Author Archives: Patricia Brawley, PhD, LPC

The Last Spoonful Of Jam – To Eat Or Not To Eat

I’m not young or skinny, although I’ve been both.

I know the month and year when I gained weight and the most I’d ever weighed. I can tell you the outside story of why that happened but, for the life of me, I can’t tell you why those pounds stayed around after the traumatic event passed. Oh, they play hide-and-seek but I always find them. Or, do they find me? It doesn’t matter.

I’m now trying to get to the root of this problem and figure out what type of eater I have become. I figure that will help create meaningful goals and plans for change. No need to plan to stop eating bread if I don’t eat bread anyway. No need to add more cardio if I’m already doing in hour a day. Get my drift? It goes deeper.

Morning breakfast gave me a good test. I like a spoonful of jelly / jam with my toast. I don’t eat that every morning but it was toast morning and I had the peach jam jar in my hand spooning out the last of the jam. I had enough for the toast, but there was about one spoonful left in the jar. Suddenly, I felt like I was in the crosswalk of New York traffic and didn’t know which way to go. Should I eat the spoonful or throw the jar away with the spoonful in it? The jam didn’t have a smidgen of peach in it, it was purely sugar that I didn’t need. Then, there’s my husband’s habit of retrieving jars from the trash and surely he would scold me for throwing away food.

Well, I ate it. Then, the analysis came. I wanted to get to the bottom of it (pun intended) Was this the lesson of childhood of “clean your plate”? Greed? Waste not want not? The “Mikey Will Eat It” habit of eating leftovers whether they were good or not?

It was certainly not unconscious eating or eating from starvation, although you might have wondered the way I wolfed it down. Maybe it was eating before anyone could see me. Am I a Secret Eater like some folks are secret drinkers?

This is turning into a mystery game.

My question to you — Would you have eaten the last spoonful or not? Why?

If you aren’t sure, maybe my food personality quiz will help you decide. Sign up at the following link and download and print it free. It gets to the heart of your emotional eating triggers. Click on the button below, enter your name and e-mail address and get instant access to the food personality quiz. Check it out. You may never look at weight management the same!

Please let me know. I may be the only person who would!

The Lost and Found Department for Weight Loss

Ever had that sinking feeling when you started to leave the store and realized you had lost your car keys?

The sinking feeling morphs into panic and your whole being goes into overdrive. You are looking everywhere and you finally remember there is a Lost And Found department. Ah! You run there ever so fast and see the clerk pulling the door closed and you hear the lock turn, just as you make it there.

But, you know she’s there. You still feel there’s a chance she’ll hear your plea and open the door just for you. So, in rising voice, you beg for the door to open – all you need is a peek! And your prayers answered. She opens the door just a slit as if she’s doing something wrong and listens to your story. She smiles, “Yes, someone turned that in earlier. I’ll get it for you.” Then, she hands over your item. Tears are not enough to show your thanks, but you try to tell her how good she is and how much you appreciate what she did for you.

The panic feeling washes out of your body replaced by feelings of happiness and relief. You tell yourself, “I’ll never do that again.”

Imagine that the next week you’re shopping at the same store and you lose your keys again. You turn up at the same Lost and Found department and talk to the same helpful lady. She has them. The scene is repeated and you tell yourself again, “I’m never going to lose my keys again.” But, you do.

How would you feel if you did this every week?! Would you allow yourself to keep losing your keys or would you recognize a “pattern”? Now, think about how many times you’ve lost weight. How many times did you gain it back? Isn’t it a little like the Lost and Found story? You suddenly become aware you’ve lost weight! You’re happy and relieved.

BUT, soon you’re at the Lost and Found begging for the pounds be returned to you. And, they are no matter how many times you’ve lost them. That may sound silly but it’s about 99.9% true for most people. There are thousands of people pounding on the Lost and Found door wanting their weight to be returned to them. I can hear you. You’re saying, “I didn’t want my lost pounds to return. They came back on their own.”

