results in addressing a variety of mental health concerns. We provide both in person and online video counseling as well as soft skills training workshops for corporate and non-profit organizations.

Of Wounds and Arrows: How Couples Conflicts Can Win Closeness

by Nathan Chua

It can be bewildering for some of us to think about conflicts as opportunities for closeness.  How can these instances of excruciating feelings of anger, hurt, and aggravation turn into lovey-dovey moments?  The key is not in what you fight about or why you fight, but in how.

The problem begins with a slow but inevitable part of being around someone for a significant period of time.  It’s an unnoticeable slide that couples take as they begin to get off the stars in their eyes to a more realistic view of their partners.  Slowly, differences emerge from the shadows as if they were never there when they first met.  Unfortunately, this begins a cycle of conflicts that not only produces conflicts about conflicts but also the conflicts that they create out of discussing such conflicts.  In other words, it not only becomes a fight about differences but also a fight about the way they fight.

This kind of relating can either produce feelings of helplessness and a surrender to a comfort zone that doesn’t increase closeness and retains the status quo, or lead to the eventual end of the couple’s relationship.  Either one of the couple walks out believing that there is no hope for the relationship.  At times, couples will just stay with unfulfilling relationships that not only gets in the way of a meaningful relationship, but also hamper their capacities to leave their kids a lasting image of a healthier way to deal with the conflicts that they will eventually have with others of their generation.  After all, as some experts put it, the best couples make the best parents.  No amount of parenting skills learned through self-help books and workshops can replace what children see in their parents when they’re fighting.

If couples can take time to record their fights and listen and analyze what one said that led to the other saying something more hurtful, someone with an understanding of how fights escalate will recognize that most of their remarks focus on what the other person is doing wrong, doing too much of, or not doing enough of.  Alas, couples become caught up lawyering for themselves in the arguments.  Left unchecked, this exchange becomes an unwinnable war between the couple.

A group of experts have come up with an easy to remember slogan that couples can take to their disagreements.  To paraphrase, “Focus on the wound, not the arrows.”  This means that in order to stop the vicious cycle of arguments, couples would need to come from a more vulnerable spot.  Instead of criticizing the partner for something they evaluate as wrong or defective in their partner, he or she can open up with softer emotions that describe how some behaviors of the partner affect them.  

For instance, instead of saying, “You never keep your word about coming home in time for dinner,” an aggrieved partner can say, “I feel lonely having to have dinner alone and neglected when I don’t get an update if you’re coming home for dinner on time or not.”

From this standpoint, the offending partner will tend to be more open to listening than being focused more of being on the defensive.  Defensiveness is usually the second step towards escalation and unless you’re with a partner who’s as calm as the Dalai Lama, a criticism or sharp rebuke will usually be met by an equally strong defense. 

Sharing vulnerabilities usually stops the attack-defend cycle.  A vulnerable partner can be met with more compassion and empathy.  This is when a couple can experience a closeness and connection that they have long missed since their early days of dating.  It may be scary and our minds will come up with all sorts of reasons not to be vulnerable, but for as long as there are no physical or threatening verbal attacks involved, it is well worth the try.  Eventually, you will see that conflicts lead to a closeness that has been absent for so long.       

How do we objectify ourselves?

by Nathan Chua

It’s too hard.  I can’t.  I must.  I should or should not.  These are just some signs of a person (1) believing in the reasons that the mind offers or (2) signs of objectifying him or herself.

Here’s a test for how reasons may not be as powerful as we think they are.  Think of a few reasons why you can’t stop your addiction to binge watching movies or television series online.  Now, think of a few reasons why you shouldn’t be wasting countless hours of your life watching them.  Now consider this, if reasons did make us do things, then all of us would have been doing the right things all the time because they come from the right reasons.  So in effect, reasons are just thoughts and nothing more.  It is up to us how we behave whether such reasons exist or not.

And how is it that we objectify ourselves?  Let’s take for example someone who was dear to us in our family dies.  Here’s where we play the I should or I must game.  I should be able to buck up and keep doing what I’m doing.  I mustn’t show any emotions for being emotional at this time is inimical to myself and the people surrounding me.  If we look deeper, this means that we ought to have a switch inside of us pretty much like a robot or a computer.  Our thoughts tell us that we ought to be as efficient and switchable as that desktop in front of us.

Unfortunately, this almost always doesn’t work, because how do we accomplish switching ourselves off?  Well, that trip to the bar with flowing alcohol is one way.  Others are getting lost in busyness at work or at home, comfort eating, and of course, binge watching.  Some of us go to pills that doctors prescribe to get rid of unpleasant feelings.  All of these do serve the purpose of making us feel better for a while, but ultimately comes with a pretty huge price tag, a chunk of our lifetime spent on what only matters to make us feel good temporarily, and little or nothing to do with a meaningful and purposeful life.  Like how empowering does it feel to have a bunch of pills in your pocket to kill your depression or anxiety?

We also objectify ourselves with the roles that we create for ourselves.  I have always been the wedge that kept mom and dad away from getting at each other’s throats.  I have always been the successful migrant who keeps the family finances together.  I would always be the caretaker of the clan.  These are just some of the many roles that stick to us like cattle branding.

We even objectify ourselves by the values we aspire to live by.  We use our values to bludgeon ourselves.  I must always be kind and generous.  I have no option but to say yes all the time because to say no means I would be a bad person or a hypocrite.

The one thing that most of us forget regularly and quite often, is that the challenge of this life is not being in control of our inner workings all the time like a computer or a robot.  

The challenge is being a person, being human.

You and I are human because we hurt when we lose someone we love.  You and I are human when we make mistakes that make us feel we haven’t lived consistently with what truly matters to us.  You and I are human because we exist beyond what our minds tell us who we are.  You and I are human because we do things that our rational minds cannot comprehend.  And that something incomprehensible is the thing that is most akin to being human, and that’s none other than our capacity to choose the hard stuff for no other reason but love, and caring for ourselves and others.