“Nice Guy” Bachelor: Real TV or Real Life?

23 Feb

 

Jake Pavelka, the current Bachelor on the ABC series, has made comments about breaking the adage that “Nice guys finish last.” It appears that Jake is hoping that this reality show will be the platform that will enable him to overcome his difficulty in finding “the right one” and meet a woman that he can settle down with and marry. When Jake was a contestant on the Bachelorette with Jillian, he was turned down for being “too perfect.” My guess is “perfect” is code boring and dis-ingenuine. This season Jake still seems “too perfect.” But is he really?

Obviously something has gotten in the way of Jake finding love and settling down up to this point. On television Jake comes across as a “nice” guy with his big grin and conservative values. One may assume that he wants another smiling woman with similar conservative values. However, Jake continues to pick Vienna week after week as a woman he may want to marry. This seems in such contrast with what people would expect from him. Is this a reality show set up (as in producers encouraged him to keep her on for the drama) or is he really considering her as a potential mate?

So is Jake really the nice guy who finishes last, as he proclaims?  His niceness seems over-the-top and insincere. It’s not just his words that indicate this, but his facial expressions, too. He is always smiling.  Even when is talking about something painful. Jake seems to be someone who covers up his real emotions with a smile. He gives cheesy lines and is not congruent with how he’s really feeling. His intention may be to be a “nice guy,” but he’s trying so hard at it that he is likely stuffing down his true emotions.  He doesn’t want to risk showing any emotions that others may deem acceptable. If this is Jake’s pattern, then it makes sense why his past relationships haven’t worked. When people mask their true emotions and stuff their true feelings they often end up feeling resentful of their partner and the relationship falls apart. Also, this incongruence between the situation and his facial expression indicates to his partner that he is not genuine and people probably find it difficult to make a real connection with him.

How do you make a connection with someone who is not being true to their feelings? You end up connecting to the “fake” them, and not the real person. The lesson for Jake is that confrontation is not necessarily a bad thing. It is important to directly express to your partner your feelings- good and bad. And to be less concerned with appearances and more authentic with your true self. Only time will tell if Jake will reveal his true self, and if he will no longer be “the nice guy who finishes last.”

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Mindfulness- What Is It?

19 Feb

 

Much recent attention has been given to the practice of Mindfulness. However, this practice is far from new. Essentially, mindfulness is about living more of your life in the present moment. It is about being awake to your life as you are living it, instead of spending excessive amounts of time in the future or past.

Many people get caught up in regrets and ruminations about the past.  Although it can be helpful to reflect on the past, it is often detrimental to spend too much time there.  If you spend most of your time reflecting and regretting the past, you are likely to feel sad and depressed. Alternatively, people are also prone to spending a great deal of time in future-oriented thinking. You may spend time planning, strategizing or worrying about what may lie ahead. Although some future planning and thinking is important, too much of it can have a negative impact on your well-being. People who are overly future-oriented tend to suffer from excessive anxiety.

There are real benefits to living more of your life in the present moment. The key to getting there is the use of your breath. It is your breath that can anchor you in the here and now. Sound like a good idea? I will elaborate more on mindfulness and how you can use it to improve your life in posts to come…

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Is Fear and Anxiety Holding You Back From Living Your Life?

10 Feb

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We all have fears.  We all have anxiety.  But for some people their fears and anxiety get in the way of them living their life the way they want to live it.  If this is the case for you, it is important to recognize that you can learn tools to help set you free from the fear that holds you back from living your life more fully. 

It is important to learn how to manage feelings of fear.  Part of doing this is creating the ability to separate the true signals of danger from false alarms.  For some people, their brains fire signals that indicate they are in danger when they we really aren’t.  Some examples of this are: 

  • Having a panic attack when there is not immediate threat to your safety.  For example, in a grocery store.  At that moment your brain is telling you that you must flee- that you are in danger.  When in reality, there is no real threat to you.
  • Feeling a sense of dread or extreme fear when you encounter germs.  Although your intellectual mind may know that not every germ you encounter is going to kill you, it feels as if you are in immediate danger.  The danger feels very real.
  • Something in your environment reminds you of a past trauma and you immediately feel that you must fight or run.  You may feel a sense of danger and extreme fear even when you are in a safe environment.  (This frequently happens to people who have experienced terrible trauma or have PTSD).

