Couples Counselling: Will it Work For You?

Transcript

Couples counselling can feel like a daunting and scary undertaking, but it can also make a world of difference for struggling relationships. In this video I address some of the most common ways that couples counselling can help your relationship, so that you have a better idea of what to expect. Stay tuned to learn how a skilled counsellor can help you turn down the struggle and turn up the satisfaction!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give you practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

Realizing that your relationship could use a little outside help can be a big, important step toward making things better.

Unfortunately, there’s a still a whole lot of stigma out there when it comes to doing therapy, especially couples counselling. I hear it all the time – “the right relationship should be easy”, “if it’s meant to be, it will just work”, or that “love is all you need”. And let’s not forget about the social pressure to make it work at any cost. 

Then, on the flip side, there’s the belief that if you aren’t satisfied in your relationship, it’s better to cut your losses than to keep trying to make it work. All of these mixed messages and ideas can leave a lot of couples feeling confused, hopeless, and stuck!

So how can couples counselling help you go from feeling discouraged to secure in your relationship? Allow me to explain!

One of the most common reasons couples seek therapy is because they struggle to work through conflict in helpful and constructive ways.

Just about anyone who has been in a relationship can agree that it can be incredibly hard to find better ways to work through conflict when we’re the ones in the middle of it! It can be hard to hear your own tone, remember the content of what you say, and understand why your partner responds the way they do to it all. And digging into these details after the fact can bring up old hurts and frustrations.

The benefit of bringing in a third party, like a therapist, is that you and your partner are given the space to have your points of view heard by an unbiased professional. This creates a level of safety for both of you to share, have your perspectives reflected back to both of you, and ultimately understand each other better.

A couples counsellor can serve as a guide for you to find resolution to conflict by asking questions that encourage you both to validate one another’s perspectives. Doing this in a genuine way can support you both in softening any feelings of hurt and anger, creating space for compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. 

One way to know if this is a struggle that you and your partner are facing is by asking yourselves what usually happens when conflict arises in the relationship. How do you each respond, and how do you find resolution? Does it feel like you get stuck, or that big issues don’t get fully resolved? If so, this is one way a couples counsellor can help.

If it seems like this could be a helpful thing to work on, look into connecting with a counsellor who is skilled at supporting couples in developing effective ways of communicating. It’s important for you both to feel a connection with this counsellor, and that each one of you are treated fairly, without judgment.

The benefit of taking this step is that the two of you learn really effective strategies for communicating, which helps to create a stronger foundation that will support you in getting through all sorts of challenges down the road.

Another familiar problem that many couples face is feeling disconnected from one another, or out of sync.

It’s really easy for life to get in the way of focusing on the relationship, and for you to wake up one day and realize that you are both in a bit of a rut. This can feel like an overwhelming and scary realization, that can lead to lots of questions about the future of your relationship if the spark isn’t rekindled quickly.

If this is an experience you are familiar with, then getting the support of a skilled couples counsellor can be really helpful. This person can offer you valuable feedback and help you collaborate to create the changes you both desire.

Couples counselling offers a space to engage in an open, frank conversation about where the relationship is currently at, and how you both would like things to be different. 

When deciding who to reach out to, both of you can consider the support you need from a counsellor, and what both of you are looking for in terms of help.

In this way, relationship counselling helps hold you both accountable to focus on the relationship, giving it the attention you need to restore your connection.

 Another common reason that couples seek therapy is in response to a loss of trust between partners. This can be due to a transgression by one or both of you against the other, and couples counselling offers an avenue to heal and move past the hurt.

When trust has been shaken, it can be really hard to work together to make things whole again. Maybe one or both of you feel invalidated by the other, or that you aren’t given the space to feel how you feel about the situation. There might also be a lack of accountability taken for the wrongdoing that is getting in the way of forgiveness and healing.  

In situations like this, couples counselling offers an opportunity for the two of you to talk about what has happened in the relationship within a safe space. The upside of any struggle in a relationship, even those that feel huge and hard to overcome, is that they offer a chance for you to heal past hurts and create a stronger foundation of connection and trust.

For couples, reaching out for support doesn’t have to mean that your relationship is doomed and beyond repair. Instead, it can be a sign of the commitment that the two of you share in having a more desirable and fulfilling relationship. 

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life.

Social Anxiety: How to Get Over Fear of Rejection

Do you ever feel like you're all tied up in knots because you're anxious about being rejected or disliked for who you are? If you struggle with social anxiety, it's probably no surprise that fear of rejection is one of the biggest things people worry about.

Transcript

Do you ever feel like you’re all tied up in knots because you’re anxious about being rejected or disliked for who you are? If you struggle with social anxiety, it’s probably no surprise that fear of rejection is one of the biggest things people worry about. In this video I’ll be touching on why that is and what you can do to feel  more at ease when anxiety comes a-knockin’. Keep watching to learn all about it!

 Hi folks, I’m Will Bratt from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to address your problems and make your life happier – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

 As you may know from your own lived experience, social anxiety is often a strong emotional response to anticipating rejection, exclusion, judgment, or just not fitting in with others. Now, not everyone who shares these fears experiences them for all the same reasons, but it really is uncanny that so many of us can relate to these feelings in some way!

 No matter the reason behind why you feel anxious about being disliked or rejected, you probably don’t appreciate the way these fears can shrink your life. Social anxiety can make it really hard to venture out into new social contexts, get to know new people, and let new people get to know you. So let’s take a closer look at social anxiety, fear of rejection, and what you can do about it!

 Isn’t it interesting how human beings can find it so unnerving to imagine being disliked or rejected? I mean, it’s not like our lives are necessarily at stake. But still we really struggle to feel comfortable with that possibility. I touch on this in our video “How Most Anxiety is Social Anxiety”, and I explain how this is because belonging goes hand in hand with dignity. I definitely recommend giving that a watch after you’re finished with this one.

