Deborah Horton

No Answers

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

One of the biggest issues that we as humans have is that some questions have no answers.

As humans, we are driven to find answers. We feel that we must learn things and know things. We feel as if everything must have an answer. And when no answer is found, we create an answer to satisfy our need. Even if that answer is a lie we fashion into the truth.

It is always the hardest questions that have no answer. The questions that shape our lives and beliefs and we are never given the answer to the most basic question….why?

If we experience abuse as a child, we ask why. If people we love suffer and die, we ask why? If our relationships are consistently failing, we ask why. If our parents were not able to love us or care for us properly, we ask why. If someone makes us feel unloved, unworthy, not smart, not pretty, we ask why.

These questions can have answers, but most often we reject the answer in favor of something more easily believed. If the answer to abuse is that the person who abused us has unresolved trauma, that is not an acceptable reason for what they did to us. If the answer is that every human dies, that is not good enough. If the answer is that it is our own unresolved trauma that prevents us from forming healthy relationships, somehow that must be false. If the answer is that our parents did the best they could with who they were and are, it does not make anything better for us.

There are always answers, but as humans we find them unacceptable. The answer must be something else. Or someone else’s fault or our own fault. The truth is often harsh and does nothing to help our pain.

And because we are still in pain, we create answers that we can accept more easily. Even if these answers bear no truth, they make us feel better. It is like coating a bitter pill in sweet chocolate. The bitter pill that provides no relief must be avoided at all costs. It is just too hard a thing to swallow.

The search for answers about our lives provides us with one thing for certain – choices. We can choose to accept the sometimes harsh and hard truth or we can choose to create truths we can accept. This is always the choice when we seek answers.

One leads to acceptance and the other leads to constant battles within ourselves to keep our created truth alive.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Happiness Starts With You

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For many people, happiness is something they think happens due to outside forces. If I get the grades I want. If I have a job where I am successful. If I have a relationship. If I am thinner. If people are proud of me.

I call it the happiness hamper. The place where you go to dig through all the things to find one that you think will make you happy. Trying on different ones to see which will make you happy at that moment. All of these kinds of happiness are dependent on someone or something else.

True happiness can only come if you are happy with yourself – with nothing added by anyone or anything else. Just you, in your own flesh, looking in a mirror and saying that YOU make you happy.

People that seek happiness outside of themselves from other people or things are very often disappointed and decidedly unhappy. If your happiness resides in your getting a certain job or making a certain amount of money and that doesn’t happen as you hope it will you then feel sad and as if you are now not successful or worthy.

If you seek happiness in relationships and your relationship does not work out…you feel sad and as if you somehow lacking because that person did not choose to stay with you.

If happiness does not start with you how then can you expect to be happy with anything else that you do or with anyone else. If you inherently find fault with yourself and are not wholeheartedly happy with just you – how can you expect that you would be able to be happy in some other situation? You are still the same person are you not? The same one you are not happy with. That does not change because your situation changes.

So many times my clients when I talk about being happy with themselves bring up all the trauma and suffering from their life. They believe they cannot be happy with themselves because of all the beliefs and responses they have to this trauma – that other people and other situations taught them. But they believe it, internalize it, live it with words like “my fault”, “not worthy”, “not valued”, “not smart”, “not pretty” and on and on.

I should have a sign in my office with the following words: Repetition and Reinforcement. I say it often enough. I believe it absolutely that it is the only way to change how you think about what you feel. You must repeat, repeat, repeat for as many times as is necessary. And then you must reinforce by repeating hundreds, millions, hundreds of millions until your brain believes what you are saying. Until the negative things you have internalized are gone – replaced.

Start small, say it once a day, have it written and placed next to where you brush your teeth every morning. Say it out loud looking at yourself in a mirror and smile when you do it.

I AM HAPPY WITH MYSELF.

Do it once a day for four weeks. Then do it twice a day for three weeks. Then three times a day for three weeks. It takes 21 consecutive days of doing something to make a habit that sticks. Then do it four times a day for three weeks. Ever increasing until it becomes a running monologue in your brain. And smile every time you say it – smiling releases endorphins, endorphins make us feel happier.

Happiness starts with YOU.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Be Your Own Valentine

Valentine’s Day can be the cause of great joy and great stress. When we have a special someone in our lives we feel we have to work extra hard to keep them and when we do not have that special someone we feel we must spend all our energy trying to find them.

