There are millions of people around the world who struggle with disease like depression and anxiety. Millions of people united in their pain and united in their silence around it until recently. As humanity’s consciousness awakes we have become more vocal. We express our thoughts freely on twitter, we echo #metoo, and shout back against racism and all the ism’s on its back. As we wake up, we begin upon a path toward unlearning the patterns that no longer serve us well.
To be authentic is to live truly. Though living true is not an easy thing to do, the more I do it the better I feel. And so do many of my clients who struggle with depression, anxiety, and trauma brain. Just think of all the messaging you receive from birth. The programming you get from society down to well meaning parents. The covert and overt messaging of who to be and what to like. From birth you’re learning all the things it’s unsafe to be. As we grow we discover that some of those things actually fit better with who we are. That if we make decisions from a place of honesty and empathy we are happier. I believe that by following the little voice inside your head and living more intuitively you serve better in life. That the more true you are to you and what your purpose is on Earth the easier your path unfolds. While flowing and serving the people around you in a much better way. The Persian poet Rumi says, “When you walk along the way, the way appears.” I read it as the most beautiful, concise way of saying: LIVE AUTHENTICALLY. So why don’t we do it? It sounds SO easy right? Just do what you want!! SEEK PLEASURE AT ALL COSTS! No, this is not a hedonistic point of view. Living true comes with respecting everything around you. That is living in worth and coming from a place of truth. One of the biggest reasons it is so difficult is that we have hundreds of subconscious limiting beliefs bubbling around the authentic self. It takes self-reflection, honesty, and meditation to hear these beliefs. Some are loud and recognizable but many are those deeply ingrained, tiny little nuanced things you picked up along the way. Therapy can be a great way to get to know your authentic self. You hear your ideas bounced off another person, and you see yourself reflected back in someone who doesn’t know you outside of that room, and is not invested in anything other than your well being. You can figure out who you want to be. A great way to boost that learning and unlearning is to pair it journaling. Pulling that voice out and amplifying it loud enough for you to discern is a big chunk of the work. The other comes in listening to it every time it speaks. These intuitive moments don’t often make sense. If you miss it or you doubt it that’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up, just learn from it and listen the next time. These intuitive messages will get louder until you hear them. A lot of clients wonder about the difference between anxious thoughts vs. authentic thoughts. These Intuitive hits feel clear and calm, just a pop of awareness maybe fleeting. While Anxious thoughts feel shelled from a place of insecurity and fear. This is a good way to determine which is which. When we ignore this voice we can be left feeling depressed, anxious, far from our true self and calling. Living authentically and following these moments of truth reflected back you will lead you to be more open. More open to give and to receive. Id like to leave you with a journal entry to get to know your authentic self a little better today. Let’s journal about the AUTHENTIC SELF- I’d like you to find time to get quiet. 15–30 minutes of sitting quietly, maybe after a bath or shower. Sit with your thoughts, allowing them to come without judgment and redirection while thinking about the question, then write: Where do your thoughts go during the day? What do you think about the most? Can you do a little more of that everyday? How can you incorporate it?
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First, I’d like to acknowledge my place in this. I have been born with the immense privilege of white skin and light eyes. I have not lived with the injustices that Black people in America (and worldwide) experience daily. I have shoplifted from stores, walked into abandoned homes, I’ve been pulled over by the police countless times as a reckless teenager and yet, I managed to walk away alive. Though I have not personally known what it feels like to always be in fear that you will be targeted because of your skin, I can try to empathize. I can imagine the sort of trauma you’d live with everyday when you are constantly afraid that you will be in danger because of your skin color. The pain it causes, the behaviors you take on as your brain tries to protect you while you process the pain in a culture that has been gaslighting you to feel as if you have none and no right to, because slavery was abolished many moons ago. As if when we made things illegal the pain disappeared like magic into thin air. As if the systems changed with the law to create true equality and not instead continue to target humans based on race.
