Author Archives: Evelyn Barton

10 Ways to Live Free from Fear

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1.  See the good in your life — stay focused on this.

2.  Trust that you have the skills to get through the difficult times.

3.  Don’t be afraid of the anxiety.

4.  Do something that makes you feel better.

5.  Get in touch with your senses to stay in the present moment.

6.  Remind yourself that anxiety is temporary.

7.  Breathe – take long, deep breaths in through the nose and exhale slowly through the mouth until the anxiety is gone.

8.  Connect with someone or something.

9.  Remember, anxiety cannot hurt; it just feels like it does.

10.  Stop judging yourself.

 

 

How to Spot a Child Molester

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How do you know when a person is safe for your child to be around?  Answer:  You really can never be 100% sure because pedophiles and other brands of child molesters are master manipulators; but, there are some clues that can be indicators that someone is not safe for your child.

Ways to identify a child molester:

  • They are more interested in talking to your child than they are in talking to you.
  • They tend to be people who spend time alone with children; in particular, males who strategize alone time with children or one particular child.
  • Pedophiles often try to elicit sympathy from their victims by telling them sad stories about their own childhoods.
  • Child molesters are usually people you know and trust.
  • Child molesters do not respect boundaries – particularly those of children.
  • They treat children like peers rather than like children.
  • Most child molesters are male.
  • They place themselves geographically in locations where children are present schools, parks, kids’ clubs…
  • They become involved in relationships with adults who have children, particularly single mothers.
  • They “groom” their victims with promises and gifts.
  • They manipulate their victims by sympathizing with them and tricking them into believing that they “really” understand the child’s situation.
  • They look children in the eye and appear to be genuinely interested and concerned for them.
  • They are incapable of having a healthy relationship with a mature woman.
  • Pedophiles tend to have “gaps” in their employment history.

At some point during the relationship an element of secrecy gets introduced.  The beginning secrets may be “innocent,” that is, not involving sexual content; but it is in the act of having a secret that the child becomes “hooked” in the relationship.  Once the molester realizes that he has gotten away with getting the child to keep a secret, then he quickly increases his level of physical boundary violation to the point of sexual contact.

A relationship between a child molester and a child feels very intimate.  Usually the child molester has violated all appropriate boundaries to the point that his relationship with the child involves elements akin to an intimate adult relationship.  In fact, many pedophiles actually believe they are having a real and beneficial relationship with the child.  The child enjoys the relationship to some degree and puts up with the sexual violation because the relationship feels deep and meaningful, meeting the child’s  needs to be seen and heard by an adult.  A pedophile is meeting the child’s needs for affection, acknowledgement, attention, and value.  The child is trapped in this elicit relationship, partly because it is meeting some of the child’s “felt” needs, albeit, inappropriately.  Unfortunately, this intimate relationship is extremely toxic, perverting the childâ’s desire for closeness, and confusing the childâ’s sense of how a relationship “should” feel.  Sexual abuse not only causes the victims to feel a deep sense of shame and rage, it confuses the victim’s perceptions of love, boundaries, and need for validation.

Another dynamic that occurs when a child is molested is that the child becomes deeply ashamed and she feels so humiliated by what is happening that she tries to push it out of her mind and pretend that everything is fine.  She is so horrified by the truth that she mentally runs away from it and will not tell anyone, let alone herself, what is really happening to her.

The best way to prevent the sexual molestation of your child is to pay attention to her.  Make sure that you meet her felt needs of acknowledgement, attention, and worth.  Look her in the eye and listen to her. Be interested in your child’s life. Let her know you are paying attention, you are attuned, and you care about her wellbeing.  Talk to your child about deep and meaningful things.  Make sure she is not being neglected or left to fend for herself.  A sexual predator feeds on children who are neglected.  Make sure your child is not neglected.

Boost Your Confidence

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Are you fairly confident in your own shoes? When do you feel your best? When do you feel the most insecure? Even the most confident individuals go through periods of self-doubt. Are there areas of your life where you are a bit insecure? It is very natural to feel confident in certain areas and lack the confidence in others. That means there is room for growth! Remember nobody is perfect, so don’t beat yourself up over your flaws. There are many things you can do to improve and boost your confidence. Just like you need to weight train in order to build your muscles, you need to take part in daily activities to boost you confidence. The people you associate with play an important role in your self-confidence. If the people you surround yourself with are constantly criticizing you or your abilities, of course you are going to harbor feelings of self-doubt. Be extremely picky in who you allow into your life! Just remember that self-confidence is a learned response over time. You put yourself in situations that will ultimately boost your confidence level. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Set and achieve goals. Setting, and then, achieving goals will boost your confidence. Most people, however, set unrealistic goals that are difficult to achieve. When you continue to fail in your goals, then, of course, your confidence plummets. For now, write down some realistic goals and the steps needed to achieve them. Crossing off even one step at a time will boost your confidence.