On Valentine’s Day, and truly every day, we can be so invested in keeping or finding our special someone, or being very sad that we have lost them or have not found them, that we forget to love the person who needs it, deserves it, and benefits most….ourselves.

Do you love yourself? Do you make you happy? Do you practice self love?

If you answer no to these questions, perhaps it is time to start changing that, right now, this moment, today. And to build in love for yourself on every day of the year.

If you believe that you do not or can not love yourself, why is that true for you? Where did that belief start in your life? You were not born not loving yourself. It started at some point after that. Experiences, trauma, caregivers who caused you to form this belief, internalize someone else’s beliefs as your own. We do not wake up one day as an infant and decide that we, ourselves, do not love ourselves any longer. We are conditioned to believe this. How were you conditioned to answer no to the question of do you love yourself?

Are you happy with yourself? If the answer is no, what parts of yourself are you not happy with? And why did you become unhappy with those parts? Again, who informed that belief, who gave you that belief? What experiences caused that belief to become something you now accept? You were not born unhappy with yourself. How were you conditioned to believe that you make you unhappy?

If you answered no to the first two, it is highly unlikely that you practice self love. When is the last time you did something to show love to yourself? Were you taught that to think of yourself and do things for yourself was selfish? Were you taught that you had to or needed to take care of others and care about their happiness before your own? When you were born your own needs were very important to you – food, care, clothing, safety. When did that change?

“Loving yourself… does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion.” —Margo Anand

Loving yourself is the most kind, respectful thing that you can do for you every single day. Repeat after me – I love myself, I am worthy of loving myself, I deserve to love myself, my love for myself makes me happy with myself.

Be your own valentine!

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

The Hardest Word In Therapy

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There are lots of difficult words in therapy. Trauma, abuse, grief, change are just a few of the hard words therapy causes to surface. There is one word though that is more difficult than all the others for most of my clients.

ACCEPTANCE

On the road to change there are three words. Acknowledgment or awareness, acceptance, and change. Change cannot come without the other two being ahead of it on the road.

However, it is the word and act of acceptance that most of my clients find the hardest to see, say and do. Acceptance means that one has to accept fully that what has happened to them to this point in their life, no matter how much they would wish it could just be forgotten, wiped away, not remembered, will always be a part of them, always.

Most people with trauma spend their lives ignoring, running away from, or repeatedly responding to events and relationships from a place of their traumatic experience. And yet, all the while, they are trying to pretend that it is not the trauma. That they can forget the trauma, box it up, pretend it is not the cause of all the subsequent fears, traumas, failures, and unhealthy coping techniques they employ for all the days of their life that follows.

Most people with trauma work very hard to NOT acknowledge or be aware of their trauma and the subsequent trauma responses. They work even harder on NOT accepting that this trauma will forever be in their memories.

In order to progress towards real change, one must acknowledge their trauma. Face it, understand it, process it in relation to all that has followed, recognize it and be aware of how it causes you to make decisions, respond to events, and conduct relationships.

The second step is acceptance that your trauma is part of you. We cannot erase memories. Lobotomies are not performed in many countries any longer. Our experiences are our experiences. They happened. They shaped who we became after and what we thought and believed about ourselves after the trauma.

And this is where change comes in. We cannot change what has happened. We can however change how we feel about it. We can change how we react to it. We can change how we think about ourselves in relation to it. And in changing these things, we change everything.

It is a process. Sometimes a slow and painful process. Sometimes a quicker process. Each person’s path to change will be different. It will not happen overnight. But it can and will happen if we acknowledge, accept, and then change our thoughts, change our beliefs, change our reactions.

What has your trauma caused you to think about yourself in relation to it? I am not worthy of love, I am not good enough, my feelings do not matter, I am not valued, and any of the millions of things we can be taught to think and believe by our traumas. How have these beliefs affected your choices in life, your responses, your relationships? Do you know who you are outside of this trauma? Are you even aware of who that person is?

The path to change can be frightening. For all the horrible things trauma causes in our lives, we can become accustomed to it because we know it. We know exactly how it looks, feels, and what we can expect to happen. It is known. Change is unknown. The person on the other side of change is unknown. The life on the other side of change is unknown.

And so the only remaining question is, do you wish to be the same person with the same trauma reactions in 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10 years? Or do you wish to find your truer self, accepting the past, and growing beyond it?

