San Diego Therapist Blog: Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

~ M. Scott Peck

It's quite possible that these uncomfortable and even terrifying experiences are the very times when we may grow the most, sprout wings and learn to fly.

Rebirth:  chronicles a woman's experience with Leukemia....through chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, heartbreak, loss, and also spiritual, emotional and physical rebirth.

"Rebirth" is Ludwig's year-long journal chronicling a story of love, sacrifice, heartache and discovery that culminated in her physical, emotional and spiritual rebirth. 

Cancer is such a dislocating experience. We feel alone, alienated and lost. Any sense of security is just gone. A personal story like Deborah's can really help us through our own experience. It can lessen our sense of anomie and isolation.

A portion of Rebirth's royalties will be donated to Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

If you've recently been diagnosed, get a personal experience book like Ludwig's. You can also go to my coping resources page. I have other personal experience books listed here

Whatever you may be feeling internally is simply passing through at this moment. 

Breathe in and breathe out.

Your feeling state does not make you personally right, wrong, weak, strong, good or bad. Feeling states and thoughts float through us all day long. We are in a constant state of change. Nothing is permanent and nothing lasts forever. Thoughts, feelings, and even our basic biology is constantly in a state of change. Cells are changing every single minute. Some say we get cancer many times a day through flub-ups in cell DNA replication, but this does not always become a diagnosis of "cancer" per say, because we are constantly in a state of repair, replication and change. And the same is true for thought and feelings. They come and they go. Nothing is permanent. They float in and they float out.

It is only when something stops the stream, the flow, that things get out of whack. With thoughts, when we identify with the content of a thought, we get into trouble. For example, pretend the thought: "I can't do this" floats by. If I notice this thought for what it is: just a thought, then I can release it and the thought is free to continue floating by, and another thought will float through and so on and so on. However, if I get "hooked" or identify with the thought content by saying, "yes!, that is me, I can't do this... and...actually... in the past I could not do those other things...", then the spiral begins. The mind has gotten stuck in this content, hooked into the thought and a spiral has begun. This is one way depression or despair begins (which is anger turned inward)....through faulty thought identification.

To stop this spiral from happening you can pull out the hook. You can practice releasing thoughts. They are not really yours anyway. They are simply thoughts and feeling states. They come and they go. Getting hooked means identifying with or conversely fighting a thought or feeling (trying to push it down, deny it, or anesthetize). Either way, through identification or avoidance, you have engaged the thought/feeling state. It will usually stick around until you cut bait or gently release it. Try the fisherman's practice of Catch and Release.

Also note, there is usually a quality of rigidity and self-judgment to this downward spiraling. Add compassion and flexibility, to catch and release and see what happens.

A word on compassion from Pema Chodron:

Resource: Get out of your mind and into your life by Steven Hayes, PhD.  

....goes the Green Day song. This song is based on Billie Joe's (Green Day lead singer) experience of living through seemingly interminable grief after his father's death. He longs for the pain to end. The grief hangs on him, his constant companion.

"Here comes the rain again...drenched in my pain again" are poignant lyrics describing the experience of grief. As time goes on, you seem to feel alright for a moment here and there, but suddenly you are "drenched" again in the heaviness of it all, and you're completely and totally helpless. Like a sudden thunderstorm, grief pours from the heavens. The feeling washes over you like a wave, and you simply cannot shake it, you ride it.  

Grief and loss bring us to our knees. Very few things in life can provide suffering like losing someone close to us can. Grief is not only related to literal death. It also appears with other great losses, for example: the ending of a relationship (divorce) or the loss of one's innocence, youth, or agility (aging).

Grief can become heavy. We wish someone could "wake" us when it ends. But we cannot jump over grief, any more than we can skip the month of September. We have to walk through it. And September can feel like a very, very long month.

However, likewise, grief is also responsible for awakening, enlivening and individuating our persons. Individuation is a term clinicians often use to describe the process of becoming who we are, which is exactly what Billie Joe says in his song, "Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are". In walking through grief, in being present to the whole experience of it, amazingly, bizarrely, you somehow are molded; somehow you expand from grief? Grief can actually heal you.