Really?

Think about the choices you made right before your pounds showed up in your life after you thought they were gone for good. Just as it would be ludicrous for us to keep losing our keys, the same is true when we repeatedly lose and gain weight.

Here’s why you do it. Despite what we’ve been taught, we are all emotionally hungry in some way. That’s right. We all connect with food emotionally in some way, but society and the media don’t touch on this part of weight management. So, I’m here to tell you that before you can be seriously committed to any weight loss plan or address any challenges you have around eating or weight loss, you need to look inside yourself first.

If you would like to learn more about this, Click Below to sign up and download my free quiz on identifying your eating personality and emotional eating type.

The Things We Think We Have To Do – Are You Sabotaging Your Dreams?

If I asked you to make a list of all the things you think you have to do would it go on forever? If I asked you to mark the ones you think you absolutely have to do, you’d have a shorter list. Some would be related to work or family, some friends and some moral codes.

Now, If I asked you to make a list of what you have to do for yourself – just you – how long is your list now? Is it the shortest list? Why is that?

Enough questions. But, I hope it got you thinking about the things you would like to do for yourself. I’d like to make it easier for you to grow into a place where you can do things for yourself and not feel guilty! For example, just think of how many diet programs and food plans are available to solve our weight problems for us. They all work but most don’t last. Why is that?

The same mind, mostly our unconscious mind, keeps us stuck doing the same thing over and over to sabotage what we say we want to achieve. In this example, it would be in the lose weight – gain weight pattern.

You hear people say, “It didn’t work.” “I couldn’t keep up the plan.” “It’s too expensive and time consuming.” Most people don’t succeed at losing weight with only products. Products don’t measure our desire, emotions, sense of urgency, and fears. True, if we feel a bigger sense of urgency to lose weight, we have a better chance. But how long does a sense of urgency last before we give up and eat to handle emotional needs or to handle stress? I’ll tell you why.

Their success has everything to do with mindset.

You can develop insight to understand your mindset about losing weight (or other goals) by writing answers to all the questions in this article. The next one is very important. Think about it.

What is it you’re not willing to change to have the success you want? Write these things down. Go through your life and be honest. The things you write down control your life. These things may be holding you back from losing weight, too.

You see, it’s not the programs and strategies to lose weight that fail you. Your mind is working perfectly well. There is nothing wrong with you. But your mind is running on beliefs that you value and believe are true. Remember, just because we believe something, doesn’t mean it is true. For example, you may believe that you would never steal anything because it goes against your beliefs. But, if you were told your child has a week to live if you didn’t steal something, would you change your belief? Most people say they beg, borrow, and steal to save another person’s life. They would change their entire mindset from thinking they could never do something to thinking they must do it no matter what.

But, would you change your mindset to do something for yourself? What belief is running through your mind about your worth? Have you been taught to put yourself last? What good does that do?

If you’d be interested in participating or listening to a free teleseminar next month about how to make changes drop me an email at Dr B@earthlink.net. I’ll add you to our guest list and make sure you get the info.

Why You Should Forgive Someone When You Don’t Want To

I know, I know. You’re most likely thinking you are the one who has been wronged and need an apology not the other way round. And, most likely, you’re right. But (you knew it was coming), victim and victimizer are like a see-saw. We know how to play both roles.

This article will help you get relief. By this time in life, you probably have a story about the time(s) when you were wronged. It could be when you were abused or treated unfairly by people you love or harassed at work. Fill in you blank. We all have an inner story like this.

Who do you blame for these feelings?
In your mind, how do you talk to this person?
If you blame yourself, how to you talk to yourself?

If it’s someone else you blame, you should know they may never apologize. The solution is not to get them to apologize. The solution is to forgive them anyway in order to be free. Break out of the prison of victimhood. Forgive so that you can get past where you’re stuck and quit telling the same old stories that bind you to people who have wronged you.