 But yeah, even though we don’t have to depend on each other in the modern world the way our ancestors did, belonging is still vital for our sense of wellbeing. So it makes sense why so many of us have a hard time with this particular kind of social anxiety.

 Now, even though it makes a lot of sense to feel anxious about rejection, exclusion, and not fitting in, it can end up being very restrictive for us to take those fears as gospel without challenging them. In other words, just because something is scary, doesn’t mean we should rule it out and avoid it forever. Although the prospect of things going badly can be terribly unnerving, it can also be rewarding and enlivening to challenge our social fears with courage.

 So here are some ways of taking the wind out of social anxiety’s sails:

 1.     Ask yourself “So what?”

 The first way to disrupt social anxiety around the fear of rejection is to ask yourself in a very kind and honest way, “So what?” What if you did experience rejection, judgment, or some other negative social response. What would that mean for you? What would the consequence be for your life? What’s the best way you imagine yourself or someone else dealing with that kind of experience?

I offer questions like these to help you explore for yourself what it is about the possibility of rejection or not fitting in that feels as scary as it does. While there’s a reason for everything, not everything needs to stay the way it is. In this case, I have a hunch that even though it might feel really scary to be rejected or excluded, your fears probably don’t give you enough credit for your ability to deal with challenges like these.

2.    Consider the Cost/Benefit

 That leads us to the second way of keeping social anxiety and fear of rejection from constraining your life: considering the cost and benefit of putting yourself out there in spite of your fears, versus adhering to social anxiety’s cautions.

 What do you imagine would help or hurt your life more? Having your fears come true and experiencing rejection, or staying quiet or withdrawn to keep the rejection from happening? I think it’s important to acknowledge here that every situation is different, and so there’s no universally right answer to this question. I also can’t tell you what’s right or wrong for you, but I can say that for myself, strictly adhering to my fears of judgment, rejection, and exclusion usually costs me more than it benefits me. I’ve developed some wonderful relationships with people who I initially felt scared or intimidated to talk to, in part because I took the risk of approaching them.

3. Building confidence

This connects naturally to the third way of reducing your fear of rejection: building confidence in the possibility of things going well.

In our video “Is Social Anxiety Really About Low Self-Esteem?”, I acknowledge the reality that a lot of people develop fears and expectations around receiving negative responses from others because they’ve actually had a number of those experiences in the past. In cases like this, social anxiety can actually be seen as resistance to receiving rejection or mistreatment in the future. But I also see the dilemma around not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to have an expansive social life.

When we experience really hurtful rejections, it can make it hard to go out on a limb and put ourselves in those situations that we feel anxious about. But trying anyway and experiencing success over time helps us build confidence in the possibility that things could actually go well.

I encourage you to be patient with yourself here. Negative experiences tend to carry a lot more weight than positive ones, and so it could take at least a handful of positive experiences in a row to help build that confidence and diminish some of your fears of rejection or exclusion.

4.     See it as an opportunity

Building confidence flows nicely into the fourth way of getting over your fear of rejection: seeing your fear and anxiety as an opportunity to build strength in yourself.

It’s easy to see anxiety as a barrier, because fear makes it hard to take action toward the things you’re afraid of. And while that may be true, it also presents an opportunity to get better at something you struggle with.

If you notice yourself feeling anxious about a social situation you’re anticipating, you could ask yourself a question like, “How might this be an opportunity to build strength or skills?”. You could also ask yourself, “What skills or abilities might facing this fear help me increase?”

Seeing your fear of rejection as an opportunity could help anxious moments feel less like threats and more like potential chances to grow.

These are 4 strategies that can help you reduce your social anxiety and fear of rejection. Now I’d like to turn it over to you! If you have other ways of dealing with social anxiety around the fear of rejection, let us know in the comment section. You can also let us know if you have other helpful ways of dealing with those fears. The Heart & Oak community is all about sharing what helps, and you never know who your ideas and experiences might benefit!

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life!

Social Anxiety: Is it Really about Low Self-Esteem?

If you or someone you care about struggles with social anxiety, you’ve probably heard the idea that it’s caused by having low self-esteem. In this video Will Bratt explains how that perspective misses the mark, and offers some other ways of looking at it that can help you deal with your own social anxiety!

Transcript

If you or someone you care about struggles with social anxiety, you’ve probably heard the idea that it’s caused by having low self-esteem. In this video I explain how that perspective misses the mark, and offer some other ways of looking at it that can help you deal with your own social anxiety. Keep watching to learn more!

Hi folks, I’m Will Bratt from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to address your problems and make your life happier – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

There’s a really popular idea out there that the reason people feel anxious in social situations is because they have low self-esteem. This perspective assumes that because you fear rejection, exclusion, judgment, and other negative social responses, you must not feel good enough about yourself, because if you did, those things wouldn’t matter to you.

 As a therapist, I talk to a lot of folks about social anxiety, and its relationship to self-esteem almost always comes up. But when we take a close look at that perspective, its faults start to become clear. In this video I share how the idea that social anxiety is caused by low self-esteem doesn’t hold much water, as well as some more context-based observations that better explain social anxiety.

 Let’s start with what social anxiety is, and how most people experience it.

As an emotion, anxiety is often about anticipation. In general, it is the emotional response to anticipated negative experiences. When we throw the word “social” in front of “anxiety”, we’re talking about the anticipation of negative social responses or experiences. I talk more about this in our video “How to Address the Fears Behind Social Anxiety”, which you should check out after this one.