CLICK HERE for definition of "individuation" on wikipedia and read the Carl Jung explanation.

Sometimes we have to live through September. Surrender to September. The dawn will come. If this is where you are, you are exactly where you are supposed to be right now. Have faith and continue to be present through September. September will end; it always does, every year. 

Today, let's talk briefly about the Serenity Prayer...

God* grant us the serenity

to accept the things we cannot change,

The courage to change the things we can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Most of us are familiar with this prayer and have probably heard it or said it several times. The prayer is short, sweet and empowering.

But what does "Serenity" really mean?

Serenity is a state of mind. Serenity is the state or quality of being calm, or tranquil, having composure, calm, peacefulness, or peace. Serenity is having the presence of mind, or said another way, having the presence to your own mind, to your surroundings, and to your life.

The prayer is essentially saying, God grant me the "presence" of mind to see my circumstances, my mind, and my life clearly today. God grant me this presence, so that I may see the truth, and make choices from this clear and present state.

The prayer also asks for acceptance. Accepting one's current position or set of circumstances can be one of the most difficult things we must learn do. It is VERY HARD sometimes to accept exactly where you are at this moment. We often want to manipulate it, eat something, drink something or somehow change it. We want to jump over ourselves and get to where we are going. But first, we must accept. We must start from where we are. ONLY then can we begin to move with compassion and grace into changing or moving from this current position.

God* grant me presence to whatever my life holds for me in this moment. Allow me to be fully alive to my life, fully here for all of it. I wish you full, gentle, and complete presence in your life today.

 *Note to reader, please substitute whatever word for God which is meaningful for you.

In my work at the university, I see many trauma survivors; releasing guilt is a major focus in treatment. It's often imperative to release guilt to loosen the hold of PTSD symptoms (see below for general definition and description of PTSD symptoms).

Truly, many of us carry guilt about different things that have happened in our lives. We often believe that if we had just acted differently that things may have turned out better. "IF I had only taken his keys that night". "IF I had just been a nicer person or a better student, mom and dad would have stayed together". "I never should have gone out with her, I had a bad feeling and I should have trusted myself". 

3 basic ways we experience guilt:

1. We feel guilty that we did something that we should not have done, OR we feel guilty that we didn't do something that we should have done. (behaviors)

2. We feel guilty that we thought something that we shouldn't have thought or we feel guilty that we didn't think something that we "should" have thought of. (thoughts)

3. We feel guilty that we felt something we should not have felt or we feel guilty that we did not feel something that we should have felt.(feelings)

Kubany, a Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) clinician and researcher has said that if he only had one hour to work with a trauma survivor (specifically he works with domestic violence trauma survivors) he would spend it on releasing her guilt. He went further and said that if he only had 10 minutes to spend with a victim of DV he would spend it on Hindsight Bias.

Hindsight Bias is basically blaming yourself now for decisions that you made before you knew what you know now. You cannot make a decision back then from the knowledge you hold today (knowing the outcome of the event). But we argue, "no, I had a feeling that something bad might happen". However, this is NOT the same thing as knowing the specific outcome of the traumatic event. You only attained that specific knowledge after the event, and not before. This is an important thing to keep in mind when we are blaming ourselves. We simply can't possibly know then what we know now. 

"A loving heart is the truest wisdom" ~ Charles Dickens 

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3 basic symptom categories of PTSD:

"To express unafraid and unashamed what one really thinks and feels is one of the great consolations in life"

~ Theodore Reik (20th Century German Psychoanalyst)

"...be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything else. . .What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love..."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Have you ever felt as though the floor had been ripped out from underneath you?

In a crisis, nothing feels safe. Maybe you've lost your home, a loved one has died, or you're facing the worst depression of your life. The things which once seemed so important now seem irrelevant and false. People seem far away at times, like you're walking parallel to everyone around you, but you're in an alternate space.

IF this is indeed where you are...

Welcome

I say welcome not to be flip, but to offer a warm reassurance, because most everyone experiences some kind of "parallel" walk at one time or another. In life, we all get to be the blue duck at some point.

