Deborah Horton

Starting Point

Everything has a starting point. Everything including thoughts, beliefs, emotions. Everything starts somewhere.

When we say we have always been sad or angry for as long as we can remember. Or we say we have always been anxious, we do not generally associate it with a starting point. Always implies no starting point. It implies that we were born with these emotions, these thoughts, these beliefs we hold. That is simply not true. We are not born with these things, they occur at a later point and they occur because of something outside of ourselves.

We are born as a blank slate. We do not enter this world sad, angry, anxious believing any number of things we decide are true. It just doesn’t happen. We receive messages from outside forces – people, social media, TV, news, etc. We receive messages in the way people treat us – neglect, abuse, abandonment, words and actions. We receive messages from the things that happen in our lives due to other people – divorce, domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, death. We receive messages from bullying. And then we form beliefs about ourselves because of these things and accept these beliefs as true. And we carry them for so long that we then think we have ALWAYS had them…that we were born this way.

Think carefully about when your emotions and/or beliefs started. Think very carefully. What was happening in your life at the time or what had happened around the time you first noticed these emotions or beliefs. Notice everything that was going on – everything. Write it down. Then look at it carefully and you will find your starting point. This is the place where therapy should begin. Addressing the starting point is like starting at the top of a waterfall, if you address the beginning it flows down to everything that comes after because it is ALL connected.

This doesn’t mean that just because your starting point came from something outside yourself that you can blame everything you have ever felt or done on someone else or something else. In fact, the truth is that it is always your choice what to do with any outside message. Do you let it go because it is not your truth or do you take it on and make it your reality? That is your choice. Everything you do after that is your choice. Everything.

Recognize your starting point and address that. Then recognize your choices that follow. Accept the responsibility for your choices. Let go of the starting point that was not yours. And then work through them. And yes it is work. You worked very hard to get where you are today at believing everything, you can work just as hard to stop believing it.

What is your TRUE starting point?

Until next time,
Deborah

I am currently accepting new clients (girls and women) for counseling. To set up a FREE Initial consultation call 406-413-9904 email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the BOOK NOW button on Facebook

Deborah Horton

I Love Me

Over the last week with Valentine’s Day included I worked on an art therapy project with most all of my clients entitled I Love Me. Valentine’s is generally about someone else loving us or that we are loving someone else. It is almost never about loving ourselves.

In fact, loving ourselves isn’t something many of us do with any regularity. We are very good at not loving ourselves. When we look in the mirror, we almost always find faults with ourselves. Things we do not love about ourselves. In our automatic thoughts, we are generally focused on the negative about ourselves. We think that these thoughts are our own but they all start somewhere else. Let me repeat that, all negative thoughts we have about ourselves start somewhere else. They come from what others say or don’t say, what others do or don’t do, what social media provides, etc. Not one of them originated in our own minds…not one. But these are what we think about, not loving ourselves.

When I came up with this project I thought it would be easy to think of six things I loved about myself. It was not easy. In fact, it took several days. The rules were that it couldn’t be something someone else has said they love about it and it couldn’t be something I think in relation to others. It had to be exclusively, only about me loving me. Not an easy thing to do. But eventually I did it.

Working through the week with clients I found that most had similar difficulty coming up with their own six things. Some had trouble coming up with even a single thing. So ingrained are the things we think we don’t love about ourselves that seeing anything we do love is almost impossible sometimes. We even weigh the things we do come up with against our ingrained lies. As if we do not deserve to love ourselves for anything. Another lie.

As the week went on and after several clients, I found that the pathway I had opened to things I love about myself that more things then came to my mind. Once we allow our brains to move in a different direction, it will find more information along the way and bring it to our attention. Once we push aside the negative and the lies, we discover that there is truth to be discovered if we can only allow ourselves to see it and then to accept it.

What do you love about yourself? Is it difficult to find? Do you have to have a discussion with yourself against the negative and the lies to feel that you can love anything about yourself? I know it can be difficult because we don’t get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say to ourselves, “I love this about me or that about me.” But we should.

Take a few minutes after reading this and truly think about the things you love about you. Do you love your sense of humor, your courage, your creativity, your determination, or any number of other things about you? Write them down, put them where you can see them daily, repeat them to yourself, and add to them as more of them come to your mind. Say to yourself daily, I Love Me.