If you’ve ever dealt with social anxiety, you’ve probably experienced it as fears and worries around anticipated judgments, rejection, exclusion, or even as a lack of safety in groups or crowded spaces. Common responses to these fears include avoidance of social circumstances, being quiet and careful with what you say, verbal diarrhea – where you fill the air with words and have a hard time reigning it in, and even feeling physically ill with nausea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, and fast, shallow breathing. 

With all that said, people often assume that if only you had more self-esteem, confidence, or thought more highly of yourself, you wouldn’t have these feelings in the first place. Let me explain why this assumption is generally not all that useful.

1.     It’s an overgeneralization

First, and perhaps foremost, it’s often a hasty overgeneralization that your feelings of anxiety around social situations are caused by having low self-esteem. The mental health field is full of hasty assumptions and generalizations just like this, which fail to take the context of your life and lived experience into account. Assumptions like these jump the gun and provide easy answers that lack real insight into your actual lived experience.

What I mean here is that human lives are complex, and our responses, like fear and anxiety, are typically not black and white issues. They’re nuanced and intricate, and they often come to be for a host of intersecting reasons.

When we make the assumption that someone’s social anxiety must be attributed to their low self-esteem, we fail to take these nuances into account and run the risk of choosing easy answers over potentially more accurate ones.

2.     It assumes social fears are necessarily connected to self-esteem

The second problem with the idea that social anxiety is totally due to low self-esteem is that it is an absolute and therefore potentially ill-fitting assumption. When we think that way, we put all our eggs in that one basket, and close the door on more contextually correct possibilities.

As a therapist, I’ve had way more conversations about self-esteem and social anxiety than I could possibly count. I can say that it is simply untrue that all people who fear receiving negative social responses like rejection, exclusion, or judgment, do so because they don’t like themselves enough. In fact, more often than not, the fact that someone wants to avoid negative interpersonal experiences is more of an indicator that they esteem themselves quite highly.

If that last point has you scratching you head, let me explain. If someone fears judgment, exclusion, or rejection, that tells me they care about how they’re treated. Caring about yourself in this way goes hand in hand with how you value or esteem yourself. So if you read between the lines, the fact that someone is anxious about being on the receiving end of mistreatment is more a sign that they esteem themselves highly than that they don’t value themselves much at all.

If you truly didn’t care about something, you wouldn’t feel anxious about how other people treat that thing. So when someone feels anxious about how they might be treated by others, that can be an indicator that they do indeed care about themselves – and caring about yourself goes hand in hand with self-esteem.

3.     Past Experiences

The third way this notion misses the mark is that it doesn’t account for people’s past experiences.

Everything makes sense in context, and people’s past experiences are a totally relevant part of the context around present circumstances. We can’t divorce ourselves from the past, or live like goldfish with no long-term memory. When things happen, we learn from them, and adjust our expectations and actions accordingly.

For example, we might assume that a 21-year-old who was bullied throughout high school, and who has social anxiety around meeting new people, has those fears because the bullying caused them to have low self-esteem, which causes them to feel socially anxious. But what if, having lived through that bullying, they developed a radar for mistreatment, which their social anxiety is a testament to? So instead of the anxiety being caused by not liking themselves, it could actually be attributed to learning that sometimes people treat others in really unkind ways, and their anxiety is part of their resistance to that happening further.

These are three ways in which social anxiety can be about so much more than low self-esteem. Now we’d like you to chime in with your thoughts and perspectives! Your ideas could be really helpful to the Heart & Oak community! Aside from it being all about low self-esteem, what are other ways you make sense of your own social anxiety? Are there some points from this video that ring true for you, or maybe some that we didn’t touch on at all? Leave your response in the comment section!

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life.

Social Anxiety: How to Address Your Fears

Social anxiety can feel like living inside a shrinking room, where the walls get closer and the space inside gets tighter. In this video, Will Bratt shares insights into what social anxiety is, why it's so common, and tangible actions you can take to address some common fears behind your own social anxiety.

Transcript

Social anxiety can feel like living inside a shrinking room, where the walls get closer and the space inside gets tighter. In this video, I share insights into what social anxiety is, why it’s so common, and tangible actions you can take to address some common fears behind your own social anxiety.

Hi folks, I’m Will Bratt from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives.

We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to address your problems and make your life happier – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop! 

Social anxiety is kind of a catch-all term that several different kinds of worry, fear, and anxiety relate to. Generally speaking, social anxiety is about anticipating negative social interactions with others. For some it revolves around groups of new people, while for others it’s large crowds. It can also relate to some one-on-one relationships, or to situations where you have a responsibility to others, like at a job.

In this video, I’ll be covering 4 of the most common fears and worries that people relate to social anxiety, along with concrete things you can do to address those fears at their root. The 4 types of social anxiety that I’ll be touching on are:

1.     Not fitting in within small groups

2.     Being judged for a feature of your identity or an aspect of your experience

3.     Being seen or positioned as deficient, inadequate, or incompetent

4.     Feeling unsafe in groups or crowds of people

First, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of social anxiety.

People respond to the situations they associate with social anxiety in many different ways. The most recognizable response associated with anxiety in general is to avoid the situations that we feel anxious in. Anyone who has ever felt anxious can likely attest to the fact that this makes total sense, as avoidance helps us mitigate undesirable experiences.

Other ways of resisting the negative outcomes people associate with social anxiety can include staying quiet or censoring ourselves in groups, chattering nervously and filling the space with words, or carefully curating what we say in order to illicit positive responses from other people. These ultimately all serve the important purpose of avoiding negative responses or encouraging positive ones.

The downside, of course, is that we don’t feel free to be ourselves in these situations. If you experience a lot of social anxiety, you probably feel like your life is made smaller by your fears, and you may long to feel freer and at ease in these social situations.

