We might think Jessica’s anxiety is all in her head, but a disturbing trend is leading to a different conclusion. A new study published in the journal Sexuality and Culture (September 2011) “has found that the portrayal of women in the media over the last several decades has become increasingly sexualized, even ‘pornified,’” according to Erin Hatton, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Buffalo. “In the 2000’s, there were 10 times more hypersexualized images of women than men…this is problematic because it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women.”

A report by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (2007) found compelling evidence that the rise in sexualized images of girls and women in the media is harmful to their self-image and healthy maturation. This can mean undermining a woman’s confidence in her body promoting shame, anxiety, eating disorders and/or depression. Sexualized images of women have been found to increase violence against them, and to decreased sexual satisfaction among both sexes.

“The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development,” said Eileen Zurbriggen, PhD, chair of the Task Force and associate professor at UCSC. “As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings – ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls….The goal should be to deliver messages to all adolescents, boys and girls, that lead to healthy sexual development.”

As parents and other trusted adults, we play a major role in contributing to either the sexualization of the young women in our lives or to giving them a healthier sense of what it means to be a human being. We can take an educative role by encouraging young people to question the images that are being promoted and by sharing information on the negative effects.

Sexualization means that a person’s value comes only from his/her sexual appeal to the exclusion of other characteristics. We can help young women like Jessica and all our daughters, nieces, friends, and yes, our young men, to understand that kindness, creativity, intellectual competence, physical abilities, compassion, service, spirituality and love matter more than being sexy.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Often, my patients who are involved in processing painful wounds from childhood have trouble forgiving themselves. They feel they should have known better or handled things differently. It’s common, in the consultation room as well as out on the street, for people to blame themselves that in their early years they were not as smart, educated, assertive, or as neurologically mature as they are today.

When I looked into this, I went back in time and there I was, myself only smaller. In my childhood memories, I am as I am today only my body is tiny. It doesn’t make any sense, of course, but everyone I’ve talked to remembers a smaller version of how they are today, rather than remembering the emotional experience of the time.

But that’s not how it was. Back then, like all children, each of us was innocent, completely lacking in worldly wisdom or the street smarts that come from the school of hard knocks. We were utterly dependent on the adults in our environment for everything: food, shelter, for life itself. Our emotions were not mature, and our nervous systems had not yet developed. We weren’t able to make adult decisions, reason things out, or protect ourselves from harm.  Allison didn’t stop the abuse because she hadn’t yet matured into the perceptive person she is today who would handle things differently.

Years ago in my own therapy, I was clearing some trauma that had happened when I was eleven years old. I was baffled as to why the incident had hurt me so much.  Pondering this, I walked over to a playground and looked at an actual eleven-year-old girl. She looked so innocent and fragile that I began to cry. I saw that she needed protection and was obviously too little to have understood what was happening to her. It changed forever how I thought about my own experience, and the traumatic experiences of others.

I often encourage patients to go look at some kids if they don’t have any of their own. It helps tremendously. I’m not trying to create a new breed of voyeurs or playground stalkers – you can also visit children of friends or relatives if you have them. It really helps to see their innocence, and to recall your own vulnerability, trust, and sweetness. You were smaller, yes, but not just a smaller version of yourself today.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

There’s a prevailing notion in our culture that you shouldn’t have emotions, or if you do, only the “positive” ones. It’s okay to be happy, cheerful, and outgoing, but even if you’re happy, be careful not to be too exuberant. We wouldn’t want people dancing in the streets!

Then there’s the New Age tyranny that only certain emotions are politically correct. To be a superior person, you’re supposed to go around with a feeling of gratitude at all times. Anger, grief, disgust, resentment, pain, hopelessness – these are signs that you are not who you ought to be, and certainly, “not spiritual.”

In fact, however, all emotions are an essential aspect of what it means to be alive. Your grief is beautiful, your shyness, your reticence, your pain and hopelessness. All of these emotions are the truth of your life and everyone’s life, so why would you want to miss knowing this? Every single human being has been hit with crippling grief — no one gets out without having their heart broken. If you don’t experience the richness of your grief, the way it deepens you and opens your heart, you will not share this universal experience. What gets lost in these rules-not-to-feel is what it means to be human.