Acknowledge, accept, change. One moment at a time. Sometimes you can make inches of progress and sometimes miles, but the journey always starts with the same words, hard though they may be. Change is possible.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Winter Blahs

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Many of my clients are experiencing what I would call the winter blahs. The time of year where just being a lump of flesh under warm blankets with fuzzy slippers and doing little else seems the preferable way of living.

While some only have a slight case, others have what would be considered something more. It is a short few steps from winter blahs to depression. And it is an easy road to travel this time of year especially. Making it worse than winters past is the ongoing specter of COVID and everything that comes with it.

The winter months always come with shorter days, which means less sunlight, when there is sunlight. And that leads the next thing, there is less sunlight with more overcast and cloudy days that can include lots of rain or lots of snow. Inclement weather makes it more difficult and less enjoyable to be outside in many cases, especially if the temperatures are very cold. All of this seems to translate into an innate instinct to hibernate much as many animals do this time of year.

Unfortunately, with COVID many of use have already been basically hibernating for several months already. This leads to a feeling of “never ending” hibernation. That we are somehow trapped inside and going out may never come again. Add to that some extra pounds for many of us due to the sheer boredom of being inside so long and running out of things to inspire us or motivate us.

Inspiration and motivation continue to shrink as our waistline expands. And we feel more and more like the lump of flesh our minds believe us to be. A vicious circle of winter blahs that have actually been going on for far longer.

Winter is not over though it is moving at a rapid pace it seems as it is now February. Yet, it continues, and how do we find motivation and inspiration when much of what surrounds us remains the same.

Just as with any habit, we do it in small bits, repeated until habits form, and then we add small bits to it and repeat the process. Pick one thing you want to incorporate into your life right now, that can be done in a very small way and repeated for at least 20 to 30 days, which is how long most people take to form something into a habit. When that habit is formed and you do it without having to think about it or make yourself do it, add another small something or a bigger part of the first habit to increase it and repeat again for 20 to 30 days.

And look it will be April and spring will be near.

What will your small one thing be starting today?

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Fear Of Change

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When clients come to see me for the first time, they always say that they want to change their lives and change who they are in their lives. However, when we start working on that change and they start to think about what that change is going to look like, their fear can sometimes keep them from making forward progress.

When we have trauma, we have developed responses to that trauma since the trauma started. With every subsequent trauma, we have more responses added. All of these responses shape how we think, how we react, and how we live.

Over years of time, regardless of how miserable we are or how bad our lives have become, we become comfortable in the knowing that this is the way things are and we know this person we have become very well. Much like an old blanket or comfortable slippers, they don’t exactly keep us warm anymore but we know them, we are comfortable in them, and we are not inclined to change them for something new.

When the little thoughts of change or the actual changes start to occur when we start to address our trauma and responses, fear becomes a constant companion. Fear of who we will be without these worn in parts of ourselves. Fear of what we will lose and who we will lose if we opt for the new person we can become. Fear of the unknown instead of the old and comfortable.

This fear can be overcome, but it is not going to be comfortable. No serious work on trauma ever is. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be quick. It may well be the hardest work you will ever do and the scariest.

So what can help us overcome this fear of change? Accepting that we will be different. Accepting that our lives will be different. Accepting that not everyone will make this journey with us. Accepting that we can live happier, healthier lives and that we deserve to do so.

The first step is always the hardest. Admitting that change needs to happen.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Moving Towards Margin

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Margin. The possession of space in your mind, body, and spirit to take on life’s challenges and choices. For many people, especially the past year, margin has been in short supply.

Many times, we find ourselves pushed to the edge and beyond it emotionally and mentally, and yes physically. Pushed by those who expect us to help them or in some cases enable them to solve or avoid their own problems. Children who come with presenting issues that they make seem like life or death and they expect us to solve them immediately. Bosses who bring their own stress to our desks and expect us to somehow make it better immediately. Significant others who expect us to make their lives easier immediately.

If we have no margin, we respond out of our own overload. Sometimes, our responses include a turmoil of emotions and even words that can be regretted later. Sometimes, we do it quietly and with complicity, holding in our own turmoil. The silently seething. Sometimes, we respond and respond and respond for others leaving nothing for ourselves but exhaustion and bitterness.

We can feel driven that our function our need is to always do for others. To make sure that other people are happy and that we do not rock any boats along the way. We keep the peace. We serve others completely.