2. Participate in activities you enjoy. By participating in activities you enjoy, you are focusing on your strengths and passions. Highlighting your strengths instead of your weaknesses adds up over time. Commit to taking some time each and every day to do something you enjoy. This seems fairly simple, but most people don’t prioritize and set aside this time.

3. List past successes. Make a list of all your past achievements and success stories. It is amazing that we spend so much time and energy focusing on what we have done wrong, instead of remembering all we did right. Make this list and then read it when feelings of self-doubt begin to invade your mind. Keep this list handy and pat yourself on the back when you need a little boost.

Rev Up Your Emotional Metabolism

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Everyone gets stuck at one time or another. What if we could cycle through the awful, paralyzing emotions and get to the positive, happy ones more quickly?

Figure Out if Your Pain Is Clean or Dirty

Fast-tracking your way out of a dark period starts with figuring out what kind of pain you’re feeling. Clean pain is the raw emotion that results from what happens to you. It’s real, and it’s logical. It crops up when you lose a spouse or your job or discover someone’s betrayed you, and it often causes you to say things like “I feel so lost” or “I miss him so much.” Dirty pain, on the other hand, is when you try to explain why the event happened or predict what will happen next, saying things like “He never loved me” or “My life is never going to be the same again.” What this does is add a distracting dose of punishment. Another way to think about it? The clean version is a recognition of what you’re feeling. The dirty version is a judgment about why you’re feeling that emotion and how long it will last. The more you can stick with the former, the quicker you’ll get through the tough times.

Put Yourself Through 90 Seconds of Total Hell

Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy – and time. What usually happens is that we try to divert ourselves from what’s upsetting us. We eat something or buy something or do whatever is going to make us feel better in the moment. But “research has shown that when you sit with those clean, pure emotions like sadness or anger, they actually pass through you in about 90 seconds.” So if you can just be with it and say, “I can handle this feeling,” it will burn up and dissipate. This doesn’t mean you’ll be over your breakup or your dog’s death in 90 seconds. That emotion is going to come back. But, the more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half moments of hell, the quicker you’ll start feeling those minute-and-a-half moments of happiness.

Add the Extra Sentence

Many of us have a punishing, critical voice in our heads. Every time it yells at us, it sidetracks us from figuring out what we really need to do. Silencing it is the ideal solution – but that might take some serious long-term practice: add one extra sentence to each negative, discouraging thought. For example, if the voice inside your head says, “My husband died, and I’m never going to love again,” you add, “in that way.” Another example? If the voice says, “I lost my job, and I’m never going to find another one,” you add, “exactly like the last one.” When you eliminate the punishing conclusion by tacking on a more positive (more realistic) one, you eliminate the weeks soaked with guilt and worry. You may find in one of your add-ons, an unanticipated possibility.

10 Steps to Self-Care

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–  If it feels wrong, don’t do it.

–  Say exactly what you mean (in a nice way).

–  Don’t be a people-pleaser.

– Trust your instincts.

–  Never speak badly about yourself.

–  Never give up on your dreams.

–  Don’t be afraid to say “no.”

–  Don’t be afraid to say “yes.”

–  Be kind to yourself.  Love your “self.”

–  Let go of what you can’t control.

–  Stay away from drama and negativity as much as possible.

Proven Strategies for Releasing Negative Thoughts 

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Whether by virtue of our self-imposed stress, propensity for self-blame or the scarcity mentality that keeps us from connecting with our gratitude, negative thinking can be a significant obstacle to our personal development and emotional well-being. Escaping the thrall of our negative thoughts is not simply a matter of putting a brave face on things. Positivity doesn’t just happen — it’s created and as we are the architects of our own reality, that creation is in our hands.

The initial challenge here is to get past the evolutionary and social obstacles that foster our anxiety and fear. The thinking that keeps us rattling around this prison of negativity, however, is the same thinking that can foster our freedom.

