Gaslighting - A Form of Manipulation

If you were like me, you had parents who did their best but made mistakes. One mistake that can have lasting impact is invalidating or gaslighting.       

Whats gaslighting

It’s basically crazy making. Its denying or significantly distorting facts and feelings. In my house it looked like not talking about fights or denying fights, being told I was too sensitive, being told that I was selfish for not helping even though I didn't know help was required, being told "I never said that" or "I already told you that". There was a lot of stress in my family and that sometimes left insufficient room for my needs and emotions.           

Is Gaslighting Manipulation?

Gaslighting is often described as a form of emotional abuse and manipulation. But it’s not always so conscious and sinister. Sometimes a parent or caretaker simply doesn't have capacity or skill or emotional space to see our emotion or take our perspective. But regardless, the result of chronic invalidation is that we are left separated for our self, our feelings, and our intuition. The initial anger we may have felt as a kid gets turned inward and manifests in poor self worth, shame, and depression. Most of the people I work with (and in my case as well) deal with that by numbing and soothing those invalidated emotions with food, sex, alcohol, drugs, codependency, etc. I would happily be out of a job if parents would be able to validate their kids emotions.

I think through therapy and work on ourselves we learn to validate ourselves and be comfortable with our own reality and then can we be able to tolerate the feelings and perceptions of others. By doing that we can make an impact on future generations.

Healing From an Eating Disorder

While all eating disorders are different in terms of primary symptoms, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder all center around a dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and appearance. But compulsive behaviors and obsessive thinking around food, weight, and appearance are only the tip of the iceberg of an eating disorder. 

Below the surface, we see that those behaviors could be a result of mental health issues, trauma, grief and loss, identity and societal pressure, gender and sexuality, or attachment wounds…. and not uncommonly, all of the above. A person with an eating disorder isn’t being vain or picky or selfish or sneaky or whatever by focusing on food, weight, and appearance, they’re just trying the best they can in the way they know how to cope and keep it together. 

Using an Eating Disorder to Cope 

People use eating disorder behaviors because (unfortunately) they work. Food and exercise impact our body chemicals and physiology. They can help ground and soothe anxiety and trauma by helping distract by focusing on food instead of pain or mindlessly eating or exhausting your body through exercise or being too hungry to feel emotions fully. They are also a way to have control. Maybe you can’t control your mind or your family, but you can always control your food and appearance. Everyone has their own specific ways and reasons why their eating disorder works…until it doesn’t.

Healing More Than Just an Eating Disorder 

Healing an eating disorder is complex in that there are usually hidden aspects of the person's life that lead to using food as a form of control. It does take  healing the relationship with food but, more often than not, that comes through healing the relationship with self and others that either were broken before the eating disorder or got broken as the eating disorder took over. 

Just focusing on food and weight in treatment would be a bandaid on a broken bone (at best).  Healing looks like attending to all those underlying issues and not just focusing on the eating disorder. The eating disorder was there to do a job (manage a complex, painful, and challenging life) and our mission in therapy is to heal old wounds and add new tools and skills so that the eating disorder is no longer needed. 

Because eating disorders can be quite damaging and even lethal, they often aren’t just treated by a therapist. Depending on the severity of symptoms and health issues, treatment often also involves a medical doctor, registered dietician, or psychiatrist. If they’re caught early or in less severe cases, these may not be as necessary as often, but like all eating disorder treatment, those decisions come on an individualized basis. 

Eating disorder treatment is slow, complex, and challenging but also rewarding, transformative, and, most importantly, possible.

Depression–Friend or Foe?

By reading the title, I bet you are wondering if there is a typo where the word 'friend’ exists in the same sentence as depression. How is that possible? We hate depression, right? Almost everything about depression on the internet explains how it is enemy number one and how we can overcome it. In many instances, I agree with the desire to get rid of depression as it can be incredibly debilitating to not just the individual but those around them as well. However, I would like to suggest something different. 

Treat Depression as a Friend

Let us view depression as a friend, just for a little bit. Consider this a thought exercise. The more time I spend practicing as a therapist, the more I have noticed clients’ goals of excommunicating the big-bad ’depression’. People are taught that depression is something that should be “treated”, “overcome”, or “dealt with”. Society tells us that people with depression are sick and need to have it taken care of. 

Ideally, it sounds wonderful to get rid of this so-called ‘negative’ energy and be able to enjoy the sunshine and rainbows of the world. But what is holding them back? It could be because getting rid of something that is so deeply rooted in our nervous systems feels impossible and even discouraging.

