Tips For Coping With Pandemic Reentry Anxiety

Uncertainty often creates anxiety, and this is especially true now as more people in the U.S. get COVID-19 vaccines and things are opening up again.  If you're feeling anxious as we move closer to "normalcy" (whatever that might be), you're not alone (see my articles: Living With Uncertainty and What's the Difference Between Fear and Anxiety?)

Coping With Pandemic Reentry Anxiety

Tips For Coping With Reentry Anxiety

• Develop an Awareness About Your Anxiety: It might be hard to identify reentry anxiety because it often manifests in ways you might not immediately identify, especially since you might have experienced these same symptoms during the height of the pandemic:  
• poor sleep
• nightmares
• change in appetite
• weight gain/weight loss
• a sense of foreboding
• irritability
• headaches, neck and shoulder pain
• other health-related symptoms

• Accept Your Emotions:  Recognize that you're not alone.  Many people are experiencing anxiety about the possibility of returning to some form of their work and social routine. Rather than berating yourself for your response, accept it and look for ways to cope (see below). You might also be experiencing a combination of anxiety and excitement or you might alternate between the two.  Know that this is normal (see my article: Suppressing Emotions Can Lead to Medical and Psychological Problems).

• Allow Yourself to Grieve:  There have been many losses involved with the COVID-19 pandemic, including:
• the loss of friends and family who died during the pandemic
• the loss of a job/income
• the loss of a sense of safety in the world you might have had before the pandemic (see my article: The 5 Stages of Grief Related to the Pandemic)

• Focus on What You Can Control: With so much uncertainty, you might find yourself worrying about many possibilities, but there are areas of your life where you do have some control:
• What do you need to do to feel safe to return to work and to social activities?
• How will you deal with friends and family members who refuse to get vaccinated? 
• Although there might be things that you can't control, there are many things you can control, including how you begin to reenter into social activities (see my below and my article: Preparing Yourself Emotionally For Major Changes in Your Life)

• Reintroduce Activities Gradually: If you've spent most of your time at home, rather than trying to jump back into your former schedule quickly, try to get back into these activities gradually to give yourself a chance to adjust.  Rather than overcommitting yourself to social activities, try seeing one friend (or a small group of friends) at a time so you don't exhaust yourself.

• Think About What You're Looking Forward to in the Future: When you're ready to think about the future, make a list of the things you want to do.  This can help you to shift your perspective from worry to having things to look forward to (see my article: Feeling Alive Again After a Period of Stagnation and Happiness and Your Future Self).

• Use Self Soothing Techniques: Whether you meditate, exercise, go for walks, do yoga or breathing exercises, it's important to use self soothing techniques to calm yourself (see my articles: Self. Soothing With Butterfly Tapping, Developing Your Inner Sense of Feeling Grounded and Calm and Learning to Do Square Breathing).

• Get Help If Your Anxiety is Overwhelming You: Although reentry anxiety is normal, if your anxiety is having a negative impact on your personal relationships, work life or other areas of your life, consider getting help from a licensed mental health professional who can help you to understand your reactions and develop better coping skills.  This would be especially helpful if your current anxiety is triggering unresolved trauma from the past (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma).

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Developing a Compassionate Understanding of Your Unhealthy Coping Strategies

In prior articles, I've discussed various unhealthy coping strategies (see my articles about changing maladaptive coping strategies that no longer work, including avoidance, passive behavior and controlling behavior).  In this article, I'm focusing on the importance of developing a self compassionate understanding of your maladaptive coping strategies and how psychotherapy can help (see my article: Psychotherapy and Compassionate Self Acceptance).

Developing a Compassionate Understanding of Your Maladaptive Coping Strategies

Why Is It Important to Develop a Compassionate Understanding of Your Maladaptive Coping Strategies?
Maladaptive coping strategies often develop when a child or an adult is in emotional pain, their coping skills are inadequate or poor, and they don't know any other way to relieve their emotional pain.

When people develop unhealthy coping strategies to relieve pain, the main intent is to relieve the emotional pain so it won't hurt so much, even if the strategies are unhealthy.  The main intent is not to develop unhealthy coping skills per se.

The problem with these strategies is that, although they might work temporarily, they don't resolve the problem and they usually add to the existing problems and make things worse.

For instance, if a child is raised in a very punitive environment where his parents constantly punish him for even minor behavior problems and withdraw from him emotionally, he will grow up feeling ashamed.  He will internalize a feeling of being a "bad person" or an "unlovable person," even when that's not the intent of his parents (see my article: Overcoming the Emotional Pain of Feeling Unlovable).

The emotional pain of feeling like a bad person or feeling unlovable is difficult to bear, so he will try to find ways to relieve that emotional pain that might work in the short term, but usually cause other problems in the long term.

For instance, he might numb himself emotionally or use alcohol to blunt the emotional pain.  Because the alcohol "works" temporarily to numb him to his pain, this becomes a powerful reinforcement to keep doing it, even if he knows that it can cause him physical and emotional harm and possibly ruin his interpersonal relationships and career in the long run.

Even though he knows there could be serious consequences if he continues to drink excessively, he might bargain with himself, "I'll stop after New Year's Eve" or "I'll just have one more drink and then I'll stop."  This gives him temporary relief from the fear of long-term consequences to his drinking.

But, as previous mentioned, a maladaptive coping strategy compounds the original problem. For instance, a spouse might threaten to leave the relationship or a boss might give a warning that the behavior is interfering with work.  Then, the person who is using the temporary fix knows he needs to do something else because life is becoming unmanageable.

At that point, the problem is often that shame gets in the way of getting help.  The person is now ashamed of being someone who is a bad person or an unlovable person and, in addition, he is ashamed of what he has been doing to relieve his emotional pain (see my articles: Are You Afraid to Start Therapy Because You Feel Ashamed? and Overcoming Shame).

This is where learning to be self compassionate can help to mitigate the shame so that the individual can seek help rather than continuing to avoid help due to the shame.

It's important to understand that being self compassionate doesn't mean being irresponsible or unaccountable to yourself or to others.  Self compassion isn't an excuse to continue harming yourself or others.  It's a first step in being able to resolve your problems.

A Fictional Vignette: Developing a Self Compassionate Understanding of Maladaptive Coping Strategies
The following fictional vignette illustrates how being self compassionate can allow an individual to overcome shame so he can get help.  Although I'm using alcohol as an example of the maladaptive coping strategy, the strategy could be emotional numbing, overspending, overeating, compulsive gambling, sexual addiction, and so on.

