Tag Archives: gratitude

Stop Doing Bad Things

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Christy Barongan

At the risk of sounding completely inconsolable, I have to admit, I don’t find most of the self-help articles on social media helpful.

Take, for example, the article 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself. I have no problem with the suggestions themselves, but I don’t like advice that begins with the word stop. In therapy, if after the first session I were to say “You’re problem is that you look exclusively to others for happiness. Stop doing that,” I’m not sure the person would come back.

Research supports the idea that stop statements are not helpful, because when you say something like “stop being idle,” you put the idea of being idle in the person’s head. If you’ve taken psychology classes, you’ve probably heard the example “don’t think about a pink elephant.” You probably weren’t thinking about one before, but you are now.

A lot of people do find advice like this helpful, and that’s great. Personally, it makes me feel more judged than inspired. I respond better to strategies that emphasize empathy and compassion, self-acceptance, and forgiveness. And I prefer suggestions that encourage me to be the best version of myself to admonitions for doing things wrong.

If I were to come up with a list like this, here’s how I would paraphrase their recommendations:

1., 13., 19., & 20. Spend time with people who bring out the best in you.

2. & 23. Have faith in yourself; it’s the best investment you’ll ever make.

3., 25., & 26. Commit to being honest with yourself and to others.

4., 21., & 27. Put your needs first. Period.

6. & 8. Practice forgiveness of yourself and others.

7., 23., & 29. Take risks, even if it means that you will fail.

9., 10., & 28. Happiness cannot be found out there in the future; it comes from within, in this moment.

11. & 12. You can move forward, even when you don’t feel ready.

14. Let people get to know you, even if it scares you.

5., 15., & 16. Make your standard of comparison the best version of yourself rather than someone else or some perfect ideal.

17. & 18. Negative experiences teach us lessons that we wouldn’t have chosen to learn on our own.

22. Think of mindfulness as exercise for your brain.

27. Practice gratitude regularly,  and thank the people who you are grateful for every chance you get.

It takes a lifetime to put these values into practice, so be patient, have faith, and be kind to yourself in the process.

I’m adding designer marbles to my doodle collection.

 

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Midlife

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I don’t like getting older. I even obsessed about it as a child.  When I was around 7, I remember asking my dad if you get to choose your age when you go to heaven, and he said yes. Every year I would choose my current age, because I was sure that the next year would be worse.

I had a plan for what I would do when I got old: I would use Oil of Olay to prevent wrinkles, Clairol to dye my hair, and Coast soap to bring me back to life–because that was their slogan, which I took literally. That shows you the power of advertising.

I didn’t consider myself middle-aged until I turned 43. I’m immature for my age in a lot of ways because I still live the life of a college student–a night owl with no children and no spouse whose work revolves around the academic calendar.

Although my mind is still somewhere in my 20’s, my body has proceeded at a normal developmental pace. Once I hit 43, I became far-sighted. My knees hurt all the time–not just after playing tennis 5-6 times in a row. I started dying my hair.

I don’t want other people to get older, either. Every year I tell my niece that she has to stay the same age. Whenever I leave my parents’ house, I feel anxious at the thought of seeing them sick or debilitated someday. I am terrified of losing them. I got a glimpse of what it would be like when my dad was depressed, and I did not handle it well.

I try to practice gratitude, self-compassion, and mindfulness to accept the aging process. I try to remember what I have to be thankful for in this moment, try to enjoy my blessings while I have them. I tell myself that lots of people have these fears–it doesn’t make me crazy. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person.

It helps some. But I’m still afraid.

There are only two things that I look forward to about getting older. One is that I will continue to become a better therapist because I will have seen more clients, had more life experience, and will possess more wisdom.

The other thing is that my writing will improve for the same reasons. I have wanted to write a book since high school. In the 10th grade we had a writing assignment where we had to project what we would be doing in the future. I wrote a mock interview where I was 45, answering questions about my book.

So it’s no coincidence that I made my first effort to publish my writing through blogging at the age of 44. I realized that if I wanted to make something happen for myself, I had to start now.

So I guess that’s one good thing about being middle-aged: as you reflect on the first half of your life, you realize what you have to do to make the most out of the second half.

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Moms

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Christy Barongan

I watched the Secret Life of Walter Mitty on Christmas (Warning: Spoiler Alert!).  In addition to the theme of what it means to live a full life, I also liked the more subtle theme about how mom’s save the day.

For example, it is the mom’s cake that is used as currency for passage into forbidden territories. The mom’s piano is sold to cover Mitty’s worldly adventures.  The mom’s photograph of the piano leads Mitty to Sean O’Connell.  And ultimately, it is the mom’s rescue of the wallet that allows us to find out what the shot was on negative 25.

Yes, we want a life filled with risks and adventures.  But these risks and adventures are often made possible thanks to the home base that mom’s provide through their more mundane, everyday activities.

