Blog Posts

Anxiety Symptoms? Notice Where You're Okay.

5/14/2019

Photo by Victoria Wallace Schlicht, LMFT, SEP

Just Take A Deep Breath.
Sounds A Bit Glib, Doesn't It?

I hear a lot about deep breathing from my clients in individual sessions and in the therapy groups I facilitate. Everywhere my anxious clients turn, they are being told by well-meaning people, self-help books, friends, media, and therapists, to take a deep breath. To follow better self-care. To chillax! As if. As if it were actually that simple.

Only it's not. Is it?

You, me, and everyone you know who is still currently inhabiting the planet and is not on life support is managing to breathe. And do it on their own. They're managing to breathe. It doesn't mean they are managing their anxiety.

So, I don't teach breathing as a first place to start when working with anxiety. The whole world wants to talk to you about that and up to the point you hit my office, it has not been the magic key. The time will come when we will talk about breathing, but we will start elsewhere.

Photo by Victoria Wallace Schlicht, LMFT, SEP

And Yet.

"Breathe. All we have is now. Relax. You are okay." As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and therapist specializing in anxiety reduction, I love this. It is a perfect format for self care in the face of anxiety. Or just day-to-day stressed out living. Remembering to stop and take a breath, to take a pause, is a great way to address the onset of anxiety. The trick is in noticing you are starting to feel tense, stopping, and remembering to address it in a positive, proactive manner.

Photo by Victoria Wallace Schlicht, LMFT, SEP

All We Have Is Now.

All we have is now. Our bright, busy, anxious mind runs off into catastrophic thoughts about an uncertain future or ruminates about the past. It can be a challenge to stay in the present moment. "All we have is now" is a perfect reminder to stay present and engaged with yourself and life in the here and now.

This is the perfect time to allow yourself to pause and notice where you are. Notice your surroundings. Notice what you see, and hear, and smell. Notice where, despite the discomfort of anxiety, you feel better in your body. Where do you feel the most calm and neutral? Notice that. As you do so, you will move more freely and clearly towards the present moment.

Photo by Victoria Wallace Schlicht, LMFT, SEP

Relax.

Relax. When I work with clients to reduce their high anxiety and panic, I do so through a variety of means. You can learn to be more in touch with your nervous system and soothe your anxious body out. When you support your body, you are on your way to reducing your anxiety, becoming more self-regulated, less irritable, and increasing your resiliency and well-being.

You are okay. Noticing this, reminding yourself of this is great self talk and an important skill to cultivate in your day-to-day life. Notice what is okay in your body. Notice what is okay in your circumstance. Despite it all, some things are okay. You are already talking to yourself all day, every day, but the kind of anxious, negative, self-critical statements most of us employ are not helpful. We can train the brain over time to begin to let go of habitual negative thoughts. As we do so, things begin to change.

It Really Is the perfect Mantra For Daily Use.

Photo by Victoria Wallace Schlicht, LMFT, SEP

Breathe.
All You Have Is Now.
Relax.
You are Okay.

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#KonMari And Anxiety Reduction. Is The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up Therapeutic?

2/1/2019

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Photo by Victoria Wallace Schlicht, LMFT, SEP

Chances are, by now you have heard about Marie Kondo, her new special on Netflix, Tidying Up, or her book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Marie Kondo and her work, known by devotees as KonMari, is literally everywhere right now. Taking the world by storm. Or at least your social media feed. The truth is, right now you can still hide in your piles of stuff, but it is unlikely you can completely hide from Marie Kondo. Why so much noise about managing our stuff?

Managing Life.

Managing life, managing stuff, managing tasks, managing money, managing schedules, managing relationships, managing who does what, and keeping ahead of the game is often a topic coming up in life and therefore in therapy. Especially for the highly anxious adults I work with. Demanding perfection of ourselves and others, overextending ourselves, not knowing how to say an effective and appropriate "No" to requests (Ah! boundaries!), can lead to a state of anxious overwhelm. Even panic. Or impact our relationships with partners and family members. So, it's a thing. All our stuff and how we feel about our tasks, managing our overwhelm, and trying to keep all those plates spinning in the air is a great big ol' thing.

What Is KonMari?

Marie Kondo's work hit the US market in a big way in the fall of 2014, although I didn't come across her until the following year. Having long been a student of de-cluttering and down-sizing, as a years-long follower of Flylady (that's another story for another time), I felt there probably wasn't a lot I was going to learn through KonMari. I was game, though. And I was also wrong. There was plenty to learn.

On the face of it, KonMari is just another system for sorting through your life and belongings and letting go of the extraneous. In the actual experience of practicing the technique, however, there is a deeply psychological and emotional process potentially in play. Or, so I found.

First, I Tried KonMari Myself.

Rather than old tropes about not keeping clothes or items you haven't used in a certain period of time, or lists about the number of things you can keep in any given category, Kondo concentrates on what "sparks joy" or gives you a little lift. Step by step, KonMari leads you through a systematic process, starting with clothes and ending with sentimental items, all the while honing your ability to notice what brings you happiness. Building your emotional muscle for making decisions and feeling into your preferences. We keep items and pieces of clothing for lots of reasons, but not always because they actually make us feel good about our lives and ourselves. In fact, we may not notice how items make us feel at all.

Prior to KonMari, I believed I had edited my belongings down pretty well, however what I found during the process surprised me. I had some beautiful things I liked, but when I actually took the time, touched them, contemplated them one by one, felt into them, and felt into my somatic responses, there were a few pieces that didn’t actually carry beautiful memories to complement their good looks. Who knew? I let them go. The end result is I felt immeasurably lighter myself. And my environment became lighter and more embracing. More uplifting. It’s hard to ignore.

As with so many other things, when I find something that works or inspires me, I will share it with clients when it is appropriate to do so. I’ve been providing Marie Kondo’s books as a referral for clients for the last four years. When I do so, I prepare them, just as I will prepare you here.

There's A Somatic Connection

As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) and body-oriented psychotherapist, I was drawn to KonMari because there is a nice somatic piece at the base of it: Feeling your joy and feeling it in your body. A great deal of my work as a somatic therapist is teaching folks to become conversant with their bodies. To notice the subtle early warning signs it gives at the approach of anxiety, yes, but even more important, to notice what is okay, good, and even great in the body at any given time. It is always there. That innate sense of well-being. Often, we need to learn to find it and notice it, because it is quiet.

A process like KonMari, that asks us to notice the presence of happiness in our body, or lack of it, with every item in our home, is a lovely and productive way to bring this body-oriented attention to the fore. Such a sweet and easy way to reconnect to your body intelligence. That self-knowing and inner awareness is precious and has the potential to change and inform every area of your life. This is what I love about Somatic Experiencing. It is what I love about the KonMari method, too. The principles of identifying and embracing pleasure, while they may stand in direct contrast to our historical and puritanical sensibilities, are a real road to loving ourselves and life and loving ourselves into Life. Invaluable. Stealth. Healing. Right. There.

The Healing Nature Of KonMari.

Marie Kondo begins with the end in mind. Much like therapy. What kind of life do you want to create? How do you want to feel when you enter your home? When you start your day? With this in mind, you start your journey, which Kondo refers to as a “Tidying Festival.” I know, pretty twee, right? Once you’re going, however, it IS invigorating and fun. And it is an event. Be prepared to take some time with this, because it is a thoughtful process and it takes time. Months, even.

This is a psychological and emotional process. Be prepared to feel the feels. Be prepared to do the work of coming to terms with some of your past relationships and experiences. You never have to let go of an item, you never have to toss a piece of clothing, because it is out of style, too small, or worn out. Not if it still sparks a feeling of joy or exuberance. This isn't about minimalism or getting rid of things, it is about choosing what you want to bring forward with you into the next part of your life. In the process of going through literally every item you own, touching it, and making a decision about whether you want it (or need it—sometimes joy is in the function of your screw driver, not its beauty!), you will be reviewing many memories and the history of your life and choices. It can be confronting. It can be comforting. It can definitely be freeing. When you’re done, you have a home that is a refuge and lifts and embraces you on your way through the door.