Ron
Ron was the youngest child by far of three children.  By the time he was old enough to go to school, his older siblings were already out of the house so, in effect, he was raised as an only child by two parents who were emotionally neglectful and punitive (see my article: What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?)

By the time he was five, he already knew that he was an unplanned child, an "accident," as he overheard his mother say to a friend one day when she was complaining about how tired and harried she felt from raising a small child at her age.

Ron never told anyone what he heard, but he would often sit by himself in his room feeling sad about being a "burden" to his parents (see my article: Growing Up Feeling Invisible and Emotionally Invalidated).

He tried in every way that he knew how to be a well behaved child, to do well in school, and not to cause problems for his parents.  But both parents had little tolerance anymore for a young child, and minor things would irritate them so that they would punish Ron.

They preferred for Ron to play in his room quietly so he did not disturb them.  But sometimes, when he was playing with his toys, he would get so enthusiastic that he would raise his voice a little.

If his parents were in the dining room, they wouldn't hear him, but if they were in the living room, they could hear him playing and it would annoy them.  At that point, either his mother or father would come into his room and take away the toys he was playing with and tell him to do something where he could be quiet, like reading or drawing.

When he would cry after his parents took away his toys, they would tell him to "Stop being a cry baby" or "You're too sensitive."

As a result, Ron grew up feeling that, in order not to get punished or ridiculed by his parents, he had to make himself "invisible" and also not show his emotions.  Without Ron realizing it, this eventually led to emotional numbing by the time he got a little older.  He numbed himself emotionally to the point where he wasn't sure what he felt at any given time.

By the time he was a teenager, he learned to pretend to feel happy in order to fit in with his peers.  Most teens who knew him thought of him as being a happy person, but Ron really felt empty inside (see my article: How to Stop Pretending to Feel Happy When You Don't).

When he went away to college, he began drinking heavily with other students.  He liked drinking because he felt uninhibited and free.  Since he was shy, the alcohol acted as a social lubricant for him so that he felt free enough to tell jokes at parties or ask young women out on dates (see my article: Overcoming the Temptation to Use "Liquid Courage" in Social Situations).

When his alcohol abuse began affecting his grades, he cut back enough so that he improved his grades and graduated with a high grade point average.  During his senior year, he was recruited by a large corporation in New York City, and he and some of his college friends rented an apartment together.

Developing a Compassionate Understanding of Your Unhealthy Coping Strategies 

Even though alcohol "worked" for Ron temporarily to relieve his feelings of low self worth, he began to realize that he needed to drink more to feel good.  He was intelligent and well informed enough to know that continuing to abuse alcohol could have negative emotional and physical effects.  But he didn't know what else to do not to feel overwhelmed by his feelings of inadequacy.

A couple of his roommates, who were close friends, stopped drinking and urged Ron to get help.  But Ron felt too ashamed.  He thought of his drinking as a "moral failing" rather than a maladaptive coping strategy.

Then, one day, one of his roommates, Tom, invited his Uncle Jim to the apartment to talk to Ron. Jim was a recovering alcoholic.  He told Ron how he started drinking and how he stopped by getting help.

It turned out that Jim's early childhood history was similar to Ron's in that Jim also grew up in a home with punitive parents where he felt he was a burden to them.  He also learned to numb his feelings and eventually developed a drinking problem in college.  But his life turned around after he was arrested for DWI and mandated to therapy.

Since that time, which was 20 years ago, he said, he remained sober.  But he also said that he knew plenty of people with alcohol problems who don't get the help they need and whose lives spiraled down (see my article: People Who Abuse Alcohol Often Don't Get the Help They Need).

Ron listened to Jim tell his story, and he was amazed.  It was the first time that he had ever heard anyone describe problems that were so similar to his.

Jim also talked about how ashamed he was at first when he started therapy.  He said that he was also ashamed of himself from the time he was a young child because he felt he was unlovable.  As a child, he thought to himself, If my own parents think of me as a burden, then I must be a bad person.

After he began therapy, Jim explained, he learned to be more self compassionate at the same time that he was becoming more responsible and accountable for his life.  He realized that no one had ever taught him healthy coping skills so, before he went to therapy, he did the best that he could.

He learned in therapy that his shame contributed to his emotional numbing and drinking and it made him feel even more ashamed of himself (see my articles: How Psychotherapy Helps to Heal Shame and Working in Therapy to Accept Your Emotional Needs).

He also learned to develop healthy coping skills and to work through his early childhood trauma (see my article: Developing Internal Resources and Healthy Coping Skills in Therapy and Resolving Childhood Trauma in Therapy).

Developing a Compassionate Understanding of Your Maladaptive Coping Strategies

Just hearing that someone else could understand how he felt was a relief to Ron.  He accepted Jim's invitation to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) meetings.

Ron also sought out help from a licensed mental health professional to learn better coping strategies and to work on unresolved childhood trauma that was affecting him as an adult.

Conclusion
People, who grow up in punitive families where they feel unlovable, often internalize these feelings and believe them to be true.

If they haven't learned healthy coping skills, they will most likely develop unhealthy coping skills to avoid feeling the emotional pain.

Unfortunately, shame often becomes an obstacle for getting help, including the original shame of feeling unlovable as well as the shame that develops as a result of unhealthy coping skills.

People often feel alone with these problems, especially if they don't know anyone who has had similar problems.  They might feel defective and that they're the only ones who feel this way.

Getting Help in Therapy
As I've mentioned to in prior articles, it takes courage to get help to change (see my article: Developing the Courage to Change).

It's often the case that people wait until the pain of not dealing with their problems outweighs the shame of getting help.  At that point, they might be in an emotional crisis, but a crisis can bring about positive changes in life with help in therapy (see my article: How a Crisis Can Bring About Positive Changes in Your Life).

A skilled psychotherapist can help you to develop healthy coping skills and also assist you to work through the emotional trauma that led to your developing the unhealthy coping strategies in the first place (see my articles:  The Benefits of Psychotherapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist)

Once you have learned healthy coping strategies and worked through the underlying emotional trauma, you have an opportunity to lead a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR therapy, and Somatic Experiencing (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

One of my specialties is helping clients to overcome traumatic experiences.

I work with individual adults and couples and I have helped many clients to develop healthy coping skills and work through emotional trauma.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during regular business hours or email me.