Panic attacks essentially are a false alarm.  The brain is sending off the fight or flight signal, when no real danger is present. 

Anxiety has been coined as “a disease of uncertainty.”  If you suffer from anxiety, you may be plagued with feelings of self doubt.  You may not know what you feel or what you truly want.  You are likely to be out of touch with your own desires and needs and, as a result, may find it hard to trust your own intuition or decisions.  This leads to an overactive mind that is constantly thinking, questioning, and worrying about what the “right” decision is.  You may spend countless hours trying to think through decisions before you make them and you are likely to feel stuck and indecisive.

One of the things that can keep you stuck in feelings of anxiety is self judgment.  Often people judge themselves as an attempt to try to get themselves out of a rut they are in.  They may say to themselves “You shouldn’t be feeling anxious right now!  Snap out of it!”  Or they may be even more self-critical and put themselves down for feeling anxious or fearful.  The result of this kind of self-talk is that you end up feeling more anxious, rather than less.  Each time you tell yourself that you should not feel a certain way you are actually increasing that emotion you are trying to rid yourself of. 

One of the most important concepts regarding anxiety is that it feeds off of avoidance.  The more you avoid, the more anxiety you will experience.  This is a basic tenet of anxiety management.  Avoidance can take the many forms such as:  procrastination, withdrawal from activities and isolation from others.

If you are like the millions of others who suffer from anxiety you may feel helpless and scared.  Because of all the ways anxiety can end up taking charge over your life, you may end up feeling powerless to make changes.  You may feel like the anxiety is ruling your life and you have no control. 

Mindfulness is one way to effectively decrease symptoms of anxiety, panic and worry.  A regular meditation practice and a mindful outlook on life will help you to increase your awareness of what you feel, want and think, and as a result your feelings of uncertainty will decrease and you will increase your ability to trust your intuition.  One of the main principles of mindfulness is decreasing self-judgment.  Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral techniques can be very useful in transforming unhealthy judgment and criticism into feelings of self love and kindness.  You may find that when you begin to take a stance of kindness towards yourself when you feel anxiety, worry or fear, your anxious feelings soon become less powerful and the one who feels powerful and in control is you.  By slowly beginning to decrease your avoidance you will find that your anxiety loses its power over you.

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The Worry Bug

24 Jan

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We all worry.  That is a natural part of life.  It is essential for us as humans to have the capacity to worry or experience anxiety.  It is part of what keeps us safe.  However, some people are plagued by worry so much that they end up suffering major consequences.  Some of the consequences of chronic worrying are:

  • Difficulty making decisions/indecisiveness
  • fatigue
  • physical pains- including headaches and muscle pain
  • increased propensity for getting sick
  • depression
  • increased tendency to procrastinate
  • irritability
  • poor sleep
  • difficulty concentrating or focusing

These are just a few of the most common consequences of worrying too much.  When individuals chronically worry- or have the “worry bug” they decrease their immune response.  Their body is in a hypervigillant state, and stress hormones are released into the body.  These stress hormones can help your body prepare for a flight-or-fight response.  But research is finding that when they are released for long periods of time (such as when a person is a chronic worrier) it can have a major impact on the human body and lead to a myriad of physical problems and ailments.

So what can you do if you’ve got the worry bug?  There are many different things you can do to start living your life differently and stop worrying so much.  However, keep in mind, that most of the techniques for ridding yourself of the worry bug takes time and practice.  One of the essential components to effectively ridding yourself of chronic worry is a shift in your focus from a future- oriented perspective to a present-moment perspective.  Worry is almost always future- oriented.  It often starts with the words “What if…”

“What if I don’t get the promotion?”

“What if he thinks badly of me?”

“What if I something bad happens to my son when he’s out with his friends?”

“What if I get hurt while driving my car?”

The list goes on and on….  What may start with a simple “What if” question then begins to transform into a complex web of “what if’s,” as one what if leads to another to another and another.  Along with this line of thinking also comes visual imagery of the imagined event.  Usually this imagined, feared event frightens us or upsets us in some way.  And what do you think happens when you begin to imagine some terrifying event take place in the future?  Your body tenses up, and it begins to act AS IF the event is really happening.  But this is the catch- IT HASN’T HAPPENED YET!  Now we have a physiological response (remember: release of stress hormones in the body) to an IMAGINED event, not a real one.  Our body becomes affected by this worrying, we start to feel fearful of this imagined outcome and we try to do whatever we think we can to avoid this terrible outcome from happening.  As a result we often end up feeling stuck.