Sure, you will know where literally every item is located. You will have kissed your junk drawer goodbye and brought the spare room to heel. More importantly, you will have lightened your physical and psychological load. For those going through even part of the process, I observe a new way of seeing life, personal history, and belongings emerge. You can come to a greater sense of peace and resolution. Less anxiety. More calm. Feeling freer to move forward. More able to come to terms with your history, more at peace in your household, more comfortable in your own skin. That’s therapeutic, right there.

The Gift Of Deciding.

Many of my highly anxious clients have a great deal of trouble making decisions of any kind. There’s a big fear of loss. Fear of making mistakes. Fear, period. A process like KonMari turns a lot of these fears on their head by the simple practice of honing the skilll of decision-making. By working through the various household categories, from most challenging to most difficult, you hone your sense of feeling into yourself, feeling into your body, feeling into your preferences and desires, and acting on them. So crucial. Many anxious folks have lost touch with their preferences after years of prioritizing others wants and needs over their own. Learning yourself is priceless. Another therapeutic pay off.

Discovery.

One of the things to emerge in the KonMari process is rediscovering and bringing forward old passions, interests, and hobbies. Re-enlivening old dreams. The things we love that are hiding away in boxes can find a place of honor and reanimate our daily experience. Our hobby spaces that had grown so out of control we couldn’t find them, or face them, can welcome us back into our creativity. A process like this can be a way of remembering who we are and what we love. We learn to take responsibility for the choices we make moving forward. Very healing.

I find the KonMari process a great companion to therapy and effective at generating meaningful and depthful work in sessions as clients work through memories, emotions, regrets, losses, relationship issues, unresolved pain from the past, challenges, decision-making, and successes. Like therapy, there is freedom waiting at the other end of the process. Sorting through our things can be a perfect mirror for the sorting, reframing, rediscovering, and healing work we do in therapy. We can create change. In our environments. In ourselves. We can dare to re-imagine ourselves and our way of being in the world.

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Six Ways Therapy Can Increase Your Wealth.

1/30/2019

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Therapy Is An Investment.

Sometimes we know we could use extra help and support, such as the support found in a good therapeutic relationship, but we find ourselves tripping over the cost of therapy. Good therapy, after all, isn't typically cheap therapy. Why? Because a good and seasoned therapist hasn't only spent years training for and working in their profession, but has invested time and treasure in the cultivation of their interests and therapeutic specialties through post-masters training. Ongoing training and development. Sometimes for years. A confident and experienced therapist feels comfortable setting and holding to their fee. In demonstrating their own self-valuing, they actually model self-valuing to you.

When you engage with a highly trained therapist, you are investing in yourself. In your future. In your relationships. And, yes, you are investing in building a brighter financial future as well.

1. Therapy Pays Dividends.

It's true. Therapy can pay dividends. Working with your therapist can take your lead and transform it into gold. But how is this alchemy created?

2. Relationships

One of the first things you'll notice in the course of your therapy is you are beginning to cultivate a new relationship to yourself. Through a series of therapeutic conversations, you will begin to articulate your feelings and beliefs more clearly. Sometimes for the first time.

You'll get a better sense of what makes you tick, what triggers you into reactivity or sadness, what motivates you. As a result, you'll develop a new, clearer view of yourself, as well as a different way of making decisions and responding to people and external situations. You become a better listener and a better communicator. More observant of yourself. More observant of others. More psychologically aware. More perceptive.

As you begin to understand yourself better, your relationships begin to improve. Over time. With work and attention your interactions can become easier and more productive.

3. Boundaries.

Boundaries are the habits we use to manage our relationships and set the standard for how we treat ourselves and others. Boundaries determine how satisfactory a relationship is. How much appropriate give and take there is. If you've been exposed to therapy at all, then your therapist has undoubtedly held forth on boundaries. Often. It's our thing. Why? Because good boundaries make lives work smoothly.

Therapists coach clients about boundaries, because boundaries are important. In fact, good boundaries may be the hardest and most productive work we do in therapy. Boundaries determine how happy you are in your friendships and relationships. Boundaries are the tools we use to train ourselves and others about how we want to be treated. When we have good boundaries in place, we tend to feel more fulfilled, are less likely to feel exhausted, resentful, or burned out. We've found healthy ways to set guidelines around what we take on, how much time we spend with certain folks, and how and where we use our energy most happily and effectively.

When we learn the art of being able to say 'no' effectively and appropriately, we will have more time, attention, energy, and creativity available to say 'yes' to living our lives more fully. It's a win win.

4. Reducing Impulsivity, Because Impulsivity Can Get Expensive.

Do you know what I mean? Impulsivity. It isn't everyone's problem, but if it is your problem it can really cause some big headaches. Impulsivity is when we act without considering the consequences. We act rashly and without thinking. Without reflecting on the true potential outcome of our decisions. Impusivity can become very expensive in all the ways that matter. We can end up in legal trouble, financial trouble, out of work, crashing our cars or our businesses, hijacking our most important relationships, or getting married in Vegas by Elvis. When Impulsivity is running the show things get chaotic. There are messes to clean up later. Therapy can help you reduce your impulsivity. You can slow the roll, still have fun, and make decisions with your eyes wide open.

5. Improving Self-Esteem.

Sometimes, we don't think much of ourselves. Sometimes we don't think much of ourselves, even when we are getting lots of good feedback and strokes. Worse than that, we can't see ourselves in a way that shines a light on our strengths and inherent value. Our lack of self-esteem may arise from poor decisions or struggles we're having, but typically, low self-esteem will have its roots in our family home and the degrees to which we felt loved, accepted and valued. Our parents aren't always up to the task. They aren't always capable of loving us in the way we want or need to feel loved. As a result, we can end up not feeling lovable. Or valued. Or cherished. Trauma can do it, too. Damage our sense of self and wholeness. One way or another, we can end up feeling like shit. If our self-esteem is low enough, we won't feel we are deserving of any of the good things in life. It can all feel out of reach or not for us.

Exploring our sense of self, building or rebuilding our caring and valuing of ourselves, yields real gold. We can start creating a life we want, be more open to loving relationships with caring people, make changes in our career paths and jobs, move towards the life we desire.

6. Increasing Your Ability To Make Good Decisions.

As you begin to know yourself on a deeper level, invest in better relationships, build those important and yet tricky boundaries, reduce your reactivity, increase your mindfulness in life, you'll naturally begin making better and more well-informed decisions all around. You'll be less likely to be driven by the external, by the expectations and judgements of others, by over-compensating for feeling unworthy or down on yourself and act and make decisions from a position of inner strength.

It Requires An Investment of Time.

Change and personal development, coming to terms with life's disappointments and losses, cultivating more compassion for yourself and others, reducing your anxiety and healing your sense of self takes time. Developing a greater sense of mastery in life takes time. It does. But just like compound interest it starts yielding benefits right away. Benefits that compound and grow over time to create wealth. The kind of wealth that fills you up on the inside and can help create the added financial income you're looking for as you move through life and work in a more fluid and productive manner.

When we feel better, we do better. We do better at understanding and motivating ourselves. We do better at building and maintaining relationships of all kinds. We do better at prioritizing our time and energy by setting solid and consistent boundaries. We feel more motivated. We do better at self-monitoring and being mindful in our decisions and deals. We do better at honoring our commitments to ourselves and others. Ultimately, we do better at life. We experience an enhanced sense of freedom. And that's the big pay off.

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Smart People are Often Highly Anxious People

10/17/2018

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It's True. Your Big Juicy Brain is an Anxious Brain.