Think of a person you don’t want to forgive. Question your belief about what forgiveness means. It is not excusing their wrong. Question your belief about the influence of your life, such as “I’m this way because of what happened to me, because he/she cheated.” Is that really true? Or is it an excuse? Or maybe to let go of the excuse means your story/life has to change.

It’s not easy. Childhood hurts lodge themselves in the brain that change our views and behaviors. Mirror neurons pick up what someone puts out and other people pick up what we put out. If the feedback loop is, say distrustful, you will see that in others and they will feel it about you. That’s enough to make an effort to do some personal development work aimed toward feeling positive and free.

There are 3 levels of forgiveness.

The first one is practice. It’s like what we tell our children to say when they take another child’s toy, “Say, I’m sorry.” In grown-up talk, it’s “sorry about that, etc.” We’re not really feeling sorry, we just say we’re sorry. It’s a start. It’s part of the human ritual.

The second level requires thoughtful inquiry. We become psychologically engaged to figure out what we’re feeling and whether or not the other person actually meant to hurt you.

The third level may surprise you. Your heart can be opened by grace, compassion, seeing the nature of humankind or many other experiences that increase your awareness of oneness.

Counseling, meditation, and yoga are pathways to forgiveness. So is confession, the 5th step in the substance abuse 12-step program, and talking to your best friend. My favorite pathway is writing. Therapeutic writing allows you to feel your way through this process and you can refer back to it later to see your progress.

Why is this important? Because you are important. It’s unhealthy to harbor grudges, stuff feelings, or act-out unexamined beliefs. This can create disease, obesity, loneliness, and a bitter attitude toward life in general. If you’ve ever smoked, drank, or eaten too much because of feelings, you remember how good that felt in the moment but how bad it felt moments later.

We all need to start over sometimes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you don’t need to communicate your feelings to someone who’s hurt you. But, you have to start with you first. The person you most need to forgive may be yourself.

I have created an impactful free workbook to help you on your journey to forgive whoever it is in your life that needs forgiving. You can sign up here to get it and you’ll instantly receive the download in your inbox MOVING PAST STUCK HANDOUT.

How to Develop an Intimate Relationship with Your Body

In this article, I discuss one perspective on the intimate relationship we have with our bodies, particularly weight. It is a mundane topic but one that graces the cover of almost every magazine in the grocery store check-out line and many ads on TV. Like many of us, I grapple with the problems and attitude that intrudes into day-to-day life and causes us to act on impulse and desire. Happiness will never come from grasping and yet, what are we to do? Give up? No. Give in. Give in to the situation and make it better.

Consider the benefits of becoming intimate with your body. All of it. It’s size, age, beauty and flaws. The parts that hurt and the parts you like are all part of the weight. Weight is more than a number. I’m not saying numbers are meaningless. Far from it. Numbers give us direction. But, there is so much more than body mass that makes up the number we see on the scale.

Just like when you are in relationships with others, intimacy has to do with seeing yourself in others and feeling they are “like me.” Your identity is not challenged and you are not disturbed by what others think or feel about you. But, when there is a disconnect with identity, perhaps weight, you look in the mirror and think, “This is not me.” But, you need to look deeper to find out why you are feeling the disconnect. Is it because there is a true gap between the person you see in the mirror and who you are inside? Or is it because you think you need to be someone else to make others happy?

We don’t want others to see us as overweight. We care what they think about us because we are always thinking about ourselves, rather than the other person. We become self-conscious. In Buddhism, the second noble truth shows us that the source of suffering comes from desire and excessive focus on self. We want something outside ourselves to fix it. It could be a person or the latest diet pill.

When I think of how many people are unhappy about their weight, I feel very sad at how weight has become the focus and such a big marker for happiness. Some may be teased by others, are internally traumatized by it, or are physically sick from it.

I’d like to raise awareness that a perfect weight is NOT the goal, or a reason to become self-critical. Knowing if you truly do want to lose weight and why is the goal.

