The Cookie Cutter Syndrome: How Comparison Stifles Happiness

Some 30 years ago I brought home my first babies. I actually left for the hospital well aware I was 6 weeks from my due date, having serious contractions. That was a mere introduction to the unknown that awaited me. After an exhausting delivery we met our 3lb beautiful baby girl. Unbeknownst to anyone 3 minutes later I gave birth to a second baby girl. You caught that right? Not a soul expected twins, SURPRISE. As they grew I called them my wild angels, and they were. I’m pretty sure they coined the phrase “just do it!” by the time they hit 2. My oldest I nicknamed Helga Pataki and the 5 avengers. She could meet a peer or a teacher head on. Mostly with skillful wording and occasionally the five avengers got involved. If you didn’t earn her respect, it wasn’t gifted. Cute in the 4th grade, concerning in the 8th grade by high school YOWZA. We met on the battle ground most days in the land mine she called her bedroom. I made it a mission to run as far as I could to the other side of her disdain and disregard so I could balance it with demands of seeing it from the other side grounding like that would elicit penance. She was the child I sat at the foot of my bed and bitterly sobbed at the mediator known as father husband and said, “One of us is leaving this house, her or me.” He encouraged me to be patient because she needed us but I could not survive her. When she moved out a year after high school the not knowing freed me to just have a 3 hour Sunday dinner with her. John Bowlby is known as the father of attachment. He said human beings need one another for safety and security. I started thinking of that statement in terms of evolution from cavemen, tribes, platoons, and families. I realized my angst was about the disruption in my own clan. It scared and frankly threatened me and I was acting on that with fear and defensiveness. This little lady to be fair was just the first to be thinning the fortress of my grand plan for our safety and security. We hand a child the tribe's rules, ethos, and culture of our family and they are supposed to hold it in reverence and take it forward. We all expect to be beneficiaries of “keep the tribe secure and safe,” and I was defeated on every front; religion, politics, piercings, global views, women's roles. Was every part of our family world passé? I recently met a Germanic term for how I began feeling. Schadenfreude which “simply means pleasure or joy derived from someone else’s suffering or misfortune.” I wanted her to feel a sorrowful loss, meet with the misfortune of her counter choices and run back to me with a hug and a hammer and nails to repair the family fence. Years later in one of those never forget conversations we sat in a car outside of her own home and talked for 3 hours. Then she kissed my cheek and said, “Mom there’s a saying that applies to me, sometimes when you can’t feel the warmth of the village you will burn the village down to feel its warmth.” I still tear up when I see it clearly from her experience. This was not what I wanted any child to ever feel. I thought I had dedicated my life to creating geborgenheit! This is another Germanic word relating to a feeling of warmth, peace, comfort and certainly security and safety in my presence. I have spent many hours asking myself what can I live with and hold love and what can I live without and lose? My tribe wanders the Utah desert in their own family constellations. They bring an evolving culture, spirit, and ethos back to us. I want to tell you Helga and I are “besties” but that is too Hallmark for this story. We are still finding ourselves because she refuses to stop evolving as do I, and I love it with a little wincing. So would you trust your connections to a therapist who is still polishing rough edges? I hope so, most of us are. I like it messy. Chaos really is fertile ground for change. Pick up the earth you are standing on, running from or buried in. Bring it in on your dirty shoes, if you have a desire to find, or redefine yourself and one another. PS Helga Pataki from the cartoon Hello Arnold in the 90s was a character inspired by the great activist and trail blazer for so many human rights, Frida Kahlo. Go figure, that’s my girl. Terri Rowley, LCSW

In the 1050’s psychologist Curt Richter conducted a brutal experiment on rats. He took the first group, placed them in buckets with water, and watched them swim until they drowned. The rat would swim for 2 minutes and then die. In the next group of rats, he did the same thing, let them swim until they almost drowned and he would pick them up and save them right before they were going to die. Then he would place them in the water again, and they would swim another several hours, 60 to be exact, not giving up like the first group of rats. The rat experiment shows us that there is hope in desperate times. There is an innate ability within each of us to survive when we feel like we are drowning. When we feel like giving up, there is a part in us, like these rats swimming in the water, giving us the strength we need to keep swimming in troubled times. We can find within ourselves to keep enduring even when we feel hopelessness and pain. We can find hope. Here are five coping skills to help us find hope in difficult times and painful feelings. Here are five ways to navigate through traumatic events with resilience: Make space for your feelings. When we make space for our feelings, we can acknowledge that we have feelings, and then we allow them to be there with us. We can look at our feelings in a non-judgemental way, allowing ourselves to accept what we feel. We can notice and name our feelings like, “This is sadness.” Furthermore, we can acknowledge that the experience of sadness is what we are feeling. We can take note of our feelings, thoughts and body sensations. Where do we feel the sadness in our body? How do we feel the emotion, and what is it telling us? Seek support. We can seek support from a trusted friend or therapist; this is time to ask for help. Finding someone you can talk to, and confide in, can be good for your heart and help your mind. Find reasons to live. Finding what you value and are passionate about can help give you hope. Whether it is a painting class or starting to train for your first marathon, when we have something to look forward to, something to want to do, it makes living easier. Pick out and having goals for a life worth living is an excellent way to generate hope. Start a Gratitude Log. Finding things that we can be grateful for can help us heal. It can be as simple as picking one thing a day that you are grateful for or something we loved about our day. When we look for the good in our lives, we can help our brain to rewire itself, and our patterns of thinking can change from self-defeating thoughts to positive thinking. When we can look at the good in our lives, we can begin to change our patterns of thinking. We see good more readily, and we can see the world from gratitude and thankful perspective. Get out in Nature. Studies show that when we can get out in nature, it can be as good as therapy. Try a mindful walk in nature. Listen to the wind as the leaves move in the trees. Notice the different colours you see, feel the rocks and sand on the beach and be as present as you can in nature. In an experiment using an fMRI to measure brain activity, “When participants viewed nature scenes, the parts of the brain associated with empathy and love lit up, but when they viewed urban scenes, the parts of the brain associated with fear and anxiety were activated. It appears as though nature inspires feelings that connect us and our environment.” Nature can affect us; even as small as a plant in a room makes a difference in a study. In A.A. Milne’s book, Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin says, “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you will ever know." Sometimes we feel like the mouse in the experiment. We are swimming, and we feel like we are drowning. We have no control over our circumstances. We feel hopeless and exhausted by our fears, worries and emotions. Our struggle may seem hopeless, but in the struggle comes strength; we had no idea we are capable of. Acknowledge and make room in your heart to accept what you are feeling. Search for the support of someone close to you or a therapist. Keep moving forward towards the things you love most. Look for things to be grateful for in a simple small everyday experience. Get out in nature and mindfully notice what is around you. You may feel like you are struggling, but there is hope. You have the capacity to make it through trauma. Like the mouse in the experiment, you can keep swimming--You can do this! References The Remarkable Power of Hope Posted on May 7, 2014, by Joseph T. Halliman in Psychology Today The Remarkable Power of Hope How Does Nature Impact our Well Being? By Louise Delagran, MA, MEd Found on July 29th at https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/how-does-nature-impact-our-wellbeing Karmen Tuivai, LCSW

“Wherever you go, there you are”

Growth

EMDR, Trauma, and Anxiety