That big juicy frontal lobe of yours isn't only good at problem solving and coming up with great solutions. It's prone to spinning out problems to worry about, as well. In fact, your bright brain is bomb at coming up with problems to noodle through. It's what it does best. And there we have it. The birth of anxious, ruminating, catastrophic thought. Bright brains are anxious brains. Kinda sucks, right?

Smart People Think They Can Out Think Their Anxiety.

Sometimes smart people are used to having all the answers. It comes with the territory. As a result, smart people, who are used to solving other people's problems, will feel like they should be able to solve all their own problems by themselves. Or worse yet, they feel they shouldn't have problems in the first place.

"I'm too smart to feel this way."
"I shouldn't feel this way."
"I have no reason to feel anxious. It doesn't make sense."
"I should be able to solve this!"

I hear it every day. Every day I hear how Anxious Folk are too smart to be anxious and it shouldn't be happening and if it is happening then they should be able to make it stop on their own. Push through. Master it. Think their way out of it. Bring the anxiety to heel through the application of logic.

The Thing Is, Your Anxiety Isn't Logical.

If your anxiety were logical and responded to the application of logic as a solution, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. That's the whole problem with anxiety. You can't typically just puzzle your way out of it or out maneuver anxiety. No, it's not so simple as talking yourself out of an anxious thought. Why?

All Your Anxious Thoughts Have a Seed of Potential Truth in Them. Or They Certainly Feel That Way.

For one thing, your anxious thoughts will appear to have the seed of potential truth buried in them. In any event, your anxious thoughts, even your worst ones, will feel true. Focusing your bright, sensitive mind on making a thought stop will almost always increase your sense of anxiety. Your considerable will power is not going to help you out in this case.

The Smarter You Are, The Smarter Your Anxiety Is. Go Figure.

As an intelligent person with a habit of solving things through the application of facts and diligence, anxiety can prove tricky. It will evade your efforts every time. Your big brain can actually get in the way of effectively subduing your anxiety. In part, this is because of your high value on solving it alone. For a lot of anxious folks the reliance on the mind can trip you up when it seems to be the mind that is causing your issue. Your intelligence will function as your biggest help-refusing, "I know" defense mechanism, insulating you from the new and ultimately from the very tools you could learn to use most effectively. Anxiety is not just a mental or emotional experience, but a very physical one as well. Dancing with anxiety requires you to learn how to engage your body as your ally and approach life in a new way.

Deepening Your Mind Body Connection Can Provide The Solutions You Are Seeking.

For more than a decade, my clinical focus has been on supporting highly anxious adults in the journey of reclaiming their lives and well-being when anxiety has begun to run amok. The approach that has served best has been a combination of learning how to respond to anxious thoughts while discovering a way to lower the level of anxiety and high activation in the nervous system.

It takes work. And some coaching. And a willingness to work through the discomfort of your over-functioning anxious mind and your anxious, driven nervous system.

Anxiety Is Not Logical.

Anxiety is best managed when we stop trying to control everything: ourselves, others, our misbehaving anxious mind, our stressed out bodies. When you stop trying to force a particular shape of experience on yourself and your body by trying to relax, for example, you have taken a huge step towards learning to be more at ease overall. By stepping out of the habit of control you are stepping deeper into well-being.

Not logical at all, right?

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How To Pick The Best Premarital Counseling.

4/29/2018

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When it comes to picking a venue for your premarital counseling, it really comes down to the same things it does when picking any therapist for any reason or the best venue for your wedding. Availability. Quality. Fit. Preference. Experience.

Let's Start With Preference.

Premarital counseling is provided in multiple settings. If you are part of a faith community, your community may offer faith-based premarital counseling. In fact, some churches, temples, mosques, etc. require it in order for you to be married at their site, whether you are a member of their community or not. In this case, you will most likely be offered an assessment that includes a faith-based take on the issues being evaluated. This suits some folks and doesn't suit others. Your counselor will likely have some training in how to administer the assessment and may be trained in pastoral counseling, but not actually in couples counseling. Feel free to ask some questions about their level of experience in working effectively with couples, as well as their training.

Why Seek Out A Trained Relationship Specialist?

Another option is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT). These licensed clinicians have been trained to work with individuals and couples. In particular, the training of marriage and family therapists, as indicated by their license designation, will have focused on relationships and the nature of relationships. If you want secular or non-religious counseling, this may be the best option for you. That said, some therapists practice as Christian Therapists, or utilize other faith-based approaches and incorporate this into their clinical practices as a specialty. Always feel free to call and speak with the therapist you choose, ask them questions, and determine if they feel like a good fit for the two of you. Any therapist should be willing to offer you 15-20 minutes over the phone to get your questions answered. You may want to speak to a several different therapists. In this sense, it's not too different from taste testing your wedding cake or choosing your appetizers. You want someone who feels like a comfortable and safe fit for you.

Experience Counts.

Frankly, anyone can administer and score a premarital evaluation. The work and the art of working with couples comes afterwards and that's when experience counts. You want to work with someone who has spent years working with couples, identifying and addressing issues, and guiding couples towards healthier interactions, more productive arguments (because there will be disagreements), and more fulfilling relationships.

Almost every couple has a few issues they could stand to improve on. Identifying them early is a huge boon to the marriage and the life you are planning on building together. This kind of work and awareness is a form of relationship insurance.

It's A Little Stressy.

Yes, it can be a little stressy to even consider premarital counseling. I find this is the biggest reason couples, especially young couples, avoid premarital counseling. We imagine all kinds of things. Sometimes we're afraid we'll hear our problems are bigger than we think they are. Or that talking about difficult issues will actually cause problems rather than solve them. Or someone will tell us we shouldn't even get married in the first place! By the way, that's not your therapist's job, so it shouldn't be happening. Yes, it can be anxiety producing to even consider counseling, but that doesn't mean premarital counseling won't have real value for you.

And you know what else? It can be hard talking about issues. Definitely. And threatening. It can even make you mad. Here's the thing, though, the issues exist whether you're willing to address them from the start or not. Virtually every couple has areas they could grow in and benefit from addressing. Premarital counseling is like getting a good tune up before you hit the road. Premarital counseling can provide great training and a good foundation for moving forward and managing difficulties more smoothly as they arise.

Premarital Counseling Isn't Just For Couples With "Issues" or For Identifying Problems.

An effective and well designed premarital assessment is going to identify your strengths as a couple, areas where your opinions and values line up, and areas where you want to take extra care in terms of resolving differences of opinion.

A good assessment will require you to look closely at issues you may not have explored fully during the flurry of falling in love. Differences about money, money management, roles, interacting with extended family, and personal temperament. Knowledge like this is invaluable in creating a happy life together and setting you up to celebrate the differences and commonalities that contribute to your being a unique and loving couple.

Why Do Premarital Counseling At All?

After years of working with couples in my practice,
I can tell you one of the biggest issues in the first few years of marriage are unacknowledged and unspoken expectations of one another. Sometimes we don't even know what we expect, we only know when it hasn't happened. We figure out our unexamined expectations as a result of our unexpected resentments and disappointments. Ouch!

An effective premarital assessment will uncover unconscious expectations as well as the unvoiced. This is a huge safeguard for your relationship down the line. Once your expectations are identified, explored, and aired out, they no longer exists as landmines to trip on down the line. You won't be disappointing yourselves or each other nearly as often. Less hurt feelings. Less disappointments. Stronger, happier marriage.

Premarital Counseling Safeguards Your Marriage.

A well designed premarital assessment tool, and some follow up counseling to look at the results will safeguard your relationship, your marriage, the stability of your family unit, and impact your ability to get along more easily by providing customized tools and information. In fact, studies suggest premarital counseling reduces divorce rates by as much as thirty percent. That's a number worth paying attention to. I value good tools, so I chose to be trained to utilize the Prepare/Enrich assessment. I find my premarital couples (and even married clients) enjoy and benefit from this assessment and review. It forms a great jumping off place for further exploration, in addition to the information it provides.