However, when you're in it...you're in it. It feels really lonely and scary. And often when you're in these places of despair, you honestly feel that no human being could possibly conceive of your pain. But the honest truth is that everyone, sooner or later experiences that uncomfortable place of not knowing how to make things better. 

However painful, despair, burning despair, fear and crisis can sometimes lead us to make remarkable and meaningful life changes. 

But don't let me get ahead of myself, as I said above, while you are "in it" you are "in it". Compassion is the best elixir and self soothing is a much needed balm. Be patient and loving towards yourself. You will heal and you will be ready.

One noteworthy warning to the blue duck experience: one of the most disturbing thoughts one experiences while walking in the grips of despair is that they will never return to "normal". They fear that the experience will never end. It's usually not actually the horrible situation or pain, but the fear of never getting over it, never feeling "normal" or "good" again that drives people over the edge. This thought is enticing to the mind, but it is a fallacy. Try not to get trapped by this line of thinking. 

As I said above, most importantly, be gentle with yourself, give yourself patience and compassion. You will open...

Jamie Reno, Newsweek journalist and cancer survivor will be the special guest tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST (6:00p.m. for you left coasters) on The Stupid Cancer Show, an informative, funny, cutting-edge, hugely popular show hosted by Jamie's friends and fellow survivors Matthew Zachary and Kairol Rosenthal. They'll be discussing Jamie's forthcoming novel, “A Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound,” the story of a 10-year-old boy coping with the cancer diagnosis of his mom, and about radio-immunotherapy, a remarkable lymphoma cancer treatment that saves lives but still risks extinction unless people demand their legislators to save it!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stupidcancershow/2009/07/14/Cancer-vs-Environment-Cage-Match

The Stupid Cancer Show
The Stupid Cancer Show is the voice of young adults affected by cancer. Unlike every other age group, this is about a generation of millions (aged 15-39) for whom there has been zero improvement in survival rates since Nixon. This is not OK! Hosted by young adult survivors Kairol Rosenthal (Author of "Everything Changes: The Insider's Guide To Cancer In Your 20's and 30's") and Matthew Zachary (Founder/CEO of the I'm Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation) we are challenging the status quo and demanding change from the establishment. It's time. It's our time. It's about time.

Praise for ‘A Snowman on the Pitcher’s Mound’

“A beautiful novel. Reno shows how powerful a simple game like baseball can be in helping a young boy cope. The true moral of this book though is beyond baseball and beyond cancer – it lies in the healing strength of familial love and the celebration of life.”
Larry Lucchino, President and CEO, Boston Red Sox, and two-time cancer survivor

“Finally, a book written for both parents and children about loss from a young boy’s perspective. Carefully and brilliantly written, it provides a guide for teachable moments that parents can use to help them relate to their children when faced with serious illness or loss. This fills an obvious void in the literary world.”
Leslie Hovsepian, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist

“Had me reaching for the tissues, but smiling, too, at the many moments of love so well depicted in this story of a boy coming to terms with loss. The author possesses a finely honed skill in giving readers the true voice of a 10-year-old boy learning to cope with death—and life.”
Phyllis DeBlanche, Associate Editor, San Diego Magazine

“I only wish my children could have read this when I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago. Sensitive, thoughtful, humorous, poignant and most importantly, provides a much needed canvas on which families can explore the myriad emotions surrounding diagnosis and treatment of any serious illnesses. This book will be very helpful to kids and parents everywhere.”
Michael E. Werner, Director, Lymphoma Research Foundation, CEO, Globe Union Group

“It’s never easy to talk about cancer with children, but this book gracefully facilitates this difficult dialogue in such an inviting way. I love this book. It can strengthen a family's understanding and compassion through the emotional perils of cancer.”
Regina Huelsenbeck, PhD, PsychoSocialOncologist

“Captures your heart from the first words. Entertaining, funny and touching, it takes the reader inside a cancer patient’s family and shares both the heartbreak and hope many children feel.”
Linette Atwood, CEO, Patient Resource Cancer Guide

“As a young adult who as a child lost her mother to cancer, I have never read a book that is more insightful and helpful in dealing with the questions children face when a loved one is ill.”
Jessica Dallow, Pakula/King & Associates