So let us put on our new filtered lens and take a peek at what is the purpose of depression in me. Have you noticed how depression has been there to protect you from further harm? Minimizing risks? Evolutionary speaking, depression encourages the individual to rest. 

“While depression may be maladaptive when it comes to mood and social interactions, the symptoms could be quite adaptive when it comes to keeping a person alive while fighting infection. The theory also helps explain why stress can trigger depressive episodes. It may be the body’s effort to amp up the immune response in preparation for infection.” (Walton, 22)

Different Ways to Look at Depression

If we take a break from resisting this very important part of us, we just might notice the purpose of its existence in our lives. To try something different, would be to understand and befriend it first. Once you feel like you have made peace with depression as a part of you, only then can you start to encourage that part to move over to the passenger seat, while you focus on taking the right steps towards regaining control of your goals and life. 

• Being aware of how depression is negatively (isolation, lack of motivation) and positively (reevaluation of habits, re-prioritization, self-protection) impacting your lives. 

• Speak to yourself and the depressive part with kindness and grace. (Negative self-talk discourages us from making progress)

• Encourage the self in you to be in control of the daily goals that you wish to achieve. 

• Start collecting the small victories throughout your day.

• Rewrite your story with new-found motivation and confidence!

If you struggle with depression and want to learn how to see it from a different perspective, please schedule an appoint with me today.

Holiday Family Traditions

Family traditions can provide a feeling of cohesion and belonging within families. Family traditions can come in all shapes and sizes, from weekly pizza nights to annual holiday celebrations that bring extended family together. The holidays are a wonderful time to create new traditions for you and your family members to look forward to. Maybe you drink hot chocolate and watch a holiday movie on the first snow of the year. Or, if you celebrate Christmas, perhaps you decorate the Christmas tree as a family on the first Saturday of December.

Holiday Traditions to do with Family

1. Go cut down a Christmas tree together the weekend after Thanksgiving

2. Decorate the tree together while listening to Christmas music

3. Bake and decorate holiday themed cookies

4. Drive around to different neighborhoods and vote on your favorite light display

5. Build a gingerbread house

6. Ugly sweater contest

7. Give everyone in the family matching pajamas for your holiday festivities

8. Start a silly tradition your kids decide on

9. Write holiday letters to kids in the hospital

10. Adopt a family in need and gift them with items they want or need for the holidays

Benefits In Engaging in Family Traditions

• Traditions are often formed around values and areas of importance for families and can help family members discover more about their unique identity as a family.

• Families who come together around a common interest when engaging in a tradition can feel a sense of cohesion and closeness.

• Joining in traditions as family members allows an opportunity to “show up” for one another, even in times of stress, frustration, hardship, and conflict.

• Traditions can help families create legacies and lasting memories that will live on with family members as treasured experiences.

Some families find it difficult to engage in traditions and experience the cohesion they desire. If you find yourself struggling to feel as close with your family as you would like, especially during the holiday season, please reach out to schedule an appointment today.

Stop Talking Yourself out of Therapy and Feel Better Today

The average amount of time people wait before seeking help is staggering.  The worst part is that people tend to only seek help when they feel awful or simply can’t handle what is going on any longer. They are agonizing, sometimes in silence and alone, for years.  You try your best to make things better, but a brain that is suffering isn’t going to be able to fix all the problems on it’s own.  You're stuck.

Then you get the courage to ask for help, and you hear this:

Just exercise!  You need some endorphins!  

Oh, I have these great new vitamins that you should try.

Just get over it, geeze it’s been long enough, time to move on.

That wouldn’t bother me, why does it bother you?

It’s just a phase, this too shall pass.

You must not be trying hard enough.

Meditate and do yoga.

Turn that frown upside down!

Sound familiar?!? Guess what? You won’t ever hear anything like that at CCFT.

Whatever you are suffering from, depression, anxiety, grief, relationship problems, eating disorders, mental health issues of all kinds, we will help you.  

We are here to hold your hand, listen to what you are going through and climb that mountain with you.  We are 100% devoted to your wellbeing and are experts in our fields.  Call today and feel better tomorrow. Book a session today on our website, or you can also call us directly:  303-881-3355.

To your wellbeing,

Carrie, Kate, Erika and Sarah

Thanksgiving Day Tips for People with Eating Disorders

Thanksgiving can be hard for everyone.

It's a lot of people, a lot of preparation and clean up, and of course there's all manner good old f-ed up family dynamics. But this food focused day can be exceptionally hard for people with eating disorders to navigate. Here's a few quick tips to help you deal with an eating disorder during the holidays.  

