Tag Archives: meditation

Lovingkindness in Times of Need

Posted on October 6, 2024 by Christy Barongan

Today in our group lovingkindness meditation we made sure to include all the people affected by Hurricane Helene, from the victims to the rescue workers and volunteers. To those of you who asked about my safety, I appreciate your concern. Luckily, Knoxville was not affected, but Sadie’s college, Furman, is in Greenville, SC. Helene is the worst hurricane to ever hit South Carolina. She was out of school for over a week, and as many of you know a good portion of I-40 was washed out, as is the city of Asheville in general. It will be inconvenient for the next several years to pick her up and take her back, but that’s a small price to pay compared to those who have lost their homes, their cities, and their loved ones in the 6 states that have been affected by Helene.

I’ve heard lots of stories about people helping others in obscure places where help had not yet arrived. They were checking on one another, sharing food and resources, even though everything was scarce and their survival was not guaranteed. It seems that times of disaster often bring out compassion, tangible aid, donations, volunteers, as well as prayers and gifts of lovingkindness. I’m always moved to hear these stories. It gives me hope that maybe somehow we can cross the divide and care about other people, despite their differences from ourselves.

During this time I’ve also been reading Braiding Sweetgrass, a series of anecdotes written by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is a Native American poet with a Ph.D. in Botany and so has studied the earth as an object of scientific investigation as well as a mother that provides for all the living creatures on earth. If you check it out, I recommend the audio book because she is the narrator. Not surprisingly, her story is filled with sexism, racism, and dismissiveness for thinking that there can be a reciprocal loving relationship between things like plants, bodies of water, trees, fish, and people. Since industrialization our relationship with nature has been anything but that. Nature’s gifts are something we feel we can take, as much as we want, without worrying about what the consequences will be when these gifts run dry.

I found out about this book because someone in our mediation group recommended it to me. There is a point during the lovingkindness meditation in which we send our gifts to all sentient beings. Things like, may they be safe. May they be happy. May they be healthy. May they live with ease. Before I practiced regularly, I defined sentient beings as all the people on earth that we didn’t individually mention. But the more I mediate, the more my definition of sentient beings grows. I realized that animals are sentient beings. If you believe that there is life on other planets in the universe, then extraterrestrials are included as well. And I thought maybe plants could feel. Possibly. After reading Braiding Sweetgrass, now I know that not only can plants feel, but they have their own language. They suffer and they thrive depending on how well they are cared for. Just like us. So now I extend my gifts of lovingkindness to Mother Earth as well.

To be in the midst of the damage of Helene and reading this book at the same time, I realized that in times of need, the angel on our shoulder is more likely to take over and we give without thinking about the categories that have become so polarized in the last 8 years. We don’t care if they are from the North or South, rural or urban, Democrats or Republicans. We remember that we are all people, more alike than different, all worth helping and saving, comforting and caring for.

But why does it take a disaster to bring out this side of us? Wouldn’t it be nice if this is the mindset we cultivated all the time? Instead of seeing the other as the enemy, in competition for goods and resources, some seeming more human than others, better or worse than others. To me, it doesn’t matter which religion you belong to, or if you just think of yourself as being spiritual in general. But however you define your spirituality, I hope that it comes with a practice.

This was my goal in creating this mediation group. I don’t know what the specific religious beliefs are of most of the people in the group, but I know that if you consider yourself a spiritual being then love must be central to what you believe in. So in this time of crisis, I hope you do practice loving in some way. And in times of plenty, I hope you do the same. I know that in this year of practicing lovingkindness more regularly, I hear a call to reach out and help more often, and my commitment is to say yes to every call. And like I said in my last post, the love always comes back to you.

If you’d like to join the meditation group, email me at cbarongan@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the mailing list.

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Posted in Spirituality and tagged Braiding Sweetgrass, God, Hurricane Helene, love, lovingkindness, meditation, mindfulness. Bookmark the permalink.

Loneliness and Lovingkindness

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Christy Barongan

A few weeks ago I went with Sadie’s parents to drop her off to college. I was honored to be invited to this rite of passage because I’ve been babysitting Sadie since she was 3. If you’ve been following my blog, then you know that Sadie is more than a niece to me. She’s the twin sister to my inner child Sophie. When she was younger she always wanted to pretend we were sisters. I was more than happy to be the age she picked for me, which was usually something like 16 while she was 7. Still a large age gap between sisters but in reality I’m older than her parents.

