Some people say that self-confidence is something you either have or are born without. Others believe that environmental factors in your childhood contribute to the formation of your self-esteem. Everyone agrees, however, that the most successful people are always self-confident. Maybe they're shy, perhaps they even suffer from emotional issues that are worse than yours, but they exude confidence.

Interestingly, The Dalai Lama was astounded when an American asked him how to deal with low self-esteem. His Holiness didn't even understand what that meant. Apparently it took quite a lengthy discussion for this brilliant, wise man to comprehend this deficit that apprently does not exist among his people nor in any of the people he'd encountered up until that point.

So, apparently, we Americans have somehow cornered the market on low self-confidence. It is more natural to have confidence, than not. Isn't that exciting? Therefor, all you need is learn a few helpful techniques, and maybe work with a coach or a psychotherapist for a little while to build yours to the natural levels it was designed to have.

There are several confidence-building skills that I'd like to share with you.

The most important skill is not even a technique, but a state of mind.

In life, you want to be emotionally prepared for every kind of situation, even if it's very stressful. Very successful people have this capacity. Learning how to become relaxed through meditation or self-hypnosis is a priceless skill that can easily be learned.

The reason relaxation is so important is that you will be able to become automatically ready for most stressful situations and you won't feel too anxious or self-conscious. Self-confidence will become a habit and negative thoughts will disappear, and you'll be available to address any issue that comes your way regardless of how challenging it may be.

Take a look at my website where you'll find a free self-hypnosis exercise. Use it every day for best results. See my blogs for instructins on How to Meditate. And get in the compulsive habit of taking out time every day to DO NOTHING, JUST BE.

The Dalai Lama also has said, "With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world."

All the best,

Dr. Rita

     Life is difficult in between the happy times. Sometimes we feel angry and it scares us when the feeling is overwhelming or too powerful. This emotion lies within each of us, and yet is badly misunderstood. The cause of anger is fear, frustration, jealousy, impatience, judgment, intolerance, to name just a few, and is antithetical to love and compassion. Rage is a way of controlling others when you cannot control yourself. Though it is not healthy to to let anger fester, as it can be the root of suffering, sometimes it shows up on our radar screen, and we have to find ways to manage it, make wise choices, we can melt it away. Anger can be a healthy feeling that gives us information, just like any other emotion that finds itself into our mind/body, we let awareness be aware.

     The Rules of Anger are useful to keep in mind:
1. don't hurt others
2. don't hurt yourself
3. don't hurt property
4. DO talk about it or write about it. 
     Begin by allowing yourself to become aware of the anger as you are sitting in a safe place. Notice how you feel inside? Head? Tummy? Hands? 
     Anger, like fear, is a survival mechanism which helps the body to ready into the fight or flight response when a threat is perceived. The body releases hormones into the blood stream as preparation. The brain gets  messages that make our body aware of our emotional state, that trigger certain thoughts, that effect how we feel, and helps us to decide how to react.
     When anger happens:
1. The good old-fashioned trick of counting to ten still works best.
2. Think of a phrase that helps to calm you and lets you think through what the anger data is offering, and what are some choices of behavior open to you.
3. A mantra I like is to label the anger "feeling" and to label the thoughts "thinking" and to anchor yourself in the sound around you and/or the breath. This often has the effect of melting the anger without actually TRYING to get rid of it, which doesn't work anyway.

    Dirty anger is: kicking doors, punching others, pushing people, screaming
    Clean anger is: pushing wall, door frame, pillow, jogging, writing, crying, tearing old newspaper, walking, talking about it, telling what you'd really like, asking for support.
    TOOL: Imagine a thermometer that begins in your groin at 0 and ends in your mouth at 10 when you are completely out of control and yelling, cursing, crying, vomiting rage on others. Take a deep breath and locate the number of your anger in your body. Ideally, notice when the anger first starts to visit you at 1 or 2, but that takes practice. When anger reaches 8, 9 or 10, you are completely out of control. In the beginning, locate the anger at 4,5 or 6. Notice where you experience the heat of your anger, what your thoughts are, and using the anger as data ask yourself:

What I need to help myself...    
I feel ....
when...
because...
I would like...