How to Cope With Getting Emotionally Triggered During Family Visits

In an earlier article,  How to Cope With Difficult Family Visits, I discussed coping strategies to deal with difficult family get-togethers.  In this article, I'm focusing specifically on how to cope with getting emotionally triggered during family visits (see my articles: Overcoming Dysfunctional Ways of Relating in Your Family, Regressing to Feeling Like a Child Again During Family Visits and Learning to Develop Healthy Boundaries Within an Enmeshed Family).

How to Cope With Getting Emotionally Triggered During Family Visits

When there's a long history of dysfunction in a family, family visits can be fraught with problems, especially if you're not prepared for emotional triggers.

Have you ever wondered why you're able to overlook an unpleasant comment that an acquaintance makes, but if a family members makes the same comment, you have a different emotional reaction?

The answer is that you're not as emotionally invested with an acquaintance as you are with family members.  Also, there's probably not a long history between you and the acquaintance, whereas with your family, you've probably experienced similar problems.

Fictional Vignette:  Getting Emotionally Triggered During a Family Visit

Cindy
Cindy loved her family, but she usually found going home for family visits difficult.

Whenever she went home, Cindy experienced her family and herself falling into old dysfunctional patterns that she disliked.

How to Cope With Getting Emotionally Triggered During Family Visits

Although she knew that her mother loved her, she often made comments about Cindy's weight, which was a longstanding sensitive issue for Cindy.

This was an old pattern with her mother, and no matter how many times Cindy told her mother that her comments weren't helpful, her mother would insist that she was "trying to be helpful."

There just seemed to be no getting through to her mother, and her mother's comments would usually lead to an argument between Cindy and her mother.

Her father, who knew that Cindy wasn't in a relationship, would usually ask Cindy, "So how's your love life going?"

Then, when Cindy told him that she was seeing anyone, he would express concern and ask her why she was dating anyone, which infuriated her.

Cindy's brother earned a lot of money as a corporate attorney, and he tended to look down on Cindy's job as a Legal Aid attorney.  He also made disparaging remarks about her salary and her clients, which annoyed Cindy.  She felt that he was trying to make her feel ashamed, and they would frequently argue.

After yet another family visit where Cindy argued with her mother, father and brother, Cindy decided to get help in therapy.

She knew that these were old familial patterns, and she wasn't going to change her family, but she hoped to change her own reactions to them (see my article: You Can't Change the Past, But You Can Change How the Past Affects You).

Over time, Cindy and her therapist worked on the underling issues that got triggered for Cindy when she went to see her family.

Using a combination of EMDR Therapy and Somatic Experiencing, they were able to gradually work through these triggers so they no longer affected her.

Cindy also learned how to set limits with her family in a gentle and tactful way.

The real test of what she accomplished in therapy occurred during her next family visit when, as usual, her family made the same remarks that usually triggered Cindy.

To her surprise, Cindy discovered that while she was disappointed that they were going down the same path as usual, she didn't have an emotional reaction.  Instead, she felt that these were their issues and they didn't concern her.

Suggestions on How to Cope With Getting Triggered During Family Visits

• Prepare yourself mentally before you go so you're not caught off guard.  While you might not be able to prepare for every comment or slight, if you know that you tend to get triggered, take care of yourself beforehand by engaging in self care (see my articles:  Learning to Relax: Going on an Internal Retreat and Self Care: Feeling Entitled to Take Care of Yourself).

• Be aware that whatever your family members might say or do, they don't define you.  They might have different opinions about what you "should" or "shouldn't" being doing.  But, as an adult, you get to make your own choices.

• "Bookend" your visit with calls to supportive friends both before and after (and possibly during) your family visit so you don't feel alone.  Emotional support during a family visit can make all the difference.

• Take breaks while you're with your family.  You don't have to be with them 24/7 during your visit.  If you plan breaks where you go out for a walk, it gives both them and you a break and a way to "reset" so you can regulate yourself emotionally.

• Maintain appropriate boundaries with family members in a tactful manner so that if they attempt to cross a sensitive boundary with you, you can set limits with them.

Getting Help in Therapy
When you get emotionally triggered, this is usually a sign that you have unresolved emotional issues that need to get worked through (see my article:The Benefits of Psychotherapy and Expanding Your Window of Tolerance in Therapy to Overcome Emotional Problems).

Working with a skilled psychotherapist, you can work through these unresolved issues so that you're not constantly getting triggered by the same situations (see my article: How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

If you find yourself continually getting triggered with your family, you owe it to yourself to get help from a licensed mental health professional.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to work through unresolved trauma so they are no longer triggered in familiar situations.  

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Are You Setting Boundaries That Are Too Rigid?

In a prior article,  Setting Healthy Boundaries, I discussed how to set healthy boundaries.  In this article, I'm focusing on how to overcome setting boundaries that are too rigid.

Are You Setting Boundaries That Are Too Rigid?

Most of the time when we think of setting boundaries, we think about boundaries that are too loose.

But there are some people who set boundaries that are too rigid and they end up having problems in their interpersonal relationships.

Signs That Your Boundaries Might Be Too Rigid

• You spend most of your time alone.
• Your plans don't include other people.
• You feel lonely, disconnected and alienated from others (see my article: Overcoming Loneliness and Social Isolation).
• You don't get to know other people because you don't open up to them or allow them to open up to you.
• You're unhappy because you feel that others don't know the real you, but you also fear allowing them to get to know the real you (see my article:  Overcoming the Fear That Others Won't Like You If They Knew the Real You).
• You've alienated others because you keep them at a distance.
• Family or friends complain that you keep them shut out emotionally because you've built a wall around yourself.
• Other people seem to dislike you, misunderstand you or feel put off by you because you're emotionally cold towards them.

And so on.

What Are Some of the Reasons Why You Might Be Setting Rigid Boundaries?
Generally, people who set rigid boundaries have often experienced prior emotional trauma that makes them fearful of allowing people to get close to them.

This can include an early history of physical abuse or neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and other forms of abuse (see my article: Adults Who Were Traumatized as Children Are Often Afraid to Experience All Their Feelings).

Are You Setting Boundaries That Are Too Rigid?

If you're setting rigid boundaries, you probably don't feel safe allowing others to get to know you beyond the surface, so you might use maladaptive coping strategies or defense mechanisms that include keeping yourself walled off and shutting others out (see my article: How Therapy Can Help You to Gradually Take Down the "Wall" You've Built Around Yourself).

What Are Some of the Problems You Might Be Having As a Result of Rigid Boundaries?
We are all hard wired for emotional attachment.