Because she is an empath, emotionally intelligent, and wise beyond her years, she worries about my mental health. She knows that I feel lonely when their family goes on vacation so she’ll often call me while they’re in France or Italy or wherever they are. I feel guilty that she can feel it and tries to make me feel better, but that is definitely one of the reasons why we are so similar, since I obviously do the same thing, being a therapist and all.

My dad got depressed when I went to college, and because I am also an empath, I got depressed, too, although I didn’t realize that was the reason at the time. In some ways, he never recovered. I was the first of 4, so the nest kept getting emptier and emptier year after year. My dad coped with his loneliness by living in a state of mania. Ironically, in the end this has resulted in him being completely cut off from the family. But in his fantasies he wins the lottery and he buys a hotel and we all leave our jobs and work at the hotel together, running the family business. Strange how our coping mechanisms for loneliness end up leaving us feeling even lonelier than we were before.

To make matters worse, I’ve been seeing someone for the past few months who often leaves me feeling lonely because he’s long distance and doesn’t need a lot of contact to feel connected. Or perhaps more accurately, he doesn’t want to feel lonely so he doesn’t let anyone get too close. I often wonder if this is some repetition of my own trauma to be with someone who makes me feel lonely. I talk to my therapist about it a lot, and she and I both think it’s me. I read a book about parentified children that captured my loneliness well. When you’ve had to be the one to tend to other people’s feelings and haven’t had someone care about your feelings, you always feel lonely, like you have to it all on your own.

I think there’s something about the immigrant experience that heightens the feeling of loneliness because you are so far away from your family and you don’t go back often. It leads to intergenerational trauma for the descendants of immigrants. Whether parents tell you or not, you carry the struggle with how to feel connected to a place with people who are different from you, who may not even accept you.

My dad’s first depression was when he came to the U.S. for residency in medicine. He wanted to go back to the Philippines but Marcos had declared martial law so going home wasn’t an option. I think he married quickly and had children as an antidote to his loneliness. In fact, my younger brother and I were both born while my parents were still in residency, which is pretty rare.

So far it hasn’t been too bad since Sadie left, thanks to cell phones. We’ve talked several times, we text. Also, because I’ve been practicing lovingkindness regularly and in my weekly meditation, I am constantly reminded that we are always connected, and that loneliness is an illusion. Just like my not feeling loved is an illusion. When I first started meditating, I could feel other people’s feelings more clearly–new clients, friends I hadn’t seen. Several months ago I made a deal with a client that we would practice lovingkindness as a way to heal our country, and since then I have felt other people’s feelings even more intensely. As a result, I started wondering about how a particular client was doing who I was no longer seeing. I reached out to her and found out that she was not doing well and was feeling lonely so we start meeting again. It is because of her that I started the lovingkindness group and have started blogging again. In fact, she gives me more homework than I give her. So although I reached out to her because I felt her loneliness, it turns out that she has helped me feel more connected, as well.

Lovingkindness is like a boomerang–it always comes back to you. So now when I’m feeling lonely, I send lovingkindness to the person I’m missing and ask them how they’re doing. Most of the time I feel connected again.

If you’d like to join the weekly meditation, send me an email at cbarongan@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the list. There’s no cost, no obligation to attend, or even to stay for the full meditation. I’ll also send a recording of the meditation for that week so that you can listen to it on your own time if you prefer. Hope to see you there. It truly is an antidote to loneliness.

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Posted in Mental Health, Relationships, Spirituality and tagged connection, immigration experience, lovingkindness, meditation, trauma. Bookmark the permalink.

Try a Little Lovingkindness

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Christy Barongan

But I say to you who hear,

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.

1 John 4:8

I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve never been one to watch the news. I tried to change this after I was in grad school when I didn’t know that the whole Waco thing happened. And I didn’t know that we were going to have an eclipse and was wondering why the sky looked so weird, as I looked right up into the sun without any protective eye wear. My fellow students asked me if I lived under a rock. I guess I was in my own world, sticking to reruns of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island over CNN.

Now I don’t even try to watch the news–and I get minimal notifications on my phone–but I am not ashamed of it at all. In my line of work, I have to save my energy to see my clients, and I can’t allow the intense negativity of every update take up residence in my brain. I rely on my family and my clients to tell me if something important is happening, like if China is floating a balloon across the U.S. to spy on us. Maybe it makes me uninformed, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Still, despite the lengths I go to protect my energy, it’s impossible not to feel the divide in our country. I know we have always been a country divided, but I had never felt it so keenly as I have since Covid. And although we may no longer be living in a pandemic, pandemonium still feels very close at hand.