So let’s get in to 4 of the most common types of social anxiety and what you can do to address them.

1.      Not Fitting In

Just about everyone can relate to the fear that they might stick out like a sore thumb in social groups. This makes sense, because, as I laid out in our video “How Most Anxiety is Social Anxiety”, belonging matters for our sense of dignity – and that’s important! I also go into more detail about this in a post on the Heart & Oak blog, which you can find a link to in the description below.

When it comes to social anxiety around not fitting in, there is most often one of two outcomes that people are most fearful of: being rejected and being excluded.

Rejection is rarely, if ever, kind. It often comes with humiliation and alienation, which can make the experience all the more difficult, or even traumatic.

Exclusion, on the other hand, can leave us feeling unwanted or discarded, with an implicit message that we aren’t good enough to be included. So it makes sense to strive to keep these things from happening!

When it comes to actually taking the wind out of anxiety’s sails around our fears of exclusion or rejection, there are a few tangible actions that can help:

One is to go out on a limb and actually acknowledge that you feel anxious in those particular moments. Being the clever person you are, you probably already have a good read on people and circumstances that are safe to do that in. If you’re meeting a new group for the first time and they seem like kind, accepting people, simply acknowledging that you feel anxious when you meet new people can take the pressure to act like you feel at ease or “normal” off your shoulders. Otherwise, that pressure can just amplify the anxiety that you already feel in those social interactions.

Some other more private or subtle strategies in these situations include:

• Focusing on breathing slowly and intentionally if it feels like your breath is shallow and quick. Also, softening your abdomen and opening your shoulders while you breathe into your tummy can support more of a sense of being in control of your heart rate, breathing, perspiration, and other related aspects of your physical body.

• You can also talk yourself through the fear of being excluded or rejected

  • If your fears come true, how can you deal with it?

  • What power or capacity do you have to handle negative social responses from others?

  • How have you dealt with them in the past?

  • Who do you know who deals with negative responses well, and how do you imagine they do it 

Exclusion and rejection can hurt, but there will always be people out there who care about and admire you for the person you are.

2.     Fear of judgment

Now on to the second common fear related to social anxiety: fears of being judged

Anxiety around the fear of judgment is similar to the fear of not fitting in, but different in some distinct ways. While they both relate to not belonging, the fear behind this kind of social anxiety is more about receiving a negative social response about a particular aspect of your identity or experience. This can look like fears of judgment for how you look, your sexuality or gender identity, your socioeconomic status, how you speak, your job or level of education, or stigmatized experiences you’ve had, such as surviving abuse.

I know it goes without saying, but judgment sucks. It reduces us to a diminished essence far below who we actually are, and if it’s for something about ourselves that we really can’t help, it can really hurt. The hurt we experience for being judged is also very contextual. It probably doesn’t hurt to the same degree if it’s cast by a total stranger, versus a close friend, versus someone we don’t really know but admire, versus a family member. My point is, it’s about who we anticipate doing the judging and how sensitive we are about being judged for that particular thing.

If you have anxieties about judgment, questions like these could be useful in helping address them:

• What are the things you’re most wary of being judged for?

• What is it about those particular things that makes them especially sensitive areas?

• What do the people who care most about you appreciate most about who you are?

  • Do they know about the areas you’re sensitive about? If they do, why do you suppose they’re still in the picture?

  • How do you imagine they’d respond if they knew you were judged for what you’re sensitive about?

• What do you imagine someone else’s judgment toward you would say about them?

  • Would their judgment speak more to fundamental problems with you, or to issues they have?

• If you were to be judged for something you’re sensitive about, who would you go to for support? How would that help your sense of value or dignity?

Reflecting on questions like these can be helpful because they can take some of the power away from things we’re afraid to be judged for. That may not change the reality that being judged can really hurt, but it helps us remember that we have what it takes to deal with it.

3.     Being seen or positioned as deficient, inadequate, or incompetent

The third common fear behind social anxiety relates to being deemed inadequate, deficient, or incompetent. This is similar to the anxiety around judgment described, but it has more to do with measuring up and being seen as “good enough”.

Being “good enough” is more or less synonymous with “acceptable”, and acceptance and belonging go hand-in-hand. Do you notice a pattern here? This just reaffirms the point that social anxiety has so much to do with belonging, and belonging has so much to do with dignity!

If you struggle to feel like you measure up in the company of others, here are some questions that could help you navigate those issues:

• If not “measuring up” feels like a scary or uncomfortable position to be in, what do you imagine to be the consequence?

  • What would it mean to you if that consequence was to come true?

• In your mind, where do the standards for “measuring up” come from?

• Is there anyone around whom it really doesn’t matter if they think you’re good enough or not?

  • Who does it feel it matters most around?

• Who accepts you for the person you are, regardless of how good you are at certain things?

• If there was a critic you knew you absolutely could not appeal to, how would you accept their negative view of you?

Just like being judged, being seen as inadequate or “not measuring up” is a total affront to your dignity, but you can’t win ‘em all. Finding ways to accept this and appreciate who you are for all the ways you DO shine may be a more useful way to look at yourself.

4.     Social anxiety in crowded spaces

The fourth and final common fear behind social anxiety that I’ll be touching on in this video has to do with being in crowded spaces.

There are plenty of reasons you might feel a sense of anxiety or panic in crowded areas. Often, this relates back to adverse or traumatic experiences people have had, which undermine their sense of safety in the community. That aside, you can probably relate to having an increased sense of tension in busy, crowded spaces, which is contrasted by feeling more relaxed and at ease in less densely-packed areas. No matter how you cut it, we tend to respond to busy spaces with more arousal.

