The Terrible, Awful, and Overwhelming: Helplessness in the midst of traumatic experiences

I had an idea already planned for today’s message. I was going to talk about distress tolerance in relationships. An important and interesting topic, however; some things in my life brought another issue to the forefront. How freaking awful it is to feel helpless. 

My areas of expertise focus on trauma, grief, and attachment. All of which have an element of helplessness because these are all areas of life that happen to us. Life does not ask us permission, nor does it check in on how these events will impact us. Traumatic experiences happen to us, without notice, without permission.

The thing about humans is that we like predictability, consistency, and routine. Familiarity is a comfort to the brain and nervous system. When we encounter traumatic experiences, one factor, among many, that is distressing is the factor of lack of control. It’s really a mind f*** to process the idea that something significantly scary, threatening, and devastating can happen and there isn’t anything we can do about it. The human brain doesn’t like that, and it’s common protective response is anxiety. We start having obsessive thoughts, overly focusing on every detail, running “alternative reality” versions in our heads, and engaging in rigid/compulsive behaviors. Why? Because all of these things are the human attempt at feeling control in the midst of the terrible, awful, and overwhelming nature of helplessness. 

While we need to give ourselves grace when those anxiety thoughts and behaviors come our way; we need to also remember these control-seeking behaviors do not change what is happening in our lives. They are attempts at distraction and coping, often through avoidance. So, if you find yourself tasking or overthinking, welcome to the club of being human. These reactions are to be expected in responses to traumatic experiences. 

So, what’s the takeaway? I think it’s about understanding normative responses to trauma. If we can see something as human, it can make it a bit easier to approach, understand, and ultimately challenge. If you find yourself engaging in these anxiety behaviors, after first reminding yourself that you are human, here are something you could do to support your brain and nervous system to combat the terrible, awful, and overwhelming nature of helplessness. 

Rather than avoiding it, I invite you to:

-Pay attention to your senses: What are you seeing? Smelling? Hearing? Tasting? Touching?

-Lay down flat on the floor, put your hands over your belly, and slowly take breaths in and out (make sure when you breathe in your belly inflates and when you breathe out that it deflates)

-Go on a walk

-Engage in a safe relationship

-Stretch

-Develop a mantra of soothing self-talk 

-Scan your body- slowly scan from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, with each section-acknowledge what you notice, breathe deeply several rounds, and then move to the next section.

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen. 

Dr. C

Calling Ourselves Out

Now, before we even get started today, talking about our own human tendencies can be tough and often triggers defensiveness. As you read today’s message, remind yourself that you are human. To my clients-I know you are rolling your eyes because I say this frequently, but it is always worth repeating. Welcome to being human.

When we experience anxiety, a common response is to further protect ourselves. Unfortunately, we often do that by yelling, rudeness, and spewing hurtful comments. Other times we can totally ice out the other persons involved, giving doses of the silent treatment. Because our own nervous system senses it’s under attack, we go to battle. This not only reinforces and strengthens are anxiety, but it’s not so great for our relationships either. 

One part of being human that seems to show up for most (if not all) of us-is that we can so quickly forget our loved ones are on our side when anxiety is activated. This intensifies even more so when we’ve experienced relationships that mishandled our emotional safety. When anxiety is present, we often feel we are on our own-even if we are in currently in safe relationships. 

Today’s message was titled, “Calling Ourselves Out,” and here is my pitch for accountability. Our emotion regulation and our meaningful relationships benefit immensely when we can feel tough stuff without turning against one another. I know, I know, -easier said than done Dr. C. That’s true, it isn’t easy-but it is worth it. In the midst of safe relationships-the more we can learn our triggers, challenge ourselves to anchor back to the present moment, and hold in mind we are safe-the better not only our regulation but our relationships. Being able to come alongside and process a tough emotion as a team, rather than opponents, strengthens intimacy, trust, and most importantly safety. 

So, today I ask-is this something to call yourself on? Do you find yourself turning to battle even in the midst of safety? Are you willing to work on catching it in the moment? If so, here are some reflective prompts to guide this work. As you do, maybe I’ll annoyingly be in your head saying “Welcome to being human.”

What triggers my anxiety?

How do I respond to my loved ones when I’m anxious?

What would it be like to feel anxious with my loved ones’ support, rather than pushing them away to self-protect?

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen. 

Dr. C

What’s on Your Playlist for Your Mental Health?

Today I want to start off with an exercise. I am going to list some basic emotions below and want you to think about what song comes to mind when you think of each one.

Scared

Happy

Heartbroken

Excited

Angry

Did certain songs come to your mind right away? Were there emotions that stumped you? When thinking about the song, did you feel the emotions in real time too? Music is amazing in that way-it can take us right back to the memories as if it’s happening for the first time.

