Forgiveness – It’s not just for others

It’s not only important to be able to forgive other people.  It’s important to be able to forgive yourself.  Healthy forgiveness involves accessing mistakes and releasing resentment for those mistakes.  You learn from the mistake.  Make amends when appropriate.  And work at improving future behavior.   

Forgiving yourself involves humility: the recognition that you’re human and humans make mistakes.

Shame, guilt, and regret are emotions that are meant to make us notice when something we did hurt our self or others.   Once you’ve paid attention to that message and made adjustments accordingly, it does not serve you or anyone else for you to wallow in the shame, guilt or regret.  Forgiving yourself helps you move on.   It helps you break free of burdens that can keep you stuck.

“Show me a person who’s never made a mistake, and I’ll show you the person who’s never made anything.”  – Anonymous

©Ann Silvers, MA, LMHC; www.annsilvers.com Ann@annsilvers.com 206-660-9840

Dignity in-tact

A wedding invitation I received included a request to compose and bring a haiku poem for the couple. It was a fun exercise. Here's what I came up with:

Treasure the good times
And work your way through clashes
Dignity in-tact
-Ann Silvers

The last line has a double meaning: dignity will remain intact if you use tact in your communications.
intact definition: untouched especially by anything that harms or diminishes (Merriam Webster)
tact definition: Saying your honest opinion in a respectful way. Knowing when it's appropriate to express your thoughts and feelings. (Relationship Booster card set by Silvers Publishing)

A marriage poem

I wish you not only love, but like.
May you like each other
most of the time
for the rest of your lives.
And may those moments you don't like each other
be dealt with in ways
that don't maim or mutilate
the body, mind or spirit.
-Ann Silvers

Abusive behaviors continuum

Abusive behaviors can be placed on continuums which span from totally healthy behavior to totally abusive behavior.
  non-abusive -------    -- very abusive 

This spread is one of the things that makes abuse so confusing and complicates determining whether specific behavior is abusive in a specific situation.

Examples of behavior continuums:

Yelling
clearly non-abusive: warning someone of immediate danger
in the middle:  speaking loudly to press a point
very abusive: loud, aggressive threats or demeaning comments

Click read more for more examples

Courage quote

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues,

but the form of every virtue at the testing point." 

CS Lewis

Self-acceptance

We don’t just have relationships with other people; we also have a relationship with our self.  And that relationship is foundational to all other relationships.

If you don’t accept yourself, you probably don’t accept other people either.

“The happiness, the peace, and the love you crave cannot happen without Self-acceptance.” - Robert Holden

Shame, guilt, perfectionism, old negative messages repeating in your mind, can all contribute to being down on yourself.
Being unhappy with yourself taints every aspect of your life.  If you don’t recognize that your unhappiness is rooted inside, you may mistakenly attribute your unhappiness as being caused by something or someone else: your job, your partner, your house,. . . . You might then conclude that you’d feel better if you could just change your job, dump your partner, move. . . .  But there’s a saying about the disappointment that can come when you do something like move in order to feel better and then discover you’re still unhappy: Everywhere you go—there you are.

click read more for: How to improve your self-acceptance.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence (a.k.a. EI or EQ) is wisdom about, and ability to deal with, emotions.

Emotional intelligence is developed, not automatic. Increasing your emotional intelligence makes life better.

Ideally, year by year we grow in emotional intelligence. As we experience various emotions we can recognize them faster and identify what has worked or not worked for us in the past when faced with that same emotion. If we feel rejected, recognize it, and work through it, we have developed wisdom that will help us the next time we feel rejected. When we go through life pretending we don’t have painful emotions, we don’t develop that wisdom. We may be 55 years old but are 14 emotionally. Still, all is not lost; we just have to play catch-up.

© Ann Silvers, MA, LMHC ann@annsilvers.com  http://www.annsilvers.com/
206-660-9840

Communication: it’s not just what you say

Communication is not just words.  It's also tone & body language.

This points out several things:
1. Emotion is a very important part of communication.
    Tone and body language express emotion.  What this means to you: If you want to be a good communicator, it’s important to have a working knowledge of emotions.
Click Read More to see the rest of the list.

Anger

I see anger as mostly a secondary emotion. It’s the tip of the iceberg.

With an actual iceberg, about 1/3rd of it is visible and 2/3rds of it is hidden under the surface. With anger, anger is the visible response, and some sort of emotional pain is hidden under the surface. Instead of dealing with that pain directly, we turn it into anger as a way to release it or redirect it. It’s much healthier to learn how to identify and process directly the pain that’s underneath the anger.

That emotional pain under the anger could be many things: fear, rejection, shame, resentment . . . . There are many possibilities. Learning to identify the specific emotions you are feeling is an important step in dealing with anger.
Click Read More to see the rest of the article.