Everyone has a basic need for emotional connection, even people who deny to themselves and others that this is what they need.

As I mentioned earlier, if you're setting rigid boundaries with others, you probably feel lonely a lot of the time.

You might not make the connection between your loneliness and the rigid boundaries that you set with others.  You might not even realize that you're setting rigid boundaries because it might be unconscious on your part.

You might feel like others don't like you or they're the ones who are avoiding you--when, in fact, what's really happening is that others sense you want them to remain at a distance.

This isn't always something that is clearly defined--it might be a vague sense that others have to keep away from you.

Rigid Boundaries: Others Sense You Want Them to Keep Their Distance

Due to this dynamic, there is a spiraling effect:  You signal to others, either consciously or  unconsciously, that you don't want others to get too close to you.  Then, others respond by keeping their distance from you.

But just like everyone else, you need emotional connection, so you end up feeling lonely and then wonder why others are keeping their distance.  This, in turn, can lead to you're feeling annoyed or resentful, which further signals to others to stay away.

Overcoming the Need to Set Rigid Boundaries With Others
The first step in overcoming this problem is self awareness.

Without self awareness, you won't know that you're creating this dynamic with others and there will be little to no chance of changing it.

The next step is getting help in therapy to overcome the original problem that created the need for you to keep people at a distance.

Getting Help in Therapy
Often, people with rigid boundaries come into therapy because they feel lonely, misunderstood or alienated from others.

Even if they're missing having close connections with others, they might not know how to make those connections.

The underlying problems that lead to forming rigid boundaries often starts at a young age.

It's hard to change from having rigid boundaries to having healthy, flexible boundaries without professional help.

Getting Help in Therapy to Overcome Unresolved Trauma That Results in Rigid Boundaries

A skilled psychotherapist, who is trained in trauma therapy, can help you with unresolved trauma to work through these problems so you can learn to trust and form healthy relationships.

This isn't easy or quick, but trauma therapy has helped many people with rigid boundaries and other similar problems.

I'll be writing more about this in my next article.

About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

One of my specialties is helping adults to overcome psychological trauma, and I have helped many people to overcome their trauma history so they could go on to lead fulfilling lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Coping With Stress and the Mind-Body Connection: Calming the Mind, Calming the Body

When you're overwhelmed by stress, calming your mind can help you to calm your body. It also works the other way around: Calming the body helps to calm the mind.

Coping With Stress and the Mind-Body Connection

Your particular reaction to stress is determined, in part, by your sympathetic nervous system, which is part of your autonomic nervous system.

The function of the sympathetic nervous system is to mobilize you for a fight-flight response if you're in danger. When you're in a high degree of stress, whether it's about positive or negative events, you might experience various stress-related symptoms, including an increase in heart rate, dilated pupils, an increase in blood pressure, pale, cold skin, and so on.

Many people who have experienced a significant amount of stress over a period of time are in a constant state of anxiety, and even relatively minor incidents of new stress can trigger a high degree of emotional activation.

For these people, even minor stressors, like waiting on a grocery line, getting caught in traffic, or waiting for a train, can cause an emotional overreaction because they're already in a state of high activation from chronic and unrelenting stress. Just coping and getting through each day can be a challenge.

Over time, an inability to cope with stress can have a negative impact on a person's confidence and self esteem.

Stress Management:
In order to cope more effectively with stress, it's important to find healthy ways to de-stress.

In the next few blog posts, I'll discuss specific, effective methods for calming the mind and the body. As a psychotherapist in NYC, I often recommend and teach these methods to my clients in my private practice.

About Me
I am a licensed psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, Somatic Experiencing therapist, and EMDR therapist in NYC.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

See Articles: 

Mind-Body Connection: Focused Meditation

Mind-Body Connection: Mindfulness Meditation

Coping Strategies in Mind-Body Psychotherapy: Remembering Your Happiest Memories

Mind-body oriented psychotherapy, like clinical hypnosis, EMDR or Somatic Experiencing, usually begin with "resourcing," which is another way of saying developing coping strategies before any work on trauma or other issues begins.  One of the most common ways of beginning resourcing is for the therapist to ask clients to bring in 10 happy memories. 

Depending upon which mind-body psychotherapy method is used, the therapist helps clients to amplify and integrate these experiences so that clients can call upon them as part of their coping strategies in the work.  This helps clients by giving them tools to use either in their daily lives or in session if they come to a particularly difficult part of working through a problem or memory.

As a psychotherapist in NYC, I use all three treatment modalities (EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and clinical hypnosis) in my work with clients.  After the initial consultation and getting some history about the problem as well as family history, I usually begin by teaching clients the Relaxing Place meditation, which is a place (either real or imagined) that they choose.  

I help them to get into a light meditative state and then I assist them to experience their relaxing place with as many of their five senses as possible.  Then, usually, if they feel comfortable, I ask them to visualize themselves "anchoring" the experience somewhere in their bodies so they can call on this relaxing place whenever they need to help themselves to relax.  I usually ask clients to practice this meditation at home so that it becomes second nature to them to call on it when they need it.

Happy Memories as a Resource in Mind-Body Psychotherapy

Usually, after I teach clients to do the Relaxing Place meditation, we work on their happiest memories.  These memories, which are chosen by the client, can be from any time in their lives:  from early childhood to the present.  The entire process is collaborative. Clients choose which memory to begin with in our session.

To give you an idea of how this works, I've included the following fictionalized vignette:

Linda - During the Resourcing Stage of Psychotherapy Work:
When Linda came to therapy to work through issues related to an abusive childhood.  She had been in talk therapy before and she made some progress on these traumatic issues. But she discovered that her traumatic childhood was still having a negative effect on her ability to be in a romantic relationship.

After the initial consultation and history of the trauma and family history, we worked together on the resourcing phase of treatment.  She had never done meditation before, so she was somewhat concerned about whether she would be able to do the Relaxing Place meditation.  But with my support and encouragement, Linda came up with a place in the country that she experienced as peaceful.  I guided her into a light meditative state and helped her to use her five senses to experience this place on a deeper level.

Everyone has different abilities with regard to his or her senses.  Some people can closes their eyes and visualize in detail, while others have a better sense of hearing (like when you "hear" a song in your mind).  Others have a better sense of smell or tactile sense.  It doesn't matter whatever abilities you bring to this experience.  The most important thing is to be able to experience the relaxing place on some level.