Until next time,
Deborah Horton

I am currently accepting new clients (girls and women) for counseling. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up a FREE initial consultation appointment.

Deborah Horton

Choices

Almost everything we do involves choices. There are few exceptions – breathing, blinking being the main ones. Most everything else involves a choice of some kind. Even choosing not to make a choice is a choice.

We choose whether or not to allow our thoughts to become our realities. We choose to accept and believe or not the messages we get from outside sources. By the way, every single thought (message) we tell ourselves came from an outside source. We were not born with them and we did not create them on our own.

We decide whether or not we allow our past to be our present. We decide whether or not we allow our fear of the future to be our present. We decide whether or not we are happy or sad. We decide whether or not we are full of fear or calm. We decide whether or not we get out of bed or stay in it. We decide. We always decide.

Many clients tell me that their choices are made for them. They say they are made by their past, they are made by their thoughts, they are made by their emotions. Those things influence only. They are the background noise. The choice – the this way or that – the yes or no – the remain the same or change – the fear or the calm – the choice is always, always made by the person. Always.

So how do we make different choices than the ones that have caused us to remain stuck in our own personal quicksand? We have to recognize the choice for what it is. Do not shift the responsibility to your past, your thoughts, your emotions or to other people. Say to yourself, this is my choice – do this or do that, say this or say that, think this or think that, remain the same or change, be afraid or be calm. Whatever the choice is, recognize it, name it, analyze the consequences, and make a choice.

And then be prepared to accept the consequences. There are always consequences for every choice we make. Good or bad, there is always a price to pay, always. You have to be prepared to accept it and accept responsibility for it. If you choose to remain in the same place, accept that nothing about your situation will change. If you choose to think negatively, accept that your reality, your truth, will be negative. If you choose to change, accept that your situation will become different. Notice I did not say better, that is up to the change your choose. If you choose to leave a toxic relationship, the other person will no longer be in your life. You will have to accept that consequence. If you choose to let go of your past, you will have to accept the consequence that you will no longer have that as a constant in your life – you will become a different person.

Choices are not easy. We don’t always make the right ones. But as long as you are still breathing, you can always make another choice. You may have to make the same choices over and over if you fall back into old patterns. But you can always make another choice.

What choices will you make today?

Until next time,
Deborah

I am accepting new clients (women and girls) for counseling. If you would like to make an appointment for a FREE initial consultation appointment call 406-413-9904 email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the Book Now button on Facebook

Deborah Horton

Response Time

Controlling your thoughts can control how you feel. I am sure you have heard this said a lot. It is true, however it is not the whole story. In fact, it is just the very, very beginning. Your thoughts are just a spark, the flame is the response to the the thoughts. It is the action that causes every single thing that follows.

It is the response time that has to be managed. Thoughts will come into our minds. We can have thoughts about anything. They come automatically. Most thoughts are not intentionally brought to mind. They just appear like a spark. It’s the what we do after. It is ALWAYS the what we do after.

The response time is only milliseconds long – shorter than the time it takes to blink. It is in that briefest of time that we decide what we will do with the thought. It is that decision, that response, that determines all that comes later.

In that response time, we can choose to recognize the thoughts just as thoughts and let them go. Physically watch them leave our minds and they don’t come back. Or we can let them sit. We can let them grow. We can believe that they are true. We can imagine our reality with these thoughts. We can project the future or constantly relive the past. We can make someone else’s words into the truth about ourselves without proof. In milliseconds, we can go from a blank piece of paper to a novel of lies, assumptions, false beliefs, and predicted catastrophes.

Making changes in the blink of an eye can be very difficult. Especially if we are used to responding in the same way every time we have had the thoughts before. We become conditioned to our own response. We turn into our own Pavlov dog. Thought, spark, same response.

The only way to affect change, any change, is to make a decision every single time that is different than what we have done. We will fail. We must try again the next time. Thought, spark, different response. Thought, spark, let the thought go. Thought, spark, watch them leave our minds. Thought, spark, recognize lies. Thought, spark, different reality. Thought, spark, stay in the present. Thought, spark, only our truth. Thought, spark, proof. Again and again and again until we control the response every time.

What would your life be like if you changed your response time?

Until next time,
Deborah Horton

I am accepting new clients (girls and women) for counseling. If you want to schedule a FREE initial consultation call 406-413-9904 email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the Book Now button on our Facebook page.