Celebrating Our Differences.

Differences are not a bad thing in a marriage. The ways in which we are different or disagree can strengthen our marriages and help us expand as individuals, provided we have an understanding and valuing of those differences.

Some differences define areas where we agree to disagree. Every marriage contains some topics such as these. When these differences are not deal breakers, then we can learn to negotiate them. Your premarital assessment can identify personality differences--there are always some--and a skilled therapist can mentor you in negotiating and understanding these differences in a productive and healthy way.

You're going to spend a lifetime learning about yourselves and each other. This is what long term committed relationship looks like. This will be true whether you invest some time in a premarital assessment and counseling now or not. Premarital counseling simply gives you a leg up. It can help you identify challenges and strengths as a couple, provide you with better understanding of those qualities, and most importantly, provide you with a great set of tools to continue your journey together.

In The Midst Of Planning Our Big Wedding, We Can Forget We Are Planning Our Big Life Together, As Well.

So, while you plan your Big Day, taste all the cakes, and interview the videographers, set aside some time to invest in your Big Life together. Build it on a good foundation of understanding. Take responsibility now for creating the sweet life you want together.

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Why Somatic Experiencing? Five Reasons Your Treatment Center Needs A Somatic Therapist.

4/26/2018

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1. Talk Therapy, Alone, Is Not Always Enough.

Cutting edge treatment centers have integrated body-oriented therapy into their services for the last ten or twenty years. Why? Because it works. Because it works and because clients respond.

I love talk and insight oriented therapy. It's a beautiful thing. And it's not always adequate by itself. After over a decade of practicing as a somatic therapist, I'll admit it. I'm biased. For some of our clients, talk therapy will never be enough. Not in the long term. We're not just intellectual beings. Or emotional beings. Or mindful beings. Or physical beings. We're all of that and more. The most effective therapeutic approaches recognize and exploit this reality fully. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is one such approach.

2. Your Clients Have Been Storing Experiences of All Kinds In Their Bodies Since They Were Born. Maybe Before.

Your addicted, chaotic, eating disordered, and highly traumatized clients have been storing experiences of all kinds in their bodies since the day they were born. Perhaps, since conception. We all have. Layer enough of the right kind of experience into the nervous system and bodies and systems react the way they react--seeking numbing experiences and experiencing high levels of activation and internal chaos. Impulsivity. Destructive relationship patterns. Addictions. Somatic Experiencing can begin to loosen and resolve the issues driving such behavior patterns and do so in a non-retraumatizing and elegant manner. Smooth.

3. Your Clients Need Stabilization And The Ability To Self-Regulate And Self-Soothe In Order To Benefit From The Rest of Their Treatment Program.

Deepening the ability to self-soothe, cultivating resiliency, identifying triggers, reducing impulsivity, establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries, getting in touch with a renewed sense of safety, and understanding emotions as they emerge are important skills each of your recovery minded clients needs to have. Somatic Experiencing is a real boon in this way and a perfect pairing with DBT and other approaches you are already employing.

Not every client is stable enough for EMDR. Lovely and powerful as EMDR is, not all your clients have enough resource or ego strength in these early days to navigate EMDR. In addition to being a strong stand alone therapy, Somatic Experiencing is great tool for creating resource and resiliency in your clients' nervous systems and prepare them for entering your EMDR program over times.

4. The Desire To Numb Out Is At The Bottom of Many Client Behaviors.

Of course. We both know this. At a certain point, your clients will recognize this, as well. Your clients have used their behaviors and substances to numb their feelings for a long time. When those behaviors are brought to heel through the hard work of your clients and your treatment team, there's a natural and yet dangerous void remaining. All the ways in which struggling folks numb out have now been taken off the table and clients are left with a deficit of self-care skills to address the overwhelming emotional and physical discomfort of being with their feelings again. All the time.

You and your treatment team are working night and day to support your clients in developing a skill based and mindful approach to dealing with these overwhelming emotions. Somatic Experiencing promotes increased self-awareness, increased self regulation, and increased well-being by supporting an individual's ability to gently learn how to be more present to themselves and their somatic sensations. Those sensations are fueling their emotions.

5. The Brain Has a Natural Negative Bias.

Our brains are designed with a negative bias. Not just some human brains. All human brains. We have a big juicy frontal lobe, which has evolved as wonderful problem noticing, problem solving organ. We've spent eons identifying risks, avoiding catastrophe, scanning for danger, noticing and attending to what is wrong in our environment and in our bodies. We need to know when we are in trouble or injured. It's simple survival, really. Apparently, noticing the positive and what was quietly going well wasn't nearly as important to survival of the species as identifying pain and trouble. As I tell my clients every day, the anxious survived and we're the result. Fun stuff.

Overcoming that natural negative bias is one of the tasks of evolving as a person and creating a happier existence in an overstimulating and chaotic world. Somatic Experiencing, with its focus on sensation, can be a wonderful tool for noticing what is going well with the body, what is neutral, or even great, despite the concurrent presence of pain, discomfort, or anxiety. SE can form a huge learning in being able to be with both, hold both, the good and the bad, the positive and the troubling. Learning how to cultivate an awareness of what is actually okay can be a very stabilizing and encouraging support for recovery of all kinds.

Utilizing a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) As Part of Your Treatment Plan Can Increase Your Clients' Overall Success.

Treatment centers are always striving to increase their clients' success rates and satisfaction with services. It's good clinical work. And good business. Increasingly, I see this desire for excellence and a competitive edge includes acknowledging the body-mind connection in a manner that is both accessible and least activating for clients. Somatic Experiencing, which can be provided within the treatment center or as an adjunct individual service or as part of your regular group rotation, can satisfy this need in a safe and titrated way. Learning how to be present to the body, aware of but not overwhelmed by strong emotions or sensations, constitutes a hugely powerful, empowering, and healing experience for our clients. Isn't that the exact thing we are wanting for all our clients?

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Anxiety? Just Stop It, Already!

4/26/2018

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Every Day I Work With Anxious Folks About The Issue Of Their Anxious Thoughts.

Is there a way to just toss your anxious thoughts aside? Put a stop to it? Pull the plug on your anxiety? It's not really that easy, is it? I mean, have you ever had any luck just stopping your thoughts? Any of your thoughts?

It's not as if you can just decide to stop being anxious or stop thinking anxious thoughts. As much as we may want that to be true. At least, I've never experienced "Stop it!" therapy as having much value or effectiveness, although Bob Newhart did get a lot of mileage out of it in his famous skit.

Almost every anxious client I work with would like their anxiety to end now! Immediately. During the first visit, if possible. Of course. This makes perfect sense. The experience of high anxiety or panic attack is so very uncomfortable. Plus, your anxiety is nothing if it isn't impatient. The thing is, reducing your anxiety is a process and it's a process that has value. Working through your anxious experience will reduce your overwhelming anxiety and it will do so much more.

Reducing Worry Takes More Than Simple Willpower.

Attempting to use our willpower, alone, to stop anxious thoughts simply doesn't work. If anything, it just makes it worse. When strong-minded, intelligent, problem-solving oriented people focus their considerable willpower on stopping an anxious thought they are going to hit a wall. Smack! It can be an alarming sensation to feel you have no sense of control over yourself and your experience of the world. Especially if one thing you really value is your sense of self control. And I'll just say it now--us Anxious Folk love the idea of absolute self-control! Or just control in general. Uh-huh! The desire for control is not only our addiction, it is our Kryptonite!

Reducing Overwhelming Anxiety Requires More Than Reading A Great Self Help Book.

