Fear, depression, sadness, loneliness, anger… when you’re in the middle of painful or uncomfortable feelings it can feel like they will last forever.

In fact, when you do fear that those painful emotions will last forever you may avoid moving through them.

That avoidance is what makes those painful feelings last much longer than they normally would.

This video talks about how to understand those painful feelings and how to give yourself permission to move through them in the best way possible.

I want all of my current and future clients to know that I am always looking for new and more effective therapeutic techniques to help you on your journey.

I came across this approach the other day and think it might be useful.

Let me know what you think.

Many of you believe in the value of counseling.

But there are still some who don’t quite understand exactly HOW talking with someone can help you through your problems. After all, can’t they just “get over it on their own?”

HOW Counseling Works

Counseling involves more than just talking to someone.

The following is a list of the other elements that are part of a therapeutic relationship. When all of these things are put together, people get better faster.

1. No Matter How Disturbing The Subject, The Counselor Will Still Be Engaged

When you share uncomfortable information with friends or family, their natural reaction may be to withdraw or run away. A counselor is able to stay in the room, physically, emotionally, relationally, and personally—even in the midst of difficult topics.

2. A Counselor Will Not Judge

A counselor won’t shame or judge your actions. He or she is there to help you understand how you got into this situation, why you made the decisions you made, and the best way to make things right.

3. A Counselor Has Empathy, Insight, Understanding, And Acceptance

A counselor does more than blindly listen. He or she has the desire and ability to hurt with you without getting lost in that hurt. That’s called empathy.

In the midst of that empathy, they will have tools and ideas to help you navigate through some of the difficult situations you find yourself in.

Your counselor knows how to listen with understanding. They get all the information first (or as much as possible) so they have a complete picture of the situation.

Since a counselor can not change the past, they will help you learn how to accept the situation as it is, accept yourself unconditionally, and accept the next steps in the process.

4. Counselors Give You The Opportunity To Speak The Unspeakable

Sometimes, things that are so difficult to talk about that you carry them around for years. They weigh on you, causing emotional, relational, and physical problems. When you reach the point where you can no longer carry the secret, a counselor will be able to listen to your story and help you figure out what to do.

5. Counselors Provide A Safe Environment To Be A Mess

Looking at the heavy stuff in your life can be messy.

Because the counseling relationships is confidential and protected, you can stop worrying about how you look or who will see you. You are protected, sheltered, and cared for as you start to experience the appropriate emotions that come along with difficult situations.

6. A Counselor Can Be Safely Be Used As A Transference Object Without Counter-Transference Getting In The Way

Transference is when a client has strong feelings towards their counselor.

Counter-Transference is when the counselor has strong feelings towards their client.

An example:

When you were a child, you were told that what you had to say was stupid and unimportant. You quickly learned not to speak your mind or share anything you were thinking about.

When you get into counseling, and the counselor ask you, “So, what do you think?” you will probably experience the same feelings of fear that you felt as a child. You will treat the counselor the same way you treated the adults in your life. You may withdraw or lash out against the counselor.

Because the counselor is trained, he or she will be aware of his own reactions (counter-transference) to your reaction (transference) and choose a healthy response. It is this healthy response which starts to challenge your belief systems and shows you that you have different options on how to interact with your world. If the counselor wasn’t aware of their own reactions, and reacted in the same way that the hurtful adults in your life reacted, they would be reinforcing the negative experience and not being able to provide adequate help in your growth process.

Finding A Good Counselor

It’s not always easy finding someone you click with. This is some of the important characteristics you should look for in a quality counselor.

Take your time, find someone you feel safe with, and then start to do the work. You’ll find out for yourself just how valuable counseling can truly be.

Being sexually assaulted changes everything. Not only do you have to endure the physical consequences, but it also brings with it some significant emotional scars as well. There is no guaranteed way to prevent being assaulted, but the one thing that will help you during an assault is fighting back.

Fighting Back Is Better Than Trying To Talk Your Way Out Of It

“Women’s generally high sociability was often a liability rather than an asset during a rape attempt. Many women tried to appeal to the humanity of the rapist or to establish some form of empathic connection with him. These efforts were almost universally futile.”

It makes perfect sense to try and talk your way out of a scary situation. You’ve been told your entire life to be kind, to play nice, to not make people mad, to not hurt other people’s feelings. Those messages automatically kick in when we are scared and our rational brain takes a break.

But they don’t work.

It is healthy to know when to be kind and when to be offensive. Both are good if used in the right context. Being assaulted is the perfect time to do everything possible to communicate to this person that what they are doing is not going to be tolerated and that you don’t actually care about them. You are willing to hurt them personally, emotionally, and physically if necessary. It is saying, “I am choosing my health and safety over yours.”

