Midtown Family Therapy

When to end it

Nick — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:30:48 +0000

When you have given up, when the future seems only full of pain, you may need to look at serious changes. But first, TRY to fix it. Read, get help, get coaching, discover the real reasons you are unhappy. Don’t be lazy – do the work to try to improve it. But, when you have really worked hard at fixing it (and also important, other people believe that you have worked hard too) and things have not improved then you owe it to yourself to make your own life work. So, set yourself free to be happy. Whether it is a job, a relationship or some other situation there comes a time when you have to cut your losses and move on. There is no way to do this painlessly. It may make you anxious, it may hurt, it may confuse and hurt others but it must be done. You have a right and a responsibility to make your life to be as happy as possible. Do it or you may die an ugly and slow death. There is one reason to be cautious about this coaching: young children. Think twice and hard. But even then, and sometimes for their sake, you may have to flee. Get as much coaching and support as you can before you do.

QTIP

Nick — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:50:57 +0000

Quit taking it personally. Regardless of what another person does it is 100%, wholly and completely about what is inside of them, inside their own thinking, emotions and mind. You never cause their emotion. When you take personally the behaviors or words of another person you are infecting your own mind with things that did not originate with you nor has anything to do with you. Oh, sure the emotionally distressed person wants to make it about you; they blame you but you are not the cause – their own internal world is the cause. Their own beliefs, history, temperament are the cause of their internal world and the cause of their upset; you did not cause any of those things. Get calm. Let other people have their reactions to their life but you do not have to let yourself be infected by them, their words, emotions or behavior. I sometimes give people a little q-tip (a small straw with a little spin of cotton on the ends) in my office for them to take with them just to remind them of the principle – QTIP. Quit Taking It Personally is a great tool to leave the crazy world out there, instead of taking it into your own heart.

Anger from pain

Nick — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:32:06 +0000

If your loved-one is angry or acting emotional it is because they are in pain. If someone you love is hurting what would you do? Would you act cold, hostile or rejecting toward them? Rather, you if you know they were in pain you would extend your heart to them in empathy. When a person displays some kind of negative emotion our first response is often to get defensive and respond back with negative emotions. Of course back and forth negative emotions tend only to escalate to yelling and even worse. Negative emotions need to be explored not reacted to; try first to understand what is going on; you want to understand because what lies behind negative emotions is always pain of some sort. If you really do love them, then you want to reduce their pain not inflict more of it. So, when your loved-one is displaying negative emotions don’t take it personal; explore the idea that he/she is in pain and then caringly, lovingly ask them what their pain is really about. Allow your own heart to see and feel their pain and be moved with compassion and empathy to try to understand and comfort them. At the very least never fight back.

70% Crazy

Nick — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:17:10 +0000

We are all 70% crazy all the time. Echhart Tolle expressed this idea in one of his books. I basically agree that human beings are largely insane everywhere on the planet. We murder in the name of God, destroy the environment, gamble away our last dollar, condemn people who have a different idea about government, abused the weak or different – as a species we are nuts. If your own thoughts and private actions were suddenly broadcast for all of your friends, family and the world to see it might become quickly clear just how crazy you are too. Looking honestly at yourself, you might be able to see some of it. So, if you happen to catch your loved one being a little crazy don’t be surprised. We are all pretty crazy; it is just that some people have better fences around their crazy than others. A good fence around your crazy is the reason that other people often do not see just how crazy you can be. Good fences result from being devoted to being your very best self; practicing putting your highest principles ahead of your feelings. Thank goodness for strong fences, yours and other people’s. Keep your fences in good repair so that at least your crazy does not show.

Looking for love

Nick — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:48:06 +0000

What a challenge finding love can be. Whether you are 7 or 95 you want to feel loved. Happy love relationships are about character – things like: faithfulness, kindness, truthfulness, tenderness and determination. We all want someone who is easy on the eyes, but a person of character becomes beautiful with knowing them. If you are trying to recreate love in your relationship then become committed to being a person of character in your loved one’s experience of you. What would a truly faith-filled person do in her/his life? Whatever that is, do it. If you don’t have a love and you are trying find one then focus first on being a person of character. I remember in college dating a beautiful and talented girl; I said something disrespectful about another person and it really turned her off. She never went out with me again. There is nothing more attractive, or wears well over the long haul, than to experience a partner who is truly and deeply a quality human being. Focus on character. Look for a person of character. Be a person of character and a person of character will be attracted to you.

