Tian Dayton

One fifty minute session per week is simply not enough to change a person’s life. If insight is to translate into meaningful life change it needs to be accompanied by small daily actions and lifestyle changes that translate insight into action so that change becomes sustainable and renewable. The fifty minute hour is a crucial underpinning for change because it’s where we can work through inner conflicts that may be keeping us stuck and blocking our ability to grow. But if we really want to see change in our lives, we need to take a holistic approach both as therapists and clients not only to what goes on in the therapist’s office, but outside of it.

We live in the middle of a constant cascade of information; we know random factoids about everything from the anti-oxidants in blueberries to why crossword puzzles help us to slow down the aging process. But what we know doesn’t necessarily get translated into what we do or who we’re able to become. We can have all sorts of great insights but if we lead lifestyles that put us under too much stress, eat foods that make our moods spike and dip, drink caffeine that makes us buzz and crash or use alcohol or drugs to manage emotional turmoil, insight won’t help all that much. We’ll still feel stressed out, out of balance and all over the place. When we “know too much” and “do too little”, or if we “know better” but “do worse” discouragement follows. We set ourselves up for disappointment because we know enough to have high expectations but we undermine our progress by living lifestyles that create stress and imbalance. We think “I know better than this so why isn’t change happening?” “I understand what triggers me and what my issues are, so why do I still get triggered and have issues, why do things still hurt?”

Emotions are a lot like the weather and people are like any other ecosystem. If a person’s emotional insulation layer gets compromised by too much stress and toxic living, they will experience the same sorts of extremes in their emotional climate that global warming causes in our weather system. They will have trouble with self regulation, they will tend toward emotional extremes because their ability to self regulate will be undermined. It will be harder for them to simply live comfortably in a balanced emotional mood.

Therapy is a wonderful place to examine emotional and psychological patterns of thinking, feeling and behavior that get us into trouble so that we can change them. This is where insight can be very freeing, once we understand the origins of particular patterns we “see” what’s going on and feel able to change them. But, if we’re going to therapy, gaining all sorts of good insights then living a lifestyle that undermines what I like to refer to as our “emotional sobriety” we may not see the changes we’re looking for.

If we want to make therapy sustainable and renewable, we’ll need to make lifestyle changes that go far beyond the office; the kinds of changes that become self generative and self sustaining. In order to do this, we need to understand how our emotions, bodies, thinking and action all work together as a well oiled machine, or how they get out of whack if we don’t take care of them. Over the next few weeks I will go through some of those changes one by one and discuss the underpinnings of good emotional sobriety and balance.

Some friends and I were sinking into that backdrop of twilight sky, flickering lights and people in motion that make eating outside in this city so strangely cozy and entertaining…and we got to talking. There are some benefits to this recession when it comes to returning New York City to some of its livability and charm. Is it my imagination or because people are going out less do they seem to be enjoying it more? Maybe it’s just summer and everyone is more relaxed, traffic is down and the streets are calmer but something about New York City just feels less frantic. There are tons of folks, for example, streaming into the park; friends, lovers and families with little children loaded down with picnic baskets, laying down blankets and settling in for free concerts and movies. Sidewalk restaurants are full of attractive, interesting looking people leaning into animated conversation over bread, wine and plates of pasta.

And an added bonus, some of the worst kind of New York types are less in evidence. The wannabes who walk down the street shouting into their cell phones, trying to look like wheeler dealers, the masters of the universe types who stare …..somber and smug…. through the tinted windows of their black limos; the over dressed, over jeweled and over-ampted shoppers for whom nothing is quite right. You know the types? When there is less money to spend or show off, well people do less spending and showing off. It’s a relief.

This recession has done a lot to remind people of what’s really important, to get us to reflect on how things got so out of control to begin with; it has been humbling and sometimes being humbled brings out the best in people. Humbled people tend to be less preening and competitive and more focused on getting on with it and enjoying the moment. The simple pleasures seem worth more; walks through the park, dinners with friends; noticing and valuing what you already have and where you already are instead of always wanting to have more and be somewhere else.
And culture becomes more important again. After all going to the museum is cheap entertainment and a lot more elevating (well this could be argued, I suppose) than shopping. Seeing a play, though not cheap, is still less than some evenings can add up to in New York, it’s good value, more bang for your buck. An experience to be remembered.

When rents fall more people can live here. The City was rapidly on its way to pricing everyone but big money makers or people in rent control out and that’s not healthy. New York needs its art loving, people oriented, intelligent middle class, the ones who are here to use and enjoy the city rather than possess and own it.

Maybe we’re getting our city back so that those who live here, raise their families here and love the little stuff that makes this city “this city.” They can can remember why they wanted to live here in the first place. Strolling down Fifth Avenue, meandering along the side streets of downtown, Chinatown, bagel shops, corner delis, book stores and the rare mix of people from all walks of life can be rediscovered. We can take a momentary break from breathlessly getting ahead, stop and, well not smell the roses exactly, but love that feeling of being surrounded by something alive and endlessly interesting, a city that has a pulse of its own that never stops beating. And we can actually spend some time just enjoying each others company instead of constantly networking and “getting ahead” to a place that no one can quite define. If less affluence means living more in our bodies and less in our heads and wallets, then maybe we can learn something about ourselves during this period, maybe we can remember the value of doing less and enjoying it more.