In every religion they say that love is the only force that can conquer hate, and it is our job to spread love. And it’s up to us to say yes to that job and to do it in a way that uses our unique talents. I know that I was supposed to become a therapist because since I’ve gone into private practice clients that I’ve seen decades ago have reached out to me to work with me again, saying I changed their lives. Yet most of the time I was at my old job I felt like a terrible therapist. The clients that I’ve seen since I’ve moved to Knoxville have said the same thing, even though the first year and a half of my time here was perhaps the darkest period of my life. Somehow, although I was barely able to function in every other area in my life, I was still able to help people. This is not about me. It’s about God. God has made sure that I’m able to do what I’m supposed to do in this lifetime–to help others in need.

But lately, with the country being divided and both sides full of hatred, pointing fingers, I feel the need to step it up a notch. I’ve started doing the lovingkindness meditation, which is a Buddhist practice in which you cultivate your ability to be loving, even to your enemies. The reason why I like it so much is that it’s empowering. I can put in the work to become a more loving person. I can make this happen. I have to admit, I’m not as diligent about doing it as I would like. It’s a lot like exercise–you have to be committed to the process. And sometimes after work I’m just too exhausted to do it.

I can feel it changing me, though, even practicing lovingkindness imperfectly. I’ll often teach clients how to do the lovingkindness mediation when they need a way to feel empowered, and for those who try this or their own spiritual practice, it changes them, too. I imagine there are more people out there who are looking for the same thing. Who want to do something other than feel anger, helplessness, and fear. Maybe there are people who want send out love to the universe but haven’t figured out how to do so yet. So I thought, well hey! Maybe there are some people out there who might want to do the lovingkindness meditation with me. I think that doing it in a group is probably similar to what Jesus said about 2 or more people praying together. It makes it more powerful. Even if one person joins me, it doubles the amount of lovingkindness that goes out into the universe. And who knows? Maybe there will be even more.

So if you think this might be a practice that you’d like to try out, I’ve decided that if even one person wants to do the lovingkindness meditation with me, I’m going to host a 30 minute Zoom meeting weekly where we can practice together. In the first 10-15 minutes I’ll teach you how to do it and construct your own mediation. And in the last 15 minutes, we’ll practice it together, silently. Or you can do whatever practice you’d like, if something resonates better with you.

If you’d like to try it out, email me at cbarongan@gmail.com and I’ll send you the day, time, and Zoom link. No obligation to stay the whole time or to come back if it’s not for you. But I hope there are some people out there who are willing to give it a shot. God knows we need it.

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Wholeheartedly

Posted on October 22, 2018 by Christy Barongan

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I’m reading this book by Pema Chodron Called When Things Fall Apart.” She’s pretty funny for a Tibetan Buddhist. She talks about how she threw a rock at her husband when he said he was leaving her. She’s a nun now. Maybe that’s why.

But I digress. In one chapter she says

if we really knew how unhappy it was making this whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure–how that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our basic intelligence–then we would practice mediation as if our hair were on fire.

I thought that was hilarious! I mean, I meditate every day, but if my hair were on fire, that is not the first thing that would come to mind as to what I should do. But apparently that’s a popular phrase, because in this meditation conference I just went to, Bill Morgan talked about people’s hair being on fire all the time. Maybe that happened a lot in Asian countries.

The focus of this conference was on how to make meditation practice work for Westerners. He thinks that most people in the West can’t get into meditating because sitting quietly just feels like an opportunity to let demons and thoughts of unworthiness run amok. And our attention span is so short that it feels torturous to sit still for even a few minutes. Plus, because we are so goal-oriented that we spend too much time striving, trying to make something happen.

So we spent the weekend learning ways to start meditating in a gentler, kinder way. Morgan suggested that when we begin a meditation practice, we start by creating an experience of comfort. This is a way we can learn to soothe ourselves. Often we would begin by standing up to stretch, shaking out any discomfort. Then when we sat to meditate we would begin with a memory, sound, or image that we find soothing. The face of your grandmother, perhaps. The sound of the ocean. Thinking about your pet. Playing with your niece.

