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What Is In Between A Racing Mind And Dying of Boredom? Mindfulness, Sleep!

Slowing down is a practice!

The practice of slowing down has to be experienced.

No one can “tell” you what you experience when you sit silently. 

When a person has a moment to in silence, a lot of times their mind goes to “thinking, worrying.”

In fact, lots of people give up, disengage, and delve into “thinking, worrying.” 

This may involve a racing mind, an attempt to problem solve, or a rehashing of a to-do list. 

Lots of people struggle to sleep at night because their mind race as soon as quiet descends. 

This practice takes repetition and willingness. 

Can you just notice the pace, rhythm, and quality of your breath- for three minutes?

Can you just notice the topics of your mind- and where it insists on taking you- for three minutes?

Can you just notice the physical sensations of your body responding to “thinking” -for three minutes? 

Or not?

What are Dialectics and Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills? 

What is dialectics? 

Dialectics is based on the idea that two opposing concepts can both be equally true. One truth does not trump or rule out another, which undercuts the dichotomy of a “I am right you are wrong” type of relationship. A common dialectic is that you are perfect as you are (acceptance), and that in order for things to turn out differently in your life, you need to do things differently (change). One is not more true than the other, and one truth does not rule out the other truth. Sometimes people need acceptance, and sometimes people need to be challenged. Both belonging and growth are an inherent part of being in relationship. 

Dialectics challenges the idea that one person is always “right”, because when you take into account diversity of perspective, other truths often arise. Being “right” often fails to take into account effective communication and the value of the relationship. Experience and emotions get ignored. A set agenda of being “right” often gets people stuck in a very rigid, dichotomous, black and white, non-dialectical stance. Dialectics are important in that sometimes you can find the one thing you have in common with your enemy instead of focusing in ways you are different. Relationships exist in context of conflicting truths, yet relationships are the glue that carries us through life. 

What are the four Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills? 

DBT is a complex treatment that has confusing origins in terms of how it was developed and who it was for, and has been tailored to a wide range of populations and settings. The DBT skills are universally applicable materials that help people with extreme and painful emotions, intolerable life situations, and relationships. The four skills sets are as follows:

Core Mindfulness: Mindfulness is a skill that helps people focus attention, regulate arousal, calm the brain, quiet the mind, and settle in. Being mindful is a way to steady and anchor oneself in order to observe quietly and not “react” to what is going on. It is inherent in all of the other skills in that it requires a steady, quiet, secure stance in the face of demanding life situations.  It takes spaciousness to know what is going in with your body, your self-experience, your wants and desires, and your life. If you don’t pause the moment and check in with yourself, it is easier to get “caught up” in the banging and thrashing of what life throws in your direction. Mindfulness can be a spiritual practice of quiet contemplation, a way to press the pause button, and way to regroup. Core mindfulness skills taught from the DBT material include skills of observing and describing without judgement. Other traditions, spiritual practices, health care services, and therapies teach mindfulness, so it is not “new” nor is it confined to just DBT skills; its roots are actually in Zen Buddhism. There are multiple ways of accessing mindfulness including mindfulness based programs, meditation groups, trainings, and apps. DBT groups are known for implementing a mindful practice or exercise in every group, and like many spiritual traditions are simply considered part of a daily practice. 

Emotion Regulation: This is a set of skills that helps people to observe and describe what they feel (you can see the overlap with mindfulness) in order to help regulate arousal, understand what they feel, and know the reasons why they feel the way they feel. Skills cover ways to reduce emotional suffering through mindfulness and opposite action, and ways to reduce vulnerability to emotional suffering. Skills are quite complex and take practice, feedback, and validation. Since emotions can be tricky, elusive, (and just plain unbearable at times) the emotion regulation content is not something you could “quick learn” and be done with it. Sometimes people are not always aware of how or what they feel in general, and there is nothing pathological about this.  It is a process! Knowing oneself and knowing one’s emotions is a lifelong task not subjected to any particular type of disorder, and does not end just because you have had a first exposure to all of the skill content. That is why working together on ways to regulate arousal given varying life circumstances can best be done over time in small group settings that promote cohesion and intimacy. 