You can actually make your body systems function more efficiently by regularly taking a little 90 second break to focus on calming your heart. What goes on in our hearts affects our entire bodies. The heart’s electromagnetic field far out-powers and out-ranges that of the brain or any other body system. Calming the heart calms the circulatory, nervous and respiratory systems, not to mention a host of others like the digestive and excretory tracts. If we’re calm in our minds and emotions, our overall level of physical functioning is enhanced and improved. If we’re frequently or chronically stressed or upset, our overall level of physical functioning is reduced. “Emotions such as tension, frustration, and sadness can trigger a drop in the blood supply to the heart,” say Childre & Howard of Heartmath. When we’re under stress, the body assumes its survival is threatened so it releases adrenaline into the bloodstream which in turn activates the body’s fight or flight response. When this emergency response becomes chronic, that is if our stress response gets revved up too often throughout the day, the actual beating rhythm of our heart, our “heart rate variability” can become deregulated and chaotic which then throws off all of the body systems that the heart impacts.

Take a Heart Conscious Break
Because the heart is such an efficient organ, we can use it’s effective and intelligent functioning in our favor if we are conscious about it. If we adopt strategies to calm our hearts, our whole body will calm down as well in a matter of seconds, not only will we reduce stress, we’ll enhance healthy body functioning.
Activities like consciously relaxing, meditating or praying nourish and calm the heart and hence, the rest of us. These activities produce what’s called, the relaxation response–a physiological state that is exactly the opposite of stress, a state that reduces blood pressure and increases blood flow to the heart. Not only does this calming create feelings of peace and serenity in our minds, it creates them in our bodies as well. To experience the benefits of this “intentional heart focus,” try the following next time you’re feeling stressed:
• Take a break and mentally disengage from the situation.
• Bring your attention to the area of your heart.
• Meditate or ponder for a moment on those kinds of thoughts and feelings that make you feel calm, peaceful and relaxed or recall an experience in which you felt those feelings and “go there in your head”.
• Re-experience these feelings while keeping your attention on your heart. Let your breathing be relaxed and regular.

This little 90 second to 3 minute break done throughout the day can actually keep you healthy as well as happy. Don’t let stress build, the more you consciously focus positive feelings and relaxation on your heart the more you’ll strengthen and expand a reservoir of peace and calm within you. While you’re eating your omega 3′s, olive oil and veggies, don’t ignore your heart, conscious calming is heart smart living, too. Tiandayton.com

It’s “Children of Alcoholics Week” so this blog is dedicated to anyone, of any age, who has lived with addiction and the emotional extremes, chaos and dysfunction that it engenders. One of the strange phenomena of living with dysfunction and pain as a child is that the effects of it can surface much later, even in adulthood. This is because of what’s known as a post traumatic stress reaction in which long after the stressor is removed, in this case alcoholic or abusive parents, we live with the effects of it in our lives and relationships our relationships, particularly our intimate relationships.

Following is a list of characteristics that living with the emotional and psychological trauma of addiction can lead to, though this list is serious in nature, remember that recovery is also a path to self fulfillment and leading an alive and purposeful life, so read all the way to the bottom today!

Problems with Self- regulation
Those of us who have lived with addiction, all too often tend to live in emotional extremes. We go from zero to ten with no speed bumps in between, from imploding to exploding. We have trouble living in 4, 5 and 6. Our thinking, feeling and behavior can come to mirror this movement. We be uncomfortable living in the middle range, in other words, and used to living on the emotional edges.

Hyper-reactivity/Easily Triggered
Living with relationship trauma can over sensitize us to stress. Consequently we may over respond to stress or blow conflicts that could be managed calmly out of proportion; we over react. People who are hyper reactive may become easily triggered. This hyper reactivity can emerge whether in a slow grocery line, in traffic, at work or in relationships.

Learned Helplessness
When we feel we can do nothing to affect or change the situation we’re in, we may develop learned helplessness, we may give up. We may lose some of our ability to take actions to affect, change or move a situation forward.

Emotional Constriction
Emotional constriction refers to a restricted range of feelings or lack of authentic expression of emotion. Homes that do not encourage the expression of genuine feeling may leave us with either fear around expressing our real feelings or even an inability to know what they are.

Somatic Disturbances
Because the body processes and holds emotion we may experience our unconscious emotions as somatic disturbances such as back pain, chronic headaches, muscle tightness or stiffness, stomach problems, heart pounding, headaches, shivering and shaking or anxiety.

Loss of Trust and Faith
When our personal world and the relationships within it become very unpredictable or unreliable, we may experience a loss of trust and faith in both relationships and a predictable, orderly life.

