Exploring the Mental Fitness Formula
1. The FORMULA in Action
When I was fourteen I decided to make a mosaic out of the stones I’d collected from the Lake Michigan beach near us. My dad took me to the lumber yard to get Elmer’s Glue and a handy-panel and I began sorting them on the back patio. I drew a rough design and spent hours for several days creating...
2. Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and Mental Fitness
How could these two possibly come together? The struggle in your mind that prevents mental fitness consists of clashing brain elements. To bring them into harmony you have to know what they are and how to manage them. Here’s where pineapple upside-down cake comes in. It’s after the holidays the...
3. Wise Parent = Happy Child
In this picture Dixie is unhappy because of her bow, but okay because she’s gotten lots of treats for her trouble! A well-cared-for pet is playful, trusting and open to love. So also our own inner Child can enjoy these feelings when our Parent and Adult work well together. As I mentioned, the...
4. Reflections for the Coming Year
I love to listen to Windham Hill instrumental music, lie on my couch, gazing at the Douglas firs outside and just let my thoughts roam at this time of year. I’m contemplating this picture of a little pool around a rock on the ocean beach. I wrote another post for this week, but it’s too cluttered...
5. Quick Handles on Fight-or-Flight
This is a squirrel who knows how to handle fight-or-flight. Surely not all squirrels would be able to manage this elegant solution. How does she do it? First she sniffs that there are seeds for her lunch up in the tree. Then she goes up to get them, but Karen the owner has set up a barrier so she...
6. Divide and Conquer
One day I decided that I should sort out for myself and my readers just how the FORMULA and the Adult-Parent-Child systems inter-connect and relate to Mental Fitness issues. I created the “Scaffold” here to capture this for us. In previous posts I’ve illustrated how these systems can combine by...
7. How to Reduce your Critical Parent’s Power
It seems to be easy for people to recognize their Critical Parent. When it presses it’s Toxic Beliefs on you, you feel it right away with a tightening gut or fists, flushed face, mental sense of being overwhelmed, prickling on the back of your neck or other body fight-or-flight reactions. Here’s...
8. Recognize Your Indulgent Parent
A penny saved is a penny earned. Now that you can feel your Critical Parent (CP) at work, it's more of a challenge to identify when your Indulgent Parent (IP) is stepping in. If your Adult fails to do this, you'll certainly suffer the consequences. First it's helpful to realize how often your...
9. Set Up by Your Indulgent Parent
A see-saw of self-indulgence and self-punishment happens when you’re set up by your Indulgent Parent (IP). Your Critical Parent (CP) keeps you on a short leash so you can’t get into trouble, scolding your Child each time you fail to measure up to one of the six toxic beliefs your CP holds. Your...
10. Introducing Your Three Child Brain Habits
Imagine the shadow in this picture is my Adult and the very subtle pattern in the rivulet represents my three Child Brain Habits. It’s not easy to step out and take a picture of what happens in your brain. Let’s try to help you get a picture of these brain habits to help your Adult catch them at...
11. Black & White Thinking Intensifies Toxic Beliefs
First we’ll look at black & white thinking, the simplest and easiest Child Brain Habit to defuse. It prompts you to automatically sort all you see, hear and feel into polarities: black or white, right or wrong, loving or rejecting, trustworthy or unreliable, bad or good, okay or not okay, etc....
12. Personalizing: Frequent Cause of Guilt and Blame
Do you often feel like the only place you can find peace is one like this? People offer innumerable triggers for fight-or-flight reactions. While it’s wonderful to retreat to such an inspiring spot, it’s possible to be at peace, even when you’re with other people. Your Adult can learn to recognize...
13. Personalizing Spawns Jealousy, Envy and Hate
Toxic belief #2, that you must surpass others in at least one area to be worthwhile, is also fueled by personalizing. Consider sibling rivalry or even the power struggles within a community. It seems to be wired-in for humans to feel threatened when someone in their own group exceeds their...
14. Overgeneralizing Creates a False World
In psychology we define generalization as “the brain’s tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar things or situations.” For example, when you were in fifth grade your math teacher taught you a formula or principle using a few example problems. Then she’d give you a test with...
15. Overgeneralizing and Truth
Whether you generalize or overgeneralize, how can you be sure you’re not creating a “false world” for yourself? I learned the hard way that reality is much easier to deal with if you don’t break away from it too long. As noted in the previous post, it’s not possible to avoid generalizing....