Reasons people stay in abusive relationships

There are many reasons why people choose to stay in abusive relationships. The reasons may be complex and deeply rooted in private and cultural patterns or they may simply be that they know of no practical alternative. Any or all of the following may be factors:

 Hope: that things will be better. Abuse may come and go in cycles: increasing tension-abuse-release of the tension; back to increasing tension-abuse etc. A lull in the abuse keeps reigniting hope that the abuse is finished. Also, the partner may promise change when there is a threat that the relationship will end.
Click Read More to see the rest of the list.

Own your stuff

Owning your problems, opinions, wants and needs and letting others own theirs is a basic foundation principle for successful communication. It’s not only important when you’re communicating with others, it’s also important when you’re communicating with yourself.
Anger and discomfort can grow when we ruminate about how bad someone else made us feel. First of all: no one can MAKE you feel anything. They may do something and you have a certain emotional response, but they didn’t make you feel it.

Your emotional response to situations arises from your unique makeup of biology and personal history, including experiences ranging from early life to a few minutes ago. Own it—it’s yours.

Integrity

A definition of integrity:

Behaving in an ethical way. Being worthy of people’s trust.

I had a client who told me in their first session that he had been “working on integrity.” He said it as if to declare that integrity was something he had made great strides at and was proud of his level of the quality. Just about the time of his 3rd scheduled appointment he called and said that he had guests and could not make it to the appointment. I reminded him that the contract he signed with me said that clients must pay for an hour if they do not give 24 hours notice of cancellation. I also reminded him that we had a conversation about the policy. I make exceptions for sudden illness etc, but this last-minute re-prioritization of time was not an exceptional circumstance. That was the last I saw of him & he did not pay for the missed appointment. He was right about one thing: he needed to work on Integrity.

Working on building Integrity, some things to think about:
Have you had an opportunity lately to work on advancing your skill with the quality of Integrity?
Do you see an opportunity in the near future?
Have you had challenges with Integrity in the past?
Do you know someone who demonstrates Integrity often? How does it impact their life & the people around them?
How would Integrity, or lack of Integrity, impact your relationships?

© Ann Silvers, MA, LMHC ann@annsilvers.biz  Silverstream Unlimited, PLLC

206-660-9840 http://www.annsilvers.biz/

How abusive women abuse men: introduction

Abuse is a pattern of reoccurring behaviors involving self-centered motivations. It is common for abuse to run in cycles of more intense and less intense phases, possibly involving a period of regret, apology, and promises of change.

Some behaviors, like stabbing or stalking, are blatantly abusive. Other abusive behaviors may be more confusing. Many potentially-abusive behaviors can occur in non-abusive situations. Unplanned pregnancies really are accidental sometimes. People are irritable sometimes and say inappropriate things. A partner may not be in the mood for sex for a myriad of reasonable reasons. The difference between abuse and normal is often found in frequency and motivation. And frequency may not be about reoccurrences of the same abusive behavior but rather a combination of behaviors.

Ways abusive women abuse men: a list

Abusive people sometimes have methods-of-choice and so focus their abuse in a few select ways. Others use a variety-pack of abuses. The following are examples of how abusive women abuse men. Some of the ways women abuse are the same or similar to those used by men, some are unique to women.  It is important to be clear that it would not be expected that all the possible techniques are used in each case.

Fear, stress & anxiety

Often what we label as “stress” is based in underlying feelings of fear. Everyone feels fear sometimes, even those people that may have the misconception that having fear is a sign of weakness. All emotions are tools that let us know what is going on between us and the world. Fear warns us of danger. Sometimes, it’s healthy to listen to the fear because if you do the thing that stimulated the fear you or someone else will get hurt. Sometimes, the fear isn’t that rational. The perceived threat may not be as dangerous as the level of our fear would indicate or may in fact not be dangerous at all. Sometimes the fear needs to be overridden.

People experience a wide range of fears over things big and small; in and out of their control. We may fear growing old, change, not making the mortgage payment, public speaking, taking a test, making a mistake, appearing stupid, loss of control, getting hurt (physically or emotionally), not getting to watch our favorite TV show, the toothpaste drying out, the dishwasher not getting filed “right,” …. The list is endless.

Feeling is not a 4-letter word

Some people act like feelings are something other people—lesser people—have, but not something they experience themselves. This concept grows out of training from parents who had that same idea or contact with adults or peers who made acceptance conditional upon the “feelings are bad” code.

The reality is that feelings, or emotions, are an integral and crucial part of being human. Emotions are great tools that let us know what is going on between us and the world. They create a feedback loop that can inform our choices about what to think, do, and say. Fear of big trucks on the move can keep us from walking out into the street as one passes by. Ignoring that feeling can be deadly.

If we don’t pay attention to our emotions, they will still create behaviors in us, we just won’t be as in control of those actions as we are when we are conscious about our emotions.