This was revolutionary for me because, as you know, I really struggle with self-soothing. For the longest time I really had no idea how to comfort myself. I’m still not great at it. I realized during this conference that I primarily try to comfort myself by creating chaos–a common strategy for people with histories of trauma. Peace and quiet feel strange, foreign, so we recreate the experience of the chaos we grew up with, because it at least feels familiar.

My version of creating chaos involves taking on too much–signing up for Talkspace, moving, volunteering to captain a team that I don’t even have time to play on because they need another captain. Or by obsessively trying to practice self-care, which ends up stressing me out more than it reduces my stress. I just did my health assessment for my job and all of my health markers were worse than they were last year. So apparently I’m getting an F in self-care. Sort of like when you study really hard for you Calculus but still end up failing all the tests.

After spending time in meditation during the conference, I think I’ve figured out why practicing self-care hasn’t been helping. I’ve treated living with anxiety, depression, GERD, asthma, and allergies as a chore. I had been practicing self-compassion, but my attempts at self-care were driven by fear of crashing and burning. My routines were done resentfully, begrudgingly. As if I had a child who I thought was a pain in the ass but I have to take care of her because that’s my job.

In the meditations he taught us, he told us to pay attention to ourselves with the heart of a caregiver. I do that for my clients but not for myself. I do not listen to myself wholeheartedly. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not just going to go through the motions of checking in with myself. I’m going to try to listen with an open heart, as though I were someone who I cared for deeply. Because I want to be someone who I care for deeply.

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May We All Accept Things As They Are

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Christy Barongan

As a part of my compassion practice, I am currently reading Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, by Sharon Salzberg. Today’s chapter was on equanimity, which is “a radiant calm that allows us to be present fully with all the different changing experiences that constitute our world and our lives.”

I can definitely use some of that. It’s hard to have a “radiant calm” because I have an anxiety disorder, so I obsess all the time. In my last post where I was describing how happy I was on Sunday, I really did obsess about death and bodily injury later that day. Luckily, I was able to focus my attention back to the present moment, which made me happy again.

And sometimes I get depressed for no apparent reason, which is maddening. Or sometimes there is a reason, but that’s still maddening, because I can’t function. The ups and downs that everyone experiences are a bit steeper when you have a mood disorder. Still, I try to accept whatever it is I’m feeling, whether it makes sense or not. To remind myself that this is the natural ebb and flow of life.

And I take my medication.

The equanimity meditation is actually about accepting that you can’t control other people’s behavior. Like getting mad when people don’t take my advice. Which is ill-advised, but I guess people can make bad decisions if they want to.

Seriously, though, one of the things that brings clients the most suffering is that other people aren’t behaving the way they want them to. If they would just text me back. Or put their dishes away. Or not hook up with anyone until we graduate. Then my life would be better.

Most of the meditations on lovingkindness are about sending yourself and others the hope that they are healthy, happy, safe, and free from suffering. Practicing equanimity means that we send these good intentions without trying to control the outcome. We understand that, no matter how much we want good things for other people, ultimately they have to help themselves; they have to take responsibility for their own happiness.

Salzberg refers to this as the release from codependency in psychological terms. Which is ironic, because I never heard the word codependent once when I was getting my Ph.D. in clinical psychology. You don’t read self-help books for your course work, so I had no idea what people meant when they said I was codependent. But now it’s pretty clear that I am. The whole feeling other people’s feelings thing. And trying to control other people’s behavior.

The words you recite in the equanimity meditation are:

All beings are the owners of their karma. Their happiness and unhappiness depend on their actions, not on my wishes for them.

That’s a lot for me to have to remember to say, so I opted for the shorter version when I did the meditation, which is “may we all accept things as they are.”

When I did the meditation earlier tonight I was feeling sad, and after I did the meditation, I can’t say that I felt significantly better. But then I remembered that I can’t practice the meditation with the intention of controlling my feelings; I just have to accept whatever they are in the moment.

But now that a few hours have passed, I do feel better. Which is a reminder that in the ebb and flow of life, happiness will return to you at some point.

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Posted in Mental Health, Psychology, Self-Acceptance, Uncategorized and tagged codependence, equanimity, meditation. Bookmark the permalink.

If There Were a Prize for Most Likely to Obsess Over Nothing, I Would Totally Win

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Christy Barongan

Next week I am going to a week-long meditation retreat on self-compassion in California, and I am freaking out about it. I didn’t realize the meditation part would be such a prominent component of the training until after I signed up. After I found out that they recommend that I pack a zafu meditation pillow–which I had to buy–and a yoga mat. And that I need yoga-type clothing.