The first of several practices for getting past our negative thoughts is to simply not believe what we think. If we identify, or over-identify, with our thoughts, they start having us, rather than us having them. Holding fast to a particular negative belief or belief system, we not only limit ourselves, but mire ourselves in that negativity. For example, should we operate with a poverty mentality, we paralyze ourselves into thinking we will never have enough. Taking a moment to recognize what we do have and then acting to further cultivate that breaks us out of this cycle of negativity. Knowledge is in the thinking; wisdom is in the doing.

It can also serve us to question our reality. When confronted with a negative thought we can take time to ask ourselves three things: “Is it reasonable? Is it rational? Is it reliable?”

Establishing the reasonableness of a thought helps us get some perspective. There is such a thing as a reasonable level of anxiety. When that anxiety blooms into a full-fledged panic simply because we don’t know what’s going to happen, then we’ve likely stepped outside the bounds of that reasonableness.

Next, we need to establish if our thinking is rational. If, for example, we are struggling to make ends meet every month, but the bills are still getting paid, it’s probably not rational to be sitting up for the better part of the night fretting over losing the house or having the car repossessed. If, however, we find ourselves in a place where the bills really aren’t getting paid and our concerns are reasonable, we need to point our rational response at what comes next, rather than creating more internal conflict by fretting over something we may not be able to control.

Finally, we can explore if the thought is reliable. Has it happened before with any degree of consistency? If the answer is no, then it’s quite likely we’re making up a story, rather than responding to a potential.

Another helpful means for sorting out our negative thinking is unpacking our feelings. When our psychophysiological response to a situation passes through the filter of our worldview — our subjective assumptions, expectations and ideas about the way the world works — we experience a conscious feeling. The quality of that feeling is determined by what we are thinking about the situation. For example, if two people are standing at the top of a roller coaster one may be feeling excited, while the other is feeling fearful. Both are experiencing a relatively similar physiological response, but for one that translates into a feeling of anticipation, while for the other it translates into a feeling of apprehension. The difference between the two is how each person is thinking about the experience before them.

Unpacking our feelings can lead us back to the source of our experience and, once we identify what we’re thinking about that experience, we can ask a very simple question: “Why?” What is it about roller coasters that make me fearful or excited? What is it about the envelopes with the little windows or the phone ringing that makes me anxious? Once we find the source, we can label it and then, release it because in identifying the thought, we now control it. It no longer controls us.

An additional technique for releasing negative thinking is to ask ourselves, “What’s the worst possible thing that could happen?” This kind of extreme perspective serves as a foil, giving us a more realistic view of what’s actually in front of us. Scripting a scenario that plays to our greatest anxieties, fears and negativities allows us a certain relativism that can take the charge out of our experience, making it more manageable.

Acknowledging and keeping your mind fixed on what is going right in your life is a great way to divert your attention from the negative thoughts. Praying (asking God to change your thoughts) and keeping your focus on God are also helpful in releasing the negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones.

Once we’ve employed these various techniques for guiding our thoughts, we need to find a means for keeping them corralled. Journaling prompts us to slow down and develop a more balanced sensibility around our larger picture, engaging all of our faculties and senses in organizing our thoughts. Exercise releases endorphins, calming and centering us, which allows us to think more clearly and with greater acuity.

Whichever of these techniques we may choose, our primary focus is on creating a shift of mind that takes us out of our negative headspace and into one that is more positive, or, at least, balanced. We create our experience by virtue of how we are thinking about a particular situation, good, bad or indifferent. What’s important to bear in mind is that if we can think ourselves in, we can always think ourselves out.

 

Finding Courage in Times of Need

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You draw courage from what matters to you. The changes you’re willing to make are the ones that have the greatest significance. For example, if you’ve been offered a job that will force you to move across the country but you don’t care about the job, you’ll have a hard time finding courage to make the move.

Once you’ve decided what matters, then follow these suggestions for becoming more courageous.

