Do you know your support language? Do you feel supported in your relationships?

I can think of the times I felt very unsupported by partners or friends. I remember when my ex-husband would criticize me in front of other people. I never knew what to say or do. Had it happened in private, I would have told him that what he said hurt me. But in the company of others, I just shrunk into myself, humiliated. 

Criticism is obviously not supportive. Sometimes a lack of support is more subtle. Like the time, I was overworking and needed my husband to tell me that he would get involved and help. Or the times I was anxious, and I needed him to say to me that everything was going to be okay. I needed actual words of soothing. 

Attachment Theory and Physical Contact

Many people need physical contact to feel fully supported and connected to their partners. Stan Tatkin, MFT, a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® has an intervention called Welcome Home Exercise. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9FBdC2Kykg

He has couples struggling to create a more secure union by having the coming home couple be received by the at-home partner with an embrace. This sets full-body contact and is similar to what the baby and mother experience. Many of his interventions include slowing the couple down and having them attune to each other physically with physical contact. Our bodies often calm and relax when we are held or physically tune into each other (this is not sexual contact.) 

This is, of course, sort of the ground root of support. It is the support we all needed as babies, the physical tuning in and comforting of one body to another. 

That said, there are different kinds of support beyond this basic physical tuning in, and we may each gravitate towards feeling more supported by some kinds than other kinds. 

According to Jennifer Freed (a psychological astrologer), there are four support languages. One for each element. 

Fire support involves doing and actions and bold demonstrations

Do you need support in terms of doing? Do you need someone to take charge when you are overwhelmed? Bring flowers on your birthday? Have a party for you to celebrate an important event? Showing through bold action is more important than words for someone needing Fire Support.

Earth support involves consistent effort

Do you need your partner to share the household chores? Do you need someone who listens without fixing calmly and dependably? Sometimes we need help—rituals like you loading the dishwasher while I wipe up the counters after dinner. We want to feel like a team. We want to know that our partner wants to help and hold up his or her part of our responsibilities. This is important for Earth Support types.  

Air support is expressed through communication

Do you need to be supported with words of affirmation? Do you need someone interested in your mental world, imagination, vision, and goals? 

Do you need words of affirmation like:

I love you.

I am here for you.

I think you are amazing. 

Communication like this is emphasized for Air Support types. 

Water support is expressed through authentic feeling

Do you need someone who can listen to your vulnerable feelings and validate your concerns? Do you need someone who can just sit and be with you when you are upset? Do you need someone open with their feelings and able to tend yours? This kind of support is vital for Water Support types. 

Personally, I need Earth, Air, and Water support more than Fire support. This is interesting because I have a predominance of fire in my chart. Maybe I need these other forms of support to balance out what I already have enough of innately? 

We don’t always let others know what makes us feel supported (or unsupported). We may not have even identified for ourselves what it is that makes us feel loved. 

Our friends, co-workers, and partners are not mind readers. It is our responsibility to let them know what helps us feel cared for. 

Think about what feels unsupportive to you. Think about what feels supportive. Maybe make a list. Try to communicate with those you want to feel supported by what you learned.

Maybe find out what feels supportive to them. 

Let us know what you learn about your support type!

With love, 

Jennifer

Self-awareness is a funny thing. It is like you can see yourself instead of being blind to yourself.  Think of someone who has a mannerism but has no idea they have it. You notice it. They do not. They are blind to some aspect of their being. 

I remember when I first started Gestalt therapy with a new therapist. I was sitting there talking and she said, “Where did you just go?” I was shocked. What was she talking about? I thought about it for a moment. I realized I had been feeling anxious about what I was saying, and I stopped talking and jumped into another thought. She simply saw me go blank. This was the beginning of me realizing that I often exited due to anxiety. 

How do we develop awareness? Personally, I developed self-awareness through:

1. Therapy (in this case Gestalt)
2. Meditation (tons of different kinds at various points)
3. Yoga over the course of 25 years or so
4. Journaling which got me more connected to my feelings and thoughts
5. Training. Tons of training to become a therapist

To be more consistently self-aware:

1. Take on a practice like one I mentioned above. 
2. Make a commitment to notice what you are feeling/thinking in a moment-to-moment way. 
3. Stop yourself periodically and check in. What is happening in my body? What is my mind thinking? What am I feelings? What am I noticing? 

Self-awareness can only improve your life. You don’t want to be the person chewing with your mouth open, but you are the only person in the room who doesn’t know it!

With love, 

Jennifer

To start, everything is up in the air! Our world is changing in many ways. There often isn’t anything to hold onto. Relationships flop and end. We may lose our source of income or our home. People leave us or die. The climate is changing. We are dealing with mass migration due to both political and environmental issues. Species are going extinct. The way the world works, the type of jobs available, and much more is evolving. The external world consistently changes. One of the Buddha’s main principles is the principle of impermanence.

“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.” – Nhat Hanh.