We can feel that to be valued we must be seen to be involved in everything. We take on extra work responsibilities. We are in the PTA and every other school activity with our kids. We never say no to anything or anyone.

When asked for a response or to “fix” things for someone else, we do not hesitate no matter how tired and emotionally drained we feel. We continue to draw from a well with no reserves.

How do we move towards margin? We have to pause before responding. We have to breathe and examine why we are responding or why we feel we must respond. We have to know who our response is serving. We have to recognize our well is dry.

If the request that is being made of us or that we are creating for ourselves is not life or death, it does not require an immediate response. We can pause, breathe, ponder, choose and THEN do.

All of this has to be communicated to those requesting that we respond. If your child comes to you and exclaims that they need answer right now, request time to gather your thoughts, examine your response choices, breathe, and that you will respond to them after this is done.

You will receive push back from others and from yourself feeling that you must immediately respond. It is not necessary.

You must also find time for yourself. For your own self-care. For your own mental, spiritual, and physical health. Margin requires constant tending to remain accessible and to keep you from exhaustion and for not making sure you are serving yourself.

Are you moving towards margin?

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Let Go

Learning to let go can be one of the most difficult things humans attempt. We hold on to feelings and events and let them take over our minds. We give them a place to live and keep them alive. We continue to let them affect us long after the things that caused them are gone. The inability to let go causes us most of our daily anxiety, depression, anger, and suffering and we do it all to ourselves.

When I work with clients, I use the visual of clouds as a metaphor for letting go. Almost everyone has watched clouds moving in the sky. They never remain still. They are constantly coming and going and so it should be with the thoughts that come into our minds that we need to let go. See these thoughts as clouds, see the words of them on the clouds, see them come into your mind, and see them go out. When they go out, let them go, do not think on them further – they are gone. Let go of them. Replace them with clouds that say something positive instead, something uplifting, something freeing.

Another way to practice this is through meditation. Using meditation along with the visualization of the clouds reinforces letting go, reinforces concentrating your thoughts in a more positive, focused way. I use the meditation app Headspace with my clients. It is a free app that offers guided meditation that is easy to use and can help you retrain your mind to let go of things that negatively impact your daily life. Meditation allows you to also allow thoughts to come and go and practice improving that skill with daily mental exercise.

Most of the issues we face are caused by our inability to let go. Holding on to negative emotions and experiences builds up emotional and mental toxins in the body that come out as anxiety, depression, anger, and sometimes even physical illness. Bringing these things back day after day only reinforces these negative feelings. Learning to let go can free us of the weight of all we continue to carry that weighs us down on a daily basis. It’s like unpacking a suitcase we refuse to stop carrying. Imagine how much lighter you will feel if you let go of the weight.

Letting go of the past year may prove very hard to do as we still continue to battle many of the same issues going into the new year.  However, we can let go of the year itself.  A new year is upon us and with it so is change.  Nothing, no situation, no pandemic, no crisis, nothing lasts forever.  All these change or end and something else takes its place.  

Hope for better things ahead.  Belief that all things change and nothing lasts forever.  Focus on what is good in our lives right now.  Moving ever forward.  Do not let the thoughts and feelings of the last year keep you stuck in 2020.  That time has passed.  

Let go.

Until next time,
Deborah

Deborah Horton

What’s On Your Christmas List?

Photo by Mike Arney on Unsplash

One thing that most of us do during the Christmas shopping season is make lists. Lists of gifts we need to buy, food we need to shop for, gatherings we need to attend, everything has a list this time of year. One thing we usually do not do or do enough of is make a list for ourselves.

Christmas is the season of giving. The old adage is often repeated, it is better to give than to receive. However Christmas can also be a very stressful time of year. This year offers even more stressors than normal with the ongoing virus. It is quite possible that we need to think about giving to ourselves as well.

As we sit down to make all of our other lists, we should think about pulling out some paper to make a list of what we can do for ourselves during this holiday season to love ourselves and to lessen our stress levels.

There are many things we can for ourselves. Some take seconds and others require a little more planning, but all are worth it to love ourselves more this holiday season. Here are just a few that you might add to your list this year.