16. Brain Differences and Fight-or-Flight
This little stone family invites you to take a big leap into wiser Adult coping. You can’t guess what these rock people’s brains might be like, can you? How would you cope with a co-worker who looked like these one-eyed stones? You could suspend a few toxic beliefs for a while. Would you get...
17. Shelter for Your Uniqueness
To protect yourself from hurt and anger over any brain differences that make it harder for your Adult, you must build shelter into your Wise Parent. You can extend it to others as well. As noted in Post # 16, there are several wired-in conditions that can make you feel like you’ll never fit in to...
18. Be Assertive to Be Mentally Fit
This picture shows that somebody wanted to create a unique statement at the beach. He or she thought about what to sculpt and carefully formed this octopus of damp sand. To make it more visible, the sculptor laid out seaweed to contrast with its arms. Now we can readily see this remarkable design....
19. Ms. Fixit Lights Her Candle
All it takes is a point of light, a ray of hope in the darkest night… Randy Travis Do you ever have moments when you get what seems like a great idea, but later you reconsider and decide you’d be crazy to try to do that? Here I am to show you what crazy looks like! I put this costume together when...
20. A Lantern for Your Candle
When you see what’s wrong and you try to make it right, you will be a point of light. Randy Travis This line from Randy Travis always brings me to tears. But wishing don’t make it so. First you must construct a lantern for your candle. This spark of inspiration and faith in yourself, like all...
21. Compassion and Assertiveness for the Pop-Bead Puppy
The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated. (From the Dale Carnegie Course, 1976) Here’s a new take on compassion and assertiveness! For a stronger Adult, a wiser Wise Parent and a more secure Child, consider the story of “Compassion, Assertiveness and the Pop-Bead...
22. The Grief Process, Denial, Bargaining and Mental Fitness
The graph above describes an intuitive view of the grief process, based on how much energy grief seems to require at each stage. The way energy flows in your process may be different, but what’s important is for your Adult to learn how to recognize the five stages as they happen. Grief can prevent...
23. The Grief Process: Anger, Sadness and Acceptance
Dolly was a beautiful long-haired dachshund with a personality that we knew from the start would one day break our hearts. After almost eighteen years, that's what happened. I must tell you about her. In this picture she's still got the shorter coat of a puppy. She would tip her head as she looked...
24. Toxic Belief #9 Ignites Fight-or-Flight
Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? A clear desk is the sign of a sick mind. A stitch in time saves nine. Research has shown that order in our surroundings reduces anxiety. You should be more responsible! Full disclosure, this is a picture of my craft room/office today! The balance...
25. The Grief Process for Human Relationships
In my practice I saw many people struggle to manage fight-or-flight reactions in their work relationships. In these settings, since there were both friend- and livelihood-related issues at stake, their reactions were often intense and long-lasting. Sometimes they would get physically sick and...
26. Human Bias Against Differences
The previous post described how a worker might assume that a co-worker would see a situation the way he did and might have also believed that his managers would agree with and support him. When these expectations weren’t met he might enter the grief process. We call it empathy when people do...
27. Grief and Brain Differences
In post 16, “Brain Differences and Fight-or-Flight,” I discussed how some people, whose wiring is significantly different from average, struggle harder to keep their Adult in charge. Now I’d like to describe how we, who are troubled by our differences, must resolve our grief over them to stabilize...
28. HSPs and Personalizing
I just know where she’s coming from… Here’s another example of how being wired differently from others can affect you journey toward mental fitness. Elaine Aron observed that HSPs tend to “take things way too personally.” After working with hundreds of HSP clients (and myself) I can certainly...
29. Social Anxiety and HSPs
Social anxiety is another common issue for HSPs. It is a chronic form of Personalization that can be isolating and very harmful. It’s the feeling that the people around you are always looking for ways to find fault with you. I remember feeling sick to my stomach as I sat among the 20 kids in my...
30. Mrs. Fixit Transforms Grief
If you see what’s wrong and you try to make it right, you will be a point of light! Randy Travis Grief has much more impact on us than we realize. We can recognize many things that make us sad: the loss of a pet, of a child, a job, a spouse or parent, our hearing or mobility, a relationship,...