Social anxiety in the context of big crowds is actually quite unique from the previous three kinds of fears. What differentiates it from the others is the focus on physical safety above belonging and dignity. When people feel anxious at the prospect of being in a large crowd of people, they tend to be less concerned with being judged or excluded, and more worried that something untoward them might happen.

If someone has experienced violence, or is fearful of encountering a person or situation that would be scary or uncomfortable for them, the solution isn’t as simple as saying “Just don’t worry about it! I’m sure you’ll be fine!”. If you think about it, it can be a lot harder to watch your back when there are a ton of other bodies milling around you. Sometimes there’s good sense behind our sensitivities and aversions!

If you struggle with anxiety around crowds or big groups of people, these questions could help you explore that in a constructive way:

• What makes crowded spaces different than those with fewer people when it comes to your anxiety level?

• What are you most wary of having happen when you’re in a crowded place?

• What precautions do you take to create safety when you’re entering crowded spaces?

• If you could imagine something happening that would take all your worries about this away, what would that be?

• How have you created safety in the past when you’ve felt fearful or unsafe going into crowded spaces?

  • When you reflect on that, what does that tell you about your capacity to handle hard situations?

When it comes to taking care of social anxiety around crowded spaces, the emphasis is generally more on bolstering your sense of safety so that you trust you’ll be taken care of in the ways you need to be. 

Being aware of your anxieties, fears, and worries can help you navigate them with intention. When you have a more robust understanding of the fears behind your social anxiety, it’s easier to negotiate with them and live in more preferred and expansive ways.

So, what kinds of social situations do you find you feel most anxious in, and why? Do you have strategies for navigating your own feelings of anxiety in social situations? If you have some thoughts or strategies to share, or any questions about the things I talked about in this video that the Heart & Oak community could help with, let us know in the comments below.

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life.

How Most Anxiety is Social Anxiety

There is one thing that almost everyone who feels anxiety can relate to. In this video, Will Bratt explains how and why most anxiety is social in nature, and why that matters when it comes to feeling more at ease in anxious moments.

Transcript

There is one common theme that almost everyone who feels anxiety can relate to. In this video I explain how and why most anxiety is social in nature, and why that matters when it comes to feeling more at ease in anxious moments. If you deal with anxiety, this video is for you. Keep watching!

Hi folks, I’m Will Bratt from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re Victoria BC therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

 As a therapist, I have more conversations about anxiety than any other problem people experience. Because I’ve had so many of these conversations, I can’t help but ask, “What’s similar from person to person?”, “How are these experiences the same – even though they have their own unique differences?”

 I had an “Aha!” moment one day when I realized that so many people’s experiences of anxiety often tie back to relationships and social connections.

 Through helping people address their diverse experiences of anxiety, I’ve seen how realizing the specific social concerns at the heart of your anxiety can help you feel more empowered to take action in ways that make a big difference.

 So let’s dive in to how that works.

Anxiety is typically described as the emotional response to anticipated negative events or experiences. It draws our attention to what could happen, in the interest of avoiding negative outcomes. In this way, even if we don’t think it’s helpful, anxiety is primarily concerned with our safety.

 Now, we usually think of safety in terms of our physical wellbeing, but as relational creatures, our social wellbeing is also a valid need to consider. While we may not need the acceptance of others in order to survive physically, things like dignity, esteem, value, and worth, carry a lot of weight in the social world. If you’re skeptical, just ask anyone who has thought about ending their life after struggling against bullying, abuse, or social exclusion and rejection. Belonging matters and isolation can kill.

The importance of belonging is clear when we look at social anxiety. Most people who identify as having social anxiety describe it as fears and worries around rejection, exclusion, and humiliation – the other side of the coin from belonging and acceptance. But how does this common social denominator relate to other forms of anxiety? It’s really all about context and taking a deeper look at why we feel anxious about the things we do. 

It can be useful to start with a question like “What particular fears or concerns does your anxiety relate to the most?” The more specific you can be, the easier it is to really understand what it’s about. I’ve also linked a to a post from the Heart & Oak blog that goes into more detail, and includes other questions that can help you clarify the target of your anxiety with even more depth and accuracy.

Let me share a few examples to illustrate what I mean:

I had a recent session with someone who was feeling anxious and unsafe in a big new city. On the surface, it might have looked like he was experiencing agoraphobia, fearing that others might do him harm. But when we really got to the heart of his anxiety, he was ultimately afraid that some outside force would do him or his partner harm, and disrupt or undermine their relationship, which he cherished deeply.

I had another client who described feeling anxious about his health, worrying that he might get really sick with something like cancer. It would have been short sighted for me to assume that his anxiety was all about his health and mortality, as the more we talked about it, the clearer it became that he was ultimately afraid of losing the chance to get to know his family on a deeper level, and cultivate more fulfilling relationships with them.

Just to share one more example, I worked with a young woman who was terribly anxious about a lot of things, including driving, her health, and unexpected catastrophes. As we put her anxiety in context, she made it nice and clear that she had been through a lot of loss in her short life, and she was understandably afraid of losing her closest, most supportive and stable relation, which was her partner.

All three of these examples illustrate how anxieties that could have easily been misunderstood as very individual concerns were really and truly relational.

So what does all this mean? How can it be helpful and empowering being able to find the relational concerns at the heart of your anxiety? It’s all about making the context around your anxiety more tangible, and therefore easier to work with in effective ways. 

In all three of the examples I mentioned before, those people were able to directly address their relational concerns and issues behind their anxieties, and eventually feel way more at ease. Their anxieties went from being bad enough to require professional help, to way, way more manageable.

There are reasons behind everything, and anxiety is no exception to that. Recognizing the concerns that inform your own anxiety can give you something tangible to work with, which can ultimately help you feel more empowered and capable of managing your anxiety at its root.