If you are happy in your own skin, that’s all that matters! If you’re not, ask yourself why. Become more aware of how you are talking to yourself about your body. Lighten up. Make a list of the things you love about yourself. Drop the criticisms and create an action plan to bridge the gap if there is one In meditation, hold your body in totality. Try to not celebrate gaining or losing pounds. It’s distracting from the joy of living.

Point of View

Unexpected discoveries are expected, even looked forward to, on vacation. Anticipation of seeing new places, eating different foods and hearing other languages gives us a perspective of leaving home. Most travelers imagine what it would be like to live in vacation spots.

And, so it was with me. Driving down California’s Highway 1, famous for beautiful vistas, treacherous curves and plummeting cliffs is an adventure. No wonder it is the site of movies and commercials. The beauty and anxiety draw you into the scenery. I was prepared for Highway 1. I’d driven it many times. I was not prepared for turning left into a redwood forest with a breathtaking drive and view that transports you to visions of early life on our planet. Trees so tall your neck stretches back to see the tops, growing in “families” of circles, grouped together and arching over the paved path to form shade.

Turning left gave us instant awe and surprise! We even took pictures looking out at the end of the road. One view was a picture of the blue Pacific ocean, ringed by yellow grass and beach, overcast with blue and white marine layer. Now, turn around in the same spot and snap a picture of the entrance to the Redwoods, where every clearing on the road had a cabin smushed into the landscape. A retreat.

Isn’t that the way it is with meditation practice and looking at our thoughts? One view is one way but the same thought can be experienced differently? For example, take weight. “Boo hoo – I didn’t lose any weight this week” or “Whoo hoo, I didn’t gain any weight this week!” Same fact, different perspectives which will lead to similar thoughts and feelings about weight/self.

Is one any better than the other? Not really. They are just different. They can become different experiences if we travel down the thought path or more positive or more negative thoughts, believing them. We have a choice. We can look at our thoughts, whatever they are, and accept them as “just another thought” and “this is my thought about that” and let it go. That’s all. Another one will come. Just as another experience came down Highway 1. Oh, yes, traveling Highway 1 is like this and now it is like this.

Moments in time give us a perspective of view, but nothing stays the same. Change can be beautiful.

Meditation for Stress Relief

At some point in your life, you have to deal with issues that stress you out. It could be one big issue or a bunch of competing problems that drain your energy and leave you feeling zapped. Perhaps you’re experiencing the loss of a loved one and struggling to focus on work. Or, you’re going through a divorce that’s affecting family relationships. You’re losing sleep and your weight is fluctuating. It’s as if your life is spinning out of control.

The benefits of meditation have long been recognized as a technique to alleviate stress in many circumstances. Following are methods you can try yourself.

Breathing Meditation

Find a quiet spot where you can either sit with your legs crossed or where you’re comfortably seated in a chair. Avoid lying down so you don’t fall asleep.

Close your eyes and breathe through your nose, not your mouth. Feel your stomach expand with each inhalation and contract with each exhalation. Breath should not be controlled – just let it flow in and out, slowly and deeply while concentrating on how it feels flowing through your nostrils.

Don’t let thoughts distract you from concentrating on your breathing. If this happens, bring your awareness back to how your breath feels.

Mindfulness Meditation

Like breathing meditation, you focus on the flow of your breath during mindfulness meditation – but you can also concentrate on other experiences during this time.

The intention of mindfulness meditation is to be mindful and aware, with acceptance of living in the present moment. Without passing judgment, observe your feelings, emotions and thoughts.

Visualization Meditation

Is there a place you love to visit that relaxes you? The ocean? The mountains? A field of flowers with birds chirping happily nearby?

With visualization meditation, you form mental images of places or situations you find relaxing. Try incorporating as many senses as you can. For example, if you imagine being at the ocean, sense the smell and taste of the salt air; hear the waves crashing on to the shore; see the glimmer of sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.

