mental health

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

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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

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.

Deborah Horton

The Boss Of You

When we are growing up, we have people who can appear to be the boss of us. Parents, teachers, employers, friends, romantic relationships, or just about anyone who we feel has the ability or authority to tell us what to do and how to do it. Also as we grow, we start to develop the ability and the desire to make our own choices, to be the boss of ourselves. The struggle comes when we have the ability to make our own choices but we continue to let others or our own negative thoughts make them for us.

Over time, our own negative thoughts can become louder than the words of any real person or even our own words. Much like the voice of a military drill sergeant, it is constantly talking to us, repeating the same negative thoughts over and over. Many times it can sound like the voice of someone in our life who was critical of us, who abused us, who hurt us in some way, someone whose voice makes us feel even worse about ourselves. This voice becomes the boss of you.

Listening to this voice every day reinforces the negative things and your brain believes that these things are true. This voice becomes the boss of you and it is no longer you making decisions about your emotions, your choices, your life but it is the voice.

What if when the negative voice speaks to you, instead of going along with it and believing it, you talk back to it with something positive. It takes practice and it takes time and it takes doing it over and over. You did not come to the place of having your negative thoughts be the boss of you overnight and you won’t replace them overnight. As long as you let the negative thoughts continue to boss you, your brain continues to believe them and then looks for ways to make them true.

If you have the same negative thoughts repeatedly, write them down. For each negative thought you write down, write a positive thought next to it. Example, “what happened to you was your fault” positive “I did the best I could at the time” or “what happened to me was not my fault”. Rate your percentage of belief of your positive thought on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being you barely believe it to 10 being you totally believe it. If you find positive thoughts with a higher percentage of you believing them to be true, use those. However, your brain will start to believe the positive things you tell it if you say them over and over just as it has done with the negative things.

Start today to be the boss of you. One thought at a time.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you are a teen girl or adult woman or know one who could benefit from learning how to be the boss of their own thoughts and lives, I offer FREE Initial consultation appointments to see if counseling with me is a good fit. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com to set up an appointment.

Deborah Horton

Meditate This Way

Meditation is a tool that I try to use with most all of my clients. Many clients believe that meditation is for controlling your thoughts. A way to be able to think about nothing. To clear your mind. Most of these beliefs, however, are false. Meditation is about learning to be mindful, to be calm, in the midst of your thoughts and emotions and to not get stuck in them.

Headspace is an app I have used for several years now for guided meditation with clients and for myself. The main goal of this particular meditation app is to help you train your mind to see thoughts, become aware of them, notice how they make you feel, and then to let them pass through your mind instead of taking up residence in it. Not thinking is never the goal. Not feeling is never the goal. It is to think and feel without allowing those thoughts and emotions to control you. You control them and by doing so, you can let them go.

Many people view their thoughts as something their brain is telling them. The brain only tells you what you have put in. Human brains are like very powerful computers and like all computers brains digest and spit out what you put into them. Your brain did not on it’s own start thinking negative things about you. It did not start believing these things by itself. You told it to do so and so it did. You repeatedly told it what you believe about yourself, your life, your relationships and it believes you and then works to make these things all true because they must be true – you said they were.

These millions of thoughts that are input and then become stuck are what we allow to control how we think and feel every moment of every day. Meditation is about taking control over those thoughts and not allowing them to be stuck. Imagine that whatever thought you are thinking at the moment is in a cloud. See it, become aware of it. However, just like clouds that you have watched millions of times, they never remain in the same place, ever. They come and they go. Imagine your thought cloud coming and then going and when it is gone it is gone. Say to yourself, I am having the thought that (insert thought here) and I am letting this thought go. And when it leaves return your focus to your breathing and only your breathing. Next thought comes and we do the same thing again. We are in control of our thoughts. It just takes practice.

The second piece of resistance clients can have is stating they have no time for meditation. Do you spend 10 minutes a day just scrolling through your phone or online just scrolling, not really doing anything of consequence? Do you have 10 minutes before you fall asleep that you are just lying in bed with your thoughts? If you do, you have time to meditate. It doesn’t take hours, just a few minutes to begin to take control over your thoughts and to stop letting them control you.

Remember, the goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts and emotions but to become more aware of them, to learn how to move through them without getting stuck.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you think counseling could help you learn how to control your thoughts and emotions, set up a FREE initial consultation with me by calling 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or visit Mindful Montana Wellness on Facebook and click the Book Now button.

Deborah Horton

Comfort of the Familiar

Mindful Montana Wellness, LLC Professional Counseling Services Blog

Humans are content to remain in the comfort of the familiar. They dislike change. They dislike the unknown. They fear letting go of what they know. They fear letting go of what they are used to. Where they live their lives.

If you let go of the things that have taken up residence in your minds, in your hearts, in your emotions, what then takes the place of that? If you let go of negative things that you have built your life around, what comes next? Something worse or something better? The truth is, until you let go of the things you are familiar with, you will never know what waits for you. You will make assumptions about what it is, and they will take the form you choose, negative or positive, but the truth is not discovered until you let go of what has become comfortable. What is familiar. What you have decided to live with, blame yourself for, hurt over, be sad over, be stuck in.

How do we gain the strength to venture into the discomfort of the unfamiliar? By peeling off the layers of the familiar in which we live. Years spent in adding more and more to what we are comfortable with, what we allow ourselves to wallow in, what we choose to feel every day, what we never stop thinking about. How do we undo this damage? One layer at a time.

In my practice, I always have a worst first approach. If you cannot work through the worst thing first, you cannot get beyond anything that comes after. Everything else is informed by what happened first – what affects you most – what worst is for you. Everything else follows along after that, is added to that, is layered on to that. It is the hardest place to start and it is the most important for letting go, for learning lessons, and for moving on.

The comfort of the familiar is very difficult to change because it is frightening. The layers we have added provide a way to not look at the things that started us on the path we walk over and over day after day going nowhere. If we remove the layers, then we have to look at the truth and the truth is scary, difficult, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar.

Freedom is the only condition for happiness – letting go gives us happiness. If we truly desire to be free of events, thoughts, emotions that keep us stuck – we must let go – to move towards happiness.

Until next time,
Deborah

If you feel stuck in the comfort of the familiar of your past, perhaps counseling can help you find freedom. Call 406-413-9904 or email mindfulmontanawellness@gmail.com or click the BOOK button on Facebook to schedule a FREE initial counseling consultation.