Working in the areas of trauma, grief, and attachment-I am often supporting people through unimaginable and indescribable life experiences. Due to the nature of the experiences, the emotions attached to them are often hard to find words to describe them. Somehow though, music can fill that gap. That gap between knowing with your whole body how you feel but at the same time knowing the words available fall short to truly paint the picture.

Music not only helps us feel connected to our emotions, but it can help us to regulate them too. Research on music therapy has shown that music can help with depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms. Music can also make us feel closer to ourselves and to others. Have you ever been in a room full of people and a song comes on and everyone knows the words? Music helps us access our emotions, regulate them, and to not feel alone in them.

That being said, I think it’s often overlooked or missed as a coping mechanism. Music interacts with our nervous system, impacting our breath pattern and even heart rate. When we listen to music mindfully, or with our full attention-these changes can be observed. Listening to music actively or mindfully (this means really really paying attention to the words, beat, instruments, and also your body’s reaction) supports regulation of the nervous system.

It’s also important to note that some music (even the music we say is our favorite) can be activating to our nervous system- perpetuating moods like anger/irritability. This is where you come in as the expert as the dj to your own playlist. The better we know our mental health and our body’s reaction to music- the better we can select which tracks we should hear depending on our emotional state.

What does today’s message mean? Music is a powerful tool to support our mental health. Music influences the nervous system in both regulating and dysregulating ways. To best use it as a coping mechanism, we benefit from knowing ourselves, our emotions, and our nervous system. And finally, taking the time to truly mindfully listen to music is different from being autopilot. The more we can attune to the music, the more we can also attune to our body and how it responds to what we listen to.

In addition to the exercise above, here are some questions to support you building the playlist for your mental health.

What emotions are tied to the music I most frequently listen to?

How do I feel after I listen to the music I most frequently listen to?

Do I tend to listen to music when in certain moods and not others? If so, what do I think contributes to me listening to music.

Where are areas of my life/routine that I could incorporate listening to music mindfully?

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

Dr. C

Being Vulnerable Safely is Good for Your Health

What comes to mind when you think of the word vulnerable? If you were asked to describe it, what words would you choose? A quick google search produces the following Oxford result for the term, “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.” What sticks out to me are two words. Before I tell you my two; what two words stick out for you?

Did you also choose exposed and attacked?

 Our relationship to vulnerability directly impacts our mental and physical health, our relationships with others, and perhaps most importantly, our relationship to ourselves. Depending on our attachment experiences, being vulnerable may or may not be a safe affective state to experience. If our prior experiences have taught our nervous system it is not safe to be vulnerable, we will come up with alternative strategies that feel “safer.” I put safer in quotations because these strategies trick us in the moment and often come at a cost overtime.

Strategies are adopted by our nervous system as a means of protection. Our nervous system works hard to keep us “safe,” even if the strategy comes at a cost. A common strategy to avoid vulnerability is emotional suppression. Emotional suppression is a tricky strategy because while it can be effective, it does come with consequences when utilized as the only way to regulate emotions. Emotional suppression is conscious, meaning we make the decision to not feel the emotions at hand. Rather than choosing to feel the emotion, because it has been deemed unsafe by the nervous system, the individual does not acknowledge, accept, or process the emotions. While this works in the moment to offer a perception of relief and maintaining safety, there are scientifically documented consequences to long-term emotional suppression. Higher rates of anxiety and depression, as well as heart disease and autoimmune conditions are just a few on the list. So, while it may be scary to feel our emotions, it is also imperative to our mental and physical well-being.

Today I offer an invitation to reflect on your own relationship with vulnerability. I encourage you to think about your influential relationships throughout your life and what contributed to the level of safety you feel in your vulnerability. As always, I’ve provided a few prompts to support you in this exercise.

What does vulnerability feel like for me?

Who in my life am I able to be vulnerable with?

What relationships influenced my relationship with vulnerability?

Are there emotions I suppress more than others?

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

Dr. C

Anger: Protection at the risk of collateral damage

Set the stage with me. We’ve all been there. When what we had in mind for a conversation, well; the exact opposite happened. Although there was every intention to keep our cool, stay level-headed, and communicate the way we practiced in our head…..the interaction brought out something entirely different.

As frustrating and disappointing as this is when it happens, it’s human. Interactions that involve tension, aggression, and intensity can make it difficult to stay regulated. Not to mention if the relationship has preexisting trauma within it. If that’s the case, anger can be sitting right beneath the surface, on-call, and ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. Our nervous system works so hard to take care of us. Even if it is at the risk of damaging our relationships. How exactly does our nervous system protect us in these difficult interactions? Anger. And don’t get me wrong- you may be thinking to yourself “Well, don’t I deserve to get angry?” or “Dr. C if you knew what they did you’d be mad too!” Of course you deserve to feel anger. Today’s conversation isn’t about that empowering anger that fuels us to stand up for ourselves-no, no, no-today we are talking about the anger that gets the best of us and results in hurting the people we love.