As a culturally sensitive and empathetic person I truly believed that I understood this. I felt my work in community mental health and the foster care system made me an ally and an advocate. I grew up as a daughter of an immigrant family. An immigrant family from an Islamic country. Oh, I have felt the racism rampant in America. I have been othered and ostracized at times and felt that my experience was similar. Mostly unaware of the privilege my skin tone has given me. The usual response I get from White Americans when they become aware of my ethnicity is, “oh wow you don’t look Iranian. Are you half?” As if people can only be boxed in to categories of race. As if I had looked like my darker ancestors I would not be valued but clearly I must have had SOME European in me making me worthy. There are MILLIONS of Iranians with pasty skin and green eyes like me. But I realized that this was a mistake I had been making too. That I had been saying “we” when I referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as if I was not hiding safely behind my own white skin. I had been equating my experiences with those of the Black community and that was wrong and totally unfair. They are vastly different. This week I took on the #amplifymelantedvoices challenge on my instagram page. I vowed to stay silent, not promoting my own content or voice. I began to follow more accounts of black men and women in my communities, sharing their work and hoping to teach my followers, my family and friends, about what it means to be an ally. I didn’t realize how much I would learn about myself and my own racism in the course of a week. I began to read Ibram X Kendi’s book How to be An Antiracist. I looked back on experiences and conversations I have had in the past. My eyes truly open for the first time to how deeply ingrained these issues can be. I felt the white guilt for having sat at tables and broken bread with people who I knew to be racist. For having bit my tongue or laughed at their “jokes” for fear of being other-ed myself. I feel ashamed for not speaking up then but I will now. I felt I had understood what #blackoutTuesday was meant to be when I shared that I would be muted on Sunday evening. However, come Tuesday morning my feed became filled with little black boxes from everyone, their mom, and their dog’s IG accounts, I was so confused. I posted a blackbox, then deleted it, then posted it again, then deleted again and chose to stay deleted as the message became clear. It was an opportunity to AMPLIFY MELANATED VOICES not to wash them out with black boxes. I continued instead to share helpful resources, charities to donate to, and petitions to sign to find some semblance of justice for those who have lost their lives. I cried with clients and friends, I attended a peaceful protest, and continued to expand my knowledge on how to be an antiracist ally. Meanwhile, I saw some white friends and brands go back to business as usual, posting selfies and promos of lip kits (not her specifically her- you know what I mean). This enraged me. How could people just move on? Well, I figure they may be the same people who just up and decided that they were over Covid too. I hope that they realize that BLACK LIVES MATTER is not just a viral trend. That black lives matter IRL and not just on the internet for clout. That they continue to do the work PUBLICLY AND PRIVATELY. That their black box is not doing anything at all. That black people’s LITERAL lives and well being are on the line. I hope they do not hide cushy behind their white skin. Kendi writes that to be an antiracist, “requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination”. This week has been the start of a true look into myself and the mistakes I have made. I will continue to do the work, I will say the wrong thing from the right place, and I will change. I will point out racist ideology or comments that friends and family make. Not as an attack but as a way to educate and begin to shift beliefs. I can and will do better. I hope that you do too. We have seen the positive change that protests have already brought forth but this is a worldwide movement that will not end until change happens from the ground up. In America, everything from our education system to our justice and police systems need change. It will be a long road with many opportunities to learn and it starts from within as do most moments of growth and change. Learning, expanding, and evolving take time. They require patience and kindness toward self and others. Our consciousness is shifting from an individual and collective space and it is important that we continue to have empathy and utilize our voices in solidarity with the Black community. I've been struggling to find the right words to say. But not saying anything at all feels like complicity. Day after day, I am appalled (though not surprised) to hear, see, and experience the racism in this country. When will it end? When will all the 'woke' people realize there is still so much work to be done? It is not enough to make this post and say a few words. I want to actively work against racism. I stand in solidarity with the black people in this country being murdered in plain sight again and again. For simply being alive. I will continue to educate myself on how this can be done. For now, I'm going to shut up and listen to people of color on what they need and what their experience has been. I share with you all again that empathy is a skill. A skill that can be taught and that can be learned. Many white people apparently never learned it. They reached the top from climbing on the backs of indigenous peoples. We will work against them and their ignorance. Racism stems from fear (and extreme hate) we need to educate each other and find communion and commonality in the human experience.