Fighting Back Keeps You From Blaming Yourself

“Women who were immobilized by terror and submitted without a struggle were more likely not only to be raped but also to be highly self-critical and depressed in the aftermath.”

Freezing and becoming passive is a normal and natural thing to do when you are scared for your life. It often times happens automatically and can’t be helped. Unfortunately, one of the emotional consequences of freezing is the critical self talk that comes later on. You say things like, “Why did I just let this happen.” “It must be my fault since I didn’t fight back.” “I deserve what happened because I didn’t fight back.”

You do this to make sense of a situation that doesn’t make sense. It gives you a sense of control. “I’ve got to blame someone, and since I didn’t fight back, I should blame myself.” Doing this puts inappropriate shame and guilt on the wrong person and its important, during recovery, to shift this blame to the person who did the wrong—the rapist.

Fighting Back Helps You Actively Process The Physical Energy

“Women who used many active strategies and fought to the best of their ability were not only more likely to be successful in thwarting the rape attempt but also less likely to suffer severe distress symptoms even if their efforts ultimately failed.”

When we get scared our bodies get ready for battle or flight. Our heart rate increases, our adrenaline starts pumping, our blood flow changes to the core of our body to keep it protected. All of this physiological preparation needs something to be done with it. Freezing, or becoming passive, keeps all this physical energy locked up in our body which leads to significant problems later on. When we fight back, we disperse all that energy, even if it doesn’t eventually stop the assault. Our physical bodies process through it differently—healthier—so that the consequences later on are not as severe.

If You’ve Been Assaulted…

… there is help for you. You need to find a good counselor who can help you move through all of the personal, emotional and physical reactions to the rape. Once you do that, that event will be part of your story but not impacting you on a daily basis.

You’ll want to find someone who specializes in abuse recovery and PTSD and has a variety of tools to choose from including EMDR, EFT, Somatic processing, etc… Both male and female therapists can be helpful, as long as they are someone you feel safe enough with.

If You Want To Be Better Prepared…

… consider taking a self-defense class. This teaches you when it is okay to contradict all the messages to be nice you’ve received growing up. It creates muscle memory so you know what your screaming voice sounds like, what it feels like to punch someone, what it feels like to purposefully try to hurt someone. Once you have these tools, you’ll be better prepared for a wider variety of situations in your life.

Information and quotes adapted from Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery

Most negative thinking is automatic (Automatic Negative Thoughts—ANTS) and goes unnoticed. You’re not really choosing how to respond to a situation, its being chosen for you by your bad brain habits. To find out what is really true you need to question your thinking patterns.

Below are 9 of the the most common ANTS people have. Even though we slip into each one of these at some time or another, we usually gravitate towards one or two main ANTS in our lives. By catching what the negativing thinking pattern is, we start to have the ability to chose our responses in life and live a little more productively.

1. “Always/Never” Thinking

This happens when you think something that happened will “always” repeat itself, or that you’ll “never” get what you want. All-or-never words like always, never, no one, every one, every time, everything are usually wrong.

2. Focusing On The Negative

This occurs when your thoughts reflect only the bad in a situation and ignore any of the good things. Its getting 100 reviews back and all you can focus on are the 4 bad ones, forgetting about the 96 positive ones.

3. Fortune-telling

This is where you predict the worst possible outcome to any situation. When you go into a conversation assuming that the other person won’t like what you have to say, you change the way you communicate to usually make it come true.

4. Mind Reading

This happens when you believe that you know what other people are thinking, even though they haven’t told you directly. Taking someone’s silence as “They’re mad at me” is a perfect example of mind reading. They may just be thinking.

5. Thinking With Your Feelings

This occurs when you believe your negative feelings without ever questioning them. Feelings are very complex and often based upon our past stories. Feelings are not always about truth. Feelings are your perception of certain situations.

6. Guilt Beating

Also called shoulding on yourself, guilt beating is when you think words like should, must, ought, or have to to most situations. It’s healthier to say, “I’d like to be able to help them out” instead of “I should help them out”.

7. Labeling

Whenever you attach a negative label like jerk, arrogant, irresponsible, or stupid to yourself or to someone else, you stop your ability to take a clear look at the situation.

8. Personalizing

This happens when you invest innocuous events with personal meaning. “My boss didn’t talk to me, so I must have done something wrong.” There are lots of reasons people do things. You never fully know why people do what they do.

9. Blaming

When you blame something or someone else for the problems in your life, you become a passive victim of circumstances and you make it very difficult to do anything to change your situation.

Further Reading

If you want to read more on ANTS, this information was taken from Daniel Amen’s book Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. (I know. Its a cheezy title but its got some good stuff in it. I’d recommend it.)