  1. Start the day as soon as you wake up with taking time for yourself. Whether that be deep breathing, breathe in counting 5 seconds and breathe out counting 7 seconds or doing a brief guided or unguided meditation. Perhaps a few short yoga movements or some nice stretching when you get out of bed. Just to feel centered and grounded.
  2. Taking a nice warm bubble bath or shower and using some of the wonderful products out this time of year. Holiday scented scrubs and body washes. Lighting some holiday scented candles. Picking up a holiday scented moisturizer.
  3. Scheduling a massage, facial, hair or nail appointment. Doing something just for yourself. Some just you time for pampering.
  4. Get out in the sunshine. Winter can be a difficult time with lots of cloudy and darker weather. When the sun is out finding time to just go out and stand in it or to take a brief walk in it can do wonders for your mood and body.
  5. Be mindful of your commitments. Many times during the holiday season we can over commit. Agreeing to any and everything others want us to do leaving no time for ourselves. Be mindful not to over schedule yourself.
  6. Try to stay as much in your routine as possible. The holidays can often lead to staying up late, eating too much, and skipping daily habits such as exercise and taking your vitamins. Sticking as close as possible to your usual routine will keep your bod and your mind happier.
  7. Make a spending budget. Many people stress over what they spend during the holidays. If you make a budget and stick to it you can avoid the after Christmas spending blues a little easier.
  8. Give yourself time outs. If you start feeling overwhelmed or overly tired, find ways to take a time out. Spend some time doing things that make you feel recharged and rejuventated.
  9. Manage you expectations and roll with the changes. Inevitably our holiday schedules can get jumbled up or rearranged. Let go of what you cannot control and focus on enjoying what unfolds.
  10. If you feel overwhelmed or that your stress is too much for you to manage, seek out help. Talk to someone about how you are feeling. Delegate tasks and do not try to do everything yourself. And if you are experiencing stronger feelings of grief or sadness, seek out professional help.

When you are making your holiday lists, make one for you and give the gift of self love to yourself.

Until next time be well,

Deborah

Deborah Horton

Lack Of Margin

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Over the last couple of weeks, many of my clients have been stating the same thing. They say that they have no margin. This has been an ongoing issue throughout the pandemic, but with the addition of the holidays, it has increased exponentially.

What does having no margin mean? For most people, it is that there is no pause in the response time to any stressful situation or emotion. When people have margin, there is the ability to pause before reacting. The ability to engage in rational and logical thought processes. The ability to utilize tools for management of stress, anxiety, anger, and depression.

When people do not have margin (or feel already pushed to the edge of management), there is no pause before reacting. There is no ability to engage in rational and logical thought. The ability to use any helpful tools seem to vanish.

The result is immediate reaction. Going zero to 100 in microseconds, less than a blink of the eye. There is no pause, no thought, no tools. Only reaction. And generally the reaction is very big, sometimes very out of character, and hard to reign back in.

Someone cuts you off while driving. With margin, we can pause and be thankful there was no accident or use a stress reducing tool such as deep breathing or grounding. Without margin, we are yelling, cursing, sometimes confronting people, and generally letting it ruin the rest of our day or even our week.

Unable to spend holidays with family members due to Covid19. With margin, we can pause and be grateful for our health and healthy family members or use logic and rational thought to know that no situation lasts forever and the pandemic will end and we can see more family then. Without margin, we are sad, angry, and feeling overwhelming grief at the loss of normalcy. We can let it affect us for days, weeks or even months without margin.

Lack of margin has a way of building up and exploding. We may be able to manage the first few times someone cuts us off or the first couple of times we have to say no to family gatherings. But the more these things add up, the less margin we have and the less ability we have to control our response.

So what do we do? Firstly, we must acknowledge that we are short of margin. We must tell ourselves the truth about our capacity to pause and respond – the truth is that we usually are not going to be able to. We must give ourselves grace because our current state of mind and emotions is what it is.

That being said, we do have moments in this lack of margin where we can find quiet to pause and reflect and think rationally and logically. We can find moments for meditation and calming. During these times, we can also reflect on the times where we haven’t had margin and if there is anything we can do next time to try and avoid the explosion.

Communicating to other that we are short of margin and that we are trying to respond appropriately but we may not always do so. Communicating the first time members of our family or friends or others we have regular contact with do something that pushes over the margin line how it makes us feel and how we may need them to interact with us differently. Be proactive. Do not let it build up.

We are all short of margin at times during this ongoing pandemic that is now accompanied by the holidays. We are all trying to do the best we can. But sometimes our margin runs completely out. Recover in the the times that you can and let go of what anger, sadness, and grief that you can while building in self-care and resilience.

Nothing lasts forever and this too shall pass.

Until next time be well,

Deborah