Distress Tolerance: In order to regulate emotional arousal, finding ways to endure the “I-can’t-stand-it-itis” of painful and extreme emotions is critical. Surviving painful life circumstances well means doing so in a way where people do not lose self-respect, forget their values, give up what is important to them, or react in such a way that makes things worse. Sitting in the fire and not reacting is often harder than picking a fight, poking the fire, making others suffer in order to prove a point, exacerbating pain to let others know how bad things are, undermining a person where it hurts, forcing the university to prove its point, perseverating on being “right”, asking “why me”, or engaging in self-defeating or relationship destroying behaviors. Being willing to tolerate the unknown, be zen with the universe, stop fighting reality, and do what works is skillful practice. We all want things to do our way or to turn out for the best. In reality, a lot of people are suffering a great deal and need everything they can to survive well. Distress tolerance skills encompass not only change strategies (if you can do one thing make it better, why wouldn’t you?), but acceptance and willingness skills.  Anyone who has successfully undergone any type of exposure treatment for anxiety knows that the benefit to tolerating anxiety is a decrease in overall anxiety. There is an inherent truth that reality is easier to face once you stop fighting it, thus freeing you up to do what is needed to effectively solve problems. 

Interpersonal effectiveness: True to the concept of the dialectical philosophy of DBT, it is better to be effective than it is to be right. The interpersonal skill content encourages readers to identify objectives in situations (what exactly it is you want or don’t want), how the relationship may be impacted, and if self-respect is at stake. Balancing the three helps people to look at natural barriers and consequences of interacting, and enables readers to problem solve the cost/ benefit of ignoring each. For instance, you can ask for what you want at the expense of the relationship, or you can give into a relationship but sacrifice self-respect. The balancing act of relationships is an ongoing challenge for everyone, and some give and take is part of how people stick together, find intimacy, and keep people close. Interpersonal skills also include ways to get out of or decrease contact with toxic or unwanted relationships, set limits, say no, and to identify barriers to doing so. Direct rehearsal in terms of “what to say and how to say it” benefits group members in that they can try out and receive feedback in both verbal and non-verbal forms. 

Make sure you sign up for my mailing list if you are interested in learning DBT skills, or contact me directly.

What you should know if you have Borderline Personality Disorder

Here is the truth: BPD, or Borderline Personality Disorder, has a historically bad rap with mental health professionals. I’m going to give you some truths to what you should know to not only think about this clearly, but to consider your options in terms of the person you want to be and the person you want to become. 

BPD was historically known for “bordering” on the lines of neurotic vs. psychotic. In the olden days, clinicians who didn’t know if a person was living in the confines of “reality” could put them in a category that didn’t really fit either one. Historically neurosis has to do with issues related to anxiety, mood, and depression. Neurosis can also be related to trauma, vigilance, and paranoia about bad things re-occurring. Psychosis is related to problems hearing and seeing things that others do not see or hear, and is often associated with schizophrenia. “Borderline” has often been referred to as a category that doesn’t really fit any category, and in some cases has been the in- between of no-place.

BPD is also historically written about from an extremely pejorative and hopeless point of view. Words like “manipulative, gamey, cagey” are often used, and mental health professionals often refer to this diagnosis when talking about people that bug them, that they do not like, that get them enraged, and people that can tie up crisis hotlines and emergency rooms. In many cases, labeling someone with BPD has become a substitute for observing and describing behavior, providing useful feedback, and encouraging people to behave in ways that make them competent and more effective. 

Here are some truths that you should keep in mind if a mental health professional has “informed” you that you have BPD:

Mental health diagnoses are not valid nor reliable. This means that (in terms of validity), if the same professional assessed a person over time (such as an assessment 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and 5 years ago), the likelihood that that professional would give the same person the same diagnosis is unlikely. It also means that if many different mental health professionals assessed the same person it is highly unlikely the all of them would come to the same conclusion about diagnosis. This is assuming that the only measure of giving a diagnoses is a working familiarity with the DSM-TRV, or the “psychiatric Bible” of diagnostic criteria (which is highly controversial. Be aware that homosexuality was once considered a psychiatric disorder, and now it is not). Mental health diagnosis may be more reliable and valid if the diagnosis is given based on a range of valid and reliable assessment batteries; thus if you have had some comprehensive personality assessment and testing this may be less of the case for your situation. Bear in mind that most people in the counseling profession are doing nothing more than giving you their clinical opinion; hence my point about reliability and validity. Also, there are some counseling programs that don’t cover concepts such as instruments of mental health measurement. 

