O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

Mindfulness in Everyday LifeSometimes we can’t ignore external signals to be mindful. My puppy is a reminder. When I am absorbed in a task, usually at the kitchen table on my laptop, she will quietly move into position next to the chair and nudge my leg with a toy. If I ignore her attempts to get my attention in this gentle way, she will increase her efforts by pressing the toy into my leg more forcefully. If that doesn’t work, whimpering will. Recognizing the need for a break, I take the stuffed toy outside so she can chase it. I am reminded that life exists beyond the computer screen. Sometimes it takes a puppy to nudge us toward mindfulness.

In Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “In my tradition, we use the temple bells to remind us to come back to the present moment. Every time we hear the bell, we stop talking, stop our thinking, and return to ourselves, breathing in and out, and smiling. Whatever we are doing, we pause for a moment and just enjoy our breathing.”

In mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) we practice both formal and informal meditation. Formal practice is sitting and lying-down meditation, or a guided body scan. In these practices, the focus is on the breath, or—in the body scan—the area of the body we are focusing on in a guided meditation. When our mind wanders, we bring it back to the breath without judgment, doing this over and over again for the duration of the meditation. Minds will wander off the focus of the breath a million times, but the instruction is to bring the mind back to the breath a million times.

Practicing Mindfulness

Informal practice means performing a routine activity mindfully. By being fully present in a mundane activity that we often do thoughtlessly, we change the experience. Eating a meal mindfully, without watching TV or reading—noticing the food, sensing the texture, the flavor, the smell, the colors, and really tasting the food—is one informal meditation practice. Usually, we eat with numerous distractions and wolf down food so that before we know it, we are done eating and don’t remember having tasted our food or even having eaten.

Practice doing any routine activity mindfully. Brushing teeth, folding laundry, washing the dishes, and getting dressed are all ways to practice mindfulness. We often use distraction when performing mundane activities to prevent boredom. Yet by bringing awareness to a puppy’s prompting or a child’s insistence on playing one more game of Chutes and Ladders, we find them surprisingly interesting. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says in Letting Everything Become Your Teacher: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness, “If you are cultivating mindfulness in your life, there is not one thing that you do or experience that cannot teach you about yourself by mirroring back to you the reflections of your own mind and body.” It is in the stillness of focus that we observe where our minds wander. Later, we use this information to know ourselves more deeply.

Bringing Awareness to Daily Life

When a child or a puppy interrupts you, you can use the opportunity to notice your thoughts and your breathing. Being attentive to what you are doing in the moment invites inner stillness and reflection. By bringing awareness to aspects of life that otherwise may slide by, it is possible to wake up from automatic pilot and connect more intentionally with the present. If you have been living life on automatic pilot, as most of us do, then taking these opportunities when they present themselves opens up experience. If you are fully aware of thoughts, feelings, and sensations in your body, you can change the experience; you have more choice, more freedom. And this can have a profound effect on feelings of depression and anxiety. In a recent MBCT group, several participants commented that being mindful allowed them to stay focused without judging when family tensions arose. Being able to experience difficult emotions knowing that they will pass brings equanimity in the face of challenges.  

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Sleep and Romantic Relationships: How a Good Night’s Sleep Keeps Relationships Romantic

 

Research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that poor sleep hurts relationships. “Poor sleep may make us more selfish as we prioritize our own needs over our partner’s,” according to Amie Gordon. Gordon concluded that when partners feel unappreciated, the hidden culprit is sometimes poor sleep.

Sleep is a Cornerstone of Mental Health

Sleep is the cornerstone of mental health. One of the most common symptoms of emotional distress is sleep disturbance. People with depression complain of early-morning awakening, fragmented sleep, and inability to get back to sleep once awakened. Anxious people frequently report difficulty getting to sleep due to worry, rumination, and replaying or anticipating the day. Having children is another culprit in poor sleep. Nightly feedings, diaper changing, and generalized worry keep new parents awake well into toddler-hood. Getting a good night’s sleep is important—anyone who has been through periods of insomnia can attest to that. But what was interesting about this study is that it demonstrates that a partner who is sleep deprived is less likely to express fondness and gratitude. As Gordon notes, “You may have slept like a baby, but if your partner didn’t, you’ll probably both end up grouchy.”

How Sleep can Affect Romance

When Jack and Anne came to my office recently, Jack had been through a particularly stressful experience with his father. His emotional distress increased tension in his neck and back, intensifying his chronic pain. The combination of physical and emotional tension cascaded over several days, resulting in a sleepless night. The next morning, when his partner made a gentle bid for contact by pointing out an interesting article in the newspaper, he snapped at her. Or as they more vividly described it, “It was somewhere between a growl and a scream.” The walls went up, and both partners retreated in silence.