     Healing, cooling words that your friends and family can offer you are:
sounds like or you seem angry...
tell me more...
let's talk about it...
let me help you solve the problem.

     Life offers us countless opportunities to be human. Awareness is the key, it opens the door to a myriad of choices in behavior.

All the best,
Dr. Rita

     There is no argument that trauma is not a good thing. But as I wrote last week in Part 1, a traumatic experience has the potential to transform into a positive outcome.

     Let me tell you about Cathy (fictitious details to protect confidentiality) a beautiful Irish brunette who came to see me about a year ago when she survived a rather serious accident. She was crossing a busy intersection on foot without paying full attention to traffic, her head burried in her Blackberry, when she was struck from the right by an SUV, that actually ran over her right foot and knocked her to the ground. She underwent many months of surgery, rehabilitation, pain, and still suffered flashbacks where she re-lived the trauma, waking up in the night drenched in the cold sweat of fear. The worst part for Cathy had been the sudden, unexpected rush of pain that left her feeling unsafe in the world. She had gained forty pounds since the accident, and lived to eat.
     In the process of working together with me Cathy once said, "It was as if I had been sleep-walking through my life. Just how crazy was I," she continued, "to cross Broadway without looking around - I was a techno-addict." Cathy copped to being out of touch with her husband and her feelings, but was unclear as to whether the Blackberry helped her numb out, or if her work required that she focus her energy there instead of her personal life. In time, Cathy realized that her marriage was a sham - there had been no sex, no intimacy, no kindness, no friendship for ten years, during which time she was more comfortably at the office as a well-regarded paralegal than as a wife, and becoming a workaholic and Blackberry fiend was a great way to disconnect from the reality of her unhappiness at home.
     The accident was a wake-up call as it turned out. The crisis Cathy was still undergoing, was opening a door where she could begin by opening her eyes and acknowledging the reality of the circumstances of her life, and in particular her marriage. She had the opportunity now to make changes because continuing in the same old way was no longer comfortable for her - something she realized during the months of recuperation.

     Despite the ongoing leg pain, she knew that she needed help to find new solutions. She felt confident about her willingness and courage to face the challenge that the accident created for her. Call that the luck of the Irish, or the silver lining on a cloudy day, but Cathy was willing to open her heart to herself, and to examine her 50% or the resonsibility in making her marriage what it was. Cathy knuckled down in her therapy, and began by confronting her numbing out behavior, and changing. 

     Another patient of mine, Brady who was a successful investment banker - even through the tough times, suddenly lost his father to a rare form of cancer, leaving him reeling from pain of never having had a relationship with this most important man in his life. He turned things around by becoming a better father to his own son in the hope of breaking a long-standing family tradition of disconnected fathers and sons.
     Not everyone is capable of Post-Traumatic Transformation. But if you are grateful to be alive, and miss the passion that had once fueled your days, or if you feel to be truly entitled to live a full and passionate life, than you can take advantage of gifts that come your way that can provide you with those windows, the rare opportunities of Transformation and Expansion, that appear wrapped in all sorts of strange ways.

All the best,

Dr. Rita

     Most people live life as if they're sleeping with their eyes open. So many of us are disconnected from our bodies, from our emotions, from our day to day possibilities. We go from one habitual activity to another - brushing our teeth, getting dressed, taking care of kids or job, eating mindlessly similar meals, having sex because we think we should, endlessly worrying about the same things: money, time, disappointment. We brush our teeth, and go to bed, only to start the identical cycle tomorrow.

     Some individuals consciously recognize the mundane nature of their lives, and feel helpless because of economics or inertia to make changes. Others are afraid to step off of the treadmill of their days because of the unknown consequences. To accomplish staying in place, we develop tunnel vision, we use drugs, drudgery, alcohol or exercise to numb ourselves. Numbing feels like a solution but in fact it only exacerbates our empty lives. We are afraid of the past, frustrated by the present, and paralyzed by the future. And then we die.