1. Keep your routine as normal as possible. Don't restrict or skip meals before dinner. Doing that may make it feel more safe, but it actually sets you up to be more anxious, less present, and more likely to struggle with diner if you go into the meal super hungry.

2. Don't spend extra time around the food. Limit time in prep and clean-up of food. Being around the food more than necessary may keep you focused on food and more likely to be anxious, calorie counting, or triggered to binge. Instead, see if you can spend time with friends and family outside the kitchen. When possible, before and after the meal, distract, distract, distract.

3. Don't drink much, if at all. That will make staying centered and grounded and connected more difficult.

4. Remember that it's just one meal. Regardless of culture and family messages, thanksgiving doesn't have to be a gluttonous free for all. It's just a meal. No need to eat past fullness. That being said, it's just one meal. Even if you eat more than you usually do, you may feel uncomfortable and at the same time you're safe. Your anxiety and fullness will pass. One meal doesn't make or break your life or your body. Usually bodies are far more flexible and forgiving with food than your eating disorder mind is.

5. Try to redirect your focus from food to gratitude and family. Food doesn't have to be the centerpiece of your day. The day originated as a way to celebrate friends and family and give thanks. Don't let your anxiety and eating disorder rob you of that. The meal can be challenging AND you can still feel and focus on gratitude. Be grateful that you have a meal to attend, that you are brave for showing up, that you have values you are moving towards (connection, family, love, humor, integrity, etc.) that are more important than your eating disorder.

If you or a loved one are struggling with an eating disorder, we are here to help. Contact us to schedule a consult.

How to Deal with Family Estrangement

Recently I have had a lot of families seeking my help because the dynamics between parents and their adult children have become so conflicted and found communication so difficult that the family members have cut themselves off from one another. There is no one type of interaction, parenting style, or conflict that leads to estrangement or family cutoff and it is rarely due to one event but rather more likely to be the result of a history of complicated factors.

Family cutoff is common, and often a healthy choice, when there is toxic parenting, abuse, or addiction within the family. More than one in every four American adults are estranged from a family member. However, family estrangement and cutoff are becoming more common for less severe reasons. Our increased mobility, focus on personal well-being, and a shift towards a more individualistic culture means that many are less reliant on relatives than in previous generations. Joshua Coleman, an author on family cutoff, writes, “today nothing ties an adult child to a parent beyond that adult child’s desire to have that relationship.”

Western society has also become more politically and culturally divided than ever and families are following this pattern. Value differences related to disagreements of opinion about sexual orientation, gender identity, religious beliefs, politics, and race has been cited as the cause of family estrangement by more than one in three mothers in the US. Most recently, disagreements the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination have led to more family estrangement.

In addition to disagreements and value differences other common reasons for family division include, lack of flexibility when one family member asks for a change in the relationship dynamics, including the lack of respect for new boundaries, holding on to perceived slights from the past, disagreements about money or inheritance, perceived or actual differences in the treatment of siblings, uneven division in responsibility for aging parents, or loyalty to a newer relationships (spouses taking precedence over parents). As opposed to the more severe reasons for family cutoff, these conflicts mostly come down to the inability to resolve conflict, communicate in a healthy manner, and to listen effectively to one another.

The good news is there is hope for reconciliation. Family estrangement is rarely permanent and often comes with cycles of cutoff, distance, and reconciliation. However, the best solution is not to “let it go,” “just get over it,” or “forgive and forget.” Both parties need to work on their communication, understanding, and extend empathy for one another, not to exonerate someone for their wrongs, but rather to make that person’s behavior less personal to you. Adult children who understand that most parents do the best they can with the tools they have will be more likely to understand perceived slights or mistakes their parents made are not personal but rather a part of being human.

For the relationship to move forward, it is important for both parties to be able to express and what has hurt them in the past in and feel heard.

Parents who can listen to their adult children without defensiveness and validate their experiences, even if they disagree with their interpretation of events, are perceived as more easily approachable by their children and lessen the likelihood of harsh disagreements in the future. It’s also vital for both parties to accept their family members as they are without accepting their hurtful behavior.

You have a right not to be attacked or blamed for all the bad outcomes in a person’s life. If not approached in the right way by both parties, these conversations can be hurtful and can lead to further conflict, especially if you are dealing with a toxic parent or complicating factors such as abuse or addiction. If this is the case, then seeking professional help from a neutral party who can mediate is recommended.

Other sources on family cutoff and estrangement:

• Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them by Karl Andrew Pillemer

• Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation by Fran Schumer Chapman

• Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict by Joshua Coleman

• Family Estrangement: A Matter of Perspective by Kylie Agliias

If you are dealing with estrangement from your family and want to talk or need help bringing your family back together, please reach out to us. We are here to help you find your way back to happiness, whatever that might look like.