Deborah Horton

Where Is Your Proof?

Many people battle with negative automatic thoughts. These thoughts come from several sources including our families and friends, strangers, people in authority over us (teachers, coaches, bosses), social media, and of course from inside our own minds. However, those inside the mind came from somewhere or someone else almost all of the time.

A message, or seed, is introduced to our mind. Something someone has said, a way someone has acted or not acted, an assumption we have made about what someone has said or done or what we have seen online. This seed is at first nothing just as the words we hear or we create are nothing but thoughts. They have no life, unless we provide them with what they need to grow. If we water them, fertilize them, give them a place in our minds to live they become implanted and are always there.

There is of course one other thing we must do in order to grow our negative thought seeds – give them truth. By agreeing that this thoughts are true and using absolutes to describe them – I am, I do, I can’t, I don’t, etc. – the brain then views them as truths – not thoughts or seeds. But where is your proof that these thoughts are true? Where is your absolute proof?

When these thoughts appear, we must stop and question them just as any lawyer would do in court to prove an accusation is true. Imagine a stop sign appearing when the thought appears. Imagine yourself looking at this thought (only words) and asking where is your proof? Just because you think it does not make it true. Just because someone else said it does not make it true. Just because you read it does not make it true. Where is your proof? Almost always the proof will not be found except the truth that the thought is just words we have given life to and assumed a truth about.

Where is the proof that the thought is false? For example, if you have the thought “I never do anything right.” What is your proof of things and times where you have done things right? Did you put on your own clothes, take a shower, do your hair or makeup, drive a car, pass a test, complete a job task today? If you did, you obviously did it right. Therefore, “I never” cannot be true. There is no proof.

Without proof, we are left with giving truth to just words because we assume there must be some proof or we wouldn’t think these thoughts. Thoughts come and go all the time. It is up to us whether or not they grow and live in our minds or whether they are dismissed for lack of proof.

Where is your proof?

Until next time,
Deborah

I am now accepting new clients, girls and women, for counseling in Montana. If you would like to set up a FREE initial consultation please call me at 406-413-9904, email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the Book Now button on Facebook.

Deborah Horton

Be Proud Of Yourself

As humans, we are so very quick to criticize ourselves, have less faith in ourselves, create negative beliefs about ourselves. We are even more quick to allow others to criticize us, lose faith in us, say negative things about us. The negative is easy. It’s like slipping into a stretched out pair of old sweatpants – it’s easy. We become comfortable there. We believe it is who we are and what we deserve no matter what good things we are doing, believing, creating.

If we spent even one tenth of the time that we spend on putting on the negative on the positive things about ourselves our lives would look completely different. We would be amazed at the positiveness of our lives, of our minds, of our spirits. When we focus on the negative our focus becomes negative. It prevents us from recognizing the positive in ourselves and in others. What we slip into is what we become.

For just one moment, think of one positive thing about yourself. It can be anything. A part of your personality, something you are good at, anything you do well, choices you have made, anything that is even minimally positive, anything that creates even minimal steps forward, anything that makes you smile and feel good about yourself.

Every time you do something make a positive choice, that you choose to be kind, that you accomplish anything and anything can be as simple as getting out of bed, when you think something positive instead of negative, when you feel good about anything you do or anything you don’t do. If you do something well at school or at your job be proud. If you choose to get up and get dressed be proud. If you choose forgiveness over anger be proud. If you choose to be positive instead of negative be proud.

Acknowledge yourself. Pay attention to your positive self. Notice each individual good no matter how small. Allow yourself to be proud of you. It is okay to be proud of yourself. In fact, it is necessary for a positive life. If you are always waiting, looking, expecting to find someone else to be proud of you until you can feel proud and happy you need to stop and look at yourself.

Be proud of yourself – not just in the big things – but in everything.

Until next time,
Deborah

I am now accepting new clients (girls and women) for counseling. If you would like to make an appointment for a FREE initial consultation call 406-413-9904 email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the Book Now button on Facebook

Deborah Horton

Building Walls

Building walls has been a very popular topic for the last few months. I thought it might be a good time to talk about mental walls. The kind that many people construct every single day adding to them brick by brick until they are trapped behind a wall of their own making wondering why they are there.