For some mental health professionals, telling someone they have BPD can sometimes be a  communication of frustration. In a helpful world, telling someone what diagnoses they have can be useful and even helpful- it can validate if a person really is depressed or help figure out specific treatments. In the case with BPD, the “right treatment” is more complicated and may not be readily available. If your mental health professional is telling you have BPD, you might want to consider: So what? How it is it helpful or useful? Does it help people have the resources or tools for solving painful problems? Is it specific enough to describe what behavior shows up- and how behavior can be changed? Does it provide access to literature that is actually helpful? For some people, being diagnosed with BPD can only serve to increase shame and self-loathing. Literature is not always helpful and mental health professionals don’t always shore up resources for how to move forward to obtain resources and supports. Is the expectation to hide in a corner the rest of your life and not tell people who you “really” are? And do you seriously want to live this way? 

There is a lot of confusion for most people around diagnosis being a cause. Diagnoses are actually descriptions of behavior, and mainly identify patterns of responding or behaviors that are typical for a person. Many people, including some mental health professionals, actually believe that they are describing reasons or causes of behaviors when giving someone a diagnoses. For instance, if the way that you behave is because you have a disorder, then someone people think they have adequately not only explained the reasons you behave the way you do, but they think they know why you behave the way you do. In terms of diagnosis, this really is not the case. The failure of the mental health system is that people think they are being helpful (“You have problems because you have a disorder”) rather than addressing  causes and potential solutions for behavior change. In this case, many problems of pain are not being solved as the focus of attention is on the “correct” diagnosis, which, in my opinion, is a rather useless pursuit. It can be akin to a parent who has several children; one of them is determined to be “bad.” Instead of figuring out how to prevent problem behavior, solve problems, and tend to the child’s needs; the parent simply attributes all problem behavior to the child being “bad.” 

What you can do if you have, or think you have, or someone else thinks you have BPD:

Don’t think you are permanently impaired, hopeless, or beyond help. Fear and shame keeps may people paralyzed from acting with self-respect, doing things that are meaningful, and putting oneself out there in the universe. Universally, fear and shame can prevent anyone from living a decent life. You are not an exception. 

Learn to talk about yourself and your behaviors in a descriptive, non-judgmental, and matter-of-fact ways. This will make you competent, understandable, and respectable. This also means that if you go around and tell everyone you are disordered, people may treat you as fragile, incompetent, incapable, or helpless. Create and practice ways to talk about yourself outside of the realm of “mental illness.” 

Pay attention to providers, mental health professionals, or family members who attribute your behavior to being “mentally ill” or “bad” or “personality disordered.” Realize that everyone has vulnerabilities and that many, many people struggle with giving accurate, helpful, and specific feedback. Consider how giving and receiving feedback is either helpful or not helpful, and don’t  seek out relationships where blame seems to be an acceptable solution for reducing pain or resolving differences. Finding “fault” only works if the consequence is taking responsibility and making changes; not amplifying shame and paralysis of action. 

Be aware that if you do delve into literature on BPD, you may encounter a wide range of confusing terminology that attempts to define you; which may not only be disconcerting but also downright confusing. You might encounter terms like object relations, transference, countertransference, self-objects, self-soothing self-objects, object mirroring, intrapsychic processes, or projections. Don’t get bogged down by mental health-ese. Bear in mind that some mental health professionals have a lot of trouble observing and describing behavior and giving useful feedback and sometimes hide behind their own jargon. 

Find other things that provide you a sense of identity, that define you, that make you the person you are, and that you value. Consider roles you take on in society; engage in them and be proud of them. What is important to you? Why would you let a diagnoses get in your way with pursuing what is important to you? In what ways do you not “show up” because you have shame around a diagnosis? Life is bigger than the world of “mental health.” 

Bear in mind that many mental health professionals are obsessed with political leaders that they believe to be personality disordered. In truth, political leaders are still political leaders, and political leaders have made great gains, influenced many, changed laws, and maintained power. Being diagnosed with something “bad” hasn’t deterred people from being politically active, advocating, having power, or being influential. There is no good reason why you have to be shamed from participating in the universe just like everyone else- people with a lot of problems still manage to be successful and competent in a myriad of different ways. 

Finally, feel free to visit the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, a nonprofit that may be more helpful than the general google search. Their website (www.borderlinepersonaltydisorder.com) has some useful non-pejorative literature, trainings, and free services for friends and family members. 

Parenting The Emotionally Extreme Teen- Free Workshop

What happens when you find yourself parenting your teen in the exact way you wanted to avoid? Our ability to parent arises from what we know, and there is no script for how to do it right! Teens can challenge our values, get under our skin, and set off intense reactions.

