Using Metaphors to Visualize Problems is Like a Massage for Your Brain

Posted on May 21, 2016 by tcadmin

“Jealousy feels like everybody in the world getting ice cream brought to them on the couch and you get none” – Olivia, age 7

Writing teachers must be doing an incredible job. The young people I see in therapy are masters of descriptive metaphor when it comes to describing the challenges they face in life and in how they might overcome them.

brain-massage Recent brain research has uncovered some of the potential healing benefits of thinking in metaphor. A 2008 study found that the sensory areas of the brain are activated when we hear a metaphor. Imagining yourself to be as ‘cool as a cucumber’ might send soothing signals to your brain in a stressful situation. Metaphors can bridge the mind/body gap, allowing us to understand our experiences and connect to our physical sensations, which can help us reduce stress.

Therapists have long understood the benefits of metaphor in helping clients shift perspective and unlock old ways of thinking. Metaphors can help a therapist and client visualize a problem more clearly and envision new solutions that might be difficult to imagine when one is focused on the immediate context and detail.

Olivia struggles with sharing her mother’s attention with her twin brother. Her comment above allowed us to talk about her feelings in a way that was removed enough from the anger she felt towards him that she could contemplate different possible ways of dealing with them.

ME: And who brings the ice cream to everyone else?

HER: The mothers!

ME: And what do you want to tell all those mothers?

HER: I want some ice cream too!!

ME: And what happens if you get some ice cream?

HER: I’m not so mad at the rest of them and it’s fair.

From here, we were able to talk more about how it felt when her brother was getting more attention than she was and she was able to feel a sense of control and calm that wasn’t accessible to her when she was angry at her brother.

Children aren’t the only ones who can benefit from visualizing through metaphor. Jarvis is a self-described worrier.

“I’m always focused on the worst possible outcome. I can’t even enjoy a night out because I’m thinking about what it will be like if things don’t go well.”

“Sounds like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Yes that! Exactly”

“Maybe there’s only one shoe.”

I asked Jarvis to picture one shoe hanging above the floor. Then I asked him to see it fall to the ground and to imagine looking up again to see no other shoe. “What is it like to know there isn’t a second one waiting to fall?” I asked. He told me he felt he could keep his eyes focused forward. He said he felt his chest loosen and his shoulders relax a bit. His homework would be to call up the image of the shoe whenever he started to imagine what might go wrong and see if that helped him stay a little more focused on the present. Two weeks later, he reported being much more able to enjoy himself, though sometimes he confessed to imagining the second shoe.

Think of a problem you are currently facing. How might you use metaphor to describe it? What metaphors are you already using and not aware of (Are you painted into a corner? Are you walking on a tightrope?) Rather than focus on the details of your problem, imagine the metaphor as literal. Can you see yourself holding an umbrella to balance you across the high wire or finding a creative way across the painted floor?

Creating a visual picture can help you become more flexible in dealing with challenges and may reduce the physical symptoms of anxiety and stress you’ve been experiencing.

Anxiety in the Classroom

Posted on March 18, 2016 by tcadmin

Take a moment, right now, and pay attention to what’s going on around you. How are you seated in your chair? Is there tension in your neck, shoulders, jaw? Is it noisy where you are? Do you feel rushed to finish this article and get on to your next task? Close your eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths. What do you notice now? Did anything change in your posture? How about your heart rate? Maybe nothing is different. Notice that too and notice how you feel about that.

That reflecting you just did was possible courtesy of your pre-frontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain that allows you to regulate your emotional responses and override any automatic behaviors or habits. It is central to self-regulation and empathy. And it doesn’t fully develop until the mid to late 20s.

When we experience something threatening, the fight or flight response is immediately triggered and the part of your brain that deals with emotions hijacks the thinking part of your brain. The prefrontal cortex, when activated, can serve as the ‘brakes’ to this response, lowering the alert signals and allowing you to assess the situation with more reason.

Children, however, do not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex to help them easily regulate high emotions. What might not seem to the rational, adult mind to be more than an annoyance, is perceived in the child brain as a threat. Fear triggers the release of stress hormones and if the child is unable to regulate the response, anxiety and then panic may set in.