The next step involves using your imagination to take this experience and imagine placing it somewhere in your body, sensing that you're storing in your body--wherever it feels right to you.  So, some people picture themselves storing it in their hearts or in their stomachs.  There's no right or wrong with this.  It's whatever works for you.  Practicing the Relaxing Place meditation at home helps you to consolidate this experience.

When it was time to work on her 10 happiest memories, Linda had some difficulty.  She came up with two memories to start, so we work on those.  The first happy memory was about the first time she performed at a dance recital when she was 10 years old.  Although she had been nervous before she went on stage, once she began to dance, she felt completely in the flow of the dance.  She felt light as a feather as she relied on the body memory of the dance to carry her along.  She felt unbelievably happy at that moment, and the dancing felt effortless.

We worked on this memory by getting Linda to re-experience these feelings in her body--the flow of the dance, the muscles in her legs as she moved, the feeling of lightness in her torso, and so on.  We worked on this as if she were re-experiencing it in slow motion so that she could experience it in a very nuanced way.

We also focused on how happy she felt and where she felt this happiness in her body.  She said she experienced the happiness as an expansiveness in her chest and in her shoulders and arms. We spent time with these sensory experiences so she could amplify them.  So, whereas in her original experience, she might have been barely aware of these feelings because they passed so quickly, we spent time to allow them to deepen.  Then, I helped Linda to use her imagination to "anchor" the experience in her body so that she could call on this experience at any time.  She chose to "anchor" it in her heart.  As she was doing this, she was also aware that, with her eyes closed, she was seeing a deep royal blue color.  Her association to this color was that it was a powerful color for her, so we incorporated it in this "anchoring" process.

Over time, Linda began to realize that she had other happy memories that she had not thought of in a long time.  This wasn't surprising to me because it often happens that people who think they have few happy memories will come up with other happy memories once we begin the process.  We also used those happy memories as part of the resourcing process with Linda "anchoring" those experiences in her body too.

After we completed the resourcing phase of treatment, which was about three sessions in her case, we began to work on the trauma.  Linda was able to use her Relaxing Place meditation and the happy memories we worked on whenever she felt she needed to, both in session as well as between sessions.

Remembering Your Happiest Memories as a Resource in Psychotherapy

Everyone is Unique When it Comes to Coping Strategies and the Resourcing Phase
Everyone is different when it comes to the resourcing phase of treatment.  Some people start with strong internal and external resources that they developed before they started treatment, so they don't need as much time in the resourcing phase.  Other people haven't developed adequate resources, so they need more time in this phase.

Some clients come to treatment wanting to start working on their trauma on Day One.  Often, they have  been dealing with the repercussions of their trauma for a long time, so it's understandable that they would want to work on it as quickly as possible.  But rushing into trauma work isn't a good idea.  Clients need to be adequately prepared to be able to deal with whatever might come up, and doing resourcing first is an essential part of that work.

The resourcing phase helps to ensure that clients are more likely to have an emotionally safe experience in therapy.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.



photo credit: Khatleen Minerve (Sakura) via photopin cc

photo credit: *Leanda via photopin cc

Changing Maladaptive Coping Strategies that No Longer Work for You: Controlling Behavior

In prior blog posts, I addressed avoidant and passive coping strategies as maladaptive strategies that usually do not work by the time we become adults. I mentioned that these maladaptive coping strategies usually develop from a combination of individual temperament and early home environment. In this blog post, I will focus on controlling behavior as a maladaptive coping strategy.

What Are the Signs of Controlling Behavior?
Just like any other type of behavior, controlling behavior is very individual and it will manifest in a variety of ways. Similarly, controlling behavior is on a continuum from moderate to severe.

Controlling Behavior

People who are moderately controlling will try to control some aspects of their lives and the lives of those around them, but they realize that they can't control everything. Often they will respond to others' discomfort with their controlling behavior by backing off--at least for a while.

People who are severely controlling have a need to control or micromanage nearly everything. In most severe cases, when others around them express their discomfort, people who are severely controlling become angry. In some cases, they might become violent.

In both cases, controlling behavior often stems from underlying anxiety, fear, or insecurity.

The following fictionalized vignette, which is not about any one particular person, is an example of moderately controlling behavior:

Ruth:
Ruth grew up in a household that was almost always on the verge of chaos. She was the oldest of six children. Her mother, who stayed at home, tended to be very anxious and overwhelmed most of the time. Her father spent long hours at the office, leaving the mother to take care of the children and the household.

By the time she was 10, Ruth was helping her mother to prepare meals, do the wash, and take care of chores around the house. Since her mother tended to be in a state of high anxiety most of the time, this caused Ruth to feel anxious and insecure too.

By the time Ruth was married with children, she tried to make a lot of decisions for her husband and her teenage children, which caused friction in the household. Often, when she and her husband went out to dinner, she would order his meal for him, even before he had a chance to look at the menu. Whenever her husband pointed out to her that he would like to order his own meals, Ruth would realize that she overstepped her bounds and she would apologize. Similarly, when she continued to choose clothes for her 19 and 20 year old daughters, who still lived at home, and they told her that they wanted to make their own choices, she backed off. But even though Ruth backed off, in both instances, not being in control of these situations made Ruth feel anxious. It wasn't until she began psychotherapy to deal with these issues that she realized that she had underlying family of origin issues and her own temperament that caused her to develop this maladaptive coping style.

The following fictionalized scenario is an example of the other end of the spectrum of controlling behavior, severe controlling behavior:

Henry:
When Henry was 18, he moved out of his family's household to get away from his abusive father. For most of his life, he grew up witnessing his father hit his mother. He also witnessed his mother's passive response. He thought his father was a tyrant--always wanting to control every aspect of their lives.

Henry vowed to himself that he would never be like his father. He quit high school, got his GED, began working, and got his own apartment.

In his early 20s, Henry began dating a young woman, Linda, that he really liked. After a few months, they decided to date each other exclusively. At first, their relationship was going well. But after a while, as Henry got closer to Linda, he began asking her to let him know where she was going and with whom. At first, Linda was flattered because she thought this meant that Henry really cared about her. Whenever they went to a restaurant, Henry ordered for Linda. Initially, Linda felt he was being chivalrous, and she liked this.

After a while, Linda got tired of having to answer questions all of the time about where she was going and with whom, and she wanted to order her own food when they went out. Whenever Linda tried to talk to Henry about all of this, he refused to talk about it.

