Counselor's Corner

“As we are moving into another, new stage of transition, what are you doing to bring self-compassion?” The facilitator’s gentle voice with the soothing British accent posed this question during yesterday’s self-compassion session. He was referencing our latest, new stage of transition – the reopening of public places. I found myself replaying a recent moment that resulted in my taking a spoonful of self-compassion as anxiety-based thoughts and sensations swirled inside me. Two weeks ago, I received an email questionnaire from The Thinkery, our children’s museum in Austin. They were interested in hearing parents’ feedback about what they could do to increase our sense of safety and asked several thought-provoking questions. What information would I need about their safety precautions and cleaning practices? Would I need to see employees in masks? Would I need to have a limited number of people in the building? Would I need to wait until everyone in the building was vaccinated ag

  Imagine. You are sitting at your table at the end of your day. You open a new box of 120 crayons. You inhale that aroma that smells like waxy happiness, excitement, and first day of school memories. You look at the colors and find your eyes taking in both the individual hues and the big picture of them lined up together in tidy rows. Your smile broadens. Now think about your day. What single color best represents your background, the overall gestalt of your day? Today was a rough day for me, an “exhale on a big sigh” gray day. There were a series of low-grade frustrations and all the frustrations were surrounded by the reality of life during pandemic uncertainty and pressure. That particular shade is not a fun color to grab. I want to grab the seafoam green or the sunshine yellow. But it was an “exhale on a big sigh” gray day. It began this morning at 2:30 when I took our four-month-old puppy outside. He returned to sleep quickly. My brain, however, decided to consider

  Remember our fish saga from the Free Fish and Priceless Life Lessons blog entry in November? The “two weeks later” epilogue would have discussed that, once the water was healthy and fish friendly, we returned to Petco and purchased new fish. We went home with three – an orange guppy named Bob (Angel’s choice), a yellow guppy named Shallow (Giovanni’s), and a gray guppy with an orange-tipped tail named Jessica (mine). As I write this, five months later, I’m watching them swim happily in their tank. Shallow and Jessica seem to enjoy each other, but neither enjoys Bob, so we haven’t had any baby guppies, despite his tenacious efforts to woo them. A few weeks ago, we had our first experience with light green water. Per my research, this is a common phenomenon that indicates algae growth caused by excessive light and/or overfeeding. I followed the recommendations and the issue cleared within a week. One of the articles contained a simple sentence that resonated with me. Yo

This morning I participated in a mindful self-compassion session via Zoom and the facilitator, a dear friend of mine, asked us what we need right now. My immediate answer to the question was “Stillness.” As I heard myself say that word aloud, I recognized how much mental weight I carry as a parent as I’m balancing “we’re in a crisis situation” with “the kids need as much normalcy as possible right now.” Cognitively, I know that those two truths don’t fit well together and yet, somehow, they need to cohabitate and allow enough bandwidth for a wonderful job that also needs my attention.   Sound familiar? I found myself telling my comrades about the challenge of trying to outfit all three of us with private workspaces and overseeing our individual transitions from in-person to online learning. I talked about how hard it is to housetrain a 12-week-old puppy when our local grocery store hasn’t had paper towels in several weeks. I discussed losing track of how many times I checked Ship

  I participated in a conference call recently. After the initial check-in and introductions, the facilitator asked us a question that was simple and profound. “What are you letting go of right now to give yourself compassion?” There were about 10 of us on this conference call and most of us had a response that tied to a basic theme of relinquishing our need for predictability and/or control. We returned to the importance of remembering that “right now” will not last “forever.” I appreciate the facilitator’s question that redirected our attention from managing our anxiety to finding compassion for ourselves during this difficult time. I forget at times that the two are so interconnected. When I feel anxious, I become more vulnerable to the judgmental commentary of my inner critic and her negative predictions. I forget that her negative predictions are a story, not something that is actually true. When I respond to my anxiety and my inner critic’s ramblings with the compassion