My mom is a superhero.  While I was home for Christmas, she hosted our Christmas Eve party. She cooked every day.  She went to work on Thursday and Friday–as a physician, no less–while the rest of us lounged around the house.  She carefully packed up our food in ice as my brothers and I left for home, one by one.  The only gift she asked for was that we all come home for Christmas.  This is the only gift she ever asks for, regardless of the occasion.

But there are disadvantages to having a superhero for a mom.  It’s impossible to live up to the example that she has set.  She often does know best, and I hate being wrong.  She is aware of her superhero status and takes every opportunity to remind me of it.  But I guess she has earned her bragging rights, and then some.

Often it is when children become parents themselves that they fully appreciate all that their moms have done for them.  I do not have children and do not plan on having any unless it is through divine intervention.  So the best I can do is to practice gratitude for all the big and small things that my mom has done to help me become the person I am today.

So this blog is dedicated to her, and to moms everywhere.

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Gratitude

Posted on December 25, 2013 by Christy Barongan

Over the past few weeks I have been praying for a way to take in what I love about Christmas. Singing Christmas songs. The lights and decorations. The food. Having my entire family together. And reflecting on the significance of having our Savior born in the most humble beginnings.

I looked at the news headlines about the homily Pope Francis gave last night, and true to my prediction, it was a message of acceptance and forgiveness. The quote that stood out to me was the reminder that Jesus was all-powerful but he made himself vulnerable for us. There is great strength in vulnerability; it is His vulnerability that redeems us.

In this blog I have made myself vulnerable by sharing all of the thoughts and feelings that I usually keep to myself. After writing my post on forgiveness and reading people’s responses, that was the most vulnerable I have felt thus far.

People who have never been depressed do not realize what a dark place it is to be in. For example, “normal” people can make themselves happier by practicing gratitude, by reflecting on people who are less fortunate than themselves, by counting their blessings. The assumption is that sadness and gratitude are mutually exclusive.

When you are depressed, your demons turn this well-meaning advice into further evidence that you are a bad person for being depressed because you are not able to snap out of it, despite all the things you have to be thankful for. So it is especially difficult to practice gratitude when you are depressed because it often makes you feel worse.

However, my spiritual guru is the Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr, and one of the most helpful things that he emphasizes is that spirituality is not either/or, as we tend to think in Western religions. It is not good or bad, right or wrong. Spirituality is both/and.  So I can practice gratitude and still be depressed. They can both be true, and that’s OK.

Today I am already thankful for many things. I am thankful that the party wasn’t as overwhelming as I feared it would be.  That the homily last night had a message that was meaningful to me. That I’ve had meaningful conversations with two of my brothers, and in a few hours my other brother and his family will be here. I am thankful for the friends who have already sent me texts to wish me Merry Christmas.

And I am thankful for this blog. I think God gave me this blog because He knew that these next few months would be difficult. So He gave me a way to share my pain, to reach out to others, and to ask for help. It really is true that making ourselves vulnerable may be the most powerful thing we can do to experience love and connect with other people. I think that this is what Jesus would want us to experience most of all on His birthday.

So I am thankful to all of you who have taken the time to read my blog on Christmas Day. And I thank my friend Sharon for giving me the cartoon below.

 

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Friendship

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Christy Barongan
Last night we had our 2nd Annual Charlie Brown Christmas Party.  The party was named after last year’s tree, which looked like this:
 
 
This year the tree was more normal looking but my friends were more comedic, as you can see in this picture:

We even had prizes for Christmas attire:  Ugliest sweater, Most Festive, and Prettiest Sweater.  Guess which person won each prize from the picture below:

I am so thankful to have such good friends.

In my first marriage my husband and I were everything to each other–just like in love songs and romantic movies–but we didn’t have many friends.  Perhaps at some level we feared that if we told people what our relationship was really like, they would see how fragile our marriage was.

I believe that lessons are often learned from tragedy, pain, and hardship–particularly lessons you don’t want to learn.  What I learned from that relationship is that no single person can be everything you need.  And when you lose that person who has tried to be your everything, you are left with nothing. 

So I vowed never to allow myself to be that socially isolated again, and I have done a pretty good job of honoring that commitment.  In addition to playing and captaining all of those tennis teams, I also organize most of our social events and play the MC at the parties, making sure that our time is evenly spent between eating, singing karaoke, and playing board games. 

However, I am still more inclined to play the role of therapist with my friends than friend in need.  And I use all the same excuses that my clients use for not asking for help:  I am a burden, a broken record, a person whose feelings may be too much for other people to handle.  A person who is too needy, too demanding.

I’ve spent today the way I spend most Saturdays–tired and alone.  I did text a few friends.  And I talked to my brother.  And I’m writing this blog post.  So I’m trying to reach out.  But it will always be more natural for me to help than to be helped.

Perhaps whenever I have doubts about whether my friends want to be there for me, I can look at the deranged elf pictured above and remind myself that only someone who cared deeply about me would pose for a picture that can be posted for all the world to see.

