It’s that time of year. Time to make those New Year’s Resolutions again. Usually these are based on the guilt-ridden, I’m so bad, I must fix myself in the following ways type self-berating talk in our heads. How about a change of heart this year…….not what can I change about me but how can I pursue happiness in my life and those around me? After all at the stroke of midnight we bid each other HAPPY New Year.

Martin Seligman is a pioneer of “happiology,” not simply because he has a systematic theory about why happy people are happy, but because he uses the scientific method to explore it. According to Seligman, we can experience three kinds of happiness:

1) Pleasure and gratification
2) Embodiment of strengths and virtues
3) Meaning and purpose.

Each kind of happiness is linked to positive emotion. If we follow Seligman’s advice in 2012:

• We will build more experiences of pleasure and gratification into our lives. Here are a few thoughts: Build more “feeling good” times in your day and week. Try new things. Take mini vacations. Learn the art of deep breathing. Buy more flowers for no reason. If you are in a rut, get out. Try something new each week. Do something in a different way; take a different route to work. Laugh out loud once a day (keep track). Express gratitude more often verbally or through email.
• We will learn to replace our inner dialogue with positive messages affirming our strengths and unique attributes. Stop feeling guilty unless you really are and then deal with it through forgiveness. Pick one negative thing your brain is telling you and set the record straight. If you never apologize, learn to do apologies well. If you apologize too often, learn to stop. Start a what I love about myself list. Abandon a frustrating project- give yourself permission to move on to something new.
• We will find more meaning and purpose through interaction with others. Smile and make eye contact at everyone who serves you. Pay for the person behind you in line at Starbucks or wherever. Join or start a book club. Volunteer- something as small as offering to pick up something for someone else or as big as Habitat for Humanity builds.

Finally, I will add: Learn to ask for help. Talk about the barriers to your happiness with someone who can offer you perspective and skills.

-Larcy

Many people are confused about the difference between a professional counselor and a life coach. In some ways, it may seem more appealing to make an appointment with a life coach whose focus is on helping a client to grow and achieve. A professional counselor seems more identified with clinical issues or “working on problems”.

Here is a contrast of the qualifications of each:

A professional counselor is required to have:

* 6 years of College (minimum)
* 2 years full-time post- Master’s Clinical work experience and Supervision
* State-sanctioned Testing for Licensure
* 30 hours of Continuing Education every 2 years.
* Is qualified to participate in Medical Insurance re-imbursement as a Provider.

A Life Coach is required to have:

* No College education required
* No State License
* Start up as soon as business cards are printed!

A professional counselor is trained and required to follow rigorous ethical standards to provide quality growth-focused client care. In my practice, my goal is helping my clients to become the best they can be in their lives.

-Larcy

Just like Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer there are seasons in marriage. There is the season of falling in love and the beginnings of a marriage. These are special times of highs and sometimes lows as two lives join to form a partnership. Depending on whether this is a first marriage or a subsequent marriage, each person brings a history of expectations and unfinished business to the new relationship. Fitting together a new life can be challenging.

There is the season of busyness as children are added to the family and financial and career pressures build. Often, marriages are strained during this season. Sometimes couples drift apart as children become the center of the home rather than the marriage.

There is the season of transitions, as children leave to pursue their own lives, when health difficulties may appear, or retirement is taken.

Finally, there is a season of aging, with losses of partners and lifestyle changes. Most couples promise to love one another through all of these seasons “until death do us part”. The promise is made sincerely but often the reality of the challenges is overwhelming. Through all of the seasons, it is wise to seek guidance and perspective from someone who can identify historical issues and assist a couple to work through the current issues.

A happy and rewarding marriage is possible!

-Larcy

Here are some sources of power:

• Humility…….admitting you don’t know it all; recognizing the value of another perspective; admitting you are wrong.
• Forgiveness…….setting your own self free from bitterness and the need to get revenge or justice.
• The ability to change a life…….your own life or another life.
• Influence………..knowing that you have wisdom and perspective to share that will benefit another.
• Kindness…….random acts of kindness or intentional decisions to be kind.
• Choosing to be positive in challenging situations.
• Choosing to be generous….with humour, with your time, with your assets.

As you can see, there is freedom to choose this kind of power…it starts with you!

-Larcy

Respect means a lot of different things.  Sometimes people will say :”Respect needs to be earned.” That may be true but treating people with respect is also a choice you make.Respecting someone includes taking their feelings, needs, thoughts, ideas, wishes and preferences into consideration. It means taking all of these seriously and giving them worth and value.  Respect means valuing a person’s uniqueness- their perspective and their personalities.  Respect involves acknowledging people, listening to them, and being truthful with them.

Respect can be shown through behavior and our attitudes.

Here are some specific ways to show respect:

• Asking others “How would you feel if…” before making a decision which affects them
• Communicating “What is it that you need in this situation”
• Making changes and compromises to accommodate their feelings, desires and needs
• Not interrupting them
• Trying to understand their beliefs, values and needs
• Avoid telling them what to do
• Avoid telling them what they ‘need’ to or ’should’ do
• Avoid giving them unsolicited advice and lectures
• Choosing to be truthful rather than saving face

Respect is difficult to practice at times but is critical in building a healthy, mutual relationship.