Don't get me wrong. I love books. I consume a lot of written material, myself, and am consistently referring my clients to books. The thing is, you can read all the books, but without personalized, knowledgeable mentorship and guidance it can be next to impossible to create lasting change through a self-help book.

There are some great books out there, though, and they serve as wonderful educational tools and a great jumping off point for heading out on your own healing journey. Make sure to test drive a couple.

Reducing Anxiety Takes Time.

And focus. And work. Yeah, as much as I know we would like to believe otherwise, reducing our anxious experience and working through the issue of anxiety takes work. Work, focus, time, and lots of good tools. It's not the kind of work you can delegate to someone else, either. No one can do it for you. Or to you. Not even your therapist (sigh!), even while a good therapist is an invaluable guide and mentor along the way.

This is actually a good thing.

A really good thing. A great thing. True story. I love doing the work of sorting through and defusing anxious experience with my clients. Why? Because it is such a rewarding path of self discovery. In the process of unwinding our anxious experience we will inevitably discover the Secrets of the Universe.

Or come close.

You'll rediscover yourself. Sort out your passions. Create better relationships. And new relationships. Try new things. Learn to say 'No.' Maybe for the first time. Learn to say 'Yes!' to the things that matter most for you. And to new things. Good things. Start to experiment with new freedom. Less self-judgement. Less judgement of others. Stop feeling victimized, resentful, and martyred. Stop beating yourself up. Whoa! Yes, it really can be a whole new world.

Oh! and reduce the awful impact of overwhelming anxiety and the misery that comes with it.

So, No, It isn't Possible to Just Toss Your Worries Aside. Not Instantly. Not Even With Your Great Willpower.

It takes time. And patience. And dogged determination. And acquiring new skills and new ways of working through your thoughts and experiences. And that's okay. That's perfect. It's okay because anything that has value takes some time to create. Besides, Anxious Folk have pushed through for a long long time. It's an anxious value--"I keep going, no matter how I feel!" All these years we've been pushing through our anxiety. Forcing ourselves forward. Gritting our teeth, enduring. After awhile it backfires on us. We end up overwhelmed or consumed by panic.

Eventually we need another way. A more gentle, methodical, self-compassionate approach. No more berating and shaming ourselves. No more merely pushing through it without actually addressing it. This is the gift a good course of therapy can bestow.

There's more freedom on the other side of your anxiety. With support, you can learn to swim through your anxiety to the other side. To life.

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Three Ways To Know It's Time To Take Your Anxiety Seriously. And Do Something About It.

7/13/2015

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Chances Are You've Spent Years Trying to Manage Your Anxiety on Your Own. Why Change Course Now?

True enough, you've gotten this far without help, why stop and take inventory and change directions now? The thing is, it's more likely than not that your anxiety has not only gotten worse over the years, but has continued to cost you dearly across multiple areas of your life. Maybe you think you've managed to outrun it. Up until now.

When is it Time to Take Anxiety Seriously?

When anxiety is running the show, when anxiety is running you, then it's time to take a new look at your approach. It's time to reassess. Time to call it to a halt and take charge. Time to move towards freedom and away from anxiety, panic, overwhelm, guilt, shame, and perfectionism. You don't have to live with anxiety and worry, racing thoughts, sleep disruption, and a feeling you can never really catch your breath and catch up. You don't have to do this by yourself, even if you're used to handling most things on your own. Alone.

Exhaustion. Are You Exhausted With the Way You Are Living Your Life?

I work with Anxious Folk every day in my Santa Ana/Tustin and Newport Beach offices. Here's what I can tell you: the folks who show up here are showing up absolutely exhausted. Exhausted with trying to manage their anxiety. Exhausted with trying to keep their stress, anxiety, and feelings under wraps. Exhausted with working to maintain a facade of "I've got it ALL under control over here! No help needed!" Tired to death with taking care of others at their own expense and yet often not really knowing another way to live.

Anxiety is exhausting, first and foremost. Your body wasn't designed for the world you're living in and it certainly wasn't designed to exist in a continual state of Fight, Flight, or Freeze. That stuff runs on a lot of adrenaline and other nasty stress hormones. Hormones that were designed to get you Out of Dodge Fast when there's real danger, but just run havoc in your nervous system when they show up for no real reason. Your natural survival hormones and the chemical cascade of panic can either save your life when you're in a jam and on the run from a big predator or literally put you in an early grave.

Perfectionism. The Big Lie You've Been Telling Yourself.

A lot of Anxious Folk work themselves ragged and are on the go non-stop. We put the A in Type A Personality. When Anxious Folk slow down, they start to feel their feelings more. And when we're bent on outrunning our thoughts and feelings, we have to run damned FAST! So, Anxious Folk make a habit out of being busy, competent, and on call.

Or we're incapable of slowing down and resting at all. Can't. Sit. Still. Most Anxious Folk are merciless in the ways they drive themselves. Our striving for perfectionism is the currency that allows us to feel half-way okay with ourselves. The problem is, Perfectionism pays very poor dividends. Not only is it unhealthy, Perfectionism is an unkind way to treat ourselves. Perfection simply doesn't exist. I think it could and should be classified as a form of torture. True story. Really, Perfectionism is just our Great Big Ol' Mean Mommy Critical Internal Voice having another go at us. We can never be good enough!

Relationships. Your Anxiety Can Run Your Relationships Right Off The Road.

Sad but true, your anxious experience can take a huge toll on your most cherished relationships. Our anxious energy can have us pretty wound up. It's not always fun to be around Anxious Folk when they're running in their hamster wheels of worry, control, and general edginess. It takes a toll!

No one enjoys being managed. And here's the thing, Anxious Folk are great care-takers and managers. Some of us can come off as a bit, um, controlling. It's our thing. We know how to take care of people. Even when they don't want to be taken care of. It's one of the ways we make sure everything is running smoothly in our world.

One thing a lot of Anxious Folk feel pretty comfortable with is the idea that the world would be better off if they were in charge! Sometimes we just can't relax on the inside until we're sure the our outside world is in order. This includes kitchen counters, piles of laundry, and the way the people in our orbit are relating and not relating with each other. It may not be an ecological use of our energy, but Anxious Folk will expend a good deal of time, thought, and life force making sure everything is alright.

When Anxious Folk are in Full Anxious Swing, then we can be highly invested in making sure things are Right. And Safe. And predictable. Some of the Anxious Folk I work with have a hard time allowing themselves to recreate. Or chill. Or take a vacation. Or board an airplane. Invariably, they've paired themselves with someone who is more laid back. So, what was meant to be a nice counter balance morphs into relational conflict. Lovers who feel hemmed in. Children who won't return your calls. Friends who feel they're getting more advice than they want. Chaos in LoveLand!

If you're Exhausted With "Doing," Over-Thinking, Perfectionism, and Your Relationships Are Out of Sync, it May be Time to Rewind and Reconnect to Your Own Inner Balance.

There are times in our lives, particularly when we are dealing with the thorny nature of anxious experience, when it can be a real boon to have expert help on hand. After all, you've tried to rein in your overwhelming anxiety on your own for some time now and it hasn't worked well enough to get you back on track.

It Takes More Than Will Power and Self-Help Books.

Wrestling your anxiety into submission and getting your life back requires more than will power. More than stern resolve. More than criticizing yourself back into line. It takes more than a few more drinks, or a bowl to put you to sleep at night. It takes more than just doing everything in your life a little bit better so you can finally chill the hell out. Just a little.

I should know. I work with Anxious Folk every day in my two Orange County offices. In fact, it is my specialty. I know anxiety from the inside out, if you get my drift. And here's what I've learned from the hundreds of Anxious Folk I've worked with over the years: healing anxious experience requires support, know-how, and more than a good insight-oriented talk therapy. In my opinion reducing overwhelming anxiety requires getting in there and working with your nervous system (I use body-oriented psychotherapy techniques including Somatic Experiencing--you'll love it), cleaning out some of the thought cobwebs, getting some good solid boundaries in place, and learning forms of deep self-care that go way beyond a few minutes at the gym and a glass of wine.