When bids for contact are not acknowledged, or your partner turns against rather than turning toward your bid, it leads to accumulated tension, often turning to resentment. Over time, this resentment leads to distress-maintaining thoughts about your partner (such as “my husband is such a jerk”) become toxic to the relationship. We know from research on marriage that expressing fondness and admiration is important for the health of the relationship. Once Jack was able to identify that his grouchiness was due to his poor sleep, he could make a repair to Anne by saying, “I’ve been preoccupied lately with my father, and that made me lose sleep. I’m sorry I overreacted this morning.”

Poor sleep can lead to the chronic use of sleep aids. From over-the-counter Benadryl to prescription sleeping pills, these medications can help for short-term insomnia, but when someone is depressed or anxious for an extended period of time, nightly use of these medications changes sleep architecture, making deeper, restorative sleep scarce. If disturbed sleep lasts for months—or years, as it often does—the missed opportunities to express loving tender thoughts to your mate accrue, leaving both partners feeling deprived of affection.

Because sleep problems are a symptom of something else, such as depression, anxiety, sleep apnea, or chronic pain, it is important to understand the reasons behind poor sleep and address those directly. As sleep improves, grouchiness diminishes, making room for hugs and kisses.

 

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Turning Toward Each Other to Maintain Your Relationship

Couples who show affection in simple ways like holding hands have more positive perspective on their relationships.
Love and Friendship

The Magic Five and One-half Hours a Week: 

How to strengthen your relationship by turning toward each other every day

Couples who make time for each other on a regular basis strengthen their relationship.  We often underestimate how important the seemingly small things are to the health of a marriage.  Small positive things done often make a big difference in how loved each partner feels.  Expressing fondness and appreciation every day for five minutes a day adds up to thirty-five minutes a week.  How silly this sounds when you actually add up the minutes!  But I can tell you that it works.

When a couple concludes couple’s counseling, a sure way to prevent relapse into old patterns is to keep in mind the following ‘magic’ behaviors.

 

Things You Can Do to Keep Your Relationship Healthy and Close

1. Affection:  Kiss, hold, touch each other.  Play is good.  Make sure to kiss each other before going to sleep, and when you leave in the mornings.  Kissing when you come home at the end of the day is a ritual that many couples do, without much emotion attached to it.  It is still a good behavior but see if some of the time you can kiss and look each other in the eyes.  Linger a bit, but know that the rule applies that showing physical affection doesn’t mean sex.

2. Admiration and Appreciation: Find some way every day to genuinely communicate affection and appreciation for your partner.  A minimum would be five minutes a day each and every day.  Appreciations can be small acknowledgments such as, “Thanks for emptying the dishwasher” or “It feels really good to have you make me my favorite pasta tonight”.   Expressing admiration can be for big or little things, such as “I admire the way to handled the kids just now, you didn’t blow up the way I think I might have”, or “you look great today!”   Of course, don’t start pulling out the timer on your smartphone and timing these things.  The idea behind setting times is to help you understand that these small things add up—don’t short change your relationship by being stingy with affection, or expressions of fondness.

“It doesn’t count if it doesn’t come out of your mouth”.  Often we think things about our partners but don’t express it.  For reasons both complex and simple, people hold back their expressions of love, whether verbal or physical.  Couples get into habits of aloofness and distance.

3. Love Maps and Dates:  Date night is important because it lets you update love maps.  Every relationship needs at least two hours every week to be alone together.  Time to talk, to catch up on each other’s week, and to reconnect without the distraction of kids, or even other couples.  It is great to entertain together and solidify your community with friends, but don’t let this eat into your time together.  Couples often come to counseling confessing that they never have time alone with each other.  They are with their extended families, or the kids are around, or they have friends over to watch TV and have pizza. These activities are important and enriching, but should not be at the expense of time just the two of you.  Date night doesn’t have to be at night either.  You can schedule a lunch date once a week, or a morning walk.  Sometimes people say that they can’t afford to go out.  Paying for a babysitter, a movie, and dinner will add up fast.  Don’t let money be your excuse.  There are lots of free things to do – put time into thinking about ways to spend your time that doesn’t involve money.  A picnic or a trip to a museum on Free Day – but make time to brainstorm together.  If you don’t have family who can watch your kids, then ask other families to trade watching each other’s kids.  The kids enjoy play-date trades, and they may not consciously understand it, but seeing their parents take time away from them is good.  The world does not center on them.

When couples tell me they feel guilty leaving the kids, it is usually not the kids, but they who have trouble separating.

These are just a few of the things you can do to keep your relationship alive, and healthy.

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The Buckeye: Intimations of Spring

In psychotherapy we go through the dark winter of our soul to find the spring and our wholeness.
The first California Buckeye of spring.

Spring is still a ways away where I live in northern California. The air is fresh; the sunlight brightens the green hills surrounding our mountain. The evenings are becoming just noticeably longer. The opposite coast, from Boston to Maine, saw 30 inches of snow in just a few days. Sensational news stories tell of people stuck in their homes with snow blocking doorways and covering cars.