I do meditate every day, but more of the 5 minute variety before I go to bed. Not the sit-on-the-floor-on-a-zafu-pillow-and-meditate-for-a week kind of meditation.

I am anxious about the typical things that would make someone not choose a meditation retreat, like not being able to get on my phone, iPad, or computer. And flying. And what impact the severe drought in California will have on my trip.

But I am also obsessing about seemingly insignificant and therefore maddening things like, will I be able to sleep if I can’t recline my bed because of my stupid GERD? Would a zafu pillow, a yoga mat, a GERD pillow, and yoga-type clothing all fit into my suitcase? I could bring a gigantic suitcase, but would they think I’m high maintenance?

Do I even have yoga-type clothing? If I wear tennis stuff, would that be weird? Do I need long-sleeve shirts? What will the temperature be? Because sometimes even when it’s hot outside it can be cold inside because of the air conditioning. Although maybe they don’t crank up the air conditioner at a meditation retreat, even when it’s hot. If it is hot.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

Intellectually, I know people who have chosen to go on a self-compassion retreat probably aren’t going to be judging me for my luggage or for wearing the wrong thing, but I can’t stop obsessing, nonetheless. Which is why I signed up for this retreat.

But I realized something last night that helped me to accept my obsessiveness. I was watching this biography on one of the up-and-coming tennis players, and I noticed that all of the great athletes were super competitive and full of energy even when they were kids. Their parents had to get them involved in something at all times so they wouldn’t explode.

Obsessing is the mental equivalent of a hyperactive child. Sometimes I do it because I’m anxious, but sometimes it’s just because I need something to think about. Even if it’s just what I’m going to have for dinner tomorrow. Or what order I should do my errands in. Or how many inches I should take off when I get my hair cut. There’s all this energy in my brain, and the only way to burn it off is to obsess.

So maybe if I could channel my obsessing into something useful, like those hyperactive kids who became world-class athletes did, I could become famous, too. Maybe I could use my powers for good instead of evil. Well, not evil. But something more productive. So I wrote this blog post to see if that would help. Although I’m pretty sure I’m just going to obsess about the stats after I publish it.

If anyone has ideas about useful ways to channel my obsessive energy, I am open to suggestions.

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In This Moment

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Christy Barongan

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I’ve always been reluctant to tell people what kind of music I like, because it’s pretty mainstream. In fact, I’ll make that #11 on my list–my preference for Top 40. Some of my friends have criticized me for what they consider my poor taste in music: it’s so unoriginal. So superficial.

And it’s true that the lyrics usually aren’t profound, but sometimes they still touch upon universal feelings. That’s why even the sappiest of love songs can be appealing when you have a broken heart.

Yesterday on my drive home the song “Daylight,” by Maroon 5, came on the radio. Every time I hear this song I think of one of the long distance relationships I was in during high school. My boyfriend went to college 5 hours away, so we didn’t see each other often. And when we did see each other, I was so anxious by Saturday about him leaving on Sunday that I couldn’t enjoy our time together. No amount of reasoning could stop me from obsessing.

That’s what happens when you have an anxiety disorder. The things that other people find difficult, like saying good-bye, are intolerable. Adam Levine can still hold her close for one night, even if he’ll have to go in the daylight. I, on the other hand, would obsess about how sad I was going to be when that moment came and would end up ruining the whole evening.

Despite the intensity of my negative feelings, I have often chosen relationships that have been characterized by a high level of drama. Which doesn’t make any sense, I know. You would think that I wanted to be miserable. But love is like a drug–especially in the early stages–what with all the obsession and longing and all. Even though the cons outweigh the pros, you get addicted, anyway, because it’s not a rational process.

My relationships were like an addiction in that I craved connection, but no amount of contact was ever enough. And I would experience withdrawal during even the smallest periods of separation, yet I still preferred long-distance relationships.

That’s why I’m proud of myself for not being in a relationship. I’m learning how to tolerate my fear of being alone. And I’m learning how to live without the addiction of drama. And my behavior doesn’t seem as crazy and contradictory–in relationships, at least.

Other things have helped with my anxiety, too. I resisted meds for a long time, even though people begged me to take them for their sake, if not for mine. But I have to admit, even though I don’t like taking them, they make my anxiety bearable.