Because anxiety is such a common human experience, it would be so helpful if you could leave a comment below about how you’ve addressed concerns that underlie your experiences of anxiety. Have you found success in reducing your anxiety by addressing troubling relationship situations? Whether you have, or if you have any questions about the social side of anxiety that the Heart & Oak community could help with, let us know in the comments below.

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life!

Body Positivity and Weight Loss Myths

Body positivity is an amazing movement that supports people in experiencing greater love and acceptance of their bodies, regardless of their size, weight, or shape. But can you be body positive and also have a desire to lose weight or pursue fitness goals?

Transcript:

Body positivity is an amazing movement that supports people in experiencing greater love and acceptance of their bodies, regardless of their size, weight, or shape. But can you be body positive and also have a desire to lose weight or pursue fitness goals? Keep watching to find out!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

Body positivity is all about loving and accepting your body at any size and shape. It’s an empowering movement that has offered people an alternative to the very limited and oppressive idea that only skinny equals healthy, beautiful, and loveable.

I personally love this point of view, but I know some people struggle to feel at peace with loving their bodies while also having the desire to feel different on a physical level. So, can you have the desire to look or feel fitter, healthier, or leaner, while also loving and celebrating your body for what it is? Or is that just one big contradiction? Let’s get right into that!

For starters, the body positivity movement really came about in response to mainstream western beauty standards, which tell us that for women and femme folks, thinness is god. Just think of all the magazine covers in the grocery store, and all the ads on the TV and online that tell you that you need to lose weight! We’re so inundated with these messages that they often blend in to the landscape and we don’t always realize that they’re even there!

Unlike all those ads promoting weight loss and lean physiques, the body positivity movement tells people of all genders that you’re a-ok just the way you are! It’s about appreciating bodies for qualities other than those that get celebrated by the mainstream culture, and saying “you’re good enough” no matter what package you come in. In fact, from a body-positive perspective, the package you come in is GREAT!

But things get complicated when we start wondering, “Can I want to lose weight or strive to achieve fitness goals AND be body positive?”; “If I have a desire to lose weight, does that mean I’m being body-negative or hating my body?!” It’s tricky, but it’s ultimately about your reasons for wanting to make those changes.

For example, wanting to lose weight so that someone else will like you more, or to gain outside approval, or to finally be “good enough”, sounds much more like it’s about measuring up to negative mainstream beauty standards.

On the flip side, reasons like wanting to feel fitter, or to be able to do more with your body in terms of movement, or to have more energy, are about creating a more satisfying existence. They’re not coming from a place of “Your body’s not good enough so you need to make it better!” They’re coming from a place of “My body would feel better if this thing changed”. That doesn’t mean it’s inadequate the way it is, it just means there’d be some tangible benefit to releasing some fat, or gaining strength or flexibility.

If the idea of body positivity is new to you, then start by considering how you want to feel on an emotional, mental, and physical level. It’s about separating culture’s idea of what an “ideal” body looks like from how you feel in your body – what your experience of living in your body is.

When I talk about your emotional relationship to your body, I’m referring to the ways in which you want to feel about your body. Some feelings you may yearn to have are love, care, appreciation, happiness, or joy. So, ask yourself - how do you want to feel about your body, with no strings attached? You can also ask yourself how you want to express those feelings toward your body, and what makes it hard for you to feel that way all the time?

When it comes to relating to your body on a mental level, I’m talking about how you want to think about your body.  Perhaps you want to think of it highly, respecting all that it does for you on a daily basis. Again, ask yourself – how do you want to think about your body? What do you want to appreciate about it most of all? What makes it hard to do this now?

Considering the physical needs of your body requires open and honest communication between you and your body. The struggle for all of us is that the body doesn’t tend to use words to communicate. Instead, it uses physical feelings and sensations to send us messages about how it is doing. This often looks and feels like a sense of wellness or illness.

If you are struggling to communicate and hear your body’s needs and wants clearly, then please feel free to check out our video that goes into detail about how to strengthen this bond.

A great way to start is to really consider how your body feels, and how that relates to standard measures of physical wellness. Some basic physical markers of wellness to consider are:

• Energy levels

• Sleep

• Digestion

• Pain

• Hormonal balance

• Strength

• Endurance

• Comfort versus discomfort

Once you have come to realize what areas of your physical health you would like to improve, there are a ton of resources for supporting you in making these changes. I’ve linked to some good ones in the description below.

Body positivity is all about feeling good in your own skin – accepting your body in spite of mainstream ideas about what is beautiful, healthy, and ideal.

In order to improve the way you feel in your body, it could mean dropping a few pounds. It could mean gaining some. But, it is important to note that this all dependent upon you and your unique physiology.

Now I’m gonna turn it over to you, the Heart and Oak community! If you’re already family with body positivity, how have you found these ideas helpful? If body positivity is new to you, how might it help with your own relationship to your body? Make sure to let us know in the comment section!

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life!

My Body Positive Journey to Loving and Accepting my Body

My Body Positive Journey to Loving and Accepting my Body Creating a better, more positive relationship with your body can feel like a daunting, unattainable task. If you are looking for hope and evidence that it IS possible, then watch this video to the end!

Transcript:

Creating a better, more positive relationship with your body can feel like a daunting, unattainable task. If you are looking for hope and evidence that it’s anything but impossible, then watch this video to the end! You’re about to hear my story of how I have come to genuinely and authentically love and appreciate my body – beyond its appearance!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists in Victoria BC who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give you practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

I wanted to create this video for all of you who are looking for genuine success stories about people changing their relationships with their bodies for the better. Of course, as a therapist I work with lots of people around issues like these, and part of what makes me helpful in this area is my own lived experience in dealing with challenges with my body image. I thought, “Why share examples from my practice when I can share my very own story with all of you?”

