Buffalo seasons Awareness in life
Social Connectivity: How to Halt An Epidemic of Loneliness & Isolation
Social connectivity can be understood through relationships spread across family (parents, siblings, spouses/partners, children, grandparents, etc.); work (co-workers, bosses, supervisors, contractors, consultants, clients, patients, etc.); friends (school, college, sports, arts, etc.); and community (neighborhoods, spiritual / religious, collectives, groups, volunteerism, etc.). Researchers found that social connectivity can decrease the risk of developing and worsening major physical and mental health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, dementia, and diabetes.
Resilience …That Which Does Not Kill Us
Nietzsche spoke to me on that lava field as if he were my Zarathustra: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Indeed, I thought. Indeed. Decades later, I still rely on Western and Eastern philosophical writings to guide me in life and in my work with clients. Translating Nietzsche’s existential inquiry into therapeutic parlance leads me to a psychological concept gobbled up by 21st Century pop culture: Resilience.
What Nietzsche noted in the late 1800s is today described as one’s ability to rebound from life challenges through flexibility and adaptability. One’s resilience is supported by five pillars: self-awareness, engagement in self-care, the practice of mindfulness, supportive relationships, and living a life with purpose and meaning. During stressful times, any or all of these pillars may weaken, become unstable, or crumble. As one sustains the impacts of adversity, each can help buoy one through the storm.
Anticipatory Grief & The 3 E’s of Self-Compassion
Caregiving is an heroic act that needs more recognition and support. From spouses to adult children to pet parents and veterinarians to nurses and physicians, the level of care provided to one living with a serious health condition takes an existential toll.
In this blog series, I explore the life of caregivers and offer tips on how to walk the noble road while maintaining one’s emotional, cognitive, and physiological health. This week, we look at anticipatory grief and its impact on the mind, body, and spirit. We then review the 3 E’s of Self-Compassion: Expression, Engagement, and Empowerment and their protective factors for those experiencing anticipatory grief.
Be the buffalo & Head Into the Storm
Resilience is your ability to rebound from life challenges—not by avoiding them—but by facing them head on like the buffalo. The American Bison, also known as the Buffalo, serves well as a metaphor for resilience. While domesticated cattle try to outrun a storm, buffalo instinctually know that to outrun a storm is impossible. They face the storm head on and are rewarded for their strength and ability to rebound: Buffalo suffer less, conserve energy, and spend far less time in the freezing rain, drizzle, high winds, snow, and more. In contrast, domesticated cattle suffer longer, exert more energy, and spend more time in the chaotic rise and fall of a storm. Human storms can arise from myriad wells: Infidelity or mistrust in a marriage, the death of a loved one, panic attacks of unknown origins, depression, existential angst, or a major life transition. Yet, there is purpose and meaning beyond ourselves in such storms; it is that which can be understood.
Where is Your Life Leading You?
Wherever you are, autumn is a time of reflection. A time of letting go. A time of nurturing our energies for the long days of winter. Consider how you can use this time to determine what is important to you, what sustains you, and what no longer serves you. Autumn is a time to ask: Where is my life leading me? And what would I need to recalibrate to get there?
I See You, Anger
Where does your anger live? Does it hold court in your belly? Does it wrap around your heart like a corset? Or is it so pervasive that it flows through your veins like Valvoline in a Formula 1 race car? If you’re like me, it might live in all those places and even a few I’m yet unaware of. Anger is alive in all of us—even when we try to ignore it. Even when social norms and expectations tell us anger is unacceptable. Over the next few weeks, I invite you to join me on a journey of discovery where the dark sides of you reveal you unveiled.
Entering the Role of Caregiver, Lightly
In becoming a caregiver for the first time, you have embarked on a road that may be unfamiliar to you. Even if you have been a caregiver to a loved one in the past, each caregiving experience is unique. You may utilize the new skills you honed, but, unless it is the same debilitating illness, new skills will likely be required. This blog series explores the role of caregiver and provides guidance on how to take care of self and loved one on this less traveled road.
Life Transition: Your Growth & Well-being
Life is full of changes. Life is full of new experiences. Life is full of opportunities.
But sometimes we’re not ready for the changes, the new experiences, and thus we find ourselves unable to fully embrace the opportunities. It leaves us asking ourselves, what can I do differently? How can I better prepare for when opportunities arise?
As a Certified Life Coach, Robert B. Bagget, M. Dip. Ac., CLC specializes in helping people answer these questions through strategic discovery, visioning, mapping, goal setting and supporting you through accountability measures, while celebrating each achievement along the way. He describes his work in this blog post.