I also have a therapist who I can call when I’m freaking out. I meditate, which has helped me tolerate my feelings. And I practice mindfulness as often as possible.

One of my favorite mindfulness mantras is any sentence that begins with “in this moment.” In this moment, I am anxious. It’s hard to breathe. I am in pain. But in the next moment, I will feel differently.

And I always do.

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Posted in Mental Health, Relationships and tagged addiction, Anxiety, meditation, meds, mindfulness, obsessiveness, therapy. Bookmark the permalink.

Mental Hygiene

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Christy Barongan

Negativity is like a virus. Even if you are vigilant about taking your meds, challenging irrational thoughts, praying, meditating, and practicing self-acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion, it just takes one negative comment–one careless psychological sneeze–and you’re contaminated.

I’ve had 3 people sneeze on me today. In an effort to avoid contaminating you with too much negativity, I’ll just tell you about the most egregious of the 3 incidents.

I had my follow up appointment with my psychiatrist today. Thank goodness I only have to go twice a year. It’s a 3 and 1/2 hour drive round trip for a 30 minute appointment, and there’s very little about that 30 minutes that is therapeutic. While my psychiatrist knows his drugs, he’s not a particularly good therapist, to put it mildly. Which is OK, I guess, because I have a therapist. But I have to talk about something.

Because I have chronic sleep issues due to my night-owlness, I confessed that I’ve been struggling with regulating my sleep cycle now that I’m not working. Every time I tell him what time I go to sleep and wake up, he makes this judgmental face that looks like he just sucked on a lemon. Then he proceeds to tell me what the research says about the importance of waking up at the same time every day, especially when you have a history of depression. How I need to get morning sunlight, I shouldn’t take naps, I need to be more disciplined, blah blah blah.

I am not good at constructive criticism, but I did manage to say that I’m trying. That I spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing about sleep. So much so that it probably interferes with my sleep. He can read my blog if he wants proof.

But I wish I could say something more honest. Something like, you make me feel like crap when you make that stupid face and give me a lecture on sleep hygiene that I already know by heart because I am a clinical psychologist, in case you’ve forgotten. Every time I see you, you just give my inner critic ammunition to tell me how I’m failing at sleep hygiene and that I suck. You are supposed to be helping me with my mental health–not making it worse. Oh, and by the way, your waiting room smells like mold and you need to clean your freaking office and water your damn plants. It doesn’t reflect well on you that your plants are dying!

But I don’t want to come across as being too negative.

Does anyone ever give their doctor honest feedback when they do something unhelpful? I try to imagine what my reaction would be if a client brought to my attention that my facial expression conveyed blatant disapproval of what a terrible job they’re doing of trying to get better. It would be a shock, no question. But I don’t want to convey disapproval and judgment, so I think I would want to know. I think I would try to be more aware of my facial expressions. But as I mentioned in a previous post, we are terrible predictors of how we will act in the future. So maybe I would just be pissed off.

Maybe I can think of this as an opportunity to practice constructive criticism. Maybe I’ll talk to my therapist about it and see if she thinks it’s worth it to say something. Not what I wrote above, of course. But something.

Or maybe I could just tell him that my latest blog post is dedicated to him so he should read it. That would be hilarious!

I’ll let you know what I do. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to do your part in preventing the spread of negativity. Please remember to cover your mouth before your criticize. (And not in that passive-aggressive way where you cover your mouth while you fake cough and mumble something critical under your breath, either. You know what I’m taking about.)

I think this doodle looks like germs.

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Posted in Mental Health, Self-Acceptance and tagged compassion, Depression, honesty, meditation, meds, obsessiveness, prayer, self-compassion, self-criticism, sleep, therapy. Bookmark the permalink.

Interventions

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I’m not good at confronting people. Which is ironic, because one of the things I do in my job is coach students on how to confront their friends about having an eating disorder. And I think I give pretty good advice, too. But I guess I’m not as brave as these students are.

Because confronting their friend will most likely put a strain on their relationship. It’s rare that the person who is being confronted says, you’re right. I do have a problem and I want to get help. Thank you for saying something. Confronting them may just be one step in a long series of steps toward getting help. It may not get the person into the counseling center right away, but it may plant the seed of recovery in their mind.

I’ve had many clients with eating disorders acknowledge that even though they would have denied having a problem at the time, they still wanted someone to say something about their 30 pound weight loss. And I’ve heard many clients in recovery say that although they were mad at the people who tried to help them at the time, they played an important role in the process of accepting their disorder.