     Trauma is not a good thing in and of itself, is it? Trauma is defined by the freedictionary.com as: 1. A serious injury or shock to the body, as from violence or an accident.2. An emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person, often leading to neurosis. 3. An event or situation that causes great distress and disruption. 4. Psychological or emotional injury caused by a deeply disturbing experience.
     I'm not sure about the neurosis in #2, but have no arguement with the balance. At its foundation, a traumatic event interrupts the flow of life, and creates a logjam that will either be dealt with, and re-routed, so that life can flow on, or gets stuck and cause grave physical and/or emotional harm.

     In addition, trauma can be LARGE and then it's "TRAUMA," or it can be insignificant, small, and then it's "trauma." A small "t" trauma is an event which is injurious but not so much that we cannot cope with it because we are old enough, and the event is insignificant enough, to be integrated into our body/mind system. Think of it as a paper-cut which hurts, but which the body knows how to heal all by itself. On the other hand a large "T" trauma is typically any experience which we cannot cope with because we are either too little or the event is so magnified as to make it impossible to overcome without a great deal of help. Think for example of September 11th. The severity of that type of logjam requires both the passage of time, and the assistance from a professional, and lots of inner resources to process and unwind so that our river of life can flow on.
     However, there is also a positive aspect to trauma. It shakes us up and creates a crisis. A crisis is defined as an interruption of our normal ways of coping, and incorporates two ideas: change + opportunity for growth. In Chinese the symbol for "crisis" contains the symbols of "change + opportunity." In that way, trauma creates possibilities and hopefulness for a better future: The transformation of trauma into a beautiful butterfly. However, for those possibilities to manifest themselves and become a personal growth experience, we need the tenacity to take risks, to face reality, to live in the present moment, to experiment with new solutions, to develop a sense of humor, purpose and positivism, to become resilient, in a word to find a new normal. Sounds hard? You bet!

Tune in next week for part 2.

All the best,

Dr. Rita

     The most important issue related to trauma and addiction of any kind is the process of emotional disconnection from self and others. We all begin as infants who would literally die without connection with our mothers. (In most societies it is the female nurturing the young, and therefor I designate this first and foremost connection as the mother, and along with her, the first and foremost connection with the mother as taking in nourishment and nurturance.

    There are times when the mother is absent, and when other females take her place, and on rare occasions a male, in which case this figure becomes the primary connection. However, here I will unilaterally talk about the mother, albeit with the caveat that there are occasional substitutes that can do almost as good a job as the ideal mother.)    

     Remember the monkey studies of the 1960's where baby monkeys died when an effigy of an adult female monkey was strug onto a branch in their cage with a bottle of formula attached to it? The straw and wire monkey looked a lot like a monkey mother, but alas, was not, and although the baby monkey was nourished, it was not nurtured. The monkeys died. The results of these sad experiments made it clear that human infants need humans to care for them. Once again, such outcomes with similar results occurred  in Great Britain during WWII when infants who were nourished by propped bottles in all too busy orphanage/hospitals died in droves because there weren't enough caretakers to hold, hug, smile and nurture them.

     We learned that to thrive, babies need to be nourished and nurtured and have some primary survival needs met: nourishment, nurturing, attachment, affection, attention, safety and security. The more caretakers provide such care, the better.

     Fathers have an equally crucial role in the life of their baby in that they supply the safety and security needs related to the outside world, as well as more sophisticated affection and attention needs. The wonderful news is that the care needs to be Just good enough. And in the case of a family where the mother is incapable of providing nurturing, the father can take her place with few dire consequences, if any.

     With all that being equal, there are times when we can't be there for our children in the way they need us. When we can't protect them, or make them safe, or give them enough attention because of our own heavy burdens our children develop HOLES in the fabric of attachment. These holes create symptoms that can be life-threatening as very severe eating disorders, addictions, anxiety attacks, depression and other nightmares.

     The Art of Therapy is to identify the existence of those HOLES, tho mend and heal them, utilizing a creative pallette of traditional, experiential and holistic therapeutic tools so that life can flow through us again and we can reconnect with our own true self. And then, with others.

     The Art of Living Life Well is to become aware of our patterns, and be on the lookout for our HOLES so tht we can get support to mend them, as well as to learn the crucial skill of SELF-SOOTHING.

     In these ways, addictions can be reversed, or averted altogether, and good mental health belong to us.

All the best,

Dr. Rita