It all happens so fast. The calm and collected version of ourselves is so quickly replaced by yelling, rudeness, and overall defensiveness. This is the part where I repeat, we’ve all been there-to remind both myself and you that this happens. I know I need the reminder because it can feel icky to acknowledge that part of myself.

So what flips the switch? How can something go so differently than how we intended it to go? Typically the answer is anger. Anger is interesting…..fascinating really. It’s an expressive emotion-it takes up space and is accompanied by notable behaviors. Take a moment here to think about how you display your anger. Does it show up in your tone? Body language? Criticism? The thing is though, when it comes to anger-what we see on the outside is often covering up what is happening on the inside. Anger you see, is referred to as a secondary emotion. Secondary emotions show up as a result of feeling something else first (the ones that come first are called primary emotions). Now remember, I said this all happens so fast. When we get angry-we just feel angry-we don’t always realize that it’s coming out because we are first internally feeling something more vulnerable.

What are some of the more vulnerable emotions that anger comes to protect? I’m glad you asked: sadness, worry, fear, disappointment, loss, and discouragement to name a few. All of these emotions, by the way, can and do occur in our meaningful relationships with the people we love.  Today also isn’t about solving it. We will tackle that in a later blog. Mostly because we cannot tackle something we don’t know or recognize. So, today is about getting to know the anger that shows up with your loved ones.

If it feels safe enough to do so, return back to that stage you set at the start of this. Here are some starter reflections to support you getting to know your anger. With increased awareness and understanding-we can then start to problem-solve how to allow that anger to be felt while minimizing collateral damage to those we love.

In what relationships does my anger come out?

Can I identify the underlying (primary) emotions involved (remember-things like fear, sadness, disappointment, loss)?

How do I show my anger toward others?

What is my own comfort with feeling vulnerable?

 Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

 Dr. Cunningham

Do You know you?

Biases are important. They absolutely influence perspective. So, let me claim mine here at the start. I am a psychologist that is heavily influenced by attachment theory, research, and clinical practice. That is-I believe relationships are critically important in any conversation about mental health. Now that that is out of the way, let’s proceed. But also- keep this whole biases thing in mind as we continue………

A big component of my approach to therapy is focusing on the relationship with the self. I’ve never quite understood how symptoms of depression, grief, anxiety, or trauma could be assessed and treated without attachment as a core component of that process. A lot of mental health treatments focus on investigating and changing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. How can we talk about changing thought patterns, challenging beliefs, or building new habits if we don’t know the quality and history of the relationship within? Even more-so if we are totally disconnected with ourselves? Our relationships impact our reactions, perspectives, and how we regulate. How can we work on any of those things if we don’t first learn about the relationship with them?

It is not uncommon for people to struggle with answering questions about their relationship with themselves. We live in a world that offers lots of ways to distract us from spending time with ourselves. Distraction is an effective strategy (watch out-effective does not equal healthy) to avoid all of the thoughts and feelings we’ve accumulated throughout life. Although our brain and body have been present for all of our life experiences, we can live life completely severed from building a relationship with our internal self. What’s even more interesting, is the fact that we can be so unfamiliar with the internal self-while still letting that internal self run havoc on our lives. That internal self can engage in negative self-talk, create self-doubt, hate, and total disdain for ourselves; and is capable of creating entire narratives about our self or the world without a single ounce of objective data. For a part of us that is so influential on our mental health- it seems it would be a good use of time and resources to get to know us a little better, no?

As with any relationship, the relationship with ourselves needs time, prioritization, and investment. Also like any other relationship, work with the internal self requires consistency, vulnerability, and honesty (just to name a few). It can be a daunting and overwhelming task to even think about, let alone to sign up to do it repetitively.

Here is a reminder that often what we need is very different from what we want. If you are feeling overwhelmed at the idea of getting to know yourself, perhaps that is a good place to begin. I highly recommend leading with curiosity and responding to whatever comes up with grace. The cool thing is (insert nerd alert-I understand cool is a very subjective descriptor and you may be reading this thinking “Dr. C, nothing about this sounds cool.”) the more you do this work, the more magic happens. It is truly incredible how improving our relationship with ourselves can and does spill over into our lives (Remember those things above? I’m talking about those-our self-talk, our reactions, our ability to regulate-those things!). Today, I invite you to consider where in your life you can start carving out some time for you to get to know you.

Starter reflective questions:

How did I feel reading about this?

What do I feel inside when I think about my relationship with myself?

How would I describe my relationship with myself?

What comes to mind when I think about what has influenced how I talk to myself?

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

Dr. Cunningham

I said leave me alone, why didn’t you stay?