Anxiety, in and of itself, is not an affliction. Anxiety helps us to be alerted to our surroundings. It can propel us to action and improve our performance. Anxiety is a signal to us that there is an imbalance between what we feel and what we think or know. Ruminating about the past and worrying about the future represent a skew towards overthinking. Becoming overwhelmed by emotions represents the other end of the pole.

What to Look for and How to Address Anxiety in the Classroom

In order to help children manage their anxieties we need to first recognize some indicators that a child may be experiencing high levels of stress. Anxious children may verbally express worries about grades, friends, physical activities etc. Preoccupation with getting the right answer or completing tasks perfectly are also indicators of anxiety. Restlessness, difficulty focusing or withdrawal may also be observed in the anxious child. These symptoms can often be mistaken for attention deficit disorder (ADHD) prematurely.

All children, whether they experience high levels of anxiety or not, can benefit from breathing and relaxation exercises to help them become more aware of body sensations and emotions. Here are some easy to implement strategies to combat classroom anxiety:

Use language children can understand to describe what they might be feeling. Instead of anxiety, try words like ‘worry’, ‘afraid’, ‘pressure’.
Incorporate breathing, stretching and relaxing exercises into the daily schedule. Before beginning a new subject, ask children to pay attention to their breathing, see if they can fill a ‘belly balloon’ with a longer, slow breath and then blow it out as if they are blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Invite children to comment on what they notice this changes in their bodies. Invite children to tense and then relax their muscles to help them recognize the difference.
Teach children to celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn. Neil deGrasse Tyson recently lost a popular radio quiz show game on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”. When the host asked if he was embarrassed to have gotten two out of the three questions wrong he said “If I had gotten all three right, I wouldn’t have learned anything. Today I got to learn two new things.”
Allow time for students to reflect on mistakes and successes so that reflection is a part of the learning process and not only as a consequence or punishment. Ask children to regularly name what they did that worked for them and what they will improve on next time.

Finally, we can’t teach what we don’t know. Learning more about how anxiety impacts you and how to manage your own symptoms will better prepare you to recognize and respond to children’s behaviors as they occur in your class. You can learn more about anxiety and how to manage it in our video courses at TeacherCoach.com.

Thinking Styles That Can Leave You Feeling Mad as a Hatter

Posted on March 4, 2016 by tcadmin

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday this week, we will draw our inspiration from a much-loved children’s book Alice in Wonderland.

Alice is chatting with the Mock Turtle and Gryphon when they ask her to tell them about her past. So much has happened to poor Alice in the past 24 hours that she says to her friends:

‘It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’

What a liberating notion, that what is possible today could be completely unexpected and different from all the adventures that came before it. So often we become locked into patterns of relating to others based on our previous experiences. We’ve been hurt before so we protect ourselves through predictions and conclusions we draw based on yesterday’s stories. And we rarely take the time to check out whether our predictions are correct or if there might be another possible outcome.

Here are 10 common thinking styles that can lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety and a feeling of being ‘stuck’ in our relationships and personal lives:

All or Nothing Thinking: This is sometimes called black and white thinking and leads to the belief that something is only ever right or wrong.
Negative Filter: Giving weight only to negative information or information that supports our negative assumptions
Jumping to Conclusions: Believing that we know what others are thinking (Mindreading) or that we know what will happen (Fortune Telling)
Emotional Reasoning: Assigning incorrect meaning to feelings “I’m embarrassed so I must be stupid”
Labeling: Assigning labels to others and to ourselves
Over-Generalizing: “People are always selfish”, “Nothing ever works out for me”
Minimizing the Positive: Making excuses that diminish your accomplishments
Catastrophizing: Blowing things out of proportion and imagining the worst possible outcome
“Shoulding”: Using critical words like ‘should’, ‘must’, and ‘ought’ about ourselves can leave us feeling guilty and as if we’ve already failed. Using them about others can leave us frustrated when they fail to meet our expectations.
Personalization: Taking responsibility for things that are not completely your fault or blaming others for something for which you bear some responsibility.