Now, this video is definitely related to our last one, “3 Ways to Love Your Body for More Than How it Looks”, so if you haven’t watched that one yet, I highly recommend doing so after this.

The first thing I need to state is that, in spite of the work I do and the person I am today, I am a work in progress. As much as I would like to sit here and pretend that I have overcome every single body image obstacle and struggle, that would be a bold-faced lie. And it’s important to me that I be genuine and honest with you, as opposed to painting a picture-perfect story of change and growth.

The truth is, I have had a long and in-depth struggle with my body and food. I can honestly say that I did not experience a consistent feeling of love and appreciation for my body between the ages of 11-29. There were moments in that time when I made a very concerted effort through therapy, hypnotherapy, guided meditation, CBT, self-help, and positive affirmations, but it all felt pretty hollow. There might have been times where I felt a slightly stronger connection to my body, empathize with it, and pretend to love it, but it never felt quite “right”.

I don’t think I’m alone in this type of experience. In fact, I know that I’m not. The clients I have worked for thus far have shared similar stories – attempts to force that feeling of love without a real genuine, consistent outcome. And that can be a frustrating and hopeless place to be.

So, where am I now?

Today I am at a place with my body where I actually listen to and prioritize its needs. I genuinely feel grateful for everything that my body does for me, and I am motivated to take care of it in spite of conflicting desires, like thinness. I also feel pretty positive about my body’s appearance, and enjoy dressing it up and showing off my curves.

I still have desires and longings to be slimmer and fitter. I want my muscles that I have worked so hard for to show up. I want my face to stay youthful and wrinkle free. At the same time, these desires do not outweigh my genuine interest in supporting my body in being its happiest, most energetic, and healthy self. This is a HUGE contrast to how things used to be.

For so long, the desire to look like a runway model was at the top of my misguided priority list. I wanted to be skinny at all costs, and I blamed my body for refusing to give me what I so desperately wanted.

The shift to where I am now took time. I was not an overnight success by any stretch of the imagination. It began by recognizing where I was at, and how frustrated and exhausted I was by this way of being. It coincided with my desire to change my restrictive eating practices to be more intuitive and body-directed. This required me to trust that my body could make wise choices, and that I could learn to listen and prioritize its needs with some trial and error.

You may be wondering – how did I get here?

The short and simple answer is that I did exactly what I outlined in the video “3 Ways to love your body for more than how it looks”.

When I began asking myself why it was so important for me to look a certain way, I began to recognize how I believed that if my body were to fit in with the acceptable “norm” of beauty, then it was more likely that I would be accepted and included by my peers. I had a longing to be in a committed relationship, and I believed that by looking a certain way, I would be more attractive to a potential mate. Logically, this all makes sense.

In realizing this, I quickly recognized that I was selling myself, and others, short. This was an old, shallow story that didn’t fit with the reality of my life. There was a whole pile of evidence that I was able to pull from demonstrating how my peers and potential romantic partners did accept me, regardless of my body size and shape.

When I considered whose story it was that my body wasn’t good enough as it was, it was easy to conclude that I was not the author of this fucked up idea.

As I retraced how my body had been singled out for not fitting in, I recalled several humiliating moments when peers or loved ones decided to call attention to my body, referring to me as “fat”. My Granny “lovingly” pinching my arm fat and calling me chubby. The writing on the bathroom wall in Grade seven that said “laura is fat”. The boy who called across a school hallway and yelled “You’re too fat to be wearing that”. Heart-warming moments of my life, I tell ya.

Those types of comments helped in forming this story, but the speakers aren’t the originator of it. They aren’t unique in judging a body based on its size and appearance. They were merely spreading common, old, culturally accepted ideas that we all live in relationship to. When I was able to recognize who the author of this story was, I was able to have some distance from it – moving away from the idea that I was the author of the story, to being a resistor against it. I realized I was angry, exhausted, and fed up with this story. That it was total bull shit that I no longer wanted to buy into.

The biggest way I have been able to successfully love and appreciate my body is by shifting my relationship with it.

I have created a lot of space for my body to have a voice that I listen to. Through a lot of practice and exploration, I have come to pay attention to its needs and wants, and do my best to respect these. Below I’ve linked to a post from the Heart and Oak Blog that has a lot of questions you can ask yourself that can support you in exploring and shifting your relationship to your body.

Again, I have to reiterate that in no way am I close to having this down perfectly – nor do I ever expect to. What counts to me, is that I even consider what it is my body might want or need, above my desire to fit our cultural ideals. Getting to this place also meant truly dealing with the underlying reasons for why it made sense for me to be disconnected from my body. There is also a link to that blog post below.

My ultimate hope in sharing my own personal story is to illustrate that it is 100% possible to go from feeling at odds with your body, to loving and appreciating it for what it is. There isn’t anything special or unique about me and my experience. With awareness, curiosity, and openness, change became possible for me. The fact that you are here, taking the time to watch this video suggests to me that you’ve got something brewing. That you are at the very least curious about your relationship to your body, and potentially yearning for something to be different. This is a brave, and courageous starting point!

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life.

3 Body Positive Ways to Love Your Body (For More Than How it Looks!)Laura shares 3 body positive ways to love your body, beyond its physical appearance

3 Body Positive Ways to Love Your Body (For MORE Than How it Looks!) So many people can relate to feeling down about the size, shape, or appearance of their bodies. If focusing on everything "wrong" with your body gets in the way of you feeling positive about it, then this video is for you!

Transcript:

It’s sad but true that so many people can relate to feeling down about the size, shape, or appearance of their body. If focusing on everything “wrong” with your body gets in the way of you feeling positive about it, then this video’s for you! Keep watching to learn how you can come to really love your body in an honest and sustainable way!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives.