The important piece of this equation is that all of this mental energy is spent attempting to predict or anticipate a FUTURE outcome.  By beginning to focus on the here-and-now we spend less time engaging in thoughts about the future and more time living our lives in the present moment.  One way to begin to live your life more in the present moment is through a mindfulness practice.  (More about Mindfulness will be discussed in this website).  Mindfulness is not the only avenue to ridding one’s self of the worry bug, but it is one that has been proven to work.

There are many techniques that have been proven  to help manage worry, such as:  worry time, the stop technique, and other cognitive-behavioral strategies.  These techniques can be helpful in learning to worry less.  Some of the core features of learning to worry less are:

  • Increase the amount of time you spend in the present moment.  This can be done by engaging in a mindfulness practice.  You can make this shift by increasing your awareness of the time you spend thinking about the future and remembering to bring yourself back to the present moment.  So next time you find yourself consumed by the worry bug, regain your focus on what is actually happening in the moment.  Take a breath, look around, and re-engage in what is going on right in front of you.

 

  • Recognize what you can and cannot control.  The serenity prayer that is used as part of the 12-step recovery process works for a reason.  Once you can begin to quickly recognize the things in your life that you can and cannot control you can begin to live much more peacefully.  Are you worrying about something you can’t control?  Are you trying to control or predict the future?  Are you trying to control another person’s  behavior?  Remember the things that you can control are actually quite few.  (As an exercise see if you can list right now the things you can and can’t control and notice what you come up with).

 

  • Slow down- The worry bug often gets you revved up.  Your mind is moving fast, and your body may be moving fast, too.  When you are anxious, stressed and worried it is difficult to create a shift in your thinking.  Sometimes the key to turning off the worry bug is to SLOW DOWN.  Sometimes you may need to slow your body first.  Stop what you are doing and stop multi-tasking.  Do something relaxing, if possible, or even just sit quietly for a moment.    The worry bug does not like quiet. 

Remember- I am not suggesting that you do not think about the future, or ever ponder about potential scenarios in the future.  The goal is to strike a balance between the time you spend thinking about the future or past and the time you spend living in the present moment.  Many people live a great deal of their lives constantly two steps ahead of themselves.  When you do this, you are prone to living a life filled with worry, uncertainty, stress and agitation. 

So now that you have read this information, sit where you are for just a few moments in silence and let the information soak in.  Perhaps you might set and intention for yourself for how you would like to practice living your life differently from this moment forward.

And after you give yourself a few moments of silence.  Then open your eyes and move on to the next moments of your day…

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Ask Alisa

14 Jan

Welcome to my blog!  My intention is to provide a format to increase awareness and encourage discussion regarding topics related to self improvement.  The main topics are:

  • Psychological Education:  I hope to provide you with clear information related to psychological diagnoses and mental health.  Many people have misperceptions regarding psychiatric diagnoses and my hope  is that by giving you clear information about various personality structures and psychiatric symptoms you will be better able to understand yourself as well as those around you.   We frequently see mental health issues on television- actors going to rehab, celebrities acting erratic or unpredictable.  You may also notice that people in your life act in ways that are confusing to you.  Or, you may also wonder how to deal with an emotional struggle you are having.  The information I provide is intended to shed some light on these issues and help you make some sense of yourself and the world around you. 

 

  • Integrating research and practice:  In the work I do with clients I tend to integrate information from research with clinical experience in providing life advice and guidance.  I studied cognitive science during my education and I am fascinated by the study of the human mind.  Although there is still much to be learned about the brain and how it operates, there exists a great deal of information about the brain, our mind, and human consciousness that can inform how we approach the world and how we deal with suffering.   I will use common terms to explain some ideas and concepts from this area of research to help you learn how to deal with the  inner-workings of your brain and to live your life in a more satisfying way. 

 

  • Mindfulness:  I also work from a mindfulness based perspective.  Mindfulness is a philosophy, or way of living, that is about being in the present moment.  The practice of mindfulness can help you to increase your awareness of what you feel, want and think, and as a result you can more clearly know what is right for you.  The mindfulness tools I present can help increase your ability to trust your intuition and decrease your suffering. 
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