Conversations with Helpers and Healers: Clara Wisner, Certified Nutrition Therapy Practitioner

I am fascinated by the connection between our physical and emotional wellbeing.

In this interview, I talked to Clara, a Denver based nutrition therapist, to chat about her views on food and health and how she empowers herself daily to live her best life.

1. How do you work to help people feel better physically?

   • I am a certified nutrition therapy practitioner so I work with clients who have a range of different health symptoms and complaints.

   • Having a highly clinical education in nutrition, I blend this scientific knowledge of biology and physiology, with my deep and personal understanding of the emotional components of dietary and lifestyle change. By blending the clinical with the energetic, I create customized nutrition and lifestyle programs that facilitate true mind-body transformation for my clients.

   • On a physical level, I work with people from the perspective that their symptoms are clues to the physiological imbalances taking place in their body. Instead of trying to mask symptoms with whatever means possible, I figure out the root cause of my clients’ health issues. I do this by using my clinical training in, and deep understanding of, human physiology and nutrition. With this knowledge and experience, I address the specific nutrient imbalances, body systems failures, hormone disparities, and energy production issues.

   • I find that as I teach people how to support their bio-individual bodies through real food, good quality sleep, joyful movement, proper digestion, and stress management techniques their physical symptoms start to disappear.

2. As you help people feel better physically, what impact do you see that having on their mental health and relationships?

   • It’s difficult to say what happens first: the physical improvements or the mental and relational improvements.

   • I believe deeply (and my experience working with people speaks to this) that the mind and body are connected. I think of real health as having four sides: physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental. If we don’t look at, and address all four sides of this ‘total health box’, then we will never be able to fully heal.

   • With this belief driving every customized nutrition and lifestyle plan I create for my clients, I see my clients’ physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health improving all together, as one. They are all interchangeable.

   • For example, when you start to feel more energetic because your physiological energy production is unhindered by toxic foods, then it becomes easier to think more positively about moving your body. When you move your body in a way that feels good and energizes you, you’re more inclined to feel more emotionally stable. When you feel more emotionally stable you are more likely to pursue personal development and activities that give you a sense of purpose and connection.

   • This is just one simple progression that could begin by simply by eating in a way that makes your physiology more efficient and conducive to easy energy production.

3. What's something you've learned about wellness that they didn’t teach you in school?

   • I’ve learned that real health success stories come when a person stops trying to find the answers to their health problems outside of themselves, but, instead, starts to rely on their body’s own signals to determine what is good for them and not good for them.

   • Admittedly this takes some coaching (that’s what I’m good for!) and time to deconstruct old habits and learn your body’s language again. But learning your body’s language, trusting it to tell you when something is off, and having the commitment to make a change when your body does give you that sign, is the most powerful tool for your health.

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

   • I would suggest to your readers that they create a morning routine.

   • A morning routine can be the first baby step that leads towards huge habit shift in the long run. It’s a commitment to starting each day in the same, grounding way.

   • Commit to waking up a set amount of time before you have to leave for work or before your kids wake up and drink some warm lemon water, do some stretching, meditate, eat a breakfast full of protein and good quality fat, then drink your coffee, and get ready for you day.

   • This is just an example, you can do anything that works for you and makes you feel sane, grounded, and cared for. The power in a morning routine is that it sets the stage for your whole day and makes it many times more likely that you will stick to healthier habits if you don’t feel rushed, out of control, or frantic.

Like what you see? Contact Clara at:

www.clarawisner.com

clara@clarawisner.com

720-202-2326

FB: REvolutionary Lifestyle

Instagram: @therevolutionarylifestyle

Therapy as a Part of the Heroines Journey

I had heard of the hero’s journey. It was made popular by Joseph Campbell and is an archetype for human struggle and growth and is the basis for most all stories.

But I hadn’t heard of the heroine’s journey. While the hero’s journey is the archetype of peoples interactions with their life and environment and society, the heroine’s journey is the archetype for peoples struggles with their emotions, needs, intuition, and sense of self. The hero deals with the exterior. The heroine deals with the interior.

I heard about this concept from a podcast (typical Erika). Here is an expert from an article that outlines the steps of the heroines journey.

Note: While this talks about the journey for a heroine with she/her pronouns, it’s not a gendered thing. Men and women and non binary folks in western society lose their feminine selves (connection to emotions and intuition) and over emphasize masculine energy (productivity, busyness, conquering). I bet if you ditch the gendered wording you’ll relate.