If you observe, you will notice that your feelings come and go like the weather. Some days it rains; some days the sun shines, but none of it lasts. We all know the weather will change and expect it to. Feelings are the same – if you watch them and allow them to be as they are, you will notice them morphing and changing  — floating by like clouds.

Instead of standing guard over yourself to make sure you only experience the correct emotions, how delightful instead to watch the passing parade of human feelings that float through like the weather, ever changing. If you remain at war with your emotional life, you run the risk of missing the truth of yourself, the truth of the experience of your life.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Sometimes, though, what is needed is help to clean out old rubbish from the past, and this is deeper work you can’t do with an untrained person. Osho, a spiritual teacher, once said that therapists are really people who help you take out your garbage.

One of the analogies I use to explain to patients what is going on is a blister. We’ve all had one: a pocket of fluid underneath the skin which has been caused by repetitive pressure or rubbing. The fluid inside is usually watery, but if it’s been there for a long time untreated and become infected, can be filled with pus or blood. To treat it, we carefully make a tiny puncture and drain the infected part, relieving the pressure and thereby allowing the healing process to begin.

This is an analogy for how material from the past – unexpressed emotions, outrage, sense of injustice, fear – can be trapped inside, while a protective covering has grown over to protect it. Therapy can be like this: we drain the old toxic material that has built up, thereby relieving the pressure and allowing the healing to begin.

The second analogy I use is to explain the therapy process is a teakettle. You’ve seen one that is all hot and bothered, steam jetting out the sides. People with a lot of repressed material inside can get like this, spewing out all over the place. The “steam” tends to come out crooked, such as getting mad when you didn’t mean to, or acting in ways that surprise you, and not in a good way. The material leaks out from the inside because the pressure has built up too much and we need to work to relieve the pressure. In therapy we get the “heat” down to a normal level so that we can sit and enjoy a cup of tea.

If you get with the right therapist and complete this work, you will agree that it was worth the commitment because of your new sense of freedom from the past. It is a joy to go through life without “blisters” or without the pressure of sitting on a hot stove.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

1.  Keep a journal – Writing down your thoughts and feelings while observing your growth can be enormously helpful. It’s also encouraging to review your progress.

2.  Join a support group – There are many types of groups, as many as there are problems to solve. Depending on the issues you are working on, this might be Weight Watchers, a walking or work-out team, or a group for adult survivors of sexual abuse.

3.  Find a 12-step group – Modeled on the successful program of Alcoholics Anonymous, 12-step groups exist for nearly every issue now. The price is right (donation only) and the meetings are filled with “angels” eager to help you for free.

4.  Create a supportive environment – Look around your home to see what changes are needed. For example, you might need to clean the junk food out of your house. Also, this might mean you need new friends, or to see less of old ones.

5.  Set measurable goals – It is hard to know when you reach your goals if they are too broad. “I want to be happy” means something different thing to each person with that desire. If “happiness” includes losing ten pounds plus having three months savings in the bank, those are measurable steps on the way to happiness.

6. Reward yourself – It’s important that you celebrate your “wins,” the milestones of progress along the way. Maybe you’ll buy yourself some fresh flowers, or go for a massage. Reward yourself frequently for each small gain.

7 Educate yourself – Read books and study the Internet to learn what successful people before you have done to change and how they did it.

8. Find role models – Sometimes people find it difficult to change because they don’t think a clean lifestyle is sexy. Search out people you respect who have what you want and are doing it in a way you admire.

9. Meditate – You might like to take time each day to do nothing but sit and be with what is, or it might be useful to spend time focusing on the changes you are trying to make and being grateful for the opportunity to change.