We all can relate can’t we? The moment when someone asks if we are alright and with our words we say “I’m fine!” but with our behavior we show we are the opposite of fine. Guarded body language, lack of eye contact, short responses, irritable tone of voice-despite our words, our behavior often tells the true story. In the world of attachment, we refer to this as a miscue in a relationship. Rather than appropriately cuing that we are in fact not fine, we lie. If this has happened to you, well; welcome to being human.

Why do we miscue? A lot of reasons. Lack of safety, insecurity, doubt we will get our needs met, fear we will be dismissed, our own discomfort with vulnerability-just to name a few. Miscuing is a form of self-protection. A bit ironic right? In order to protect ourselves from the pain of not getting our emotional needs met, we lie about our emotional needs-which only ups the ante that they won’t get met.

I want to give a disclaimer here-this conversation is intended for the meaningful and trusted relationships in our lives. I am specifically referring to miscuing within our meaningful relationships, because there are certainly reasons to miscue in other interactions (for example an interaction at work or with a stranger). This is directed specifically at the relationships in our lives we have decided are meaningful.

The thing is-meaningful unfortunately does not always equal safe. I’m going to say (write?) that again: meaningful does not always equal safe. As mentioned above, a reason we may miscue is the lack of safety/security that our needs will get met. If we’ve decided a relationship is meaningful, and we find ourselves miscuing-what about that relationship is lacking that would make us feel more secure/safe to accurately cue our emotional needs?

This is where some good reflection and time with ourselves can be so helpful. When we miscue, are we doing so because the relationship has failed us? Do we have data that this person has continuously failed to meet our needs (I say continuously because we all do and will miss the mark in our meaningful relationships)? Are we miscuing because we fell into the human pattern of projecting past experiences of pain onto our current relationships? Have we had conversations with the people we have meaningful relationships with to teach them about what makes us feel safe? This is worth repeating as well: relationships require us to teach one another. Let’s normalize teaching the people we love what we need!

It gets even more tricky though, because before we can teach someone else what we need, we need to know what we need. Holding ourselves accountable for how previous experiences have impacted us is part of the work that safe relationships require. And let’s talk a quick minute about being on the other side here. In the meaningful relationships in our lives-do we know when our loved ones are miscuing? Have we learned what their needs are? Do we pay attention to the behaviors of our loved one as much as we do their words? As much as we want our loved ones to meet our needs-we’ve got to hold ourselves to the same standards.

Relationships are tricky and we won’t always get it right. The goal is not perfection, the goal is safety. Here are some reflections to support building safety and decreasing miscues in your meaningful relationships:

Are there relationships in your life that come to mind when you think about miscuing?

What are the reasons that contribute to you miscuing in your relationships?

Do you tend to miscue certain emotions (for example embarrassment or worry) more than others (for example happiness or excitement)?

Are there past relationship experiences that make it hard to feel safe in current relationships?

Be mindful, lead with love, and don’t forget to listen.

Dr. Cunningham

Do you have a relationship with your mental health?

As a clinical psychologist, I can appreciate how the internet/social media has aided in increasing awareness and knowledge of mental health. With a quick search, you can learn about symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment plans for any mental health condition. While this is great, it isn’t sufficient and often gets in the way of what is most important in my opinion.

And what is my opinion exactly? That- understanding, identifying, and labeling how we feel, think, and behave is only a part of taking care of our mental health. Another part, (which I am biased to believe is the most important part); is establishing a relationship with our mental health. Pause here-have you ever asked yourself that question? “What is my relationship with my mental health?”

In the midst of information overload, I often see high levels of intellectualization of mental health content and deficits in the development of a personalized relationship. Clients, people in my personal life, as well as myself (yes, me too- spoiler-a PhD does not make your void of being a human) can fall into this trap. We can have so many facts and terms regarding mental health and still carry very high levels of avoidance and suppression with our emotions. It’s one thing to rattle off diagnoses and symptoms, it’s a whole other thing to know them for yourself intimately.

My background is rooted strongly in attachment. I fiercely believe that our mental health is a direct reflection of the relationships in our lives, including; our relationship with others and our relationship with ourself. Part of that relationship with the self-is the relationship we each have with our emotions. Our attachments from childhood often are the blueprint for this relationship. How we were responded to by our caregivers is the very data our nervous system uses to learn overtime how we respond to ourself. This is fascinating and at the same time can be overwhelming to untangle.

Back to the question at hand: “Do you have a relationship with your mental health?” Maybe, maybe not. Either way-I invite you to engage in a reflective exercise (come on, give it a try). Think about the range of emotions we can experience and pick a few (perhaps anger, sadness, fear, and embarrassment).

Spend some time with each one and reflect on these questions:

What do I feel when this emotion comes up?

How do I respond to this emotion?

Is this an emotion I suppress?

How does this emotion make me feel about myself?

Be mindful, lead with love, & don’t forget to listen.

Dr. Cunningham