Tame Your Mood Newsletter
In This Issue:
Depression and Mindfulness Group
EMDR Services
Feature Article: Anxiety and Personality: Where the roots are rooted
Recent Online Articles
About Marty


Join Our Mailing List


 Marty L. Cooper, MFT

4831 Geary Blvd.
San Francisco, CA 94118

martycooper@
mlcooper.com

www.mlcooper.com

March 2008                    Vol. 1, Issue 9
Greetings!

[A note on the layout: on the theory that change now and again is good, I've decided to switch ezine providers, and as you'll notice, this issue of Tame Your Mood looks a bit snazzier than the prior, text-based newsletters.  While the plain text makes the email less likely to be bounced by spam filters, I felt that there was something to be said for color and images.  Let me know what you think.]

I've been thinking a lot about core beliefs recently, especially in relation to trauma, where overwhelming experience becomes locked into place by a belief.  But we all carry deep beliefs about who we are and what it means to be in the world as who we are.  And when these beliefs are centered on a sense of deficiency and vulnerability, then the results are chronic anxiety.

So, the featured article this month is about the core fears that lay in the center of different personality traits, and a brief sketch of where to focus to make deep changes, changes that will pull up the very roots of anxiety.

Best wishes,
Marty
 
Mindfulness and Depression Group:
begins March 30th
MBCT group
Beginning March 30th, my colleague Nestor Perez and I will begin a Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression group, which will run for 8 consecutive Sundays (9-11am).  MBCT was developed from Jon Kabat-Zinn's work on using mindfulness practice with sufferers of chronic pain. 

MBCT is a training in using mindfulness practice to prevent the relapses that are so common to those who struggle with chronic depression.  We will practice mindfulness and "thought watching" techniques together, in a supportive group facilitated by experienced practitioners.  Please feel free to call me for more information, or click here.
EMDR

I am very happy to announce that I will now be offering EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) services to my existing and new patients. 

So, what is EMDR?  EMDR is an extremely effective, evidence-based, way of working with trauma, that can lead to a full recovery from  post traumatic symptoms, in some cases within a few sessions.  Even very old, entrenched sufferings can be loosened and removed.  People really do experience freedom from beliefs and pains that have pained them for decades.

If you are interested in more information, you can look at the International EMDR Association's website (emdria.org), or give me a call.  (For a fuller introduction to EMDR, you can look at Transforming Trauma by Laurel Parnell, click here.)
Personality and anxiety:  Where the roots are rooted
Anxiety
The Problem

Edmund Bourne's "Beyond Anxiety and Phobia" is a wonderful manual for those of you whose suffering comes in the form of anxiety.  It talks about the core fears that are embedded in the personality of anxiety-prone people, beliefs that in a way precede experience. 

One way to see the amazing success of humans as a species is that we are able to extract patterns from our life experiences, and use those patterns as templates for future action.

However, the dark side of that success is that we can be in error about what we think we see.  The Buddhists simply group all these various errors into the category of "ignorance," misperception.  And we are particularly prone to these "errors" as children, when we haven't developed the capacity for rational thought, or you might say, error checking.

So with anxiety, we are acting from beliefs that were (usually) formed very young, and that though they are very simple in construction, the implications are profound.  Take, for instance, "I am not safe."  It is such a broad statement of reality, that virtually every situation will be encompassed by it, and the organic response to such a fundamental belief is vigilance, and fear. 

But contrast it to something like, "I am not safe when I am alone, have no access to phone, it is nighttime, and the weather is bad."  Many factors need to be true for the body and psyche to respond as if there were immanent danger;  the trigger for activating vigilance and fear is infrequently thrown, so if that's the extent of the person's beliefs about danger, then they are going to experience very little anxiety.

The broader the definition of danger, the more situations will trigger fear, and the more diffuse the possibility of "harm," (that is, the less identifiable the actual danger-it's not, for instance, a lion or a falling bridge), the more fear converts to anxiety.

Anxiety and personality traits

So, according to Bourne, there are six personality traits that define what he calls the "anxiety-prone personality," each of which having at its center a core fear:

1)      Excessive need for approval:
Fear of rejection

2)      Insecurity and overdependency:
Fear of abandonment

3)      Overcontrol:
Fear of losing control

4)      Perfectionism:
Fear of rejection and losing control

5)      Over-cautiousness:
Fear of illness, injury, or death

6)      "confinement phobia":
          Fear of being stuck, confined

Do any of these sound familiar to you? 

It's a nice schema that Bourne lays out, because it can help you identify the core organizing belief when and where it arises, because, basically, if you can't see it, you can't change it.

It's also important to be clear about these core beliefs, because you come to realize that the fears are not you, just something you believe (you and the belief are different things);  and you can focus your work at the level of personality, which is different than thoughts per se, or learning to relax, or any cognitively focused therapy. 

Personality is about who you think you are, and each of the core fears has a core belief about your self.  "I will be rejected," is undergirded by the idea that you are not worthy, that something is wrong with you.  The fear, "I will be abandoned," is supported by the belief that you are not strong enough to support yourself.  And so on.

The commonalities in these self-beliefs are a sense of lack, in one's own resources, efficacy, and especially self-worth.  If you believe you are broken and weak, then the world and relationships will of course look pretty scary.

So the solutions?

Bourne goes into wonderful detail, but they also boil down into a few common efforts: 

1)      Build self-esteem

2)      Build understanding of one's own patterns/fears

3)      Practice acceptance of oneself and the world

4)      Befriend uncertainty

5)      Develop spirituality (connection to some larger force/meaning)

Easy to write down, not as easy to do.  But to work at the deep level of personality is to, over time, actually change your basic, profound beliefs about what it is to be a person and be in the world.  And when you have built a self which is strong, resilient, and self-validating, then the basic roots of anxiety have nothing left to grow from.  This is where anxiety as an experience is uprooted and one's fundamental experience of the world shifts. 

Many of my clients have struggled with making these changes, but the gains, when they come, are so deep and such a relief, that all of the folk have said (albeit, wiping sweat from their brows) that the effort has been worth it.

Recent Online Articles

February was a busy month, so just one article...but I think a good one.  And below is the link where you can find that last year of articles, which are also indexed by subject, in case you're looking for something specific.

"In Praise of Irrelevance" (Feb. 10th)--thoughts on solvable vs. unsolvable problems, and how unexpected solutions can arise from surrender.  Click here.

(Past articles can be found on my articles page by clicking here.)
About Marty
Marty L. Cooper, MFT

Marty Cooper is a San Francisco psychotherapist who helps individuals
struggling with anxiety and depression to not only manage these "wild
moods," but eventually learn how to overcome them.  His background in
both Western approaches to healing, as well as Eastern mindfulness
practices (meditation) give a wide range of perspectives and techniques to bring to the work of taming mood. 

Marty's passion arises out of his deep understanding of how painful anxiety and depression can be, and his wish to help others learn how to avoid overwhelm, as well as to find
meaning in experience that can otherwise at times just seem pointless.

Joy and connection, and life without, fear are truly possible.
Services
 
I offer psychotherapy to those who are wanting to learn deeper and more effective management strategies for their anxiety and depression, as well those who wish to find out how to tame these wild moods.  I work comprehensively with mental, emotional, bodily, and spiritual dimensions, all of which are necessary to overcome the chronic quality of anxiety and depression.

If you are looking to make changes that last, then please call me and set up an initial phone consultation, so we can see if or how I can best be of service.