To speak on this issue and not discuss generational trauma would not make sense. They go hand in hand. Generational trauma is trauma that can be passed down through generations. This happens in all families with trauma but is heightened in families whose ancestors have been marginalized, oppressed, beaten, and killed. Resulting in younger generations to remain in the cycle of trauma though the issues have "long past". Remember unprocessed trauma doesn't just dissipate, it stays stored in the body of mothers and fathers forced to shove it deep within themselves to be able to survive. The body remembers, always. There is a ton of epigenetic research on this. How our brain and our blood literally transforms from pain and we hold trauma in our genes as it passes to the new generation. This has been occurring in black families for centuries. From being torn away from home to be shipped and sold into slavery oceans away. For modern black Americans who grew up in the time of an "official" end to slavery but had grandparents and great uncles whose lives were spent in the terror of growing up in the time of slavery. To act as if the impact of slavery ended when slavery was written out of law is a disservice to the trauma experienced by an entire people. We celebrate MLK day as if he wasn't assassinated. We celebrate Columbus day as if he didn't pillage and colonize a land that must certainly did NOT "belong to you and me". So what we are seeing now is consistent with symptoms of trauma. This isn't exclusive to black families of course. Families of holocaust survivors and Jewish families in general have higher rates of anxiety disorders. This has been whitewashed into the comedic archetype of the neurotic jew in Hollywood. While black Americans have been stereotyped as angry. These aren't just funny anecdotes. This is generational trauma. And as a society, we have been ignorant to it for too long. Justice for George, Ahmaud, and Breonna, I hope it will come. But the grief experienced by their friends and family, will not end. Please let's not allow another black man or woman to be killed for being black. Beautiful image from Pinterest. Let's drop some psycho-education for #mentalhealthawarenessmonth.
Often times a person living with mental illness can be impacted by more than one disorder, this is called comorbidity. For example, you may be diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) but also have varying symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). This is SUPER common, though symptoms tend to be more severe than they would be if isolated. Treatment would not be drastically different but medication would be important to get right. When you work with a psychotherapist, diagnosis is not the main focus. The goal here would be to provide you with coping skills while working to get down to the root and underlying cause of the symptoms. Dual-diagnosis (or co-occuring disorder) is when a person has a mental health condition along with a substance use disorder. This makes sense as people generally use substances to self-medicate and cope with the symptoms of their diagnosis. That's why it's so important to heal your mental health when working with addiction and to learn healthier coping skills to manage your condition. If symptoms stay low, you decrease the need to self-medicate in the first place. Please know that you are not alone. In the United States, nearly 1 in 5 adults live with mental illness. While 1 out of 10 Americans have a drug or alcohol addiction. There is no shame in getting help, in fact I see it as boss move of hope. You deserve to live a healthier life- don't let the shame of seeking treatment stop you from that. Perfect image to illustrate what happens in the therapy room. The therapeutic relationship is one of the most important aspects of good therapy. The more comfortable you feel with your therapist the easier it is to do the hard work of spilling your guts and speaking your truth. One way I try to ensure my clients feel comfortable is by being authentic in the room. This means discussing my own life and experience at times, speaking about current events, or one that always has my clients wide eyed and cracking up is, hearing me curse. I think it helps them recognize that I'm a person too. I'm not a high priestess sitting and passing judgment on you. Rather, I'm here to hold sacred space and guide you through your own thoughts and feelings, pushing you (gently) toward your authentic and most actualized healing self. The therapeutic relationship thus becomes a place to work through your issues, to repair broken pieces of self, and to experience a secure attachment. If you have been able to form a secure bond with your therapist then you are capable of doing so with others. Do not let this connection be a deterrent to getting help. If you feel judged or misunderstood by your therapist, SPEAK UP. If you don't feel connected with them, don't hesitate to say so and ask for referrals or use Psychology Today's therapist finder to find someone more in line with you and your style of relating. It may take a couple tries, just like anything worthwhile.
With LA County extending the shelter in place order for another month we are WFH (in leggings) for at least the next month, which brings up many new challenges in work life. If you live at home with a partner, roomie, or family you might be thinking about pulling your hair out. Instead follow some of these to tips to set and keep healthy boundaries when working from home:
- set a designated space for each of your "offices" - set a time for lunch, if possible set the same times so you can meet in "the break room" to have meals together - establish a working guideline for calls and privacy - if you have kids schedule day care and work time separately, maybe you can trade off on who works and who parents - maintain a no news during working hours rule - get up every 2 hours and break for 10-15 mins> do a guided meditation, call a friend, get some fresh air, have some vitamins or citrus to keep immunity up - communicate that though you are working in close quarters you still need "you time" and space out when and how you can take that - use I statements to communicate what you need: "I feel frustrated when I'm on a zoom call and I can hear you playing video games in the back. Please respect that I am working." - remember this is TEMPORARY, release expectations of perfection and focus on doing what you can Attachment begins with the infant-caregiver bond but it colors your whole world all the way into adult relationships. Learning about your attachment style will help you understand those deeply ingrained early childhood triggers and move toward a more secure attachment. Those with a secure attachment style have stronger, better bonds with people in their lives and are great communicators. They are able to form healthy relationships and hold appropriate boundaries of dependence and independence. Most importantly, they feel secure within themselves as the caregiver-infant bond also lends itself to the internalized voice.