If you’d like your own “Through the Looking Glass” experience, consider choosing one of these patterns you recognize in yourself and spend an entire day challenging yourself to both notice when you are using the pattern and trying to do it’s opposite. For example, what might happen if, for each time you notice something negative in the day, you seek out something you can also appreciate?

Who knows what you might uncover? As Alice says:

“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.”

Enough is Enough: The Dangers of Perfectionism

Posted on December 11, 2015 by tcadmin

He wasn’t really sure what to make of my comment. To my client, the notion was ridiculous at best and most likely impossible. “What if the very fact that you exist means you are worthy?” I had asked. “What would your life be like if you were enough right now?”

He humored me at first, I think assuming this was the touchy-feely stuff of therapy. But I pushed him. “No, really. What would a day be like for you if everything you did that day was neither good, nor bad -just enough?”

“Well, I’d sure be a lot happier,” he said. “And I’d probably get a lot more done.” J is a perfectionist. He is also depressed. The expectations he has of himself are extraordinarily high. And the fear of not living up to those expectations has frequently rendered him unable to act at all.

Perfectionism is often mistakenly praised as a characteristic of highly successful achievers. But the all-or-nothing thinking and heavy focus on perfect results is quite self-destructive. ‘Perfect’ doesn’t exist. It can’t be achieved and those who seek it are never fully satisfied as they continuously evaluate and reevaluate their progress for what more could be improved.

This fear of failure or at least of mediocrity creates a feedback loop that encourages more anxiety. J. is asked to write a summary report for his supervisor. He becomes tense as he worries about it being perfect so he spends hours on it, editing and refining it. He is convinced the extra time he is spending is improving the quality of the report so some of his tension is released which encourages him to continue the pattern of becoming anxious and deliberating over the work.

Sometimes he releases the tension of the worry by avoiding the report all together. He then begins a lot of negative self-talk and judges himself for not being motivated, and sinks further into his depression. J. has not yet come to believe that some of his greatest growth will come from his mistakes. It’s likely that mistakes were not tolerated when he was younger, and certainly not celebrated as learning opportunities.

If you find yourself paralyzed by your own perfectionist predilections, a change in perspective may be in order. First, review some of your most brilliant failures. Can you remember a time when you learned something from a mistake or bad decision? Make a list to refer to the next time you worry whether you will get something ‘right’. Mistakes tell us that we took a risk and pushed ourselves towards growth.

Next, practice non-judgement-of yourself, of experiences, of others. Notice when you attach a value statement to an achievement, even if it’s positive. Rushing to label an experience as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ cheats you of the time to appreciate the full moment. That sandwich you just ate was more than “awesome”, it was spicy, the bread was soft, it reminded you of the time you had a picnic with your younger brother. That lesson plan you delivered wasn’t “terrible”, it didn’t fit the needs of the class you had that morning. When you accept yourself and others as human, messy, flawed and imperfect, you are likely to see your anxiety lessen and may even experience more genuine relationships with others.

Finally, pay attention to your self-care. When you are not eating or sleeping well or are feeling otherwise depleted you are likely to be more rigid and less tolerant of your anxiety and less accepting of your mistakes.

Don’t Let Your Anxiety Call the Shots

Posted on August 10, 2015 by tcadmin

Someone recently gifted me and my son with water balloon sling shots and we launched our epic battle in the yard. In his eagerness to pelt me, he would often fail to pull the band back far enough and his balloon would fall to the ground. In my effort to take revenge on all his pre-teen challenges of my authority, I would often pull the band so far back that I would shoot far past my taunting target.

The slingshots are a good metaphor for the role of anxiety in our lives. Anxiety produces tension that can motivate us to action. But too much tension leaves us unable to direct our energies effectively and too little can leave us stuck. Therapies to relieve anxiety may deny us the chance to harness the tension and use it to propel us towards change. Awareness of how we become anxious, what supports our worries and the type of anxiety we have can help us to cope with the symptoms and listen to the cues for what we need in the moment.