Tips for Fitting Relaxation Techniques into Your Life

Set aside time each day. It may be best to practice meditation first thing in the morning, before other responsibilities get in the way.
Meditate while you’re doing other things. Practice the method that works best for you while waiting for a doctor appointment, exercising, walking the dog, mowing the lawn or cooking dinner.
Avoid meditation at bedtime. Some of these methods can relax you so much that they may make you extremely tired, especially close to bedtime. You will get the most out of meditation if you practice when you’re fully awake and alert.

The benefits of practicing meditation will most likely help you to more easily manage pressing issues in your life. If you feel you need more guidance with meditation, email me at DrB@earthlink.net.

The Responsibility of Having Joy in Your Life

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
—Thomas Edison

We all want it. Joy, that is. Is it possible to live with a sense of peace and joy without it being the holidays or a celebratory event? What about mundane days when ordinary moods and issues singe the edges of every memory and we can’t recall ever having joy? More, we don’t know to get it.

It may be hard to believe that you can have a place in your mind and body that is separate from the mind’s chaos; your mind that sounds like the breaking evening news with threats, worries, fears and more.

You have choices. We all have choices. We can complain, blame, stay angry about real things that have happened to us. Real people who have wronged us. Notice I write those sentences in past tense. None of that is happening now. And yet, it’s so easy to get trapped into the notion that we should spend our time, precious mental life energy, rethinking, remembering and reliving the past rather than live without the baggage. Well, it can be done and plenty of others have found that it’s not hard to change a few things in order to escape the misery of negative emotions and limiting beliefs.

On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest level and 10 the highest, evaluate how justified you believe you are to feel unhappy, angry or some other feeling about a situation that affects your daily mood. 1 would indicate no impact at all on your daily life and numbers toward 10 would indicate that you believe you have a right to feel this way.

Now, on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest level and 10 the highest, what is your level of joy, happiness or peace on an everyday basis?

Would you like those numbers to change? It’s all up to you.

You see, we are all responsible for our ongoing negative moods as well as our positive moods. I know you’re saying, “But what about….?” Yes, it’s true tragedy, death and upsetting events will happen as long as we live. Some of these will challenge us to the core. That’s why it is important to learn and practice the little changes now and add skills over time, such as learning to carry a sense of peace within no matter what is happening.

Here are a few things you can do to make small changes. You can become aware of your worry thoughts. It may take effort but most people can write down a few things on their minds. Ask yourself if there is anything you can do to change it. “It” can be a memory, wish, worry that intrudes into your thoughts. Has “it” already happened? Is “it” happening now? Is there any reason to give up your happiness, time and wellbeing thinking about this? Does it feel good to think about “it”?

If “it” were a nagging child, what would you say? Stop! Quit! Something like that? Hmmmm…

And, if you were to stop and release this thought, how do you imagine you would feel? Use our 1 to 10 scale again.

It’s up to you. It’s up to all of us to be responsible for ourselves and live out our days with more sense of control, esteem, creativity. Don’t let the past stand in your way. You have a creative spirit just waiting to feel the joy of living. What else do we have?

Quiz: Are You Too Cautious?

Helen Keller, blind and deaf educator, said: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Sometimes it’s wise to be cautious, particularly when physical safety is at stake. However, when we play it safe simply to protect our ego or heart, we may close off possibilities that could bring us greater joy and fulfillment. Life is what we make of it, shaped by our choices. What are you choosing?

Answer “True” or “False” to the following statements to discover if you are too cautious.

Set 1

Life doesn’t feel safe. I’m content with things as they are and prefer to stay in my “comfort zone.”
I’m afraid something bad will happen if I veer off my usual course. I feel safer and more confident when I stick to what I already know.
I frequently worry “what if…?” If I can’t be certain of the outcome, I won’t take the risk. Being rejected, looking stupid and failing are not options.
I know there are business and romantic opportunities I’ve missed out on because of being so risk-averse.
My fear of the unknown is paralyzing. When I look at my life, I have many regrets about things I didn’t do.
I feel bad about myself for being so cautious. I think of myself as a coward and I expect that others see me that way, too.

