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

When Life Keeps Going For Everyone Else, Trauma & Grief Completely Halts Your Own

If you know anything about me, it’s hard for me to have a conversation about what I do without acknowledging both gratitude and privilege. In my private practice, I specialize in trauma, grief, and attachment-all extremely intimate areas of life to be invited into. These privileged relationships I have with clients are often started in the thick of unimaginable, terrible, indescribable life circumstances. These privileged relationships originate in the midst of experiences such as the loss of a loved one, a chronic and/or terminal illness, or becoming a parent to a medically complex child.

In the thick of things and in the immediate time afterward, it is not uncommon for social support systems to be active. This is the time that people tend to jump in-checking in frequently via texts/phone calls, setting up fundraisers, offering help with transportation, and  volunteering to provide meals. These acts of service are important and vital in the midst of the unimaginable, terrible, and indescribable. The reality is, more is often needed.

Slowly but surely, social support systems find themselves back to business as usual. Everyone else’s life continues on, despite trauma and grief being anything but over for those experiencing it. Not only do social support systems return back to baseline, the rest of the world also continues to go on. It is not uncommon for the texts/phone calls to slow down, the fundraisers to diminish, offers for rides to stop, and meals to no longer show up at the door. And of course those things happen, because life goes on. The problem is, trauma and grief don’t follow that tight of a timeline. Trauma and grief aren’t just present in the moment of the event, they linger for much much longer, sometimes indefinitely.

Today’s message is a message of acknowledgement and remembering. Acknowledgement that as people, we can often be so great in the moment of crisis, and struggle to uphold what the situation truly calls for long-term. The length of an individual’s/family’s world halting is unique and does not fit into a nice structured timeline. This is an especially important message for those of us that live in the United States, a country that pushes hyperindependence and convenience. Trauma and grief are not convenient and serving those in our lives experiencing them is also not always convenient. Today’s message is also about remembering. Inviting us to hold the trauma and grief of the people in our lives in mind and not to forget simply because life goes on. There is power in remembering. Why? Because while the rest of the world returns to baseline and business as usual, it feels like everyone has forgotten. It’s a specific set of emotions that comes with feeling like you are the only one that remembers. Isolation, pain, and anger to name a few. So, today is about acknowledging and remembering. Choosing to do an inconvenient act of service is choosing to remember and acknowledge, rather than to treat life as normal. Because, life after trauma and grief is not normal. I invite you today to take some time and think about your people and community while reflecting on the prompts below.

 Who are the people in your life that could use some acts of service?

When in life have you been a social support system toward someone going through a tough time?

What indicates to you when a friend/family could use an act of service?

What does acknowledging and remembering look like to you in your relationships?

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

Dr. Cunningham

Mother’s Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the United States. And although we can recognize the holiday has origins in commercialism and capitalism, it’s a day that often influences our mental health. It’s a day that can heavily influence our mood, the thoughts we have, and the emotions we feel.

It makes sense, right? Even if you yourself are not a mother, the day can bring about whatever (resolved or not) is included in your relationship with your mother. It’s a day that also has pressure and expectation- because good ole’ social media is alive and well displaying perfect and romanticized content celebrating motherhood. It’s a day that can be filled with love, festivities, and smiles for some; while also a day that can be filled with longingness, anxiety, anger, grief, and immense sadness for others.

As a psychologist that works in trauma, grief, and attachment, I have the privilege of working with all kinds of mother-child relationships. From difficulties with fertility/conception, to bonding with your baby in the NICU, to grieving the loss of your child, to finding your identity as a mother, to working through your childhood trauma with your own mother- I am grateful for the many ways in which I get to work with you mothers. It’s an honor to be invited in to such intimate and important relationships.

One of the many things I take away from this work is that how we are mothered matters. How we were loved, seen, spoken to, disciplined, celebrated, or the lack thereof matters. It influences how we see ourselves, how we process our emotions, and the internal voice we carry with us throughout our lives. Sometimes we benefit from and keep these influences, while at other times we redesign and create new ways of mothering. Whether the way we were mothered was helpful or hurtful; how we were mothered matters. Because it matters, it is worth exploring, acknowledging, and understanding.

So today, if it feels safe to do so- explore the prompts below:

What words describe the relationship I have/had with my mother?

What does motherhood mean to me?

How was I influenced by my mother?

How does the way I was mothered influence how I mother/my relationships?

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

 Dr. Cunningham

Attachment Styles: The Blueprints We’ve Had Since We Were Babies

One of the many reasons I am highly interested in attachment work is the concept that so much happens in our very early years of life. We literally come into this world ready for and dependent on relationships. Take a moment to appreciate the significance of that; during a time of complete vulnerability, our brains are being influenced by our relationships in a way that has lifelong impact for our developmental, physiological, and neurological health. Our society can fall into a terrible coping mechanism making claims that little ones do not remember or understand what is going on around them. That could not be further from the truth. During infancy, we look to our caregivers for signals to make sense of not only ourselves, but the people and the world around us. These signals define what is safe and what is not safe. Interactions with our caregivers build up, one at a time, resulting in a blueprint for our nervous system. Before we are even ready to talk, our brain is collecting data and filing it away.

So, what is this blueprint I’m referring to? Our nervous system collects data procedurally to establish expectations and processes for the world around us. Through the relationships with our caregivers we receive crucial information about the importance of our physical and emotional needs, the availability of the caregiver to get them met, what those needs activate for them, and how well they are able to regulate stress in the process. In turn, this data also informs us on things like our ability to trust others, regulate our own emotions, and even the behaviors we engage in when we are upset. These are all ingredients used in the recipe of our attachment style(s). And although we have the capacity to change our attachment styles, without conscious effort and safe relationships to do that work-we are left navigating the world through the data that we took in from our early years.

Attachment conversations are not easy, and in fact are quite fragile for all parties involved (for this conversation let’s use caregiver vs care-receiver). For the care-receiver it can be quite uncomfortable revisiting moments of unavailability, let down, isolation, fear, shame, anger, or disappointment to name a few. It can be emotionally overwhelming to connect with earlier versions of the self when our needs failed to get met. We can also be bombarded with the desire to protect our caregivers so fiercely that we neglect acknowledging our experiences. For the caregiver, it can be equally (yes equally-not more, not less) emotionally intense to sit with, face, and process the influence one’s own behavior had on another. To revisit those moments in time and what was going on that contributed how the caregiver showed up can include processing trauma and other difficulties with mental health. I cannot stress enough that these conversations are not about blame, they are about learning, understanding, and identifying what ingredients went into each of our individual blueprints. Because remember, that caregiver has a blueprint from their childhood too.

Today is not about how to have those conversations (let’s bookmark it and revisit it in a way that it gets the space it deserves). Today is about understanding the influences to your blueprint. It’s about exploration. I invite you to take sometime getting to know your blueprint. Our attachment styles are processes we’ve had our whole lives, yet we can live life never getting to know them. Despite them being so important for our relationships, mental health, and physical well-being- we can be completely unaware and detached from the data our nervous system continues to use today. So, if it feels safe to do so, I invite you to start exploring.

Who was involved in your caregiving system?

What did your caregiving system relationships teach you about your emotional/physical needs?

What comes to mind when you think about the words you would use to describe how your caregivers responded to your emotions?

Does your blueprint look different with your caregivers vs other relationships in your life? (For example are you more avoidant with your caregiver but more secure with friends or partners?)

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