  • Recall previous times when you acted courageously. Did you move as a child and have to make new friends? Did you go away to college?  Focusing on times when you acted courageously will instill more courage in you, adding that you should also applaud yourself for showing courage.
  • Shift your focus. Don’t worry about failing or disappointing other people. Worry, instead, about failing yourself.
  • Eliminate the words “wish,” “hope” and “maybe” from your vocabulary. These words erode your courage by filling you with doubt, fear or hesitation.
  • Do your homework. If appropriate, know the obstacles you might encounter. Talk with other people who were once in your shoes. But, remember that no matter how much you analyze the situation, you’ll still have unknown answers. “Courage doesn’t mean waiting to act until you have no fear. Courage means living with heart and doing what you want when you’re scared.
  • Surround yourself with courageous people.  There will always be people who say “never.”  Find people who support and believe in you.
  • Imagine what life will be like when your challenge has passed. Courage can come from seeing past adversity and knowing that although it may be horrible now, it’ll get better sometime.
  • Give it your all but don’t expect perfection.  Don’t give only 50%; then, you can say later that you didn’t succeed because you weren’t trying that hard. To find courage, you must be willing to give 100%.
  • Once you’ve acted with courage, assess your response.  Did acting with courage move you forward? If not, figure out how you would behave differently next time. If so, then bottle that courage, reward yourself, and always remember this time when you acted with courage in spite of your fears.

 

Bumps in the Road – Overcoming the Hurdles in Your Life

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How many of you feel like you are making progress in life and then bumps and hurdles show up to slow you down? I know how frustrating that can feel…..I’ve experienced it several times myself. I have one particular client whom I adore, but she seemed to face hurdle after hurdle just when things seemed to be getting better. These hurdles, unfortunately, pushed her off track when she was beginning to make progress. She was expanding her business and also looking to date men who would be a step up from the men she dated in the past. Her business was very successful and she was living a dream that she, at one point, thought was impossible. In her personal life, she was attracting the same men who continued to pop up in her past, and she was unsure why this was. Instead of enjoying her thriving business, she was getting wrapped up in the drama of her dating life. After talking through some things in one session, we pinpointed that she did not feel worthy of certain men. She thought she wanted a certain type of man, one who would be respectful and kind, but she settled for ones who were not a good fit for her. She did not have good role models growing up, therefore, she did not know what a healthy relationship looked or felt like. These bumps in the road, showing up as toxic men, kept presenting themselves to her. I advised her to take a dating sabbatical. She needed some time to focus on her business and nurture herself. Until she felt worthy of men who treated her with kindness and support, she would continue to face hurdle after hurdle. This drama was affecting her work and she was not able to be fully present with her clients or her staff. Sometimes you need to recognize hurdles or bumps in the road for what they are. Why are they presenting themselves to you? Why do you continue to attract the same ones? Take some time this week to reflect on what hurdles you’ve faced in the past and what hurdles are showing up now in your life.

ACTION TIPS:

1. Past bumps in the road
I am a firm believer in learning from the past. Review your past and recognize when and where you faced and overcame hurdles. What helped you move past the bumps in the road? How did it feel to move past the adversity? Were there certain hurdles that you still have not moved through?

2. Present hurdles
Take a step back and look at your life in the present time. What bumps are in your life right now? How are you dealing with them? Are you ignoring them or working through them? Realize that by not making a choice, you are making a choice. Your choice is not to do anything. To truly succeed and grow as a person, it is vital to face your fears at times. You need to find strength within to break through hurdles that life throws at you. Brainstorm ways to support your growth in order to move forward.

3. Keep getting back on the horse
We all fall off the horse at times. It’s the people who get back on that feel a sense of empowerment and success. I know how difficult it can be to get back on the horse when you feel down and out. But, I guarantee you that just the act of climbing back on will do more for you than any self-help book or seminar. You will feel stronger, more self-confident, and prepared to tackle anything that comes your way. Next time you fall, take a minute to gather your strength, and then, get back on, no matter how scared or unsure you feel.

9 Ways to Let Go of Stuck Thoughts

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The more you try to get rid of them, the more powerful they become. Here are strategies one can use when those thoughts occur, techniques that help you free yourself from their hold:

  1. Don’t Talk Back

The first thing you want to do when you get an intrusive thought is to respond with logic. By talking back, you think you can quiet the voice. However, you actually empower the voice. You give it an opportunity to debate with you and make its case. The more you analyze the obsession “That is a silly thought because of reasons A, B, and C” the more attention you give it and the more intense it becomes. Sorting things out and forcing a solution will always seem like the most compelling thing to do – but in fact focusing on these issues in this way is using exactly the wrong tools for the job.

  1. Know It Will Pass

I can do anything for a minute, most things for an hour, a considerable amount for a day, or two or three days. Most of my intrusive thoughts, the intense phase, anyway, have a life span of two or three days. You will find obsessions to be much more manageable if you compare them to a more challenging time in your life. Your stuck thoughts are not permanent. They will be gone soon enough.