Set 2

I am committed to growing myself bigger than my fears. It’s not that I’m unafraid; it’s just that I am more committed to my goals and know the cost of playing it safe.
Developing courage is like building a muscle. The more I practice taking risks, even small ones, the more empowered I feel.
When I have a goal or dream that feels big and scary, I minimize feeling overwhelmed by “chunking it down” into more manageable, short-term steps.
I enlist the support of those who can help me move beyond my comfort zone to a more fulfilling life.
When I take risks, I trust I can handle whatever comes. If I fall, I know that I can get up again. I don’t conclude that I shouldn’t have tried or that I’m a failure.
My biggest successes have come when I’ve taken a big leap of faith.

If you answered True more often in Set 1 and False more often in Set 2, you may wish to learn some effective ways to move beyond your comfort zone to live a more fulfilled life.

Please get in touch with me at DrB@earthlink.net if you’d like support in exploring this further.

How To Motivate Yourself

Having to do something you don’t want to do isn’t hard to imagine. We run into it almost every day.

It usually involves change, time, attitude and choice, but not necessarily in that order. There are some things we are faced with that bring out the two-year-old in us as we tantrum and say “no” both verbally and behaviorally. The doctor says we can’t eat sweets, so we buy a big bag of Snickers. The workplace says we can’t smoke, so we hatch all sorts of devious plans to do it anyway. We need to lose weight, so we skip anything that looks healthy or involves movement. It’s all a big fat NO!

None of this changes the fact we need to do something different, new, better, life-saving and helpful for ourselves.

So, as an exercise, choose something you need to do. Now, let’s ease into how to do it. There’s no need to go whole hog and overwhelm yourself with dramatic and over-ambitious ideas right off the bat. It works best to look at other times you’ve made a successful change. Recall how you did it and remember the reward that came with your effort. Once you remember something you’ve done, you know that you truly can make wise decisions and you can continue to make them. Chances are, if something has come to mind, you did something to make it happen. The good news is that you can do it again, even better, quicker, easier.

I recommend writing your answers to these few questions:

Did you plan for success or did it “just happen?”
What inspires you to make change? Or Who?
How can you keep your focus on achieving or doing something to bring about change?
What’s a reasonable time for this to happen? For example, don’t plan to write a book in a weekend, no matter what those programs advertise.
If you had to defer one part of your plan this week, how would you make sure you pick back up and stay on course next week?
Do you prefer working days at a time? An hour at a time? What time of day is better for you to devote to achieving your goal?
If you were to evaluate yourself, can you see any patterns you choose that either determine your success or determine your failure?

Your goals are unique to you and the way you choose to succeed at succeeding or succeed at failing are unique to you. These questions will help you look deeply into your patterns of behavior and pick the parts that are more likely to work for your success. You can determine what different choices you can apply this time, based on what you know about yourself, to enjoy the process and achieve a good outcome.

Tips:

Create a plan for yourself. Write a daily plan that includes action steps. At the end of the week, you can see all the positive steps you’ve taken. If they are small steps, they are still positive. Don’t discount them. Look at your week. Were there days you reverted or wanted to revert back to “the way I’ve always done it?”
If there were times you felt yourself slipping back into old habits or resisting change, make a list of things you can do if this happens again.

For example, if your goal is to smoke one less cigarette a day and you didn’t achieve that goal, what could you do if that feeling comes up again (which it will!). Some people find counting or watching the clock for one minute, telling themselves, “I can enjoy not smoking for one more minute.”

You can always call for personal coaching around any transition or change goals.

The Muses Kiss

Therapeutic Writing to Peacefully Navigate Life's Changes