If a child receives consistent attunement to their needs they learn how to best make sense of the world, how to trust, and how to self-regulate. This pattern becoming predictable helps the child interpret stress and learn to self-soothe, knowing their needs will be met rather than activating dysregulation in fear of abandonment or rejection. In childhood dysregulation looks like a fussy baby or a tantruming toddler and later in life it looks like an inability to manage emotions, to handle disappointment, rejection, or stressful situations. Trauma or inconsistent emotional, physical attunement can lead to insecure attachments making for difficult relationships with self and others. The good news? You can heal your attachment style through exploration in therapy in order to have better relationships and a more secure internal voice. There are two different styles of insecure attachment: anxious and avoidant. Those with an avoidant attachment, whether single or partnered always work to keep others at a distance. They long for a connection but feel a deep rooted aloneness and unconscious fear of abandonment and rejection that stops them. Their primal brain has reasoned that getting too close to people equals danger. An avoidant will suppress their feelings often ending in disconnection, loneliness, and pessimism. If you have dated an avoidant you may have had a really great date that you felt was emotionally intimate only to realize that your partner is now pulling away or becomes less responsive. They are feeling the closeness and a little bit afraid (a lotta bit). On the outside avoidants exude a level of independence and confidence that seems carefree. What it really is is a defense mechanism and a false sense of independence they have created to stave off the fear of their needs not being met. Instead they have simply chosen to suppress their needs and maintain distance in their relationships while internally longing for connection. This shows up as “deactivating techniques” in relationships when a partner romanticizes their time of singledom (forgetting how lonely they were), or maintains fantasies about a happier life and relationship with someone else. People who are in committed relationships but maintain fantasies about a “phantom ex” or have a list of unrealistic expectations in a partner. This sort of behavior keeps them at a safe distance for the price of true connection from others and themselves. Avoidants are uncertain, afraid of change, doubtful of others and their own choices. It is hard for them to know what the right thing is because they are constantly torn between the feeling of wanting to move toward closeness and the fear of rejection. Through therapy and becoming aware of your triggers and fears of true intimacy you can move toward a more secure attachment style. Avoidants are pulled toward anxiously attached people, which is a recipe for disaster masked in feelings of passion and chemistry, but they would do well with those who are securely attached. A securely attached person can help an avoidant communicate and can push for more intimacy while holding the right amount of space. The second type of insecure attachment is referred to as anxious attachment. Anxiously attached people suffer greatly in relationships, They never seem to be satisfied and are driven by fears of not being enough. They attach rather quickly but have difficulty fully trusting people in their lives. They are often seconds away from ending relationships but don’t for fear of being alone. They are unique in the sense that their primal brains have been hard wired to sense danger. Studies show that anxiously attached people are acutely aware of non-verbal communication and changes in tone and are able to accurately sense when their partners are pulling back. HOWEVER, they mess it up because of the amount of anxiety they experience when this happens. They go into “protest behaviors” trying to reestablish contact and receive attention. They jump to conclusions, react quickly, and in doing so they get it wrong. The best way for anxiously attached people to deal with conflict in their relationships is : TO WAIT. To let all their conclusions come and go and while doing coping strategies to manage the discomfort. Wait an hour and you’ll be much happier with your relationships and so will your partner. Anxious attachers struggle with this because they are not great self-soothers. They will be triggered and activated until receiving reassurance from their partners or friends that things are ok. They struggle to communicate their needs for fear of them not being met and thus being left alone. Instead they sense the danger are not able to communicate it and go into protest behaviors like: withdrawing, ignoring phone calls, keeping score of time in between messaging, they can be manipulative, and prone to incite jealously. Protest behaviors can be harmful for relationships and cause the anxiously attached person a lot of discomfort. These are people who often date multiple partners at once and are never fully satisfied in any of their relationships. It keeps them from reaching true intimacy but this is often unconscious to them as they feel distracted enough from their suppressed needs by forming many attachments. They would do well with securely attached people but find this person boring. We’ve all known someone who meets a “good on paper” person but doesn’t feel interested. They feel bored because they’re attachment style isn’t triggered and they take this to mean there is a lack of passion or chemistry. When really their needs are being met by an available partner and they do not know what to do with that. Anxious attachment styles are pulled toward the avoidant instead. Their triggers fit together so well but they have chaotic cyclical relationships. When these