Tag psychotherapy

HOW TO BEAT TO-DO LIST FATIGUE

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

rake-leaves

Cleaning is a chore that’s always on my to-do list.  I guess it’s a fact of life that cleanup is never done only once and is never done, period.  Take raking leaves, for instance.  Like trick-or-treaters on Halloween, leaves blow in from neighborhoods far away so that it’s dismaying when the work of raking has to be done again.  And again.

It’s enough to kill motivation.

Sometimes we blame ourselves when we run out of gas.  Setting out to accomplish a new and exciting project takes longer to complete than anticipated.  Or the future isn’t unfolding as planned.  Unexpected events interfere with plans that were best laid.

Bill Murray, in the film “Groundhog’s Day”, had to learn it’s not about extrinsic motivation, delineated by accomplishment, inducement, or incentive; rather intrinsic motivation is what mattered.  This impulse breaks into the core of who are, where each of us can believe in it, live it.  It’s the inside-out of motivation, performed somewhere in a misty garden at dawn while interminably standing on one foot.

That’s easier for some of us than others.

Like a leaf-free yard, motivation (whether it’s pure or impure) isn’t a one-shot deal; it needs to be conscious, diligent and consistent — while at the same time being not.

Because you don’t “get motivated” and “stay motivated”, your supply of gung-ho needs to be renewed.  It’s sometimes true that a battery’s life is longer when it depletes all the way before recharging.

Being calm doesn’t just belong to the OMers. Smart, positive people know the trick to maintaining motivation, especially intrinsic motivation, has nothing to do with working harder or smarter or later into the night.  It’s about preparing for the future; a trusted destination even as the direction isn’t.

What would that look like on a daily basis?  Maybe reading a passage from well-loved book, reading your “mission statement”, or developing one if you haven’t already.  Committing to time spent indoors or out- (a leaf-strewn patio?) or anywhere you can relax into what’s around you.  Listen to favorite music, pet a pet, take a break from work or relaxing, meditate, stand on one leg.

Motivation isn’t here, it’s there, and we haven’t gotten “there” yet. We never do.

Writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell said “We must let go of the life we had planned so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

In this way, motivation is zen, an act of not being and not doing while at once being and doing.  Having nothing to do with some thing and something to do with nothing at all.

Want to be smarter than your to-do list?  Pack a sandwich and go find some leaves.

Kathe Skinner has been a psychotherapist in private practice for 20 years.  She and her husband, David, live in Colorado Springs with their two hooligans cats and a yard full of leaves. 

copyright, 2015  Being Heard, LLC

WOMEN’S LIB IS A LIE

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. 2 Comments

Speaking from a disabled woman’s point of view, living the “lib lie” in relationship simply doesn’t work.

The “lib lie” I’m talking about is putting career before relationship, being damned if I’ll make cacciatore, or being complimented for how I look.

Where was my head all these years.  I’ll tell you where: in the conference room, the kitchen, and in front of the mirror.

Truth be told, I like making cacciatore — and being appreciated for it.  The same as anybody would, including guysfishy.  Liberation doesn’t stop at individual freedom; its true worth is in how liberated our partnership is.  Oh, stop — I’m not talking about three ways.  See, if one partner realizes cultural or family baggage enough to detach a bit from it and the other partner is clueless, the relationship’s pretty lopsided.  But hey, some partners like their partners a tad underdone.

Clueless for real or clueless pretended, either path leads right back to a problem that’s repeated itself for generations.

Sherod Miller, co-founder of Interpersonal Communication Programs, defines a healthy relationship as the collaboration of two strong people “bridging” to each other across a committed lifetime.  Paula Derrow, writing in The New York TImes, calls it “leaning in together”.  Writing recently about her marriage in The New York Times, Paula describes a marriage right out of Home Depot.

A do-it-yourselfer, her marriage to another do-it-yourselfer spanned two states.   Their finances were separate, and so was ownership of their separate homes.  Except for weekends, each lived a separate life.

Talk about distancing.

When Paula was laid off from her job as a writer, she had reason to need her husband in very real ways, one assumes for the first time. Lying awake, the writer struggled with questions about her independence, whether she could afford to continue living separately, and whether her husband was encouraging and supportive only as a way to get her to come live with him and cook up a cacciatore.

I won’t say where Paula Derrow’s head was, but to come to the realization that her marriage was about the two of them together, not separately, is, to put it charitably, wrong-thinking.

More than most, those of us with disabilities, invisible or not, have had to come to terms with the lie that we can make it on our own.

The poor state of the world economy has left millions out of work, stressing personal worth and identity.   With so many jobless, you’d think social perception about being unemployed would’ve changed; it hasn’t.  Role expectations die hard.

Changes in the social order are happening all around us; role-turbulence is no longer reserved for the disabled or marginalized others.

These days, anyone can become marginalized.

Relationship’s great test is how to be together without losing oneself; how to get from one place to another while travelling together.

Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist and Relationship Coach specializing in work with couples whose relationship is affected by invisible disability.  Like most of her generation, she has been powerfully affected by the Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and has had trouble integrating that independence with the sometimes-limitations of multiple sclerosis.   She and her husband David live in Colorado where they teach couples to collobate their way to happier relationships.  Read more about she and David’s Communication Workshops at http://www.BeingHeardNow.com.

CHOOSING TO BE DISABLED.

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

Even if the claims that candy causes behavioral problems are anecdotal, one thing is for sure:

An American diet full of sugar is a significant cause of childhood obesity.

But it tastes so darned good.

The Centers for Disease Control report that 1 in 6 children between the ages of 2 and 19 is obese. Aside from the psychosocial aspects of being bullied or having no date for the 8th grade dance, there are significant health risks.

Like asthma, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and, as researcher Ashleigh May says, mental health problems.

Sugar induces tolerance, meaning the more you eat the more you need to feel satisfied. What’s recommended for children’s sugar intake is a mere 6-9 teaspoons a day while what’s consumed is at least 4 times that, Halloween candy not included.

At some point, people can make choices about how their lives unfold; whether or not choices are made is harder to pull off than it is to suggest.

Most of us who are disabled, invisibly or not, wouldn’t choose disability to be part of our lives. How horrifying is it that some obese people have that option and choose otherwise.

Although she was a chunk-of-a-baby, Kathe Skinner didn’t grow up that way. A Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Relationship Coach, Kathe specializes in working with couples, especially those when invisible disability is part of the relationship mix. She and husband David reside in Colorado with their two cats, Petey and Lucy. Lucy and David could stand to pass on a second helping of kibbles.

A PRETTY BIG BUTT

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment
Americans who don't show up in labor force statistics because they didn't keep up a regular job search. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Graph: CNNMoney

Americans don’t show up in labor force statistics when they stop searching for a job.  Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011. Graph: CNNMoney

Doing work you’re passionate about has been the imperative for years now.

This, despite the contined high unemployment rate, a rate that doesn’t even reflect people who gave up trying to find work years ago. Ironically, they’re called the “invisible unemployed” and there’s about 86 million of them.  Like the “invisibly disabled”, both are a large part of our society where the “invisible” part suggests monkeys with hands over their eyes.

That we’re supposed to be finding passion through work might explain why the U.S. birth rate in 2012 declined for the 5th year in a row.

If you’re tired, though, or queasy, or breathing with difficulty, passion may be easier to define than it might be to find.  Passion may be found in small measures.  It’s simple:  sleep, a settled body, breath.

Being invisibly unemployed or invisibly disabled are both shameful ways of being.  Many in the mainstream believe there’s nothing wrong that getting off their collective lazy asses wouldn’t fix.   That’s a pretty big butt.

Being marginalized for any reason wreaks havoc with the central core of us and not surprisingly with relationship – marital, friend network, family.

For the people marginalized in this way, hunting down passion is a luxury.  Suggesting there’s a choice about it is lofty, naive, and exclusionary.

However.

Invisible or not, it’s a mental health responsibility for each of us to somewhere find joy, pleasure, peace, passion or whatever you want to call it.  To take charge of being part of humanity; to assert to yourself your right to be.  That might or might not be through volunteer or paid employment, marriage or relationship, or the family/friend network.

Kathe Skinner is married to one of the “invisible unemployed”; she herself is (sometimes) “invisbly disabled” by multiple sclerosis.  She’s a Marriage & Family Therapist and Relationship Coach on Colorado’s Front Range.  More about the two of them at http://www.BeingHeardNow.com.

THE JURY’S OUT.

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. 1 Comment

I’m a fine one to talk.

“All change implies the acceptance of loss” is the line I berate my coaching and psychotherapy clients with.

Loss of function with invisible disability carries with it more than just the loss of “being able to…”  It’s how others’ attitudes might change.  Or how communication in bad hair daya relationship — married or not — is impacted.

Recently emailing with a colleague, another permutation appeared:  “All loss implies the acceptance of change.”

These days, for me, that applies even more.

Kathe Skinner is a psychotherapist and relationship coach living and working on Colorado’s Front Range.  She has been courting acceptance of the changes in her life for most of this year.  The results aren’t in.

LOVING

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. 1 Comment
Love at its most true is not afraid to be hard. ~ Whitley Streiber

Love at its most true is not afraid to be hard. ~ Whitley Streiber

Married, in a relationship, or single, life is often ungovernable.

Through disability, chronic illness, divorce, break-up, deaths big and small where do we find respite from difficulty?

When can we stop being courageous?

So many of us lean on love to give us relief from life’s chattering.

If love were so one-dimensional, though, if all loving did was give us rest, would it still be lustrous?

What is easy, quantifiable, predictable soon loses our interest.

Whitley Streiber put it beautifully, “Love at its most true is not afraid to be hard.”  I agree (even if he is talking about aliens.)

Kathe Skinner is a psychotherapist and relationship coach, specializing in working with couples whose relationship is impacted by invisible disability and chronic illness.  Married to David for over 26 years, they live with kitties Petey and Lucy in the Front Range of Colorado.  Are there aliens cruising the skies over her home?  She thinks the logic is irrefutable.