I know all of this, but I’m still afraid to do it. Maybe they’ll be angry and yell at me, and I hate being yelled at. Or maybe something else will happen that will feel terrible, but I can’t put into words what it is that I fear. So I have to think about what day I want to ruin. What day I want to be incapacitated. I haven’t found that day yet. But I need to, because I gave my word that I would say something.

I don’t even have to do it in person, since I live so far away. I just have to make a phone call. And in my defense, I have tried to call a few times, but the whole time I was praying that he wouldn’t answer. Luckily for me, he didn’t. He never answered and never called back, which is unusual. Perhaps he knows why I’m calling, and he doesn’t want to have this conversation, either. Which makes it that much harder to force it to happen.

I ordinarily pride myself on accepting challenges, mental toughness, and doing the right thing. But in this case, nothing has motivated me to move closer to having this conversation. Not prayer, or meditation, or talking my therapist. Not even guilt and shame.

So I thought I’d blog about it and see if that helps. I’ll let you know.

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The Emotional Life of Your Brain

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I just finished reading The Emotional Life of Your Brain, and although I started losing interest towards the end, it presents an interesting view of personality that is worth sharing.

Based on brain research, Davidson identifies 6 dimensions of personality:

1) Resilience (fast or slow to recover from adversity)

2) Outlook (negative or positive)

3) Social Intuition (puzzled or intuitive; A.K.A. emotional intelligence)

4) Self-Awareness (opaque or aware)

5) Sensitivity to Context (tuned out or tuned in)

6) Attention (unfocused or focused)

If you are interested in where you fall on each of these dimensions, click on the link above and you will find a short survey. Here were my results, which probably won’t surprise anyone who reads my blog:

1) Resilience: fast to recover

2) Outlook: positive

3) Social Intuition: very intuitive

4) Self-Awareness: very self-aware

5) Sensitivity to Context: very tuned in

6) Attention: focused

As with most personality dimensions, the goal is to move your set point closer to the middle. In practice, however, one end of the spectrum is usually more desirable than the other. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each extreme:

1) Resilience: Being too fast to recover may make you less compassionate and seem unfeeling and insensitive to others. Being slow to recover makes it difficult for you to function and you may focus more on your pain than on other people. But usually people try to learn how to be more resilient.

2) Outlook: A negative outlook puts you at risk for depression and annoys other people. An overly positive outlook makes it difficult for you to learn from your mistakes and postpone immediate gratification. But usually the goal is to develop a more positive outlook.

3) Intuition: Being too intuitive may make it difficult to function because you’re constantly picking up other people’s negativity. (Hmmm. That sounds familiar). People who are at the puzzled end may have problems in all aspects of their lives in which they have to interact with other people–which is essentially all aspects of life.

4) Self-Awareness: Being opaque makes you prone to missing signs of illness and make you unable to take care of yourself. Being too self-aware can make you a hypochondriac. But in general, it’s better to be self-aware.

5) Sensitivity to Context: Being tuned out might make you feel and act in ways that aren’t appropriate to the situation (e.g., anxiety disorders). Being too tuned in can make you prone to losing touch with your true self because you are constantly changing your behavior to fit the social situation. But usually people try to be more tuned in.

6) Attention: Being too focused annoys people because you don’t pay attention to them when you’re doing something. And you tend to “not see the forest for the trees.” Being unfocused puts you at risk for ADHD. But usually people want to learn how to be more focused.

Guess what the best way is to move toward the resilient, positive, intuitive, self-aware, tuned in, attentive end? Meditation! My favorite meditation guru is Jack Kornfield, and on his webpage he goes through the 5 basic meditations:

1) Meditation on Compassion

2) Walking Meditation

3) Forgiveness Meditation (which I really need to practice)

4) Sitting Meditation

5) Lovingkindness Meditation

Jon Kabat-Zinn also teaches meditation for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), but you have to pay for his stuff. You could also seek out a therapist who specializes in MBSR.

So there you have it–your cheat sheet for “The Emotional Life of Your Brain.” It took several months for me to get through the book, so feel free to make a donation to the Federer Fund if you found this helpful. Tickets to Grand Slam or ATP Masters 1000 events are also acceptable.

This doodle sort of looks like a brain. And it has 6 different colors–one for each personality dimension.