I will be offering a free one hour workshop that will help parents clarify values, embrace dialectics (balance opposing truths), understand developmentally normative teen behavior, and sort though emotional responses.

Being effective in parenting is a dance that involves flexibility, setting limits, enabling responsible behavior, and equipping teens with the tools to prepare them for adulthood.

Come to this workshop for practical resources and experiential exercises to help you be the best parent you can be. Being around others that are experiencing, expressing, or generating strong emotions can be a challenge for anyone.

Clarify values

A series of writing prompts to generate some ideas of what is important to you as a parent, how it is (or is not) showing up in your parenting, and how this may be influencing your parenting in ways you haven’t considered.

Embrace dialectics

Dialects allows us to hold multiple and conflicting truths while our teens poke holes in the universe. Parenting can be lonely and render us at times helpless and incompetent. An example of a diabetic is supporting our children (dependence) while fostering or encouraging them to do things without us (independence).  Both are needed to launch a teenager into adulthood, and one is not more important than the other.

Understand developmentally normative behavior

Argumentativeness, relying more on friends, blowing off parents, taking risks, and testing limits all has a purpose. Let’s talk about it!

What to do when you don’t know what to do?

We’ll spend some time making space for your own reactions with some private writing assignments and prompts.

Where and when:
This workshop is *free* to participants who are on my mailing list and will take place Wednesday January 6 at 7:00, 2026.

Attend Workshop

Want a live workshop at your school, library, or parent resource group? I have a limited number of presentations I can offer for the first six people who contact me directly. Just reach out to and ask.

What Is The Key Variable Missing In Your Treatment Plan For Depression? 

The facts are that depressed people often behave in ways that are depressing. When a treatment plan targets not only thoughts and feelings but also behavior, treatment is more effective. Because changing behavior requires willingness, and because depressed people have a tendency to convince others that their situation is hopeless, changing one’s behavior can be a big challenge! However, the willingness to try out different behaviors can actually improve and change mood.

Here are some basic treatment interventions for changing depressed behavior: 

Increase your connection with the things that bring you joy and pleasure. Often, when people are depressed, they tend to withdraw or isolate. If people feel self conscious or down on themselves it is easy to get inside one’s head with negative self talk, and this can drown a person in misery. Here are some smaller steps to take towards joy: 

Find three things a day that bring you pleasure, that you are grateful for, or that you appreciate (and perhaps even take for granted). Identify a buddy and share three gratitudes daily. Find more than one buddy and start a gratitude texting thread. 

Rehearse positives. This means making an effortful focus to share, remember, or tell people about the things in your life that generate a sense of well being, happiness, or pleasure. The practice can be extremely small, such as seeing a wild bird outside of your window or having access to comfortable transportation. Let people know about it, even if it is small talk with strangers in an elevator. 

Stop rehearsing negatives. While it may be true that not everyone likes you, or that there may be many challenging situations you are facing, interpreting everything as hostile increases a sense of feeling and believing you are defeated. It may be true that there are aspects of your stress or suffering that feel invisible to others. But if you spend the large majority of your social life ranting or reiterating your pain, emphasizing your terrible characteristics, or employing your general incompetence, it will create barriers for others to treat you as if you are competent and worthwhile.

When you do express vulnerably or life challenges to other people, be receptive to what others suggest or offer. Even if their suggestions may not be helpful, most everyone who is paying attention and trying to be helpful wants to feel acknowledged. If you improve your relationships and your connections by valuing what others have to offer and make them feel appreciated, you will be less socially isolated and thus less depressed. If you antagonize, challenge, or undermine others because there is “nothing” they can do about your situation, you invite everyone to feel incompetent right along with you. 

Just because you feel hopeless doesn’t mean you have to generate hopeless outcomes. Feeling discouraged, down, sad or missing someone or something in your life is normal. Rehearsing hopeless outcomes is not.Expressing sadness openly or crying with someone is different from rehearsing negatives, convincing or arguing that your situation will never improve, rehearing hopeless outcomes, or railroading a conversation into futility. You may feel hopeless, but that does not mean you have to act hopeless. Expressing sadness generally connects people to others, while rehearsing hopeless outcomes generally amplifies hopeless feelings. 

