Back to School Basics: Put Away the Phones

We seem to intuitively know that building a bond takes intention and attention. You set aside time to date your partner, you take time to have a conversation, you keep phones away or on silent. You focus on your new love and limit distraction. You probably wouldn’t dream of talking on the phone or skimming your instagram feed on a first date. You don’t just get to build a bond with your partner, then sit back and coast. It’s a daily practice to nurture and maintain a relationship bond. Phones often gets in the way of the necessary attention to keep your relationship healthy! We're so busy paying attention to email and social media that we can inadvertently stop paying attention to the people in front of us. It’s easy to get lulled into comfort and complacency, but it’s that lack of connection and attunement that underlies a lot of conflict.  So here's some practical tips to help maintain that connection and limit some conflict by putting away your phones.

1. Make mealtimes phone-free times. This is good even if you're dining alone to practice mindful eating, but it’s especially important if you're with someone to use that time to connect, laugh, and share in the experience of the meal.

2. Establish a phone free schedule. I suggest turning off your phone/tablet/laptop the hour after you get home from work or the hour before bed. Use that time to talk and connect.

3. Add activities together that are incompatible with having phones out. This can be a walk in nature, playing tennis, sex, playing board games, etc. Do something together that encourages you to be present and connected and active.

 

 

"Where Should We Begin?" Podcast

Esther Perel is a bad ass in the therapy world. She's a leading expert in relationships, sexuality, and infidelity. She's also insightful, creative, and hilarious.

She has a series of recorded couples therapy sessions on audible.com and Amazon. She tackles sex, parenting, intimacy and does so with depth and grace. I highly recommend listening to it to get new insights and perspectives on relationships as well as to normalize relationship dynamics and build empathy for yourself and others as you listen to stories every human can relate to.

Enjoy!!

May Meditation Series: Diffuse awareness

This type of meditation is about noticing. Just noticing. Not controlling or fixing or changing or judging. Just noticing. You can practice with watching clouds, watching the rise and fall of your belly with breathing, watching animals or children play...the options are limitless. Simply observe. If you notice a thought, don't cling to that thought or push that thought away. Simply notice it and go back to noticing your surroundings.

This meditation is great for practicing non attachment and acceptance. It's good for getting us outside of ourselves, our egos, and our thoughts. Its also good for relaxation.

I suggest starting this practice daily. Start with doing a discrete 2-5 minute practice and go from there.

Validation Strategies: Reflect Back

In therapy, we look at ways to build relationships through effective communication. There are some basic ways to help people feel connected and, in psycho-babble terms, they're called "validation strategies". If any of your relationships feel strained or if you just want to enhance an already kick ass relationship, do more validating!!! In this little series I’m doing, I will go through the different strategies of validation.

Strategy Two: Reflect back

So, since you are a good student and have been practicing the first validation strategy in the validation strategy series, it’s time to add on. This next validation strategy is a way for you to stay engaged and check for understanding.

"Reflecting back" is simply echoing back what the person is saying, or stating what you observed, making sure that you are actively listening, comprehending, and tracking what’s being said. When you reflect back, you give validation to the other person, and proov that what they said is being heard and understood. In the end, isn’t that what we all want!?!  

Here’s a few admittedly lame examples: "When I was late to dinner you thought I did it on purpose and were mad. Did I get that right?" "So I’m hearing that you would really want me to take out the trash every other day." "Sounds like you are in a lot of pain still from that surgery."

Key point: No judgement, be open minded, truly seek to understand. Be aware of sarcasm, tone and body language (an eye roll or a sigh or mocking tone while reflecting back is a recipe for disaster!). The goal is to connect and promote more openness with the other person and a judgemental vibe will shut that down.

Alright you crazy kid, go out there and give it a try! You may not do it perfectly, but that's ok. Keep trying and watch your communication and connection improve!

Interview with an Artist: Suzanne Holmes Rutherford

Living your best life takes many forms and requires many skills. One of the top ten skills is creativity. Creativity and mental health and their influence on each other is interesting to me personally and professionally. Sometimes the greatest art is born of pain and suffering. Sometimes pain and suffering rob us of creativity.  Because it's interesting to me, because I hope I can spark some thought and creativity in my clients and readers, and because I selfishly like picking the brains of creative people, I decided to do a series of interviews about creativity and mental health. This interview is a special one for me, not just because its with an uber talented, thoughtful, and generous woman (check out how detailed her responses are!!!), but also because she's my aunt! I hope you enjoy her insight and wit as much as I do!

 

1. You're an artist. What kind of art do you do?

I'm a manual labourer lol. Pianist, writer, songwriter, playwright, mentor.  Sometimes I'm doing public performances, but most days I'm on my own working from home.

Some days I am playing for corporate events, seniors, high school musicals.   Or even royalty (three VIP solo piano gigs for HRH Princess Anne of Britain in 2013).