10. Above all, continue with the psychotherapy that has helped you. Midway is not the time to stop. After you’re firmly rooted in your new life, you’ll be ready to fly on your own.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Caitlin understands there’s a correlation between her father’s abusiveness and her attraction to unkind men, but still she continues to date them. Josh knows the reason he drinks too much is because he’s shy and lonely, but that doesn’t help him cut down or stop. Both Caitlin and Josh berate themselves constantly as “stupid” because they know they’re smart and have good insight, but neither knows what to do about it.

Do you remember Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? — that amazing discovery last century that states that just to observe something changes it.  To those seeking personal growth, this means that merely the act of observing ourselves will bring about change. However, most of us need to learn to observe ourselves in an entirely different way than we are accustomed: without judgment, not berating ourselves as “stupid,” but instead, with awareness and compassion. We develop compassion for ourselves when we accept that we, like everyone else, are caught in not-useful patterns. We can practice calmly observing the impulse to act in ways we don’t desire, trapped in patterns we have discovered through our insight.

As we observe and become aware, the next step is to gradually make a series of different decisions. One by one, step by step, different decisions will be made and behavior will change. After observing her patterns, Caitlin met a man she was really hot for, but after seeing him treat a food server rudely, decided to say “no” to further dates. Josh still has the desire to drink, but one day at a time, he doesn’t pick up the glass. Each of these meticulously changed actions is a victory in itself. Slowly but surely, as you too observe yourself with compassion and follow up with different decisions, you will gradually become a new person, more in alignment with your true self.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

A common thread running through these challenging environments is an inability to speak the language of feelings. These kinds of families often have unspoken rules about not feeling, not speaking about feelings, or not feeling feelings they believe are incorrect to feel. Not learning the language of feelings can lead to feeling alienated from oneself and others.

It’s as if your parents didn’t teach you how to speak French and you suddenly realize you’re living in a world where everyone speaks French but you. Yes, it’s a handicap, but you can learn, even at the advanced age you are now. You will have to work on it diligently for at least a couple of years, but it can be done.

The first step is learning that feeling feelings is okay, even preferable, and to welcome their presence in your life. Next is to learn the names of the various feeling states and their many gradations. Sometimes I’ll give my patients a simple chart with faces mimicking the various emotions such as anger, happiness, or fear, and we’ll go through them methodically noticing the attendant physical response. The patient begins a process of checking in with their body to identify what they are feeling. They learn to bypass the mind, that purveyor of false information.

Patients practice “speaking French” during the week between sessions and report back what it is like to identify their feelings and live with their responses. The next stage is to practice expressing these feelings in words, both in the therapy session and with trusted people in the patient’s life. Expressing feelings to a loved one can lead to closeness and intimacy, often of a type which the patient has never experienced before.

It is certainly harder to learn French when you’re an adult than if you had grown up bilingual at home, but we all know people who have done it. It is quite possible to become fluent in a second language and enjoy eloquently conversing with friends, write poems and sonnets and essays, and who knows, maybe even share a few jokes.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

1) Practice some deep, slow breaths, all the way down, pushing your abdomen out. There’s a reason the Buddha is always pictured as having a big belly – belly breathing produces calm, chill people. Yoga and meditation classes can help you learn about this.

2) Be in the Present. Anxiety is worrying about the future. If you are in the present moment, the now, it, it is actually impossible to feel anxious.

3) Take a walk. In addition to being good for your body and causing a change of scene, walking balances the two sides of the brain.

4) Download some relaxation CD’s and/or music that you know is guaranteed to calm you. Make a playlist you can count on to always put you in a relaxed mood.

5) Watch a comedy: a movie, some stand-up or even read a comic writer. Laughter may or may not be the best medicine, but it will certainly take your mind off your troubles.

6) Get a massage: where I live in LA, there are many opportunities to get a low-cost massage, including the new Chinese Foot Massage places that offer an hour-long full-body treatment for $25. Some towns have low-cost massage schools.

7) The calming effect of warmth: take a hot bath, drink some hot tea, wrap yourself in a “blankie” and cuddle up on the couch.

Challenge your thinking:  Anxious people have a particular way of talking to themselves that contributes to anxiety. A book that can be really helpful with this is Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns.