Mental walls are constructed first by the negative messages we receive into our brains. These messages can come from family, friends, strangers, or ourselves. We can be imprinted with them from very young ages in the form of brain chemical messages. They become part of our environment when repeated over and over. We then start to believe they must be true, especially those from those we love and who are supposed to take care of us – mother, father, romantic partner. We believe them and we add a brick.

With time, we continue to add bricks from outside messages but add to those our own inside messages. We meet new people and these messages present themselves from the first words out of our mouths. They must be thinking I am (insert negative message here – fat, stupid, not good enough, ugly, and on an on). Immediately we begin to add bricks to forming any kind of new relationship. We shut down, we pull away, we create our own separation. We push others away by our own beliefs. We assume that we know what they are thinking because others have thought the same and said so and we have thought the same and believe it. It becomes our truth and our reality.

The wall grows with each and every negative thought. Soon we cannot see over it and we feel alone. Soon we cannot go around it and we feel trapped. Soon we cannot break through it and we feel helpless. But by repeating what we were told and by believing it, we have created the wall and our own misery.

So how do we break it down? The same way we built it, one brick at a time. By examining each one and asking, what evidence, what actual truth is there to support this brick? What are the positives I can put in place of this brick to destroy it? Can I allow others to say what they think of me before I assume I already know?

Most walls are built with the a very few beliefs repeated over and over. Processing them, questioning them, replacing them one at a time is how you demolish your wall. Pick a brick and get started.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you think you need help deconstructing your walls, set up a FREE initial consultation appointment with me to see if you think we can work together to accomplish this. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up an appointment.

Deborah Horton

What You Feed

Mindful Montana Wellness, LLC Professional Counseling Serviceand other s



verified-by-psychology-today-logo

The story in the picture spells out perfectly what happens with where we allow our thoughts to live. The things we constantly think are the food to our own personal wolves. Feeding them, growing them, providing them with life is what we do with what we think.

If our thoughts dwell in negative spaces such as anger, blame, self-doubt, lies, jealousy, worry, and other negative thoughts and feed those to our mind, body, spirit (wolf) that is the wolf we will grow. That is the wolf we will make stronger. That is the wolf we will then be living with every moment of every day.

If, on the other hand, or the other wolf, our thoughts dwell in positive spaces such as peace, love for ourselves and others, hope, kindness, truth, self-confidence, taking responsibility, faith, and other positive thoughts and feed those to our mind, body, spirit (wolf) that is the wolf we will grow. This wolf will grow and become stronger. This wolf will be living with us every moment of every day.

So which wolf grows stronger? The one you CHOOSE to feed. Even though constant, repeated thoughts become automatic after years of thinking them, you can still train yourself and your mind to choose differently. You can CHOOSE what thoughts you think or you can CHOOSE to replace thoughts with different thoughts. You choose which wolf you feed.

If you have been feeding the negative wolf, when the negative thoughts pop up replace them immediately with positive thoughts. Repeatedly do this over and over and those thoughts will become automatic and they will also nourish and grow your positive wolf. It will become so strong it will overpower the negative wolf just as in real life, the strongest survive, the ones who are fed well survive.

What do you feed? Mindfully, consciously, you can choose which wolf to grow.

Until next time,
Deborah

Mindful Montana Wellness is now accepting new clients, adolescent girls and adult women, for professional counseling. Schedule a FREE initial consultation by emailing mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or calling 406-413-9904

Deborah Horton

Choose Happy

Mindful Montana Wellness, LLC Professional Counseling Services Blog

Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, “Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be.” When I present happiness as a choice to many people, they will many times look at me as if I have lobsters coming out of my head. As if this is an absolutely false statement and that there is no way people can choose to be happy.

While they are looking at me in disbelief, they are also telling me all the reasons they cannot choose to be happy. They were sexually or physically abused, their parents divorced or their parents abandoned them in some way, their family was or is dysfunctional, they were or are being bullied, their relationships with family and others were or are bad or difficult, they believe they are bad or damaged or ugly or stupid or any number of other negative thoughts and lies they have told themselves, people have done or are doing this and it MAKES them unhappy, or any number of other things as a reason for why they cannot be happy. They go on to say how they just can’t let that go and choose to be happy.

Why not? People choose to be unhappy. They choose to let the past, events, people, their own thoughts make them sad or anxious. We aren’t born sad. We become sad because we let the things that happen to us and around us make us believe negative things about ourselves. We feel responsible and blame ourselves or we feel victimized and blame others or events. Then we become unhappy. We are made unhappy by our own thoughts about people and events.