When I got extremely ill with Lyme disease, my world changed. I had so little control over my body. My sleep tanked. I shook violently if I tried to exercise. I felt awful. Over time, this caused me to shift to what I could control. My thoughts and feelings - and they didn’t want to follow the program. They wanted to moan and complain. They tried to tell me how horrible things were. They had an agenda that said, “I hate this. It was better before. I want to go back to the way my life was before.” My current response to that is, “Good luck with that.”

So, what do we do? How do we keep our balance?

If you hold onto something that can change, sooner or later, you will find out that there is nothing to grasp onto. You cannot hold onto a mirage. Everything is transient. Instead, we need to learn to hold onto things that are not transient.

What isn’t transient?

What isn’t transient can be reached through the internal, not the external.

What isn’t transient are qualities such as Goodness, Kindness, Peace, and Love. Qualities simply are. We can reach towards them and hopefully embody them.

These concepts are solid. They are vibrational, meaning we can reach them by vibrating at the same level. In other words, we become goodness, peace, or love. We do this both by our thoughts and our actions. To embody generosity, we give. To embody kindness, we are kind to someone who needs it. Maybe we smile at someone we ordinarily would not notice and think about what their life is like. These actions change us. We become somebody different.

Here is another concept to think about:

Imagine you are a trapeze artist. You are swinging. You let go and swoop through the air and grab onto the other artist swinging towards you. How do you do that?

1. You have practiced and know what you are doing.
2. You trust your trapeze partner.
3. You trust yourself and what you know.
4. Your trust the process of release, flying and then grabbing back on.

In a sense, this is how you transition through the changes and empty spaces you may be confronted with.

When you are in the air between trapeze swings, you cannot be thinking, “Oh no, I might not make it.” You cannot be thinking about what you will be making for dinner. Instead, you must be in the flow. Tuned in to your inner being, to your muscles, to the act of flowing. To what you are doing in the moment.

Some steps to gain equilibrium or get grounded:

1. Negative thoughts and fears be gone. Find a way to replace them with positive thoughts. You simply cannot weather the storm if you are terrified or telling yourself you won’t make it. If you don’t have control of your mind and emotions, you can develop this ability. Try meditation or therapy. Think long term. Think of this as an investment in yourself. Think of developing a skill like playing the piano, something that takes time, energy, and focus. Anything worth doing will require those three things.
2. Get into your body. Breath. Find yourself in the present moment. Most likely in this moment, you are okay. It is what we tell ourselves that can get us out of balance and ungrounded. 
3. Manage your expectations. Don’t expect a static life. That is setting yourself up for something impossible. The world is changing faster and faster. Life is not static. When it is static, you may feel safer temporarily, but you won’t be growing. And your life won’t stay static. It simply isn’t possible.
4. Find an internal ballast. For me, it goes something like this, “Ultimately, I don’t know what will happen in my life, but I do know I will always do my best. I do believe I have a purpose and that I will fulfill it. I believe that there are higher forces and energies that I can reach for (whether this is God or something else). I believe that my life is an opportunity to learn and grow, regardless of what happens to me.”
5. See the value of flowing with change. Harmony is a higher quality than struggle. See if you can go with the flow and find harmony with what is occurring instead of fighting it. When we fight against something, we bring in a discordant energy. (Of course, sometimes we need to fight, like when we are confronting oppression or some other injustice.) But in terms of staying balanced in a world of change, be like a Zen master. We can learn to move with change. We become the tree that sways in the storm, not the one that breaks.
6. Recognize your growth. As you accept and learn from change, you grow.
7. Consider that change could invigorate your life. Something new may come in that is better than what was.

We all are confronted with difficult situations and changes. Impermanence is part of the human condition. But we also can develop ourselves so that we can survive these changes and use them to help us become more than we were. Like the sand that becomes the pearl, we, too, can take the grit of life and use it to form the pearl of ourselves. 

With love, 

Jennifer

Sources:

https://www.adam-eason.com/embrace-impermanence-important/

I grew up comparing myself to others, specifically my sister. I was timid and shy. My sister (1.5 years younger than I) was a fearless powerhouse. Nothing stopped her. When we were both in grade school, we had created projects for the yearly science fair. That year she was in third grade. As my parents drove us to drop the projects off at the school, my sister stated that she knew she would win. My parents thought she was ridiculous and demeaned her sense of accomplishment and inner knowing. She won the grand prize of the entire elementary school, grades 1-6. Even though I was the older sister, it was hard not to see myself as less than her.

What happens when we compare?

When we compare ourselves to others, we are basically saying, “I shouldn’t be the way I am.” “I’m not good enough.” “I should be like him or her.” When we do this, we are overlooking our own gifts and our own unique qualities. We are making ourselves less than and putting ourselves down. We are doing the opposite of empowering ourselves.

While my sister was a force to be reckoned with, I was very sensitive. My sensitivity is also a gift, although I didn’t know that when I was younger or recognize it as a gift for many years. 

How do I shift my energy when I begin to compare myself?