9) Good nutrition: The way we eat may have a lot to do with fostering anxiety.  Too much coffee, refined carbohydrates, additives, and sugar can lead to anxiety disorders. Observe how your moods go up and down with use.

10) Weekly psychotherapy: Long standing issues, family and cultural programming, habits of mind – these are just some of the issues that might be at cause. Anxiety is a sign that something in your life is not right. Get help to deal with it.

If these treatments have been tried and there is no change in a month, it is recommended get a full evaluation by a healthcare provider. It is important to rule out a medical condition which might cause symptoms of anxiety.

Many people consider taking an anti-anxiety drug a sign of weakness. It is not, any more than it is weak for a diabetic to take insulin. There are actually some excellent medications for anxiety that you can take on an as-needed basis which do not cause addiction. It does not make you a better person to endure needless suffering.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

It’s true that today’s mainstream culture encourages shallow pursuits. Eighty-one percent of today’s college students state that getting rich is their number one priority. The media attempts to continually brainwash us that physical appearance, possessions, and leisure are the most important things in life. Yet there’s also a 50-80 million person subculture evolving who state that their highest values include authenticity, helping others, being involved in creating a better way of life, and psychological and spiritual development. These longings may not be nurtured by the society at large, but they are timeless human ideals.

Certainly there are types of therapy that are out of date. You don’t see much demand for the nude encounter groups of the ‘80s any more (unfortunately?), or for meandering treatment that goes on for years and doesn’t produce any tangible results. I believe that therapy will move to the phone and Skype as people choose to work with therapists who don’t live in their town, although many feel that the in-person connection is all important.

Some think that psychotherapy might be out of date because of the plethora of self help information available on bookshelves and the Internet. All one needs to do is Google their symptoms to find advice on what to do. If that solves your problems, great – in fact, I often encourage people to do just that. Then again, this is often how people find out that they can’t do it by themselves.  There is no replacement for building a relationship with someone who has had years of experience facilitating personal growth, who knows how the transformative process works, and who’s been there herself.

What “Bradley” was talking about was that back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the counter culture was very vocal about the benefits of working on oneself and experimented with various techniques to do so. Some of the charismatic therapists of the day achieved rock star status and people were not shy about saying they were their patients. Today, as then, it actually is very “cool” when someone becomes free from parental and mainstream programming as a result of therapy, when they individuate into their own unique true self, because each person who becomes free helps the whole planet evolve. Getting help from a skilled psychotherapist to become your best self is actually more relevant today than it ever was.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Physical

• You have an imbalance in your brain chemistry. This can be addressed through supplements and/or antidepressant medications. Many people think they don’t want to take medication, but what if your prejudice against it is keeping you from relief?

• You don’t get enough exercise. Research has repeatedly shown that getting enough exercise is the number one thing that helps relieve depression.

• You are lacking EFA’s and need to take fish oil supplements. This seems to be especially true of people from Northern European heritage.

• You have a highly sensitized reaction to alcohol, sugar, and/or caffeine, and may not be able to use them like other people. Bummer, I know, but many people with chronic depression see miraculous results when they begin to manage their diets in much the same way a diabetic does.

Psychological

• There are ways that you think and things you tell yourself that are not helpful.   Depressed people tend to have depressing thoughts. You do not have to be a slave to your mind.

• You don’t have enough friends or social contact. Depressed people tend to be lonely without adequate social support. Facebook doesn’t count – we need to be in the presence of other peoples’ bodies.

• You have unfinished business from the past that needs to be worked through. A competent, licensed mental health professional can help you do the work to get free.

Spiritual

• You are not living your right life. Depressed people often feel trapped in work that is not feeding their heart or their passion. There are hard decisions that must be made if one is to feel good about themselves and their lives.

• You are a spiritual person, and living a life without deeper meaning is not enough for you. Many depressed people have tasted something deeper than is offered by the mainstream culture, and have a driving desire to honor that inner knowing. This call must be answered.

The healing of  lifelong (chronic) depression takes a holistic approach, and yes, it can be done. If you or someone you love suffers, please get competent help.

© 2011 Catherine Auman