I am not saying that traumatic events are not sad or upsetting, they are. It is natural to feel these emotions at the time of the events and even for some time after, but when they become the thing that drives every emotion, every choice, every thought after that every day of your life – you are making a choice every day when you wake up that unhappy is how you will feel. No other emotion or thought is given a chance to see the light of day.

How then do you choose happy? You come to the truth of what started you on the path of unhappiness. You process exactly what happened, who was at fault, and how to walk through it not live in it. Sometimes people need help to do this and that is where counseling comes in. Once you have made this journey, you can then begin to let those things go as rulers of your life and mind. And replace them with what is happening right now, this moment and making the choice every single day and yes every single moment to choose happy. Just as the choice was made up to this point to be unhappy over and over millions of times a day, the choice can be made to be happy over and over millions of times a day.

Today, when the negative thoughts and emotions you have return, take a few seconds and counter them with a positive. There are always, always positives if you look for them, notice them, say them, write them down. They can be big or very very small things. Today, for every negative thought, emotion, memory insert something positive. If you have hours a day to spend on negative things, you have hours a day to spend on positive. It is all in what you think, what yous say, what you do, what you let go of, what you replace.

You have the power, not events, not people, not the past, not the future, to make you happy or unhappy. Choose happy.

Until next time,
Deborah

Mindful Montana Wellness, LLC is accepting new clients in Billings Montana (and video/online clients in all of Montana) – girls and women – for professional counseling. To schedule a FREE initial consultation call 406-413-9904, email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or visit our Facebook page Mindful Montana Wellness on Facebook

Deborah Horton

Free To Change

The only thing that prevents anyone from changing their lives and thoughts is fear. Fear is the most powerful emotion in the world, stronger than anger, stronger than love, it is fear that paralyzes us and keeps us from making change in our lives. There are three main reasons people fear from changing themselves – fear of the unknown, fear of losing control, fear of loss – and they prevent progress.

Because of this fear, most people try to change everything BUT themselves. They try to change how others act, think, and treat them. They try to change the past or future. They try to change everything that is outside their circle of control – which is everything outside of them. When in truth, the only thing anyone can ever change is inside their own bag of bones – nothing else. But that is so much harder and so much more fearful.

Fear of the unknown is present when people have become accustomed to the way things are.  No matter how bad, how repetitive the issues and thoughts, how miserable they are – what they know about how they feel and live is much less fearful than what they don’t know or what they fear may happen if they change.  How will they feel, how will they live their lives, who will they be if they don’t have the constant misery they current live with – the thing that has become their constant companion – their best friend.  Like an warm blanket, they cover themselves with the misery they know rather than letting go of fear and making changes to themselves.  They want to know what will happen, constantly anxious about the future. If they stay in the present misery they know what will happen – the same things that have happened for years.  People do not fear what they know.

Many people fear that change means losing control.  They have a false sense of control believing that they have some effect on other people, on situations, on the past or the future.  These are all lies we tell ourselves so that our actions can be justified and so that we can blame others for our misery.  Since we cannot control ourselves, our thoughts, our actions, our pain we must control others and we can see it as the only control we have.  It is all fake control, all a lie, there is NO control of anything outside of our own skin to believe otherwise is to lie to yourself and everyone else.

Many people who fear change also fear loss.  This may be the greatest block to change of the three.  We fear that if we change we will lose those we love and care about.  If we stop making bad choices for ourselves – drugs, drinking, sex – the people we do these things with will not want to be around us anymore.  If we refuse to let others treat us badly, to keep rehashing the past, holding guilt and blame over us – they will stop talking to us, cut us out of their lives.  If we change ourselves and build ourselves up, we may realize we should end relationships and we fear being alone.  We are too afraid of what others will do as a result of our change that we continue on the same as we always have regardless of how miserable we are.

The only thing we can change is what is inside our own skin – our emotions, our thoughts, our actions, our processing of the past and welcoming of the future.  The only way to make these changes is to let go of fear.  Fear is the enemy of change.  Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change themselves cannot change anything.

Until next time,

Deborah

I am now accepting new clients for counseling – adolescent girls and adult women.  If you think counseling can help you on the path to changing yourself call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up a free initial consultation.