1. Realize that you are comparing. Sometimes we compare ourselves to others, and we don’t even know it. It is something we do automatically and unconsciously. If you have low self-esteem, you are likely comparing yourself to others and giving yourself negative messages.
2. Your inner critic. You may have an inner critic. If you do, identify her (or him), and give her a name. That will help you notice when she steps up and puts you down.
3. Think about what is positive or good about yourself. Write down a list. What I like about myself or what I appreciate about myself is… For example, I like that I listen to others. I like that I am kind and compassionate. I like that I am intuitive.
4. Be aware that you may want to develop some of the qualities you compare yourself to. Over the years, I have become much more able to hold my own, like my sister does. Because she was my hero for years, I’ve worked to develop some of the skills that she had innately. I can think of so many situations where a person was in a relationship with someone “creative,” only to find out once they developed their own creativity, they didn’t need to put that person on a pedestal anymore. They simply had to find their own creativity, which was calling to be focused on and developed.
5. Treat yourself as if you are your best friend or a child. How do we treat a child who is upset? We are kind, supportive. We soothe. We kiss the boo-boo and put on a band-aid. Your inner child also needs to be treated that way. Tend your inner child! Tell the sad or upset part of you how much you care about her. Tell her you love her. Tell her she is special and important to you. Tell her about her good qualities. Inner child work is compelling. You might want to draw her or give her a name, but whatever you, treat her with care and love.

My sister and I are both adults now. We’ve both changed a lot. I’ve learned so much from who she is. I’ve both learned to recognize my own gifts and developed those that she embodied. I no longer compare myself or beat myself up about perceived shortcomings. I simply look at what I wish to change about myself and get to work!

With love, 

Jennifer

Source:

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/learned-stop-comparing#Name-your-inner-critic

Gratitude is the experience of good will or thankfulness. What happens when we practice gratitude?

Let’s do an experiment. After each statement, take a moment and notice how you feel. 

Fill in the blank or change the statement as needed and say, 

“My _______ (job, relationship etc.) is awful. I hate it. I hate dealing with it.”

Now say, 

“Even though my _______ (job, relationship etc.) is challenging, it is a place for me to figure out some things about myself. It is teaching me what I want and don’t want. I am grateful for this learning even if I would like aspects of it to be different.”

How did you feel when you said each of those two statements? I image the first statement made you feel stuck and filled with angst. And the second was a bit more calming. 

When we begin to see through the lens of gratitude, we change how we see and relate to our lives. We find that no longer have that dusty cloud of angst following us (think Pig-Pen in the Peanuts comic strip.) It is like cleaning a dirty pair of glasses. The world gets brighter. 

With love, 

Jennifer

Imagine being out to dinner (pre covid!) and the person you are with is checking their phone and answering texts. Most likely you are feeling that they are not fully present with you – because they are not!  

Or imagine that your partner is spending a lot of time on social media, instead of spending time with you. Or perhaps your child is more interested in the screen of his or her phone, than having family time.

Or perhaps you spend your time on social media and are spending less time engaged in positive interaction with some of your friends, children or your partner.

Instead of noticing the natural world around you, you are caught in a constructed cyber reality. While perhaps you are relieved at this electronic baby sitter, you aren’t communicating emotionally with those you care about. 

Social media can be fun. It can be informative. It can also provide misleading information. It can negatively impact our skills of relating person to person with those around us. It can contribute to depression and a withdrawal from our core social support system. And it can become an addiction. 

It's best to evaluate how social media is impacting yourself and those you love. Limiting screen time can have positive effects on our relationships with others. The next time you pull your phone out to get on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or the like, ask yourself these questions:

• Do I really need to do this right now? Can this wait?
• What am I looking for, or hoping to get out of this right now?
• Can I find peace in the present moment and who I am with or where I currently am? 

With love, 

Jennifer

We all want to grow right?  Personal growth means our lives expand and evolve. It means we feel more fulfilled, and we find more happiness. Personal growth means we aren’t static, that we stay relevant as the world changes. 

Here are 5 tips to keep on growing:

Find a personal growth guru to follow. Here are a few: 

• Rhonda Byrne - she wrote The Secret among other books
• Eckhart Tolle  - He states“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make now the primary focus of your life."
• Abraham-Hicks - Abraham is an energy group channeled by Ester Hicks. They state, “Like the air you breathe, abundance in all things is available to you. Your life will simply be as good as you allow it to be.”
• Tony Robbins - You may not like him, but some of his words and ways can help you get unstuck.

Surround yourself with people who are supportive. 

It is hard to grow when we are fending off criticism or feeling bullied. 

Write, read and use The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

I’ve done all kinds of writing, attended writing workshops, writing groups, journaled, and more. Writing opens up the door to self-knowledge – a prerequisite for personal growth

Read

Reading expands the mind with new ideas, stories, and images. There are so many subjects to learn about and so many different areas to grow. 

Therapy 

I’m not sure why some people don’t like the idea of therapy. Therapy allows an examination of who we are, what we have lived through, where we feel stuck, what we desire and much more. Just make sure you feel good about the therapist you are working with. If you don’t, find someone else. 

With love, 

Jennifer