If you don’t wish to make changes, notice the impact. If you want supportive relationships, you have to behave in ways that increase or improve your connection with others. Have you burnt out relationships – or are you burning bridges – by constantly rehashing your problems on everyone else? What is it costing you to continue this behavior? What would it cost you to change it? 

If there is something you can do to fix, solve, or improve a situation, why would you not do it? Depressed people often take a passive role in complaining about their lives, or convincing others that they are the only persons who experience suffering. Sometimes this results in other people picking up the slack, stepping in, or fixing/ solving problems on their behalf. Thus, depressed people can be quite keen on making people believe they are incompetent or helpless when they are not. If this is you, what is it costing you to be in this situation? What would cost you to get out of it? If you are someone who relies heavily on others to take care of you (as we are all interdependent to some degree), is there something you can do express appreciation or gratitude? Foster or enhance the connections that you have? 

Learn new skills, solve problems, step up to challenges, and be proactive. When people stop being passive and start being active, they start to gain a sense of mastery, control, competence, and confidence. These experiences generally are in and of themselves a treatment for depression. It is harder to feel depressed when you feel competent, have self respect, and like who you are. Act like a person who likes who they are. Find what there is to like about yourself and let people know about it. Solve solvable problems. Stop avoiding your life. If there are things you can’t do physically, work on improving your relationships. Find joy and pleasure in others. 

If all else fails, do the pros and cons of acting in ways that generate more depression. After all, it is your life. If you are the one who is miserable, you are the one who has to live inside your body. If nothing is done to change or fix a situation, there is no good reason anything should change! Nobody can actually take away your pain and suffering, but if you behaved less like a depressed person, you could actually have a better experience of yourself. 

What Should I Do If My Teenager Hates Me? 

Consider the difference between anger and hate. Anger is an emotion that functions to advocate, prevent further hurt, change a situation for the better, not be a doormat, get out of harm’s way, and help people not to stay in situations in which they are taken for granted. Anger is a necessary emotion to help people survive stressful life situations. If people did not have anger they would be helpless, get taken advantage of, and stay in unfortunate circumstances that could be changed for the better. 

Since emotions exist to help people solve problems, your teen may be trying to communicate (however ineffectively) something to you. Sometimes anger is so intense that the actual feedback is actually lost, is not spelled out clearly, or does not make sense. Like any other emotion, emotions come and go, can be more or less intense, and are not permanent facts. Emotions arise out of specific circumstances. And strong emotions can actually interfere with problem solving. 

Consider how you express yourself when you are feeling hurt, taken advantage of, or are infuriated. Do you have an effective means of giving feedback, speaking up, or advocating for yourself? How is anger and feedback modeled in your family? Do you tend to give up or avoid people who express their anger with you? Pick fights or draw out arguments? Become irritable or hostile towards those around you? Perseverate on the hurt?  

Consider the difference between emotional pain and emotional expression/ actions. Feeling hurt, let down, disappointed is part of what comes along with life. Fighting reality, pushing limits, testing what they can get away, and taking risks are all things that teenagers do. They are working towards the important task of adulting; increasing their independence, blowing off their parents, and finding out if the values they were raised with really work for them. Poking holes in the universe, if you will. 

Being in emotional pain is one thing, how a person acts when upset or distressed is another. The behavior of “hating” may include things like antagonism, blaming, shaming, verbally attacking, ranting, or bringing up everything they “hate” about you. This behavior is probably not actually effective in making changes, asking for what is needed, clarifying requests, or giving feedback. It is possible that rage is too intense for your teen to develop the necessary skills for handling disappointment, keeping and maintaining relationships, advocating, and negotiating. 

Do you give in to the demands of your teenager once the verbal attacks begin? The principles of reinforcement are this: The closer and time and space a consequence (giving in) is to the behavior (attacking) increases the probability that it will occur again. If the only means that your teen has of getting what he/she/they wants, the verbal attacks will be more likely to occur in the future. If you can withstand the anger and steer the course, stay on task, and not become reactive yourself, you will be the one in the driver’s seat. Tolerating intensity without taking the bait is a skill. 

Consider reframing and validating your teen’s perspective (of course you want to stay out late and be with your friends) but maintaining your limits when it comes to having parameters (I know that when you stay out late your sleep and focus suffers). You can validate an emotion (anger, disappointment) without validating a behavior (verbal attacks, disparaging comments). You can also shape your teen to be more skillful when confronted with reality or asking for changes to be made. 

