Do you find yourself getting stuck in repetitive thoughts or behaviors? Can you spiral about an interaction from the past or the future? Do you find yourself compulsively checking your phone or email, even though you’re not expecting anything in particular? You might blame anxiety or boredom, but would it surprise you to know that sometimes our coping mechanisms actually feed into anxiety? 

Life is so full of ups and downs. Progress is not a simple straightforward thing. Sometimes we take wonderful leaps forward. And sometimes we stumble back. The most important thing is not whether or not we stumble but what we choose to do after. Do we become disheartened? Do we give up? Do we throw in the towel? 

Have you ever heard your therapist use the term enmeshment or refer to two people in a relationship as entangled? If so, I am here to talk about how to support you in learning about how to stand in your power against enmeshment. Enmeshment is a bond that impacts one’s ability to experience autonomy and creates a complex and skewed sense of intimacy. Enmeshment can make it difficult to develop a strong sense of self. It can also lead to blurred boundaries, where roles and expectations are mixed up and there becomes an over-reliance on another person.

In April, I wrote about supporting teens in a seemingly unstable world. Since then, most would agree that the world at large hasn’t gotten any more normal. Dysfunctional politics, news of humanitarian disasters and inhumane conflicts, illusionment through social media, the looming threat of unaddressed climate change, inflation and economic stress; these are part of our shared reality, the boat we’re all in together.

So this message today is for all my caregivers, whether you are the adult child of an aging parent, someone who is helping their spouse through health issues, an aunt, uncle, grandparent, or even an older sibling who is looking out for a child. 

“I just don't want to feel as much.”

“I don't want to be as easily upset by things.”

“I just want things to roll off my back.”

If you’ve ever experienced emotional overwhelm, flooding, or intense sadness or anger in response to something someone said or did, you might have experienced reactivity. These experiences can be a lot and they can make us worry that we are a lot. Because of the automatic nature of reactivity, it can feel as though change is impossible, but there is absolutely hope and things we can do to improve our coping skills.

For too many of us, shame brings order to the world -- order feels like control and control feels like safety. But it's the type of safety that results from hypervigilance to threat -- an illusory safety in which we give up our enjoyment of the present moment for constant reassurance that we are not being harmed. This reassurance is so fleeting that we must constantly chase it, and that can be exhausting.

I just want things to roll off my back. I don’t want to feel so bothered by things anymore! How can I just let things go? Many of us know the feeling of rising emotion, like a tidal wave about to engulf us – your heart races, perhaps your face gets hot, and it takes all your strength not to dissolve in tears or explode in anger. When this happens, we feel powerless, alone or embarrassed, and we wish these feelings would just go away! But no matter how hard we try, no matter how often we tell ourselves “It’s no big deal”, these feelings keep returning again and again. How do we make lasting change?

Holding healthy boundaries is a mental health and well-being phrase that seems to get passed around a lot lately, but what does it actually mean? When we are encouraged to hold healthy boundaries we are actively taking measures to implement limits which safeguard our mental and emotional well-being. These safeguards can prevent burnout, stress, frustration, and resentment between ourselves, loved ones, friends and colleagues.