Quieting your Mind

Nick — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:48:51 +0000

Two things: daily tools and global philosophy. Global – you invent, create and unconsciously design the way you see the world and your own life. You can invent your day with the potential of dread or happiness; your choice. Most people don’t choose; they just live inside of the thoughts and feelings that they have as though they have no control of them. You don’t have the power to make the sun come up (or not), but you do have the power to see it as beautiful or not – the choice is one that you are making, you are just not aware you are making it. Adopt a more positive global perspective. Daily tools – these are the momentary take-a-step-back-and-regroup exercises that you can do throughout the day: deep breathing, walking away for a moment to calm down, intentionally remembering the greatest love of your life, stopping to get an ice cream cone, etc. These and 100s more are the intentional tools you can bring into your day to refocus it to the clearer truth that you actually can be in charge of your life even in the midst of a difficult or even impossible situation. No tools are perfect; tools are tools – things you can use to build a quieter mind.

You are Gold

Nick — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:09:38 +0000

A human being is an amazing creature. Regardless of whether you were made by the hand of God, or you are the product of a 4.6 billion year-long science experiment, you are amazing. Either way you get to be an amazing creature that knows that it is awake. Cosmology says that there is probably less than a 1 in 100 million chance that you would exist from a raw physics point of view. Theologians say you are a child of God. One says you are incredibly rare, the other says you are divine. My metaphor is Gold. You exist; you are sitting there reading this. It has to be one, the other or both. So, it is reality, hard scientific, spiritual truth – you are Gold. Now, of course, there are three problems: believing it, living up to it and treating others like they are too. All hard, almost impossible; start with believing.

Telling or Understanding

Nick — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:17:56 +0000

Communication is always the primary way for expressing and improving the troubles in a relationship. “Telling” is when one person tells the other what is wrong: anger, pain, disappointment, etc. “Understanding” is seeing things from the other person’s point of view. If your intention is telling then the other person is not really being considered and so they feel “told” and get defensive. This style of communication never really works in personal relationships. Instead, you might try communicating from an intentional-trying-to-understanding perspective. There is a much greater chance of real communication happening this way. You are smart, you don’t need to be thinking about how you will respond; you need to think about how you can help your loved-one tell their story so that they feel understood. If they do feel understood then they will give you a chance to express your point of view. Understanding is more important than telling. Telling is just blurting out your feelings, bullying in a way. Understanding is helping your loved-one say what they are trying to say to you and then you need to make sure that they (and you) actually do understand. Now, of course this MUST work both ways. Both partners need to focus on understanding each other. There is plenty of time for telling, almost no time given to understanding.

Purple Giraffe Principle

Nick — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:26:07 +0000

If I say, don’t think of an elephant, what comes to your mind? An elephant, right? Thoughts, sometimes very disturbing thoughts, seem to just pop into your head. Sometimes you can have a thought that will just not go away. Well, it would be nice to have a tool, an intellectual tool, to help get rid of those thoughts – elephants. 20 years ago I was helping a 5 year old little girl who had been traumatized by a bad experience. She could not get the bad thoughts about it out of her head. So I asked her, what is your favorite stuffed animal – she said it was a purple giraffe (so, the name – the Purple Giraffe Principle). When you have “an elephant” in your head and it will just not go away, think about how much you love and care about your purple giraffe, imagine yourself holding it, squeezing it; breath in your love for it and let it be all over you. Of course, you do not have to only think of a purple giraffe, but you get the idea. So, when you have a bad thought think of a sunrise, your child’s face, the last time you were at the ocean – anything besides the “elephant.” For most people it seems to help to create the same positive thought over and over. With practice this tool becomes more and more effective. The PGP is a tool, imperfect maybe, but a tool to begin to gain some control over the disturbing thoughts that can often plague your mind.

Love is a Lab

Nick — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:28:28 +0000

There will never be a better laboratory for improving yourself as a human being than to be in an intimate relationship. If you want to grow up, if you want to become the most powerful human being you can be then get into a relationship with a person who wants something of the same thing and begin the struggle to live your lives together. Two things help you become powerful: learn how to explain as clearly as possible, with some depth, what you really want and then also to learn how to truly come to understand what is in the heart of another human being. These two skills will not only grow you as a person but they also grow your love relationship as well. Also, these two skills are transferable to almost most everything in life in a powerful and productive way. Imagine what you would learn about yourself and another person if you were literally tied together with a 5 foot rope for a day, month or a year. If you could learn to be respectful, kind, patient, assertive, modest and passionate in that situation then you would become a powerful person in your own right. Let your love relationship become your lab for becoming a great human being.