Therapy Notes and Thoughts

 How do thoughts and emotions affect how we react to things?    Where is my skill when I need it?  (assertiveness)   In dog training we teach dogs the skills they need to navigate different situations ‘outside’ of those situations.   We don’t expect them to leant the skill while in the midst of a stressful or arousing event.   As I tell my students, you don’t teach kids a fire drill when the school is on fire.   We train ‘for’ a situation, not ‘in’ a situation.  But how do I train my needed skill of assertiveness when outside of a situation where assertiveness is needed?   I’m really not sure.

The cortex is the part of the brain with explicit ability to learn.  Stored in the cortex is episodic memory.   Episodic memory is auto biographical.   The part of the brain that turns off   (brain freeze)  when stressed is the sub-cortex.   Under duress it tells us  ‘do what you did last time’.   For me that equals backdown and avoid conflict.   The challenge is to resist not only the stress, but also the prior learning.   I need to understand and deal with past learning.  Be aware of the pattern and be more kind to myself about my automatic reactions.  Have compassion for myself.   Find a way to practice the skill  (assertiveness) so it’s available to me when I need it.  Contextual Cues.   Can I replicate the environment or situation where the skill is needed?

CPG  >  Central Pattern Generation.   Start a new pattern.  Create a new pattern or modify the existing one.   Practice  can include imaging a situation and how to respond.  Right now knowledge from past learning is stored in the cortex.  The goal is not to download it to the sub-cortex.  

 Procedural memory is persistent  (old habits die hard).   We need to challenge the auto response …. modify it

• Ø  Add to the procedure
• Ø  Review my initial auto response
• Ø  Don’t blame self
• Ø  And the next time it will be a little more habituated > less emotion

 

Beating ourselves up freezes us in old responses and gets in the way of progress.  We have to be aware if our context and / or environment are working against us.

 

Flashback Vs Memory

Flashback = reliving and experience

Memory  =  remembering an experience

 

Anger

Anger is different from aggression.  Anger is an emotion.  Aggression is a behaviour.

Passive vs Assertive.   Being passive allows others rights to trample our rights.  When people know we are passive and use this to get their way, they are being aggressive.   Being assertive is attaining a balance where we respect our own rights while also respecting the rights of others.

Aggression can be words.   This was the case in my childhood.  There is a difference between being angry and upset, and being angry and hurtful.   Being hurtful is aggression.   My mothers words were her weapon.

Unexpressed anger leads to depression.  As a child,  and indeed throughout my family life, I was not allowed to argue or express anger.   Repressed anger has stewed inside me for decades.   While I may have been diagnosed with depression two years ago, I realize depression has been with me since childhood.   So what do I do if I can’t express anger at someone?   How do I flip it?   Frame inaction as action.   If there is a need to retreat that IS action.   When it is appropriate to disengage,  that IS action.   Unexpressed anger can shift to sadness when we beat ourselves up for not being assertive enough to address the anger.

 

Purpose Of Emotions

 These notes may be a bit choppy.   I make note during therapy and sometimes they are a little all over the place as thoughts and memories compete for my attention.  The following are from the past couple of sessions.

 Understanding Anger

• Ø  Emotion says do something
• Ø  Situation says disengage
• Ø  Result = conflict

 

When I think of emotion I think of sad.  I forget that there are other emotions

We need to de-code emotion > identify it

We don’t always know why we feel the way we feel. 

The six primary emotions are:  happy,  sadness,  anger,  fear, surprise, and disgust

“opposite action”  > use to dampen the intensity of the emotion   (if emotion is a false alarm, do opposite action) 

The purpose of fear is protection.  Anger and fear are ‘action’ emotions.

 Sadness is slow to come on and slow to leave.  Sadness is a reflection emotion.  It’s about thinking and feeling.  Thinking of the past.  Building meaning.  Evaluating.  Building better future based on past.

 Trauma Informed Care is an approach to healthcare that acknowledges  the need for physical,  psychological, and emotional support of patients.    It is an approach that recognizes and responds to the signs and symptoms of trauma in order to better support the needs of patients who have experienced trauma.

We need to apply these principles to ourselves.

 Disgust and Surprise are typically short lived emotions.

 Disgust

• Ø  Risk to safety > often to do with ingestion  (poison)
• Ø  Can also be associated with places, people,  or situations
• Ø  Can be learned through bad experience
• Ø  It’s about protecting us from something that hurt us

 Surprise

• Ø  Alerts brain to something unexpected
• Ø  There is a connection to fear
• Ø  There are levels of intensity
• Ø  Startle/fear vs surprise of something good like a surprise party

 Happiness is complex

• Ø  Tells the brain things are good
• Ø  That needs are being met
• Ø  Keeps us in a good situation
• Ø  Happiness has to have a reason to activate;  it doesn’t have a passive activation
• Ø  Requires acknowledgement and self compassion
• Ø   We need to do and think things to activate it

 

Happiness  >  contentment / satisfaction

Happiness requires self reinforcement

• Ø  Tell self doing a good job
• Ø  Telling our system that it’s doing a good job
• Ø  Reinforce ourselves for job well done
• Ø  Self talk ….. good job
• 
  

All of that feels very weird to me.   It feels wrong to tell myself I’m doing a good job > it feels arrogant.

For me feelings of happiness have been fleeting.  Being happy about a good grade in school,  or having my books published,  or winning an award  (dog sports) ……. there’s a quick surge of ‘something’ that I think is happy (?) but it’s just as quickly extinguished.

 

Self Reinforcement

• Ø  Tell myself I did my best
• Ø  Core belief jumps in to counter with ‘your best wasn’t good enough’
• Ø  Why?  Because I was explicitly told that for the first 44yrs of my life  (my mother died when I was 44)

 

We get what we reinforce.  I know this.  I tell my students this all the time.

Find those moments when we can be ‘happy’ in the moment