Bereavement Requires Time & Oscillation
The Dual Process of Mourning describes the importance of intentionality in the grieving process. We need to engage in “dosing our grief” because at times either end can become too debilitating. Respite from grief work can be found in learning how to call and schedule the eaves to be cleaned for the first time after a spouse dies. Respite from paying bills and going places alone can be found in snuggling in your den watching a favorite romance movie that you and your partner watched together—the tears can be cathartic, while also continuing your bond with them. These acts are integral to developing a healthy coping style to your loss.
Feedback loops 101: Anchors, Waves, & Islands
In this blog post, I talk about attachment styles, and how we can learn about whether we are an Island, Anchor, or Waves. Understanding our attachment style enables us to related better in our relationships with partners, children, and co-workers.
The Impact of Cancer on Personal relationships
When I was 15 years old, entering high school, my maternal grandfather, aka Moo Moo, died of lung cancer, which had metastasized to his brain. Treatments and prognoses have come a long way since then, and some forms of metastatic disease are curable. I often wish that he would have been able to live this long to see such amazing advancements in medicine. He was in his mid-50s—my age now. I still have the quiet moments I spent with him in his bedroom, the bed facing the rugged lawn and all its rural wonder; but I also have memories of better times with him fishing on the LaCrosse River, eating hot ham and cheese sandwiches at Hardees, and trying to make cream turn into butter by shaking the half and half capsules at the local diner (his idea and prompting).
Mother’s Day, Not Always A Happy Holiday
In the United States, the origin of Mother’s Day dates to the 19th century. In the early 1900s, Anna Jarvis embarked upon a public campaign to establish an official holiday for mothers after the death of her mother. Herself childless, Anna lobbied for the special day as a way to recognize women’s contributions to society. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the holiday to be held on the second Sunday of May.
By the 1920s, the holiday had been so commercialized, that Anna denounced the holiday, petitioning the federal government to remove the holiday from the official calendar. And so, after thousands of years of honoring mothers and motherhood, the post-modern commercialization of Mother’s Day has been foisted on the public via television, social media, radio, advertisements, sales promotions … the list is endless. For some, the month-long lead-up to the holiday followed by endless social media posts capturing just the right smiles and hugs on the special day, can be unsettling.
On Earth Day, The Minds of Gray Whales & Our Shadows
Nature is our teacher, every day. We only need listen, smell, taste, touch, and observe. On this 53rd Earth Day, reading our profundity can lead us into a verdant chartreuse and emerald-painted forest, where we can chase our Shadow amidst spring’s dew drops and cadmium yellow rays of sunshine.
Coming to understand the self in connection to our natural world and to others is an enlightening journey into waters and forest floors that we inhabited eons ago. Well before the study epigenetics, Carl Jung posited that a hidden and repressed part of the self, aka The Shadow, “reach[es] back into the realm of our animal ancestors.” [2]
Feedback Loops 101: understanding Attachment
In this blog series, I offer insight into how we learn to relationally dance, focusing on how positive and negative strokes lead to positive and negative feedback loops. No matter your current attachment style, the good news is that like a bad dance move (think Elaine, Seinfeld), you can retrace your steps and learn a better way of dancing with the people in your life.
Homage to a Woman Leader: Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
In spending countless hours with dying patients, Kübler-Ross identified the emotions and feelings they expressed on their journey toward end-of-life. Kübler-Ross is rightfully credited with changing the way we approach death and how we talk and listen to dying patients. What had previously been taboo in Western culture, had not only shifted the medical community’s views of death but also in popular culture. [1] A reevaluation of Kübler-Ross’s work has cemented her far-reaching influence on palliative medicine. [2]
Feeling the Absence in Ambiguous loss
In the 1970s, Dr. Pauline Boss identified a form of loss that results due to the physical or psychological absence of a loved one: Ambiguous loss. It is different from ordinary loss because “there is no verification of death or no certainty that the person will come back or return to the way they used to be.”
when grief is complicated
In this new blog series, I discuss types of complicated grief and how counseling can help a person struggling in their time of mourning. This week we learn about disenfranchised grief and how to help a loved one who is grieving.
Why Buffalo?
As a grief counselor, I walk with my clients through the storm, encouraging them to be the buffalo. We need to run into the grief storm, like buffalo run into the ice storm because trying to escape it is futile and depletes our resources.