One day, when Linda brought this up again, Henry felt like he was going to explode. As Linda continued to insist that they talk about Henry's controlling behavior, Henry lost his temper and he slapped her. Linda was stunned and hurt. Henry was shocked by his own behavior. After that, despite his repeated attempts to apologize to her, Henry could not get through to Linda . She wanted nothing to do with him.

Shortly after that incident, Henry began psychotherapy to understand how and why, despite his vow to himself that he would never become like his father, he had become severely controlling and violent in his relationship--just like his father.

These two vignettes illustrate that, depending upon the person and the circumstances, controlling behavior is on a continuum. I provided examples of moderate and severe controlling behavior with the understanding that there is a wide variety of behavior between those two extremes.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you engage in controlling behavior and it is affecting how you feel about yourself as well as how others feel about you, you're not alone. 

Many individuals and couples come to therapy to work on and resolve these issues. Often, you can work through the underlying issues in psychotherapy and learn new ways of coping so that you're no longer engaging in maladaptive coping strategies.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individuals and couples, and I have helped many clients to overcome maladaptive coping strategies that no longer work for them.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also, see my articles:
Changing Coping Strategies that No Longer Work For You: Controlling Behavior

Coping Strategies that No Longer Work For You: Avoidance

Changing Maladaptive Coping Strategies that No Longer Work for You: Passive Behavior

In my last blog post, I addressed the maladaptive coping strategy of avoidance, and how it develops due to a combination of early childhood experiences and a person's particular temperament (see my article: Changing Maladaptive Coping Strategies That No Longer Work For You: Avoidance).

Another maladaptive coping strategy is passivity, also referred to as lack of assertiveness or surrendering to the will of others.

As mentioned in my prior blog post, coping strategies that develop in early childhood often help a child to survive in a situation where he or she doesn't know what else to do and/or doesn't have the ability to do anything else. 

These coping strategies, which are usually unconscious, develop outside of the our awareness so we don't realize that we're continuing to use the same strategies that we used as children.

Even though these coping strategies might have worked when we were children, these strategies are no longer adaptive.

What is a Passive Coping Strategy?
A passive coping strategy is usually associated with a person being overly compliant and subjugating his or her needs to others. 

Coping Strategies That No Longer Work: Passivity

Often, this occurs because the overly compliant person fears being abandoned or punished or that they will incur the anger of others if they don't comply. 

There might also be a wish, often unconscious, that by complying, this person will gain the love or admiration of the other person. For an overly compliant child, this person is usually a parent or some authority figure. 

So, the passive coping strategy is an effort to ward off negative repercussions that the person fears as well as, at times, a wish to feel loved.

The following fictionalized scenario, which is not related to any particular person, is an example of a passive coping strategy and how this strategy can be overcome:

Ronald:
By the time Ronald started psychotherapy, his wife was threatening to leave him because she was fed up with Ronald's passivity. 

Ronald, who was in his 40s, was unable to assert himself with his domineering father, which was affecting Ronald's relationship with his wife. 

Ronald was also underpaid and overworked at his job as an engineer because he couldn't assert himself to ask his boss for a raise and a change in his workload. The demands of his job were also affecting his relationship with his wife.

Ronald grew up in a household where he was taught that his emotional needs weren't important. Neither his mother nor his father ever told Ronald this explicitly, but he was given this message implicitly nearly all of the time.

Ronald's father ruled the household with an iron fist. The father controlled almost every aspect of that household from how money was spent to what they ate to the clothes that they wore. 

The father had an explosive temper, and if he didn't get his way, he would yell, break furniture, and threaten to hit the mother, Ronald, and Ronald's siblings. 

The father never actually hit anyone, but he was a big man and his threats were enough to keep everyone in line. 

Ronald grew up not only acceding to his father's every wish, but he also learned to anticipate what his father wanted before his father even expressed it so that he could comply with his father's wishes and ward off any negative repercussions.

After Ronald got married, he and his wife bought a two-family house so that his parents could live downstairs and he and his wife could live upstairs. 

Even though Ronald was now an adult, he continued to comply with his father's dictatorial style. His father continued to control everything from the heating system in the house to what plants were planted in the garden. Without consulting with Ronald or Ronald's wife, he took it upon himself to hire a crew to paint the house a color that Ronald's wife hated.

That was the last straw for Ronald's wife. She had been telling Ronald for years that she was fed up with his passivity and she wanted Ronald to stand up to his father. Now, she told him that, unless he took a stand with his father, she was leaving. 

At that point, Ronald felt caught between wanting to comply with his father's wishes and also wanting to comply with his wife's demands, and he didn't know what to do. At his wife's urging, he sought therapy.

During his psychotherapy sessions, Ronald's therapist helped him to understand the particular coping strategy that he developed as a young boy. Ronald was able to see that, when he was a child, he did the best that he could do by complying with a domineering father. 

He was also able to see that he was still reacting to his father (as well as to his boss) as if he was still a young boy without choices and that his passivity was now detrimental to his marriage and his life in general.

Ronald's therapist worked with him by helping him to recognize where he was capitulating to his father's demands. Then, Ronald chose certain situations where he could begin asserting himself with his father. His therapist helped him by doing role plays where the therapist was the father and Ronald was his adult self.

Over time, Ronald recognized that he was continuing to operate from his old fears that his father would either hit, abandon or ridicule him. 

He also recognized that these old fears didn't apply any more. Not only wasn't he a small boy looking up to his big father but, at this point in his life, he was a strong man who was bigger than his father, and his father was no longer a physical threat to him. 

He also became aware that his deepest wish was that by complying with his father's demands, he would gain his father's love and praise. Since his father tended to be more critical than praising or affectionate, Ronald's deepest wish remained unfulfilled.

After practicing in a role play with his therapist, Ronald went home to talk to his father about his hiring a crew to paint the house. 

Before Ronald could get a word out of his mouth, his father began telling Ronald about the renovations he envisioned for the house. 

Ronald had planned what he wanted to say but, hearing his father's words, his stomach turned queasy and he began to perspire. Feeling defeated, he lapsed back into a state of passivity and abandoned his efforts to confront his father.

Ronald almost cancelled his next psychotherapy session because he feared that his therapist would be angry with him for not being assertive with his father. But instead of cancelling, he went and told his therapist that not only did he feel that he was not complying with his wife's wishes, but now that he was in therapy, he also felt that he was not complying with his therapist.

As he and his therapist talked about what was happening between them and how Ronald was applying the same passive strategies in their therapeutic relationship as he did in the rest of his life, that session was one of the best sessions that he had. 