Other days I am a writer. I'm a published non-fiction writer with a Fortune 500 Company, but in 2017 I hope to publish some short stories and an illustrated poetry collection.

Some days it's taking the grubby fleece of daily life and spinning it into a song.

Some days it's being a judge at the national level for the JUNOS (Canada's Grammy Awards)

Some days it's teaching a developmentally delayed young adult to play that tune she loves by ear, coaxing her surgically altered fingers to press the keys in the right sequence.

Some days it's mentoring, encouraging young writers to share their stuff at an open mic at a monthly coffeehouse for community youth which artist friends and I helped run for years (hopefully resuming in 2017)

Some days it's creating an entire universe, moving the pieces forward for my two act rock musical for which I wrote the script, lyrics, music and arrangements. Pilgrim's Progress: The Musical has had two workshops with a who's who of actors and directors. It will have an international audience for its Canadian debut in October 2017.  

2. It's not uncommon for creative types to struggle with mental health issues. What do you see as the interplay between mental health and creativity?

No friction, no fire.

Auschwitz survivor psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning is a frequent read for me. He's speaking from the furnace, right?

I believe we make art when we intentionally reflect on our personal quest for sanity, using our gifts to help understand why we're here.  But there's a flip-side: if we are not mindful about it, if we don't process life through our artistic gift, then it is easy to spiral into anxiety/ addictions (like I did today)

Being an artist is like being an alchemist. But the beauty of it is - you don't need the perfect combination of materials to make the gold. You can use anything, the hell and shit that life throws you, or the tiny lovely detail you notice, and transform it into something arresting, something wondrous and memorable. Being an artist is not about having the 'Midas Touch', it's about having divine eyes to truly 'see' the world around you, the world within you, the eyes to look beyond into the future and see what something could be, if you let it pass through your particular gift. 

But you need the energy, the physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional energy to do that, to keep doing that.

Daily headlines tell me being an artist is a perilous pursuit.

But the best artists I know are some of the sanest, hard-working, balanced people around.

I find that the very act of making art brings clarity, renews sanity, and restores balance.

Making art means I have to have the humility to submit to my gift in life and the daily discipline to develop that gift to its highest potential.

I am fascinated by the power of humour to energize, slyly inform the audience and also affirm the artist. To laugh daily and to be joyful runs counter to the cult of meh, despair, nihilism and death in our society. Making art is increasingly a comedic (yes there is sorrow and tension but in the end you produce something vs, say, nothing) and a subversive act; it's a middle finger to the haters. Gotta love how Andrew Lloyd Webber named his publishing firm "The Really Useful Company" and that Stephen Spielberg's is "Dreamworks".  

3. You can't possibly feel creative all the time. What do you do to foster creativity and practice your craft even when you're not feeling it? Any tricks you've picked up to help you get out of your own way?

The artist as caregiver is my reality. Having enough time and energy to do my art is a constant battle. I was, of necessity, a stay-at-home mom for my special needs young children, one gifted and two profoundly handicapped. During those years I practiced for my national concert exam for my piano performance degree in chunks of three to five minutes at the piano. I wrote after the kids were in bed.  

Practicing and writing in small windows of time is a constant necessity for me as I continue to care for my loved ones. Reading, getting out to movies, concerts, theatre, eating with friends, encouraging and investing in fellow artists, and self-care are all important soul-renewing activities for me in what is essentially a solitary life.

4. If you could suggest one thing for my readers to do to help them live their best life, what would that be?

Love is the opposite of fear. Love is creative!

I want to rethink the 'artist' paradigm completely. The 'art gene' is not just bestowed on a favoured few, dooming the rest of us who got left behind the door to draw stick figures - badly. The birthright of every human is to be a creative person. Functional MRIs reveal that our every personal encounter biochemically induces physical changes to the structures in our brain. We are actually sculpting one another - for better or worse. Our lives are a vast interconnected work of art.  How awesome is that?

My sense of self-worth comes not from my bank account or reviews. I choose to believe that a loving Creator made me and, though I am very imperfect, loves me perfectly, unconditionally. This leaves me free to love and enjoy and encourage others and free to do my own art -  because I am so loved.

So every day I am free to make a choice: do I feed my own fears - or do I remember I am loved, and use my gifts to make art, seen or unseen,  today?

Suzanne Holmes Rutherford Hon. B.A. ARCT Piano Performance is a Canadian pianist, songwriter, and playwright.She has had a ton of fun judging the JUNO awards, playing piano for HRH Princess Anne, and getting pointers from Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Wicked) for writing PILGRIM'S PROGRESS the Musical. The Muskoka Chautauqua Festival will showcase Pilgrim in October 2017; as it is the 100th anniversary of the Muskoka Chautauqua, all international Chautauquas, including the flagship New York State one and all affiliates will be in attendance.

Find Suzanne Holmes Rutherford on LinkedIn