-Larcy

When you are struggling in relationships, there are three choices you can make. The first is maintaining the status quo- things as usual. In this mode people often avoid change, blame the other, or indulge in self-pity and hopelessness. The second option is to check out or end the relationship, believing that a new person or new situation will create a different result. The interesting thing about option 2 is that you take the unchanged you into the next relationship!

The third option is working to make the relationship better- often with the help of a therapist.

Here is the dilemma with option 3: you can only change you. Sometimes this is enough to change the dynamics in the relationship. This option requires commitment to accept new perspectives and to face your own issues. We are often unaware of how others are experiencing us and we spend most communication defending our point of view. We need to look inside rather than outside ourselves to understand what is going on in the interchange between myself and others. Option 3 is difficult for defensive or stubborn folks!

-Larcy

In her book The Good Marriage, psychologist, Judith Wallerstein writes:

A good marriage, I have come to understand, is trans-formative. that the prevailing psychological view has been that the central dimensions of personality are fully established in childhood. But from my observations, men and women come to adulthood unfinished, and over the course of a marriage they change each other profoundly. The very act of living closely together for a long time brings about inner change, not just conscious accommodation………Ways of thinking, self-image, self-esteem and values all have potential for change.

What I have found in working with couples in crisis is that they are usually surprised and upset by the challenging interpersonal relationship dynamic they are experiencing with their partner.

Communication issues, unresolved conflict caused by different perspectives, control issues, “not getting their needs met” are a few of the presenting problems. One of my roles, I believe, is to present a different perspective. The goal of marriage is not uniformity. If you view your partner’s perspective as informative and helpful rather than adversarial, it changes the dynamic in the relationship. If you seek to understand rather than to be right or get your own way, you will likely grow as a person. Different is better…..because it enhances rather than accommodates. At least that is how I see it!

-Larcy

“Attuned to disappointment and confused about its source, we wind up discarding perfectly good relationships. People work themselves up over the ordinary problems of marriage, for which by the way, they fail to see their own contributions”

William Doherty, professor University of Minnesota

When couples come in for counseling about a failing marriage or divorce, one of my first questions is: “What part did you play in the breakdown of this relationship? I ask this for a few reasons. Usually people love to blame a partner for all the glaring deficits they have experienced in the relationship. They rarely have assessed their own short-comings. Another reason I ask this question is that you can’t change what you do not acknowledge. Mistakes happen- no one is perfect. But it is how you handle your own failings that matters. Are you willing to own these faults and are you willing to work toward change? I am a great believer in hope and change……that is why I love therapy!

-Larcy

Anxiety is a feeling of nervousness, apprehension, fear, or worry. In these times of economic uncertainty, job loss, foreclosures, and unprecedented natural disasters, anxiety is widespread.

People are losing sleep imagining worst case scenarios. The lifestyles we have taken for granted are in jeopardy and many people are wondering when “things will return to normal”. When struggling with anxiety, people find it difficult to control their emotions. Feelings take over.

One concept critical to emotional regulation is “mindfulness”. Mindfulness is an intentional awareness of our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and behavioral urges. This awareness helps to sort out the things we are telling ourselves which are promoting heightened emotions and influencing our actions. By learning mindfulness, we are empowered to be in charge of ourselves in a different way. Here is how this works:

John becomes aware that he is thinking: “There is no hope. House prices will continue to fall and soon my house won’t be worth anything” The identified feelings: worry, fear, panic, hopelessness. The actions: sleepless nights, obsessive checking of house prices on Zillow; loss of focus on the job. By becoming aware of this trend, John can challenge the original thoughts. What is actually true right now? What can I do/change and what do I have no control over?

By “unpacking” responses, John can regain some semblance of control over his sleep patterns, and work performance, living life more effectively in the present reality rather than the catastrophes of his imagined future

-Larcy

I was really amazed at the uproar created by Tiger Wood’s apology this past week. Some people found it “offensive”, some “insincere”, and other’s like Donald Trump wondered why he would feel the need to apologize. It seemed to me that more people were analyzing his apology than were concerned about his behavior. The only thing people seemed to agree on was the question: “when are you going to come back and play golf, Tiger?” Since I do not know the man or the treatment plan he is engaged in, I took his apology at face value- an important part of the treatment process he is still working through. There is tremendous power in owning responsibility for our actions and choices. Several comments made in his 13 minute speech were interesting to me. One was about his wife Elin’s comment. “A real apology won’t come with words, he quoted her, but through his actions over time.” I agree. In another part of his speech, Tiger talked about the issue of entitlement:

“I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in. I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that a married couple should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them.”

From my perspective as a therapist, he is working the program, gaining insight about himself and the consequences of his behavioral choices.

Finally, to those who say it was “scripted” I would ask: “could you do a thorough accounting of a highly emotional subject for 13 1/2 minutes without having it written out?” I know I couldn’t!

-Larcy