It might be hard to believe in spring back east, but during my hike in the foothills this evening, the California buckeye trees—always the first to show their green leaves—were magnificently preening against the backdrop of a the late western sun. The Valley oaks will leaf out in a month or so, but until then, the buckeye takes center stage.

In the Greek myth, Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. The beautiful young Persephone is abducted by Hades and taken to his kingdom in the underworld, where he makes her queen. Her mother grieves for her so intensely that nothing grows, introducing the first winter to the world. When Persephone emerges at last, Demeter relents and releases her stranglehold on the earth, letting the tender shoots and tendrils which had been underground unfurl toward the warm sun. The cycle repeats each year.

As for us, by mid-February the urge to shed accumulated winter layers of clothes, pounds, and clutter settle into the collective psyche. Days lengthen and we move outside, toward the grill, or to a patch of weeds. Weeding is therapeutic. Digging the damp dirt, just deep enough to feel the fragile weed roots and gently shaking off the dirt clumps while careful not to disturb those humble tillers, the earthworms, reminds us of the inevitability of change. And that while frost covers the earth, life continues to work underground, below the surface of what is seen. Like Persephone, we emerge from winter to notice the results of underground happenings.

Psychotherapy Provides a Safe Place to Grow into Wholeness and Fullness

When people enter psychotherapy, they are encumbered with layers of accumulated mud. It takes many forms—secrets, sadness, and shame—but alongside the difficulties that motivate people to seek counseling, there is a drive to be whole. It’s manifested in the desire to take care of yourself by reaching out beyond your circle of family and friends to move forward in life, to find a neutral, safe place to explore where you’ve been and who you’ve come to be.

Taking the step to make a call, to schedule an appointment, and to find a way to pay for therapy is a beginning. When new clients arrive in my waiting room, it is with mixed emotions—fear and dread certainly, but also excitement because they have taken the initiative to shake off the dirt and move toward the growth that will surely bring healing. The first appointment brings relief co-mingled with excitement about the prospect of change.

These hints, these intimations that spring is near—just around the corner of the calendar—reconnect us with the ancient knowledge that it is only by going into the dark places within that we can emerge into the fullness of our individual uniqueness. Along with cultivating our gardens, we can cultivate ourselves.

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Psychotherapy and Choice: The Journey to the Self

I often hike the trails below Mt. Diablo and am not a stranger to seeing snakes on the path, and have been told that in stretches of certain trails, rattlesnakes peer out from under the rocks. But on a recent hike, I was startled to actually make eye contact with a rattler! It was hiding in the hole underneath this gnarled tree trunk.

While snakes themselves have a rich symbolic history, today I want to talk more about the scary underground place it comes from.

I was reminded of a story I read to my daughters when they were young. The fable inspired lots of discussion in our home, and I believe it was formative for them.

The story was originally told to Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet.

A caravan of men and camels crossed a desert and reached a place where they expected to find water. Instead they found only a hole going deep into the earth. They lowered bucket after bucket into the hole, but the rope each time came back empty—no bucket and no water. They then began to lower men into the hole but the men, too, disappeared from the end of the rope. Finally a wise man among the party volunteered to go down into the hole in search of water.

When the wise man reached the bottom of the hole, he found himself face to face with a horrible monster. The wise man thought to himself, “I can’t hope to escape from this place, but I can at least remain aware of everything I am experiencing.”

The monster said to him, “I will let you go only if you answer my question.”

The wise man replied, “Ask your question.”The monster said, “Where is the best place to be?”

The wise man thought to himself, “I don’t want to hurt his feelings. If I name some beautiful city, he may think I’m disparaging his hometown. Or maybe his hole is the place he thinks is best.”

So he said to the monster, “The best place to be is wherever you feel at home—even if it’s a hole in the ground.”

The monster said, “You are so wise that I will not only let you go, but I will also free the foolish men who came down before you. And I will release the water in this well.”

Wisdom and Choice

What made the wise man wise? He had a choice. He could go down into the darkness or not. He chose to descend into the hole even though it was doubtful that he would come back up again. He also chose to remain aware. He said, “I can at least remain aware of everything I am experiencing.” He showed kindness and compassion, without an agenda to beat the monster at his riddle. Through awareness and courtesy, he sets free his companions and releases the water.

Healing Comes from Confronting our Difficult, Dark Sides

Symbolically, this story illustrates a path to healing. In psychotherapy, we are often confronted with feelings that come from deep in the unconscious. By taking the difficult route into the darker places within, we can come back with deeper self-knowledge. When people begin individual therapy, they are often hesitant to look at the dark, secret places they keep tucked away. Psychotherapy is an opportunity to dig deeper and to face the darkness within, to remain aware and open to experience in the search for insight.

When we start down the path of self-understanding, we must choose to look at the discarded parts of ourselves. In this process, we can free ourselves from the things that hold us back from being truly alive. No one is without stain—without what seems like a monster inside. It is by entering the darkness that we can release the water, the substance of life, thereby slaking our thirst for wholeness.