Anxiety occurs in two general categories, anticipatory – worrying about what has not yet happened, and ruminative – dwelling on the past. Of course many of us move between the two. While there are benefits to planning ahead and learning from past mistakes, our only real opportunity to make a change is in the present moment and the more awareness we can direct towards the here and now, the more choice and flexibility we can have in how to respond to life’s pressures.

Here are a few tips to help you get started on experiencing the present. See our courses on anxiety for more.

Live here, deal with what is present, not absent

Stop imagining. Experience the real

Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather taste, smell, see, feel…

Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts

Surrender to being as you are

Feed Your Head

Posted on June 13, 2015 by tcadmin

Remember the last time you rode a roller coaster? Or had to speak in front of a large audience? Or found a spider on your arm? Did you just think about your stomach? Gut instinct. I feel it in my belly. I have butterflies in my stomach. These aren’t just expressions.

Scientists have long known that neurons that are embedded in the alimentary canal, or gut, send messages to our brain. So rich is this network that it is sometimes referred to as ‘the second brain’ and it is partially responsible for our mental state.

New research on the bacteria that lives in our guts suggests that unhealthy bacteria plays a key role in behavioral and emotional problems including depression, anxiety, ADHD and even autism. In fact, it is estimated that nearly 95% of the body’s serotonin is manufactured in the gut when it is functioning normally. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter responsible for transferring messages through the brain. Serotonin levels and the brain’s receptivity to it are believed to be associated with mood and depression. Our modern diets of excessive sugar, processed foods, refined grains and genetically engineered foods have compromised our gut health, destroying healthy bacteria and increasing the amount of bad yeast and bacteria.

All is not lost, however. Healthy bacteria can be returned to the gut with some simple changes to diet. Reducing the amount of processed food and increasing your intake of fermented foods such as kefir, some yogurts, tempeh and sauerkraut or kim chee can re-balance your gut flora. People who do not enjoy the taste of fermented foods may wish to take a pro-biotic supplement available in most health food and grocery stores. Before grabbing any heavily promoted ‘pro-biotic’ yogurts or drinks, do be sure to check the sugar content or you may be robbing Peter to pay Paul and not getting the most health benefits.

So before resorting to an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication, perhaps, in the words of Jefferson Starship, remember what the dormouse said: Feed your head.

The Grades are In

Posted on March 14, 2015 by tcadmin

“You are FAILING the sixth grade!!!” It wasn’t just hyperbole, my son’s progress report this week does show four Fs and getting him to complete and turn in work has been a struggle since the fall. I was angry. I was frustrated. I expected more from him. But the truth is, I was afraid. I was afraid he’d be tracked as a poor student, I even worried that his sixth grade transcript would keep him from college. And as he cried and told me about class changes, block schedules, losing things in his locker and work getting lost in his backpack, I thought about the family not far from us who would never again get to be exasperated with their son or reprimand him about his work. Their 13 year old boy took his life after receiving an email from his school about a failing grade.

Suicide is currently the leading cause of death among kids my son’s age, killing more young people than cancer. This frightens me. Stress, anger, frustration and depression are all common in children who consider suicide. They are also necessary and normal feelings of teens as they figure out who they are, what their goals are and how they decide they measure up. A 2011 (Hansen, B., & Lang, M) study of suicide rates in students found that suicides increase during the school year but dramatically decrease during the summer and school holidays. The researchers controlled for seasons and weather and differences in ethnicity, race, gender and income. In all groups, the trend remained; suicide rates increase when school is in session. Let that sink in for a moment. Suicide rates go up when our kids go back to school.

We are creating environments where our children feel unvalued, uncared for, and incapable of managing stress and disappointment. We are narrowing the definition of success to discrete, measurable outputs, and forgetting to consider all that is gained through building relationships with peers and teachers and through trial and error.

My lovely boy is funny, creative and kind. He is a talented singer and artist, he stands up for others when they are being treated unfairly. He can cook. He can design costumes and build machines out of paper and cardboard. He makes me laugh daily and for a little while, I forgot that those are grades I care about most and that is the curriculum I’ve been using to raise him.

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