  1. Focus on Now

Your stuck thought is most likely based in the past (feelings of regret, etc.) or the future. Rarely are we obsessed about something that is happening in the present because we are too busy living this moment. It can seem impossible to engage with what’s happening in our world in real time when we have a riveting made-for-TV drama unfolding in our heads, but the more successful we are at tuning into the here and now, the less tormented we will be by our stuck thoughts. I try to be around people and have conversations so that I have to concentrate on what they are saying to me, not the text messages of my chattering mind.

  1. Tune into the Senses

An effective way to anchor your mind in the here and now – and away from the obsession du jour, is to tune into the senses. Our five portals to the world – seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing – can transition us from the doing mode to the being mode. For example, I was tucking my daughter into the bed the other night as I obsessed about something that had happened that day: theorizing why it occurred and arriving at 342 solutions to solve the problem. My daughter grabbed my hand to hold, and it occurred to me that I was missing out on a precious moment because of some stupid stuck thought. So I made a conscious effort to focus on her little hand in mind, her soft, babyish skin against my weathered hands. Concentrating on her hand led me out of my head and into reality.

  1. Do Something Else

If you can, distract yourself with some other activity. You need not start an ambitious project to change gears. Painting your bathroom walls could definitely do the job, but so could walking around the block or working on a word puzzle.

  1. Change Your Obsession

You might try to replace your obsession with another one that isn’t so emotional or damaging. Example: I was obsessing about something the other day when I headed to Panera Bread to write. I was intent on getting a booth, so I hung out at one of the smaller tables until I could secure one. I studied the people, their gestures” are they leaving? Another woman who uses Panera as her office came in with her laptop and was also scouting tables to set up shop. I knew she wanted a booth, too.  All of a sudden, all I could think about was securing a booth before she did. My old obsession vanished in light of this new, benign obsession.

  1. Blame the Chemistry

I experience great relief when I remember that I am not obsessing about something because that thing is crucial to my existence and should replace priorities one, two, and three, but rather because the special biochemistry inside my brain is wired to ruminate A LOT. The subject of the obsessions isn’t all that important. There is no catastrophic problem that needs to be solved in the next 24 hours. In fact, the unstuck thought might be 100 percent fluff, a made-up story the brain fabricated because it couldn’t find anything interesting enough in real life to warrant ruminations.

  1. Picture It

Fortunate for me, I have a grade school-aged child who is besieged by stuck thoughts, too. He doesn’t have the life experience or the knowledge to know that these thoughts aren’t real, so when they say, “You can’t do your homework because you’re stupid,” he panics, throws pencils, shouts some crazy things, and exhibits bizarre behavior because he is convinced that he can’t do his homework because he is stupid. Watching this temper tantrum is helpful for me because it serves as a display of what’s going on inside my head, and when I can visualize it, I see how ridiculous it all looks.

  1. Admit Powerlessness

If I have tried every technique I can think of and am still tormented by the voices inside my head, I simply pray, admit powerlessness to my wonderful brain biochemistry, and allow God to be in control. I stop my efforts to free myself from the obsessions and I know they will eventually go away.

14 Principles to Thrive!

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1. Grieve. Grieve the life you thought you were going to live. Then, move forward and make it the way you want it to be.

2. Anger/Vitality. Anger provides great vitality. Learn to channel your anger into positive things.

3. Ownership. Own your journey. Take 100% responsibility for your actions.

4. Choice. Crisis or opportunity? You decide. Create ways to make any crisis an opportunity.

5. Make Fear Your Friend. Find ways to confront your fears, instead of running from them.

6. Find Laughter. Laughter shifts the scope of the difficulty.

7. My Life is a Play. I am the producer. Do I want to be the hero, the victim? What role do I want to play?

8. A Little Help from Friends/Professionals.  Ask for the support you need, to grow. It’s okay to receive counseling, to help you address the issues in your life that you find yourself struggling with.

9. It’s My Team. You choose who is on your team. If they are not supportive, they can take the bench.

10. Everybody sells. We sell ourselves every day. What are you buying and does it serve you?

11. Invitation to Change. When things come up, be open and curious.

12. Attitude of Gratitude. Write down three things you are grateful for each day, no matter what your circumstances.

13. Perfection. Do not strive for perfection. That is not an attainable goal. Instead, strive to become a better person or to improve your life.  Because we are human, nobody is perfect. (Once you change your perspective and embrace this, it’s amazing how things begin to shift for you).

14. Play BIG. Are you holding yourself back from your dreams? How can I play bigger in my life?