We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

In my Victoria BC therapy practice, I’m really passionate about working with people who struggle with their relationship to their body and food. If that’s something you can relate to, I want to stress that you are anything but alone in that!

In fact, it’s super common for people of all genders to deal with some form of body image issues. That could look like feeling disconnected from your body in some way, feeling disheartened by the size, shape, or appearance of your body, feeling like certain body parts or regions of your body are bigger or smaller than they are – and that they’re therefore inadequate, or that your body will never look the way you wish it did.

These are all really complex issues in and of themselves, and we’ll definitely look at them more closely in future videos. But in this video I want to address the common belief that you can “should” your way into loving your body. In other words, I’m going to be talking about the discouraging practice of straining to convince yourself that you should just love your body, despite all the things in this world that make that way easier said than done.

To star this off, I want to make one thing clear: This is not an abstract, clinical issue for me. These are issues that are near and dear to my heart because I’ve lived them too. Because I have enough personal material to make a full feature documentary on my own journey through body image and food issues, I’m going to focus more on that in our next video – because otherwise this one would be way too long!

So let’s talk about some practical ways you can cultivate more genuine love and sustainable appreciation for your body.

1.     Assess what it means to you to be disconnected from your body and/or to struggle to have your ideal body type.

The first thing I’d like to invite you to do is ask yourself a very important question: What does it mean to you to struggle to have your ideal body type? In other words, why is achieving your ideal body image so important to you? This question is all about getting down to ground zero and really checking in with those things that can be easy to take for granted.

Having an answer to this question is important because it supports you in understanding your body image more deeply, and how your body image is a response to various life experiences. This helps shift the problem from being all in your head, to fully understanding the context of how and why it exists. This can also help lessen the hold of shame.

There might not be a single, solitary answer to this question for you, and that’s ok! Life is complicated, and it’s more common for there to be a bunch of intersecting reasons than just one that stands alone.

For example, deep down, does it come from a longing to be accepted or approved of? Do you imagine that if you had the “right” body, you’d be more likely to be loved or included by important people in your life?

The answer to this question is bound to be very personal to you, so think about how this longing makes sense within the scope of your lived experience.

I’ve also written a blog post that complements this video nicely, so make sure to check that out on the Heart & Oak Therapy blog, which I’ll link in the description. In that post I provide some other guiding questions you can use to explore this for yourself.

2.     Whose story is it that your body isn’t “good enough” as is?

So, once you have your own personal understanding of why achieving your ideal body image is so important to you, it can be helpful to ask yourself the question, “whose story is it that your body isn’t ‘good enough’ as it is”?

Are you the source of this story? Or is it possible that it’s come from someplace else? Is it a story you deciphered from ways you’ve been treated by people in your life? Could it be a common story in our society – one you’ve become so accustomed to hearing that you can’t even remember when it first started showing up on your radar?

The fact is, there is no objectively “right” body type to have. The very notion of an attractive body is totally contrived by culture. Want proof? Look at the history of just about any culture from around the world. For example, many different global cultures have made round bodies out to be a sign of abundance and fortune at various points in history. The super skinny or hourglass shaped woman, and the lean, muscular man are very much inventions of modern western cultures. If we’re held to those standards and told that’s how we need to look in order to be “good enough”, it doesn’t leave us many options other than to feel inadequate.

Once you’re able to identify who the story that your body isn’t good enough the way it is really belongs to, it opens the door to a few other things worth considering. Perhaps most importantly, where do you stand on that idea? If you feel sad, discouraged, frustrated, or afraid at the idea that your body isn’t good enough the way it is, does that mean you’re for that idea, or against it? Usually people don’t feel negative emotions in response to things that feel right or good to them, so if you feel down about that idea, that’s probably telling of where you really stand on it.

3.     Strengthen or shift your relationship with your body

My third tip on how to love your body for more than how it looks has to do with strengthening or shifting your relationship with your body.

When you have a solid relationship with your body beyond its physical appearance, it becomes a lot easier to resist the story that you are unworthy unless your body looks a certain way.

Your appreciation becomes genuine when you really tune in to your physical body and recognize all that it does for you.

To get started on that, it helps to take up practices that allow you to really connect with your body, as a part of the person you are. Some guiding questions you can use include, “how does your body communicates its wants and needs to you? What sensations help get these messages across, and how does it feel when you take care of them?”, “When does your body feel best? When does it feel strongest? When does it feel most relaxed? When does it feel most well?”, “How does your body’s physical appearance represent its health and wellness, and to what extent? Like is it possible to be physically healthy and well, and to carry body fat? What feels right for your body? At what point does the amount of body fat impede or support your body’s wellness?”

I’ve included a link in the description to a post on the Heart & Oak Therapy blog that offers more questions like these to help guide you down your own path toward strengthening your relationship with your body.

One thing I really want to stress is that in a world that tells us we’re inadequate in so many ways, having a really positive relationship with your body is more likely to be a work in progress than an end game achievement. By doing this work, you’re going against the grain in a big way, and that’s a challenge! The last thing we need is to feel ashamed for not having a squeaky-clean body image on top of the struggles many of us already have. That’s just yet another layer of bullshit that our culture attempts to pile on top of us.

The fact that you are even here listening to me talk about body image tells me just how strong you really are. Your courage to honestly consider where you are at, and how you want things to be different is legit, and it’s hard but important work.

It can be hard to even admit that you’re struggling with your body image. After all, aren’t we all meant to be incredibly secure, confident, and independent people? But this work is gradual and takes time – it’s not just as simple as flicking a switch and going from night to day. By opening your eyes and ears to your own lived experience and understanding your relationship to your body in context, you can start to cultivate more and more appreciation for all the great ways it can serve you.

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life!