You Need To Know, it Will Take Some Time.

Your anxious coping strategies and habits were developed over the course of a lifetime. They served you well, right up to the time they didn't serve you at all. It will take a little time to unravel those habits, smooth out the kinks in the nervous system, and get ticking along smoothly. Time and time again, my client's tell me it is time well-invested. If you're interested in learning more about winding down your anxiety and getting set to move forward, I'd love to speak with you. Give me a call. It's time.

VICTORIA WALLACE SCHLICHT, MA, LMFT, SEP
3300 Irvine Ave., Ste. 111, Newport Beach, CA 92660
2030 East 4rth Street, Ste. 111 Santa Ana, CA 92705
In the beautiful Cabrillo Park area
[email protected]
SIGN UP HERE FOR MY EZINE, THRIVING NEWS
714.914.5565

"I help people who feel bad feel better."

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10 Unexpected Benefits of Anxiety: The Upside to Anxiety.

6/29/2015

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When Overwhelming Anxiety is Running Your Life It's Hard to See Any Benefits in the Experience.

When anxiety is running the show, it's tough to manage the rest of your life. Racing thoughts, heart palpitations, relationship and professional disruptions, sweaty palms, and life-restricting fear can all take their toll. Chances are, I don't have to tell you that. In fact, it's likely you or someone you know and love is struggling with managing out of hand anxiety right now. It's super common these days. When anxiety is running roughshod over our lives, we can fail to see the benefits of our experience.

The Upside to Anxiety.

Here's the deal. There's almost always an upside to anything. Even your anxious experience. Let's take a look.

1. Only The Smart Get Highly Anxious.

2. Anxiety is an Adaptive Behavior.

Over and over again Anxious Folk show up in my office telling me how stupid they feel to "feel this way." Or that no one feels the way they do. And they should be smart enough to handle this on their own. Anxious Folks are highly habituated to problem solving and may be the Go-To person for many of the people in their lives. They're used to thinking themselves out of whatever predicament they're in and very often, they're used to going it alone. They're smart.

In fact, high intelligence is such a strong marker in anxious experience that it's nearly always a given. You've got that nice juicy, big bright ol' frontal lobe and it's busy problem solving. When it runs out of problems to solve--no problem! Your Brilliant Mind will simply spin out some more problems and get busy trying to solve those. Super. In the Anxiety Reduction Biz we call that WORRY. Awesome. So, you're brilliant. Own it!

Anxiety is adaptive on both the micro and macro level. By and large, anxiety is a learned coping strategy. So, back in the day, likely in childhood, you developed an anxious coping style to navigate through life. The development of anxiety is not always the product of chaotic or unsafe childhoods--sometimes it's just a matter of over-anxious parenting. In any case, it's a brilliant strategy that worked a lot back better then than it does now. So, being vigilant, knowing when things were safe or not safe, people were chill or not chill, reducing risk, and following all the rules, even the silly ones, might have saved you then, but it can be overwhelming and life-restricting now. So, that's the Micro or personal level.

3. The Anxious Mind is a Detailed-Oriented, Even Artistic Mind.

There's also the Macro level. In this case I'm referring to the evolutionary benefits of anxious strategies or as I often quip to my clients, "The Anxious survived and we're the evolutionary byproduct." As a species we needed some super observant risk adverse folks around to temper the impact of the Let's Make Fire and Burn it All Down! adventurers. Or the Chase Down the Wooly Mammoth and Stone It Into Submission peeps. Someone had to survive all those shenanigans to tend the home fires, notice which plants were safe or unsafe, keep an eye on the cave door for the marauding hoards, notice the signs of inclement weather, predators, and water or lack of water, figure out what problems might come up before they come up, and keep the kiddos from tumbling off cliffs or drowning in the shallows. Anxious Folk. We're masters of survival, as our antennae are always up and hyper-vigilance is our home turf.

In fact, you can even say the human mind is designed to be negative. Negative and oriented towards problems and pain. That's what fosters survival in a hostile world. True story. The rest, the positivity, we may have to train ourselves to look for. What's going well in our bodies, minds, and lives, isn't nearly as loud as what is painful or problematic, so we might miss it if we're not looking for it.

Your anxious, detail-oriented mind can actually form the basis of many personal and professional strengths. I want an accountant who is a little tipped towards the obsessive side. Someone who not only has a head for numbers, but is checking it all over a couple of times. Heck! Even Santa is "...making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice." (Okay, okay, so maybe Anxious Folk CAN tend to be a little on the rules-oriented black and white thinking side of life. We can work to soften that a bit).

Your detail-oriented mind and body will support your instincts as a graphic designer or interior decorator, because stuff will just feel "off" to you until you have it in just the right spot. It's a physical thing and not everyone has it. My guess is a lot of really good and creative computer programers fall into this category, as well: Needing things to be elegant and clean, even if they are behind the scenes.

The Anxious Mind is habituated to exploring dozens of potential negative outcomes to a situation. Just ask us. We always have a list of potential catastrophes we're tracking. Lots of fields of work benefit from this mindset, even if our personal lives don't.

4. Most Anxious Folks are Empathetic and Sensitive.

True, when we're really caught up in the midst of anxious spinning we're not going to have much attention left for anything other than our intense experience, but barring those highly heated moments, Anxious Folk are some of the most sensitive and empathetic people around. Why? We've been there. We have a real handle on how uncomfortable the uncomfortable can be. Part of our anxious experience has us highly tuned to our environment and the people around us. Remember that Micro bit about surviving childhood through anxious coping strategies? A lot of that came down to learning to instantly read the mood of the people we interacted with and relied on the most.

Many of the Anxious Folk I work with are empathic to the point of intuitive. In fact, a couple of them make their living as psychics. When we're feeling others as keenly as we do, we can put that to work for ourselves and others in a variety of ways.

5. Anxious Folk are Natural Care-takers.

Our anxious experience can mold us into Care-Takers. It's both a pitfall and a strength. One of the ways you may have learned to manage your anxious experience was by taking care of others. It can sound a little like this, "I can't feel happy, relaxed, and safe, when I know you don't feel happy, relaxed, and safe." It can even have the texture of, "If I'm not worrying about you, then I don't love you."

So, you may really know how to look after others and do it well. You might also drive your loved ones crazy with your stellar "management" skills. Or your controlling style. It happens. Anxious Folk are so great at taking care of others that they make awesome therapists (cough! cough!), great nurses, personal assistants, office managers, and are super in the hospitality industries. The challenge for Anxious Folks is rarely about being better at taking care of others, it's almost always around figuring out how not to move into an automatic codependent care-taking mode and how to learning to prioritize taking care of oneself.

6. Your Natural Empathic Gift Can Lead to Compassion and Even Activism.

Since Anxious Folks feel things and notice what's working and not working around them, they are sometimes driven to act. That super-responsible anxious thing (Oh! Have I failed to mention this? Anxious Folk are sometimes responsible to a fault) can be harnessed to create change in our communities and our world. Volunteerism and social activism can be a great place to point that "I can't be still, I must ACT now!" energy and really make a difference in the issues that matter most to you and those around you.

7. Your Drive for Excellence can be a Great Asset professionally.

As your therapist, do I want you to temper your perfectionism? Damned straight! Perfectionism is an unattainable and unhealthy standard. I'm all for categorizing it as a form of torture. Striving for perfection is one of our favorite defaults as Anxious Folk. So, for both balance and success, we want to ease that stuff over into something more akin to Excellence, which is healthy and very marketable. For one thing, perfectionism can trip you up in terms of productivity as you work and rework the deal trying to get it perfect. Excellence is achievable and the tribe of highly competent, conscientious Anxious Folk have that thing nailed as soon as they stop chasing perfection.