two styles come together they are able to reaffirm their beliefs about relationships. An anxious person wants closeness and intimacy, while an avoidant will want to maintain distance, and round and round they go until it becomes unbearable. They both fear the same thing, aloneness. Avoidants believe they are truly alone and anxious attachers are terrified of being alone (needs not being met.) Then there are the securely attached. Where are these people? And how did they get to be this way? Secures were raised with consistent care and attunement to their needs and have internalized safety and became hardwired to believe that their partners will be loving and responsive (what a concept right?!) They don’t run from intimacy and are able to get comfortably close while still maintaining their independence. They are secure in themselves and in their ability to handle conflict and express their needs. Anxious or avoidant persons who are in relationships with secure people are able to heal their attachment style and they report the same levels of happiness that two secures in a relationship report. However, this also means that a secure person in a relationship with an insecurely attached person can be made “worse”. Most of time a secure person will recognize that something is off in their partner and the relationship will be short lived because again, they believe that are deserving of respect and emotional intimacy. The best thing that an insecurely attached person can do when working to heal their attachment is to find a partner with a secure attachment style. Someone who can sit with you and understand your activating/deactivating techniques. To recognize when you’re lashing out and be able to redirect you in a compassionate and loving way. But the breadth of the work has to be done individually. As an attachment based therapist I work with clients to heal their attachment triggers through exploring caregiver relationships and raising awareness about the activating or deactivating techniques they use. It is important to become aware of your unconscious needs. If you have no idea, how can you ever communicate it with a partner? A therapist can help you learn how to communicate effectively. Communicating is scary for insecurely attached people because their underlying belief is that they will be rejected/abandoned for having needs. It is important to remember a securely attached partner will be able to hold space for your needs. How great would it be for an avoidant to be able to say “I need space” without fear or for an anxious to be able to say, “I feel jealous when you X and I need you to Y” in a non blaming but assertive way. I hope if love is on your mind today that you can sit with yourself and explore the triggers you have and think about what would help you move toward security. But most importantly, I hope you find confidence in yourself to ask for you need. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I am in a constant space of thinking about happiness. Happiness in my client's lives, their relationships, and of course in my own. I've come to realize that happiness is an elusive feeling we've all been chasing or being sold from a young age. We forget that happiness is just an emotion and emotions are temporary. They pass through you like trains coming in to pick up their next passenger. Think back to when you last felt angry. Do you still feel that way? The heart pounding, palms sweaty (mom's spaghetti), blinding rage has probably passed now and you feel calm. Would you expect to feel anger for the rest of your life? No, yet people expect to "get to a place in their life" where they feel happy all the time. This is just a disservice to the moments of happiness that you will feel. It doesn't work like that.
Don't strive to be happy, as it is fleeting. You will become disillusioned and unsatisfied in your life if you expect the feeling to last forever. Strive to live fully in moments of joy, strive to be fulfilled and productive. Strive to be kind and grateful. Give when you can and say no when you want to. Set boundaries around draining relationships and practice self-care. This is the only recipe for happiness I know. So many of my clients come in saying, "I don't feel happy" and while depression can be the happiness sucker, we later find through exploration that they aren't feeling the sadness or negative emotions either. They've numbed out to avoid the pain but in doing so it becomes nearly impossible to feel the "good" emotions. If you want to feel happy you have to know what sadness feels like. This can be difficult as we fear giving in to the sadness. As if, if we feel sad we may never feel happy again. Sadness is not all encompassing this way (depression can be). Sadness, just like happiness, is an emotion that is temporary. So the next time sadness comes into your life don't run from it. Sit with it, lean into it, and thank it, knowing that it will pass and maybe as it goes it will leave you feeling happy for a moment or two. I find that giving in to moments of sadness can be refreshing. That a good cry creates room in my heart and my head for laughter and joy. I've come into the habit of playing really loud dance music after sitting with my sadness and I've found that the emotion leaves as quickly as it came. That I can feel happiness mere moments after bawling on the bathroom floor. I encourage you to find your own ritual around sitting with the difficult emotions. I hope you don't feel discouraged by this, as it does not mean you will not feel contentment in your life. You can cultivate a "happy" life by managing expectations, by following through with your "mental health checklist", and by feeling heavy emotions to lead to a healing and content life. |
Roxana Karimi
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