Finally, is what you are asking of your teenager realistic? There is no manual for parenting, and sometimes a teen with strong emotions can take us off guard. Are you the one being extreme? Consider if there is any feedback coming your way that is useful, even if it is hard to hear. Sometimes if verbal attacks are frequent and hard, we shut down our ability to see things from other points of view. Getting your teen to be more open/ direct/ realistic can also be part of your willingness to work on being effective. What is going to work in this situation? 

To sign up for Parenting The Emotionally Extreme Teen parent class this fall please contact me.

How Do You Know That Psychotherapy Is Working For You?

Almost any good psychotherapy service incorporates some sense of increased awareness that has been known to be labeled as “mindfulness.”

What many people want from therapy is a sense of inner peace, the ability to not fall apart when stressful life events happen, and some sense to stability, predictability, and control. Most people in general want to feel a sense of hopefulness, influence, and autonomy. Some need to feel validated, heard, understood, or not invisible. For some it is getting organized, having emotional clarity, gaining skills to address conflict effectively, or being clearer about a life direction.

Mindfulness, from my teaching perspective, involves things that seem simple and basic but in general can be difficult. Being present, sitting with discomfort, or not reacting when there is is urge to control the outcome are challenges for lots of people. Let’s be honest: Life involves painful things. How can it best be survived?

Recently I came up with a brief definition of what exactly it means to be mindful. In some ways it is the nutshell version of the secret to mindfulness. It’s also an overview of some of the best teaching points, and influences my adaptive “mindful minutes” that I invite people to do at the beginning of all the groups I facilitate.

The steps I’ve outlined are ways to open up space inside you. What I wish for the people that work with me is to have a flexible momentum for waves of change, loss, uncertainty, or distress. When people are flexible and adaptive, they are better equipped to solve problems, act with confidence, think more clearly, and move forward with effective actions.

Click here to find out what it means to be mindful and join my mailing list.

Has Anyone Told You “Don’t Be Sad?”

Sadness is one of those ordinary, human, connecting, important emotions. What happens when people can’t acknowledge sadness.

Sadness is related to loss, and every person at some point in their life goes through loss when change occurs. Graduating from school, having a baby, getting married, moving, and getting a new job are all examples of changes that could generate sadness. Even when better things might be coming along, there is generally a loss of familiarity, old routine, social environment, and schedule. The loss of predictability takes up energy and attention that can be unsettling and even overwhelming.

In many families and cultures sadness is considered something that is problematic, and is often talked about with disdain, contempt, or pity. Sadness has been equated with being pathetic, not having a backbone, being weak, or being worthy of ridicule. When is the last time you used the word sadness in your vocabulary, and how did you use it? Was sadness used in a way that enhanced a connection with another person, or was it a disguise or judgement about how another person should express themselves? Did you get embarrassed when others cry or express sadness? Did you try to shut down their feelings, fix the problem, or ignore the emotion? Or was your verbalizing sadness an open invitation for a person to share openly, feel deeply, express themselves better, or to be understood?

The lack of acknowledgement of sadness can result in disconnect, alienation, confusion about one’s emotions or feelings, or even anger. Expressing or experiencing distress related to loss is an expression of vulnerability; a need to band together with the people we care about, a way to bring community together. Ridiculing, berating, or scapegoating people because they struggle with grief only makes it worse.

Grief is one of those things that has its own timetable, and can show up at unexpected times. There is no right way to go about it, and everyone has their own process to work through. So many people think that no one else feels the way they feel, and this often inhibits expression or discussion of what people are missing the most. People frequently start apologizing for crying, and some have suggested that if they cry they deserve be locked up in a psychiatric hospital or “the looney bin.” Others inform me they spend a great deal of energy suppressing, inhibiting, ignoring, or distracting themselves from how they feel.

In some cases, sadness can take up residence in a person’s life and become depression. The open expression of sadness is generally one of connection and deep support, whereas the behaviors of depression can reduce connection with others; such as irritability, low frustration tolerance, complaining, expressions of hopelessness, or threats to give up.

A normative expression of sadness is generally moving, touching, and connecting. Consider what movies or music you may have seen or heard that have moved you deeply, and if sadness was part of that process. Consider what brings about sadness in your life, and how/ in what ways are you able to share it? What losses have you endured or gone through? In what ways have you been inhibited from expressing or sharing the pain of what happened? In what ways can you honor or acknowledge your own sadness; even if no one else can do it for you?