He had a here-and-now experience of how he felt victimized even in his own therapy, and how this was the type of interpersonal template that he applied to most of his relationships. 

He also realized that, rather than owning the part of himself that wanted to assert himself with his father, he was projecting it onto his therapist--as if she was the one that was coercing him to be assertive rather than it coming from inside of him.

In addition, Ronald also began to become aware of a very important aspect of psychotherapy--that psychotherapy is a process, and progress in psychotherapy is usually not linear, but more like a spiral where clients make some progress and then they revert back to their old ways before they move forward again. 

This can happen many times in psychotherapy and it's all part of the process. 

In Ronald's case, his progress was his continuing to come to therapy, talking to his therapist about his hopes and fears, and being willing to put into practice what he learned in therapy. 

His false start with his father is a common experience for most people and it's all part of the process.

Ronald and his therapist did other role plays where his therapist played the part of his father in a way that was similar to how his father had come across when Ronald tried talk to him about having the house painted. 

Ronald practiced how he could assert himself under these circumstances. With a few false starts, Ronald found his voice and he felt even more determined to assert himself with his father.

On the day that Ronald decided to talk to his father again about the house, Ronald's father interrupted him, and he began telling Ronald that his arthritis was bothering him. 

As if for the first time in a long time, Ronald looked at his father and saw a certain fragility in his father he had not seen before. 

His father was no longer the towering, fierce figure that he had been when Ronald was a child. He was now a man in his 70s who was starting to have the kind of health problems that many senior citizens have. This made Ronald feel sad and guilty about what he was about to do.

Ronald's first inclination was to back down. He felt that internal child part in him that wanted to please his father, hoping that his father would express some affection or praise. 

He began to think about how one day his father wouldn't be around any more, and this made him feel sad as well as guilty. But Ronald and his therapist had prepared for this, and he gathered his inner resolve and began to talk to his father.

Much to Ronald's surprise, his father listened to him that particular day. Ronald talked for a long time. He hadn't anticipated that he would say as much as he did, but after he told his father about how he felt about having the house painted, he poured his heart out about how he felt unloved by his father. 

His father began turning away at that point because he was a man who was uncomfortable with any talk about love or affection. But Ronald asked his father to hear him out, so his father stayed, looking uncomfortable.

When Ronald finished, there was silence for a couple of minutes, which seemed like an eternity to Ronald. 

Then, his father apologized to him about the house, and he told Ronald that he had always told other people how proud he felt of Ronald, but he never told Ronald directly because he was afraid that Ronald would develop a "swelled head." He apologized for that too.

This was the beginning of Ronald's process of learning to be more assertive in his relationship with his father. It continued to be a work in progress for a long time because his father would often revert back to his domineering ways and Ronald would feel the old pull to revert back to his old passive behavior. But Ronald was definitely making progress. He also began working in therapy on asserting himself with his boss so he could ask for a raise and some changes in his workload.

When Ronald's wife saw Ronald making progress, she decided not to leave the marriage and their relationship improved over time.

This scenario demonstrates how maladaptive coping strategies develop and continue into adulthood, and the underlying issues that continue to influence an adult's behavior. 

It also demonstrates that people with maladaptive coping skills can learn to change and grow in psychotherapy if they're willing to work on these issues.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you feel that you need to change coping strategies that are no longer working for you, you're not alone. 

This is a common problem for many people. 

Rather than struggling with this on your own, you can work with a psychotherapist who has expertise in this area and learn to develop healthy coping strategies.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I have helped many clients to improve their coping strategies so they can live more fulfilling lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also, see my articles:
Changing Coping Strategies that No Longer Work: Controlling Behavior

Changing Maladaptive Coping Strategies That No Longer Work For You: Avoidance

Do you ever wonder how people develop maladaptive coping strategies?

Changing Coping Strategies That No Longer Work for You:  Avoidance

Well, to begin with, we all learn different coping strategies that start out being a combination of our own particular temperament and as well as the coping strategies that we learned growing up in our home environment as children. Two children who live in the same household under the same conditions can develop very different coping strategies.

Often, there are coping strategies that might have worked for us as children to preserve our safety and emotional well-being that no longer work for us as adults. Avoidance is a particular maladaptive coping strategy.

Avoidant Coping Strategies

What are Avoidant Coping Strategies?
The following is a list of the most common avoidant coping strategies:

Social Withdrawal:
The person who uses social withdrawal or social isolation as a coping strategy disconnects from the people around him.

Social Withdrawal as Avoidance

He might disconnect by staying home alone and watching an excessive amount of TV or spend many hours on the Internet without having in-person social contact with others.

He might appear to be very "independent," but this is often a pseudo independence whose main purpose is to avoid dealing with others. People who engage in social isolation often prefer jobs where they work alone and only engage in minimal social contact.

Psychological Withdrawal:
The person who uses psychological withdrawal as a coping strategy copes by "numbing" herself emotionally.

The main goal is to keep herself from feeling overwhelmed. She might also spend a lot of time in her own fantasy world as a way to avoid dealing with the people and problems around her.

Another form of psychological withdrawal is dissociation, which can range from moderate to severe. An example of moderate dissociation is something that we all do from time to time--daydreaming. Daydreaming. in and of itself, is not necessarily avoidant.

Psychological Withdrawal as Avoidance

Many creative ideas come to us from daydreaming. However, if a person spends a lot of time daydreaming, rather than dealing with the world around her, this is considered a form of avoidant coping.

An example of severe dissociation is when a person has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. When someone has DID, most often, she has experienced severe trauma and her personality fragments as a way to compartmentalize the overwhelming experience.

Compulsive and Addictive Behavior:

Compulsive and Addictive Behavior as Avoidance

Compulsive and addictive behavior include many different types of behavior: abusing drugs, abusing alcohol, overeating, bingeing and purging food, compulsive exercise, compulsive overspending, compulsive gambling, workaholism sexually compulsive behavior, compulsive risk taking, and other tendencies that seek excitement and distraction to avoid dealing with whatever is too emotionally overwhelming.

The following fictionalized scenario, which is not based on any one person, illustrates how these avoidant coping strategies develop over time:

Jeff:
Jeff and his older brother, Tom, grew up in a household with an alcoholic father and a passive, emotionally overwhelmed mother. Their father, Dan, would come home from work everyday, eat his dinner alone in the den without interacting with the rest of the family, and then spend the rest of the night drinking beer and, eventually, falling asleep on the couch.