8. The Anxious are LifeTime Learners.

Those brilliant, restless, questing minds are rarely satisfied with sitting back on their laurels. Anxious Folk are lifetime learners. In the classroom and out. Some of this highly competent tribe are driven by a deep sense of inadequacy that drives them to seek more and more training in their fields. Some are simply primed to keep cultivating excellence in all areas of their experience. Anxious Folk are great readers and consumers of information and awesome at research. While our anxious stressing can take a toll on our overall health and well-being, if it isn't tempered, our questing minds can keep us young and engaged as we age.

9. Anxiety Can Be Your Key To Self-Knowledge.

Anxiety sets us up on the road for looking for answers. Why is this going on? What can I do to improve myself and my experience? How can I create change in life? Where can I find help?

There are Anxious Folk living within any belief system. Sometimes anxiety can actually form the basis of the beginning of a spiritual practice and a greater sense of self-knowledge as we seek to learn how to be still within, how to calm our minds, how to be present now. Be. Here. Now.

The pull of overwhelming anxiety is almost always towards a troubled past or an unknown fearful future. We can use the presence of anxious experience, the moment it comes to our awareness, as a reminder to Be Here Now. Be present now. We can use anxiety to help us be present now and remind ourselves not to be pulled out of the moment and thrown into a fearful place. In this way we can use the occurrence of anxiety as a key to developing a mindfulness approach to living life.

10. Anxious Folk Know Fear, and Therefore Courage, From the Inside Out.

Here's how I see it. Without my experience of fear I don't get to experience myself as courageous. If it doesn't involve overcoming fear then it isn't courage in the first place. Lucky for us, working through our experience of anxiety gives us daily practice at walking into our fear and thereby honing our courage. Anxious Folk are a courageous lot! More so than our families and friends would realize. Since so much of you anxiety is a hidden and interior experience, your loved ones may never see the effort and courage it's taken for you to manage your day.

If You're Feeling Just a Little Brave, We Can Find a Way to Help You Work Through Your Anxious Experience.

I specialize in holistic body/mind approaches to reducing anxiety and healing the activated nervous system that contributes to your anxious experience. Utilizing a combination of insight oriented and body-oriented psychotherapy, such as Somatic Experiencing, we can tame your anxiety and enhance your well-being. This is the work I do every day with men and women in my two Orange County offices.

There's a way to befriend your anxious experience, turn things around, and put yourself back in the driver's seat. I'm happy to discuss your anxious experience with you and help you expand more fully into the freedom and creativity you're designed to enjoy. There's no need to continue to suffer on your own. Call me today.

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Four Ways Anxious People Can Save Their Relationships Now.

6/17/2015

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I Don't Have To Tell You Being Both Anxious And In A Relationship Can Really Suck.

You already know that, right? And if you don't, your partner does. Why? Because our anxiety not only wears us down to a nub and exhausts us, but it can wear our partners, friends, and family down, too. Sucks, right!? It's not like that's the way you would ever want things to be. At all. Ever. Why? Anxious Folks are some of the kindest, most careful and caring people there are. Our value for being "nice" is very high. Still, when Anxiety is running the show, things can and do get out of hand.

Our anxiety can make us difficult to be around. We can get edgy, controlling, and obsessed about the possibility of a negative outcome. About anything. Even the good things. Even the best things. A lot of Anxious Folk will prematurely vote themselves off the Island of Relationship just to relieve their stress about when and how the relationship will end.

But What Can You Do About It?

Sometimes we'd rather be alone and grieving than laying awake at night wondering if this is the right relationship, if our partner is cheating on us, or if they're wishing they were cheating on us, or if we're about to get dumped. True Story. Even the most understanding partner can get tired of accommodating our need for order, control, and avoidance of discomfort, not to mention the general irritability that can sometimes come with the package.

Actually, there's quite a bit you can do to minimize the impact of your anxiety on your most important relationships. That's the good news. The bad? It takes a little work. Here's the bottom line: It's your Anxious Experience and it's yours to deal with. The buck stops with you.

Step One: Own It.

It's your experience. Take responsibility for it. Now I'm not talking about Anxious Folks' favorite go-to: GUILT. At all. Or even one of our favorite secondary go-to's, "I'm responsible for the whole world so if it's going to shit it's my fault." And I'm definitely not talking about, "It's my fault I'm anxious, so I deserve to feel stressed out, overwhelmed, weak, and alone."

I'm talking about owning your "thing" and shouldering the work it really takes to start resolving your anxious experience and reducing the burden it brings to your own life and those around you. Learning to rein in your perfectionism, turn off your outspoken internal critic, and relax can give you an entirely new lease on life.

Step Two: Stop Expecting Your Partner To manage Your Anxiety For You.

Let's just start with this. If you're actually in a relationship with a total nightmare or a complete abusive bastard, get out now. Do that, and then we'll work on the anxiety later. This part isn't for you.

However, if you're with a halfway decent person with some integrity and you're constantly leaning on them to manage their behavior in such a way as to reduce your anxiety (about where they are at all times, how often they text or don't text you, whoever else they are texting, what they're thinking about, what they're eating, who they're Facebook friends with, who they talk to at work, what they have or haven't cleaned up around the house, whether they cleaned up to your standards, whether you're really the most important person in their lives, etc.), you need to pay attention. These anxious habits have the potential to drive you both around the bend. And apart.

And if jealousy, insecurity, and control isn't the particular form your anxious energy takes (Yeah, you, btw--life is easier without this little bit), but you expect your partner to limit their lives by the limits of your anxious tolerance, we need to talk. If there are places you can't go, vacations you can't take, flights you'll never catch, relatives you'll never see, adventures you'll never have, foods and events you'll never experience, because "My anxiety won't let me!" then your anxiety is closing in on you both. Life is definitely meant to be more fun than this. We can do something about that.

Step Three: On The Other Hand, You Need to Educate Your Partner About Your Experience.

While it's not your partner's job to completely modify their behavior in order to reduce your anxiety or to talk you down off your obsessive cliff every time you "go there," it is still really helpful for them to understand the experience you are having.

Let them know: a) This is a very physical and sometimes overwhelming experience you don't have much control over right now and you certainly have difficulty controlling it when you're in the midst of it.
b) You know it's yours to learn how to manage and learn to reduce, but their understanding, compassion, patience, and (this point is key) lack of criticism is vital.
c) You may need to take some time out and do whatever healthy thing you've learned to do to calm yourself down, get centered, and back on track again. If you don't have tools like this, we need to talk.
d) There are real reasons you learned to be anxious and it is not a weakness, character flaw, or choice. Overwhelming or disruptive anxiety is a real response to enough specific kinds of stimulation over the course of a lifetime. We learn to be anxious as a coping strategy and we can unlearn it. Yes, it's gotten tangled up with our nervous system, too, but we can also unravel that given enough time.
e) Having an anxious experience of yourself is not about lack of character. And it's definitely not about lack of will-power. Or a lack of personal strength. Some of the strongest people I meet are Anxious Folks. The trouble is you've done your level best, been strong in all the wrong ways for way too long and it's catching up with you.
f) Let them know that for the most part, they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Even if you're not currently focused on healing and reducing your anxious experience, you are already deeply engaged in trying to hide it, control it, and minimize it. Remember that last piece about strength? This is what I'm getting at. A lot of the discomfort you experience doesn't even show to others. This is one reason Anxious Folk are on edge and exhausted. It takes a lot of psychic and mental energy to keep this thing reined in and under wraps.
g) Oh! And you'll love this. Only really smart people get really anxious. Ta-da! Your bright problem-solving brain is stuck in overdrive and running away with you. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of anxiety in fact. You're smart enough to solve most everything else, but when you point your big frontal lobe and will power at anxiety it doesn't work and it gets worse.

