Tag Archives: cultivating gratitude

Dec 20

“Atlas of the Heart” by Brene Brown

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In Brené Brown‘s newest book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, 87 different emotions and experiences are described and defined, giving readers “the nuanced language to fully understand our feelings and express them to others” (Seira Wilson,  Amazon Editor, review).

The popularity of Brown’s research, talks, and writing is so off the charts that HBO Max has already optioned the book for a series you’ll someday be able to stream. So, read the book now—or wait to watch.

Why do we need this book/series from the woman Belinda Luscombe, Time, calls “the Dr. Fauci of feelings”? Luscombe states, “In surveys taken by 7,000 people over five years, Brown and her team found that on average people can identify only three emotions as they are actually feeling them: happiness, sadness and anger. For Brown, who made her name by illuminating the finer contours of humans’ emotional landscape, this is not nearly enough.”

According to Luscombe, in addition to Brown continuing her modeling of vulnerability by sharing personal aspects of her own life, in Atlas of the Heart she also makes a confession about her professional life: she has frequently touted something she now considers misguided.

For two decades, I’ve said, “We need to understand emotion so we can recognize it in ourselves and others,” she writes. “Well, let me go on the record right now: I no longer believe that we can recognize emotion in other people, regardless of how well we understand human emotion and experience or how much language we have.”

Luscombe goes on to add, “This is not to dismiss psychotherapy (we presume), but to encourage people to talk about what they’re going through rather than expecting others to know—and to listen, rather than guess.”

Selected Atlas of the Heart Quotes (culled from various online sources):

In our research, we found that everyone who showed a deep capacity for joy had one thing in common: they practiced gratitude. In the midst of joy, there’s often a quiver, a shudder of vulnerability. Rather than using that as a warning sign to practice imagining the worst-case scenario, the people who lean into joy use the quiver as a reminder to practice gratitude.

Anxiety and excitement feel the same, but how we interpret and label them can determine how we experience them.

Do I have enough information to freak out? The answer is normally no. Will freaking out help? The answer is always no.

Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort.

Don’t look away. Don’t look down. Don’t pretend not to see hurt. Look people in the eye. Even when their pain is overwhelming. And when you’re hurting and in pain, find the people who can look you in the eye.
Jul 10

Complex PTSD: Pete Walker’s Healing Steps

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Therapist Pete Walker‘s 2013 book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma acknowledges that there’s PTSD—and then there’s Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). Although other clinicians have also worked on raising awareness of C-PTSD, Walker gets more personal than most—he’s both a provider of care and a survivor.

As Walker explains, repeated exposure to abuse and/or neglect is usually the distinguishing dynamic behind C-PTSD, whereas many cases of PTSD arise from single-incident trauma.

C-PTSD is not yet, however, considered as a separate diagnosis in the DSM-5.

An intro to the manifestations of Complex PTSD by Walker (from his website’s FAQ’s):

In my experience, many clients with Complex PTSD have been misdiagnosed with various anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as bipolar, narcissistic, codependent and borderline disorders. Further confusion arises in the case of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder), as well as obsessive/compulsive disorder, which is sometimes more accurately described  as an excessive, fixated flight response to trauma. This is also true of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and some dissociative disorders which are similarly excessive, fixated freeze responses to trauma…

I believe that many substance and process addictions also begin as misguided, maladaptations to parental abuse and abandonment – early adaptations that are attempts to soothe and distract from the mental and emotional pain of complex PTSD.

According to Medical News Today, C-PTSD is a combination of the symptoms of PTSD and some or all of the following (and maybe more):

  • A negative self-view
  • Changes in beliefs and worldview
  • Emotional regulation difficulties
  • Relationship issues
  • Detachment from the trauma
  • Preoccupation with an abuser

Although Walker believes there are many paths to healing he provides on his site his own “top ten practices of [his] ongoing recovery.” Below is my shortened version with brief excerpts.

  1. Milking Self-Kindness and Self-Protection out of Grieving: “Most of the silver linings that I discovered about my trauma appeared on the other side of grieving.”
  2. Whittling Down the Critic: Self-hate is his “parents’ most poisonous legacy…Many tools eventually helped, especially grieving self-compassionate tears. But shrinking it was glacial until I shifted into angrily counter-attacking it whenever I caught it biting me.”
  3. Flight-into-Light: “Like many survivors, my recovery process began unconsciously with a spiritual quest. I needed to find something profoundly good about life to counteract the soul crushing effects of my family.”
  4. Bibliotherapy: As a child “[Books] ‘introduced’ me to compassionate adults who helped me with their wise and kind words. For decades I read my way into a better relationship with myself.”
  5. Writing that Helped Me To Right Myself: “Journaling taught me to bear witness to myself – to validate that I was born innocent – unfairly deprived of a child’s birthright to be loved.”
  6. Meditation: There’s No Boogeyman in My Inner Closet
  7. Getting and Giving Individual & Group Therapy: As a client “(w)hat especially struck me was that all my helpful therapists reparented me to some degree.”
  8. Self-Reparenting: Finding an Inner Mom and Dad: “[John] Bradshaw gave us many reparenting tools to meet the unmet needs of survivors of such abandonment.”
  9. The Created Family: Healing the Loss of Tribe: “I experience my [self-created] current clan as concentric circles of intimacy.”
  10. Gratitude: A Realistic Approach: “Gratitude is a thought-correction practice that gradually eroded the negative noticing of my toxic critic. Now, I refuse to let all-or-none thinking throw out the baby of daily niceties with the bathwater of normal disappointments.”