”1. ILLUSION OF THE PERFECT WORLD. The heroine has an idea of the world she is living in that is not entirely accurate. She uses coping strategies that she believes will work in the world as they believe it to be. Such coping strategies can include: naivete (nothing will happen to me); men/dominant group will take care of me; I am exceptional and will be “one of the guys” or just simply fit in seamlessly; everything will work out if I can please my mother/father/husband/boss/etc. This is us living as our false self.

2. BETRAYAL/DISILLUSIONMENT. The heroine’s coping strategies fall apart either because she is betrayed by someone, because they realize their coping strategy is toxic/ineffective, or because they realize their assumed world is not what they thought. This may be a loss of some kind, a breakup, divorce or a perceived failure that breaks the heroine down emotionally.

3.THE AWAKENING & PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY. The heroine may initially become hopeless but eventually she decides to do something about her situation. Others may try to discourage the heroine, but the force of the betrayal or failure pushes her on. The whole direction of her life begins to change. The heroine searches for the tools she needs, but is still looking outside of herself.

4. THE DESCENT—PASSING THE GATES OF JUDGMENT. The heroine experiences fear, abandonment, guilt, and/or shame associated with giving up her old way of being. She may be challenged by the outside world with judgments against her new identity. She may feel guilty or ashamed about sexual desires/expression. Or she may have fears/shame associated with expressing herself honestly and freely, honoring her intuition, setting boundaries, and/or letting go of relationships that aren’t in alignment anymore. Out of fear, she is trying desperately to control life and every aspect of it. As a result, nothing can flow smoothly. The heroine must give up control and all of her strategies/tools/defenses/“weapons” to move forward.

5. THE EYE OF THE STORM. In this stage (which corresponds with Murdock’s Boon of Success) the heroine experiences a small taste of success which brings about a false sense of security. The heroine may experience momentary—but not sustained—success because she is not a vibrational match for this success quite yet. She is still clenching, closing and trying to control. She has more to learn before she finds peace and wholeness.

6.DEATH/ALL IS LOST. In this stage the heroine realizes that her original coping strategies are no longer effective and that her new-found skills/tools/coping strategies are not sustainable. To continue on this way is depleting her energy, and as things get worse, the heroine feels there is no hope. Despite her best efforts, she fails to move forward and is forced to accept defeat. She is finally ready to surrender.

7. SUPPORT. The heroine meets someone (who may be a spirit/goddess/muse within, a friend, family member, love interest, spiritual teacher, coach, or specific resource) who offers support. The heroine embraces the “feminine” aspect of receiving support and accepts that she is not completely self-sufficient. The heroine surrenders as opens herself to receive. She embraces her need for support as a positive thing knowing that she needs to do things differently than she has in the past in order to successfully move forward.

8. REBIRTH/MOMENT OF TRUTH. The heroine finds her strength and resolve with the help of this support. She “awakens” and sees the world and her role within it differently. The heroine understands that brains, heart, and courage will be required, and she begins to face her own fear with compassion.

9. RETURN TO A WORLD SEEN THROUGH NEW EYES. The heroine sees the world for what it is (not better than it is and not worse). Her experience will change others—but receiving recognition for being a change-maker is not the heroine’s priority. The consequences of her experience and awakening may extend beyond her lifetime and into future generations through her children, younger siblings, friendships, etc. The heroine’s reward is spiritual and internal. She now knows herself on a deeper level and is committed to showing up as this centered, compassionate being in the world. This new outlook brings new, more effective strategies for living. I see this play out with myself and clients. People come in to therapy separated from their self. They thought the relationship, or job, or perfect body, or approval of family, or an impressive circle of friends, etc was supposed to be the thing. But in pursuit of that thing, they lose themselves. Some are addicted to substances or food or porn, or maybe numbed out, or just stuck. All are unhappy. Therapy can be a process by which we continue on the journey to ourselves. Spoiler alert: it sucks sometimes. If you’re lucky you reconnect to all your disowned rage and grief which ultimately carves out space for true connection and joy but first feels like a deep dark cave of pain. As someone’s who’s spent much more than one dark night of the soul in a dark cave, and will undoubtably go back another time or twenty, my favorite job is to be a tour guide and companion to the cave, and in the cave, and finally, at your pace, out of the cave. Basically, I’m loving the framework of the heroines journey as a blueprint. It feels more predictable and hopeful. I hope it resonates with someone else out there as well!”

We are all people on a journey, and whether you believe it or not, we all have both a hero’s and heroine’s journey to walk. If you need help figuring out the details of yours, I am here for you. Individual therapy can help you come to terms with your journey. Reach out to me today.