STEP Four: Get Some Real Help and Support. There's No Need To Drown In Your Anxiety.

There are, of course, tons of books on anxiety reduction. And an Internet full of self-help. Oh. Well, I guess we both know that. After all, you're here and I'm here writing about it. Doh! Fortunately, that's not all I do. I'm a private practice therapist in Orange County specialized in supporting Anxious Folk to get their lives back and keep their relationships stable, easy, and on track.

Here's the thing, if all it took was a good book and Google to tame your anxiety and bring your nervous system and your life back into balance there wouldn't be an abundance of Anxious Folk. Or therapists, either, for that matter. As it stands, we have plenty of both.

While there may be plenty of marriage and family therapists, there are few people in Orange County and Newport Beach working with holistic, body-oriented psychotherapy approaches and trained to work with your nervous system. This is, however, an ideal combination of approaches to bring to the reduction of anxiety.

Together we can work in just the ways that are most effective at reducing overwhelming distress, cultivating resiliency, and becoming less afraid of the sensations your anxious body is offering up. That, my friend, is a specialty. My specialty, in fact.

Somatic Experiencing, A Healing Agent.

I work with a combination of depth-oriented talk therapy and Somatic Experiencing, a biologically-based trauma healing system, to focus on bringing a greater sense of safety and well-being to your body/mind. This happens to be the one thing Anxious Folk need most. If you're interested in learning more about how to reduce your anxious experience, save your relationships, and get on the next plane to the place of your dreams, give me a call. I'd love to chat with you and champion your ability to have the life you're looking for.

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I'm Victoria Wallace Schlicht. I'm a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), which is something like a Nervous Systems Whisperer but without the white cowboy hat. I specialize in Anxiety reduction and trauma resolution. I have a multi-faceted, normalizing, non-pathologizing approach to the human experience. I just don't get the need to label folks as sick or broken. Let's face it, nearly everyone you know is either experiencing highly anxious states or has had a brush with anxiety in the past. How do I know? Well, for one thing we are living in a world that is veering out of control along several fronts. If you're not stressed out, you're simply not paying attention or you've mastered this plane of existence. We're dealing with higher levels of change at more rapid pace than at any time in our known history. We weren't designed for this kind of stress. We weren't designed to feel as if we are constantly trying to out run the Sabre-Toothed Tiger at our heels. Our over-functioning is running us down. We need a different viewpoint. New tools. Better tools. And I have them. Or at least a big pile of them. And I love to talk about them. A lot. In fact, you can't shut me up. So, I've finally gone and built a bully pulpit of my own. We'll be unwinding the mystery of Anxious experience every week Right here. Enjoy! I'm the author of Thriving in a Chaotic World, a voluminous audio information product for reducing anxious experience and irregularly produce an eZine. Opt-in here to receive Thriving News

Just Take A Deep Breath. Sounds A Bit Glib, Doesn't It?

And Yet.

All We Have Is Now.

Relax.

It Really Is the perfect Mantra For Daily Use.

Breathe.All You Have Is Now.Relax.You are Okay.

Managing Life.

What Is KonMari?

First, I Tried KonMari Myself.

There's A Somatic Connection

The Healing Nature Of KonMari.

The Gift Of Deciding.

Discovery.

Therapy Is An Investment.

1. Therapy Pays Dividends.

2. Relationships

3. Boundaries.

4. Reducing Impulsivity, Because Impulsivity Can Get Expensive.

5. Improving Self-Esteem.

6. Increasing Your Ability To Make Good Decisions.

It Requires An Investment of Time.

It's True. Your Big Juicy Brain is an Anxious Brain.

Smart People Think They Can Out Think Their Anxiety.

The Thing Is, Your Anxiety Isn't Logical.

All Your Anxious Thoughts Have a Seed of Potential Truth in Them. Or They Certainly Feel That Way.

The Smarter You Are, The Smarter Your Anxiety Is. Go Figure.

Deepening Your Mind Body Connection Can Provide The Solutions You Are Seeking.

Anxiety Is Not Logical.

Let's Start With Preference.

Why Seek Out A Trained Relationship Specialist?

Experience Counts.

It's A Little Stressy.

Premarital Counseling Isn't Just For Couples With "Issues" or For Identifying Problems.

Why Do Premarital Counseling At All?

Premarital Counseling Safeguards Your Marriage.

Celebrating Our Differences.

In The Midst Of Planning Our Big Wedding, We Can Forget We Are Planning Our Big Life Together, As Well.

1. Talk Therapy, Alone, Is Not Always Enough.

2. Your Clients Have Been Storing Experiences of All Kinds In Their Bodies Since They Were Born. Maybe Before.

3. Your Clients Need Stabilization And The Ability To Self-Regulate And Self-Soothe In Order To Benefit From The Rest of Their Treatment Program.

4. The Desire To Numb Out Is At The Bottom of Many Client Behaviors.

5. The Brain Has a Natural Negative Bias.

Utilizing a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) As Part of Your Treatment Plan Can Increase Your Clients' Overall Success.

Every Day I Work With Anxious Folks About The Issue Of Their Anxious Thoughts.

Reducing Worry Takes More Than Simple Willpower.

Reducing Overwhelming Anxiety Requires More Than Reading A Great Self Help Book.

Reducing Anxiety Takes Time.

This is actually a good thing.

So, No, It isn't Possible to Just Toss Your Worries Aside. Not Instantly. Not Even With Your Great Willpower.

Chances Are You've Spent Years Trying to Manage Your Anxiety on Your Own. Why Change Course Now?

When is it Time to Take Anxiety Seriously?

Exhaustion. Are You Exhausted With the Way You Are Living Your Life?

Perfectionism. The Big Lie You've Been Telling Yourself.

Relationships. Your Anxiety Can Run Your Relationships Right Off The Road.

If you're Exhausted With "Doing," Over-Thinking, Perfectionism, and Your Relationships Are Out of Sync, it May be Time to Rewind and Reconnect to Your Own Inner Balance.

It Takes More Than Will Power and Self-Help Books.

You Need To Know, it Will Take Some Time.

When Overwhelming Anxiety is Running Your Life It's Hard to See Any Benefits in the Experience.

The Upside to Anxiety.

1. Only The Smart Get Highly Anxious.

2. Anxiety is an Adaptive Behavior.

3. The Anxious Mind is a Detailed-Oriented, Even Artistic Mind.

4. Most Anxious Folks are Empathetic and Sensitive.

5. Anxious Folk are Natural Care-takers.

6. Your Natural Empathic Gift Can Lead to Compassion and Even Activism.

7. Your Drive for Excellence can be a Great Asset professionally.

8. The Anxious are LifeTime Learners.

9. Anxiety Can Be Your Key To Self-Knowledge.

10. Anxious Folk Know Fear, and Therefore Courage, From the Inside Out.

If You're Feeling Just a Little Brave, We Can Find a Way to Help You Work Through Your Anxious Experience.﻿﻿

I Don't Have To Tell You Being Both Anxious And In A Relationship Can Really Suck.

But What Can You Do About It?

Step One: Own It.

Step Two: Stop Expecting Your Partner To manage Your Anxiety For You.

Step Three: On The Other Hand, You Need to Educate Your Partner About Your Experience.

STEP Four: Get Some Real Help and Support. There's No Need To Drown In Your Anxiety.

Somatic Experiencing, A Healing Agent.

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Just Take A Deep Breath.
Sounds A Bit Glib, Doesn't It?

Breathe.
All You Have Is Now.
Relax.
You are Okay.

If You're Feeling Just a Little Brave, We Can Find a Way to Help You Work Through Your Anxious Experience.