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Blogging is My New Boyfriend

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Christy Barongan

I always tell people that tennis is my one true love. It’s the only relationship where if there are problems it’s all my fault. How can tennis be wrong? When I first started playing tennis again about 12 years ago, I played 4-5 times a week–sometimes several times a day–and even more in the summer when I’m off. I captain and play every league. I play tournaments. I went to the US Open in August. My TV is almost always on Tennis Channel. I love Roger Federer. My dream job is to be a commentator with the psychological low down.

I love everything about playing. It’s the only exercise I can motivate myself to do and wake up in the morning for. I love the competitive aspect and I love trying to get better at it. I’ve met almost all of my close friends through tennis, and they have become like a second family.

But recently I’ve become a two-timer: blogging is my new boyfriend. And I am immersed in it with all of the obsessive frenzy that I apply to everything. Since I started blogging a few months ago, I spend every free moment thinking about it in some way. In the morning I check my stats to help me wake up. I love that it gives me a reason to write and that I’m achieving my goal of helping people feel better about themselves. I even like the challenge of the business aspect of it–learning more about social media, how to promote my blog.

And there are rewards that I didn’t anticipate.  I didn’t expect that I would get so much benefit from writing about my problems and that I would receive so much support for doing so. I didn’t think I would get to have a relationship that is all about me. I didn’t expect that I would connect to other bloggers–that I would look forward to their posts, and they would look forward to mine. 

I never expected that starting a blog would be such a great investment in myself.

The funny thing is that for the longest time, my demons would keep me from writing because they’d be sitting there telling me how much I sucked every time I tried. So I would just write in my journal because I didn’t care what it sounded like. But I still thought the content was so mundane, no one would be interested in reading it. Even though it was very interesting to me.

Recently I was looking at my journal entries from this past summer. I had written over and over about how much trouble I was having with sleep and how writing about it wasn’t helping me become a writer at all. And what do you know! My first post was about sleep. So journaling was helping me to become a writer. It was the gateway to blogging.

I have never considered myself an athlete, and my dad sucked the joy out of tennis when I was younger. So falling in love with tennis was a pleasant surprise. But I always knew I wanted to be a writer. It’s harder to pursue something that you care about because the consequences of failing are so much greater in your mind vs when you don’t really care if you end up being good at something or not. 

It’s sort of like what it was like for me early in my career. I never expected to be a great tennis player, but I had always wanted to be a psychologist. What if I suck at it? What will I do then? I always wanted to be a writer, too. So what if I suck at writing? How will that book inside me manifest itself without the skill to put it out there?

But I have always said that I can’t fail if I never stop trying. I am thankful that my effort and determination has paid off in this relationship. It’s teaching me a lot about how to have a healthy relationship, in general.

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Thanksgiving

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Christy Barongan

There was a time when I questioned whether miracles really occur.  I could not understand why God would intervene in some people’s lives but not others in a way that appealed to my sense of justice.  Now I realize that you don’t have to understand why for something to be true.

As I await my parents’ arrival, I can’t help but remember when they came to my house for Thanksgiving two years ago.  At the time, my mom was obsessed with learning how to type to prepare for the dreaded electronic medical records implementation. 

My dad was still in the midst of the worst depression he’d ever experienced.  He was somewhat better than he had been two years prior, but still a shell of the larger-than-life person I had known all my life.  Still, in his compromised state he decided that he, too, would practice typing.  I was encouraged by this, because in his darker moments he barely had the motivation to exist.

Several hours later, he asked me for help.  When I looked at what he was working on, I saw that he had been trying to log on to his email account all of that time.  I wanted to cry.  But at the same time, I admired his determination to master the computer, even though he was no longer practicing medicine and did not have to worry about electronic medical records, and even though his cognitive abilities were greatly diminished. 

I write a lot of blog posts about my affinity for challenges.  It is definitely something that has been instilled in me by my parents, whose favorite motivational poster says “Don’t quit.”  On that day two years ago I was thankful that the depression had not destroyed my dad’s fight.  He was still a warrior, albeit a wounded one.

Last year around Thanksgiving, somehow the depression completely lifted after 3 years, even though nothing had changed in his meds.  It’s as though his personality finally broke through and he was exactly the way he had always been, which was essentially in a sustained hypomanic state.  It was truly like seeing someone come back to life. 

These days, he is constantly on FB, commenting on people’s pictures and posting copies of every photo album my parents own.  In fact, the only reason he is not on FB right now is because he is on his way to Knoxville.

My dad’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle, and every time I think of him I say a prayer of thanks–even though he tells me that I need to lose weight and gives me appetite suppressants.  Actually, he read that post, so now he tells me I look good.  So I’m thankful for blogs, too!

And wouldn’t you know that my parents showed up right as I finish this blog post.  God has perfect timing. 

I even have a picture for you today.

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