Sometimes, he would become angry and belligerent and pick an argument with his wife, Betty. Most of the time, she ignored him by retreating into the bedroom and closing the door. Sometimes, she would yell back at Dan and they would have an explosive argument. Even though he would wake up most mornings with a bad hangover, Dan almost never missed work as a train operator for the MTA subway system.

Even though Jeff and Tom were only a year apart and growing up in the same household, they each experienced their father's drunkenness in very different ways.

Jeff tended to be a very quiet child who would retreat into his room and watch TV quietly, losing himself in whatever program he was watching. If he was watching a program about an ideal family, he would fantasize that he was part of that family.

Tom would often leave the house, slamming the door behind him. By the time he was a teen, he had his own car and he would sometimes drive off in anger to get away from the home. He would meet his friends and they would go drag racing on the boulevard. He was brought home by the police a few times for speeding at 90-100 mph.

One day, Dan was sent home from work after he tested positive for alcohol on a random alcohol test at work. His supervisor told him that he would be brought up on disciplinary charges and he would either have to get into an alcohol treatment program or face losing his job.

They considered him to be too high a risk to allow him to drive the train. Before his disciplinary hearing, he would have to serve a 30-day suspension without pay.

Until then, even though he was an active alcoholic, Dan had been a good provider. Now, his job was in jeopardy, and this placed another burden on the family and created more tension in the household.

Neither his mother or his father talked to Jeff about this, but he overheard them talking quietly in the living room. He heard them say that they wouldn't tell Jeff and Tom about Dan's problems at work, so Jeff had to pretend that he didn't know and try to act "normal" around them.

When Tom got home, Jeff spoke to him quietly about what happened. Tom was furious. He told Jeff that he hated their father and he wished the father would die.

Fearing that his parents would hear Tom, Jeff tried to get Tom to be quiet, but Tom was so enraged that he ran out of the house, and sped away in his car. Jeff knew that Tom liked to speed and he worried that his brother would get into trouble. His parents were so preoccupied that they hardly noticed that Tom left in a rage.

Jeff spent the rest of the night in his room spacing out in front of the TV for hours. He had fallen asleep in front of the TV when he heard the doorbell ring late at night.

From inside his room, he heard a commotion at the front door. When he got up to see what was going on, he was not surprised to see a police officer at the door informing his parents that Jeff had gotten into an accident while speeding and he was in the local hospital. Fortunately, he survived the crash and he only had a broken leg and no one else was hurt, but the car was totalled. This was the beginning of Tom's long arrest record for reckless driving.

When Jeff got older, he moved out on his own. He had a few people that he socialized with occasionally, but he tended to keep to himself.

He was employed as a technical researcher, so he spent most of his working time alone as well. Although he tended to avoid socializing, he was often very lonely.

Part of him wanted to have close friends and a special woman in his life but, at that point, a bigger part of him was too afraid of getting hurt and disappointed.

Because he had spent most of his childhood isolating, he also lacked the social skills to go out to meet other people. And when he had opportunities to meet others in college or at work, he was too afraid to open up to these experiences.

By the time he was in his late 20s, he felt depressed and miserable. His father had long since retired on disability due to alcohol-related medical problems, and his mother was depressed and emotionally withdrawn. His brother had moved out of state and he was estranged from the family. No one knew where he was. So, Jeff felt like he had no family and no friends.

Jeff couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life in this state, so he knew he had to do something, but he felt too afraid to seek professional help.

For the next year, he went back and forth in his mind about whether he should see a psychotherapist. He realized that he was spending far too much time by himself watching TV and feeling lonely, but he couldn't get passed his fear of opening up to a stranger.

Finally, when he began having thoughts of killing himself, he called the Suicide Prevention Hot line and they gave him a referral to a therapist.

Because the pain of remaining isolated became greater than his fear of opening up in psychotherapy, Jeff decided to make an appointment to see the psychotherapist.

During the first session, he found it very hard to remain present in the session. He alternated between wanting to zone out and fall asleep.

Over time, Jeff learned how his avoidant coping strategies helped him when he was a child to avoid dealing with the situation at home, which would have been emotionally overwhelming for any child, but especially for a child who was as sensitive as Jeff.

Changing Coping Strategies That No Longer Work For You:  Avoidance

He also learned how this avoidant coping strategy was no longer working for him and that he needed to learn new coping strategies so he could live a full life and not spend the rest of his life hiding. He also needed to learn new social skills so he could meet other people and have a life outside of his work.

It wasn't easy, and there were many times when Jeff wanted to quit therapy because he felt too afraid to come out of his emotional shell. But when he thought of the alternatives, Jeff stuck with it.

Gradually, he learned to trust his therapist. Step by step, he developed better internal and external coping strategies.

Instead of losing himself in front of his TV, he incorporated new coping strategies: He began attending a yoga class and learned how to meditate in that class. He joined a local running club and met other young men and women who liked to jog and bike.

Jeff also began to date, and soon he met a woman that he really liked and they began dating exclusively.

As often happens in intimate relationships, some of Jeff's core emotional issues came up in this relationship, and he was often tempted to withdraw emotionally. However, he dealt with these issues with his psychotherapist as they came up, and he learned to cope with emotions that were difficult for him.

Even though this was a lot of hard work for Jeff, he felt like he was alive for the first time in his life. He realized that by withdrawing from difficult emotional experiences all of his life, he was also withdrawing from positive experiences as well.

Getting Help in Therapy to Change Coping Strategies That No Longer Work

He came to realize that, to survive as a child, he had blunted his emotions so that he felt almost nothing. So, taking the risk of feeling some pain came to outweigh feeling nothing.

In the above scenario, we can see several examples of avoidant behavior in Jeff's family, including alcoholism, social and psychological withdrawal, emotional numbing, and reckless risk taking behavior.

We can also see that engaging in avoidant behavior as children often allows us to survive overwhelming emotions. It comes at a cost in terms of the child's emotional development, but often the child has no choice if he or she wants to survive emotionally.

In addition, we see that the avoidant coping strategies that serve children in terms of emotional survival don't work for adults who must interact and make their way in the world.

Getting Help in Therapy
We also see that there is a lot of emotional pain for adults who recognize that they're stuck in maladaptive coping strategies, but there is also hope for those who seek the help of a licensed mental health professional.

I am a licensed psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing therapist in NYC.  I work with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many adults to overcome coping strategies that no longer work for them and learn to develop new coping skills.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also see my articles:  Coping Strategies that No Longer Work: Passive Behavior

Coping Strategies that No Long Work for You: Controlling Behavior