Hyper vigilance/Anxiety
When we’re hypervigilant we’re constantly “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” or “walking on eggs shells,” we scan other people’s faces for signs that we need to protect ourselves. Unfortunately, this may also create problems because we may perceive problems even where few exist or become overly reactive to perceived slights, making ourselves hard to be around or even driving a situation toward conflict. If we go through the world looking for people to insult us, we can usually find them.

Traumatic Bonding
Traumatic bonds, are unhealthy bonding styles that tend to become created in families where there is significant fear. Traumatic bonds have a tendency to repeat themselves, that is we tend to repeat this type of bond in relationships throughout our lives, often without our awareness. Trauma can make people both want to both withdraw from close relationships and seek them desperately. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others.

Depression with Feelings of Despair
When we are deregulated in our basic emotions we may have trouble regulating feelings such as anger, sadness and fear, all of which may contribute to depression. Elevated levels of cortisol which are associated with stress, are also found in high amounts in people who report feeling depressed. Brain imaging has demonstrated that trauma can affect the body and brain much more than had previously been understood. For example, in depression, which is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the amygdala, which is a center of negative emotions in the brain, runs unchecked — in other words everything feels threatening. In addition, a center of memory, the hippocampus, may lose nerve-to-nerve links. Brain imaging research shows that both of these centers of the brain may even be altered in size and shape in victims of trauma such as sexual abuse or the experiences of being a prisoner of war. Research both in animals and in people show that stress or trauma early in life, like the stress of living with addiction or relationship trauma, can sensitize neurons and receptors throughout the central nervous system so that they perpetually over-respond to stress.

Distorted Reasoning
We make sense of situations with the developmental equipment we have at any given age. When we’re young we make child like meaning which may be laced with magical thinking or interpretations that are based on the natural egocentricity of the child who feels that the world circulates around and because of them. This kind of reasoning can be immature and distorted. When our family unit is spinning out of control, we may tell ourselves whatever is necessary to allow ourselves to stay connected. We may tell ourselves that our drunk mother has the flu or abusive behavior is normal. We may deny the truth that is right in front of us in an attempt to make more palatable meaning out of confusing, frightening or painful experiences that feel senseless. We may carry this distorted reasoning into adult relationships.

Loss of Ability to Take in Caring and Support from Others
As mistrust takes hold, our willingness to accept love and support may lessen. We’re perhaps afraid that if we let our guard down, if we let connection feel too good, we’ll only set ourselves up for more pain when the inevitable happens and we’re disappointed again and again. So we protect ourselves as best as we know how imagining that by avoiding meaningful connection we will also avoid hurt.

Tendency to Isolate
People who have felt traumatized may have a tendency to isolate and withdraw into themselves when they are feeling vulnerable. Isolation is also a feature of depression. Unfortunately the more we isolate, the more out of practice become at making connections with people, which can further isolate us.

Cycles of Reenactment
The reenactment dynamic is one of the most common ways that trauma from one generation gets passed down through subsequent generations. We tend to recreate those circumstances in our lives that feel unresolved. We repeat and repeat the relational patterns that are familiar even if they do not work to get us what we really want.

High Risk Behaviors
Adrenaline is highly addictive to the brain and may be a powerful mood enhancer. Speeding, sexual acting out, over working, spending, fighting, drugging or other behaviors done in a way that puts one at risk are some examples of high risk behaviors.

Survival Guilt
The person who “gets out” of an unhealthy family system while others remain mired within it, may experience what is referred to as ‘survivor’s guilt.” This person may become overly preoccupied with fixing their families because the thought of being happy when their families remain locked in dysfunctional ways of living, can be very painful to them.

Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses People who are consistently being wounded emotionally and are not able to address it openly and honestly may develop rigid psychological defenses, such as denial, projection, dissociating or repression to manage their fear and pain.

Relationship Issues
Those who have experienced trauma within the context of primary relationships may tend to recreate dysfunctional patterns of relating in the present that mirror unresolved issues from the past. This can occur through psychological dynamics such as projection (projecting our pain onto someone or a situation outside the self), transference (transferring old pain into new relationships (transference)), reenactment patterns (recreating dysfunctional patterns of relating over and over and over again).

Desire to Self-Medicate
The emotional, psychological, and physiological setup that accompanies relationship trauma can lead to self medication, in which we attempt to numb out painful emotions and disturbing physiological symptoms and sensation with drugs or alcohol. Self medicating can seem to be a solution in the immediate moment, as it really does make pain, anxiety and physiological disturbances temporarily disappear, but in the long run, it creates many more problems than it solves. Addiction can be seen as a problem with self regulation.

Having laid out all of the life complications that addiction can contribute to let me say that there is tremendous hope. Twelve step programs like Al-Anon and AA offer powerful healing communities.

For more log onto tiandayton.com and for a fuller understanding of the dynamics of living with addiction, dysfunction and/or emotional trauma read Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Balance . (Dayton 2008)

For information on how to help yourself or to find out how you can help to raise conscious and help others visit the National Association for Children of Alcoholics at nacoa.org. NACOA is a resource for parents, teachers, health professionals of all kinds, legal system and anyone who touches the lives of children to learn to identify a child who might be in need and get information on what to do for them.