Feature by Nikita Fernandes

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Feature by Simran Bharadwaj

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Speaking from personal experience, meditation is not for everyone. It can be difficult to find the time, or a quiet place to sit and practice breathing exercises and clearing your mind. It may feel like you have too many racing thoughts that you can’t clear from your mind when trying to start meditation. However, meditation can benefit emotional balance and attention by providing a sense of calm and peace. Meditation is not just the typical relaxing sounds that require you to have the ability to clear your mind. There are also many meditation resources that can be used to fit your needs whether you are a beginner and brand new to meditation, or want to focus on more specific areas. 

Meditation can include breathing exercises that help you release tension and stress from all areas of your body. Progressive muscle relaxation is in the category of meditation and mindfulness that can help individuals focus on each part of their body and release tension that they may not even know they are carrying. 

Meditation Apps for Meditation:
Insight timer is a free app that provides meditation music, as well as guided meditation. Recordings are of varying lengths and there is even a customizable meditation timer that you can change depending on how much time you have available. The app has focuses on different categories including sleep, anxiety, and stress

Calm provides sleep stories, breathing programs and relaxing music. The app provides many different programs that can help fit your needs, and just like Insight timer, it is customizable depending on time you have available and provides guided meditation in various topics. This app is $12.99/month.

YouTube Channels for Meditation:
Goodful is a very useful channel that has meditation videos ranging from five to 15 minutes. The videos are all guided and has categories such as self-love, sleep, anxiety, and even a video specifically for beginners. 

Even if you are unsure whether meditation can help you, I would recommend turning to short guided meditation videos for primary exposure to meditation. Therapeutic techniques may not always work the first time around. Try finding the right meditation videos or recordings that work for you!

Feature by Simran Bharadwaj

Simran Bharadwaj is a pre-professional licensed mental health therapist in New York City. You can contact Simran at simran@mwr.nyc and read more blog posts at www.mwr.nyc.

Feature by Nikita Fernandes

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Narrative Therapy has emerged as one of the most powerful types of therapy to support minority communities. It has gained popularity in 2022 along with the rise of movements such as the Black Lives Matter and the focus on mental health after the pandemic. Narrative therapy is relatively new. It was developed in the 1980's by Michael White, an Australian social worker, and David Epston, a family therapist from New Zealand. It gained traction in the United States in the 1990's.

Narrative therapy is a nonpathologizing, empowering and collaborative experience for clients who hold minority identities. The empowering nature of this therapy can be experienced through nudging clients to reframe their past experiences, gain control over their present and shape a better future. Narrative therapy uses prompts to have client reflect over the stories they tell themselves about their life. For example, a therapist might ask a client to write about their past struggles and highlight what helped keep them afloat. This strengths based approach can help remind clients that they are much more resilient than they believe.

Feature by Nikita Fernandes

Richard Schwartz created the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model to work with clients who held conflicting views of themselves. He explained these conflicts as having various parts within ourselves. As human beings, we are made up of different parts that serve specific functions. Internal Family Systems is a powerfully transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy. The mind is considered to be naturally made up of multiple sub-personalities or families within each individual’s mental system. These sub-personalities take on different roles, such as an inner critic or inner child, and consist of wounded parts and painful feelings like anger and shame.

Feature by Nikita Fernandes 

​William James, the father of psychology, used magnetic force as a metaphor to describe human connection and love. He explained that if we took a magnet and hovered it over safety pins the pins would connect to the magnet. And, if you put a paper on the magnet and hovered it over the same safety pins - the pins would still gravitate to the magnet and connect. For the pins, there is no difference between being connected directly to the magnet, or if there is a paper between itself and the magnetic force. However, humans are different. 

                



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Baby has arrived! The parents are elated with the new addition to the family. The baby takes in all the love showered onto him/her. When an infant is born he or she does not have a sense of self. He is not aware of where he ends and others begin; there is a bubble around him/her and mother. According to Margret Mahler, the task for the newborn infant is to develop his sense of self as an individual and separate person. 
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 At first, the infant is self-absorbed and perceives him/herself and mother as one. Then, the infant begins to be alert and curios about the world. Once the baby begins to crawl, he/she can actively experiment with being separate from the mother. Finally, the child recognizes that his mobile ability separates him from the mother. Yet, the baby still wants his mother near him as he ventures out. The mother’s reaction, to the child’s tentative experimentation with exploring the world, will determine the development of an individual self in the child. If the mother responds by being impatient with the child’s uncertainty, or with anger toward the child’s need for separateness, the child will fail to develop a strong sense of self. A child whose mother is unreliable, intrusive, and emotionally unavailable will develop fears of engulfment or abandonment. These fears will seriously interfere with the ability to be intimate in later years.  

The relationship between mother and child is the “prototype” for later intimate relationships. Since the attachment between the mother and child is the first intimate experience, good enough parenting establishes the ability for later intimate romantic relationships. Intimacy is dependent on the person’s ability to self-disclose and share personal information with the intimate other. Intimate relationships call on the person’s willingness to be vulnerable and trust that their partner will not abandon them. Most importantly, the person must trust his or her sense of self, that he or she will not completely collapse and lose their sense of self.  

Eric Erikson postulated that a healthy development trajectory includes the achievement of intimacy. If one does not resolve the developmental crisis of intimacy versus isolation, by forming close romantic relationships, their development to later stages are hindered. However, Erikson explains that in order to be intimate, a person first needs to have a self. As he quotes, “To be able to share a WE, we must have sense of I” (Erikson, 1984).

The core of the psychic fear of intimacy is the fear of merging and engulfment by the other. Weak ego boundaries and the inability to maintain a sense of self is a threat to the self-identity and being intimate with a partner is a danger. As mentioned above, in order to be intimate one needs to have the capacity to be vulnerable, thereby loosening his or her boundaries. For a person with a poor sense of self, loosening his or her boundaries means a total loss of self. The paradox of intimacy is the ability to simultaneously remain separate yet connected. Intimacy requires a level of merging. But, for someone who cannot maintain his or her separate self, intimacy becomes impossible. The person fears that if they open themselves up to the other person, they will merge and be engulfed by their partner. Therefore, avoiding intimacy is a defense against the loss of self.

Another area to consider is when one feels that their partner is merging into them. The partner’s genuine and caring attempt to be intimate is seen as an infringement on his or her autonomy. As one partner moves toward deeper intimacy, the other partner resists. (sexual acting out (i.e. infidelity) can potentially be an attempt to resist the deeper intimacy). It is important to note that everyone struggles with the dilemma of engulfment and the desire for an intimate relationship. The capacity to be intimate is dependent on the extent of the dilemma. The ability to trust that one can maintain their own identity without fusing into their partner’s identity; opens the space for intimacy to flourish. 

“Do you go to the gym because you hate your body? Or do you go to the gym because you love your body?” Lisa, a registered dietitian and the founder of The Well Necessities, recently asked this question; I was intrigued. On the surface, as long as I am going to the gym, who cares why I go to the gym. But, emotionally and psychologically the answer to this question changes my experience and my relationship with fitness and healthy living. I can head to the gym with excitement, passion, and joy, or feel like I am being pushed or dragged toward the gym door.

This question applies to many areas of our life, particularly in romantic relationships. We need to ask ourselves; why do we do what we do? Is it to avoid a consequence? Or are we driven by self-love?  

We spend much of our life making decisions based on avoiding consequences. Can you stop and ask yourself “Why do I (fill in the blank)?”
 
Do you buy flowers because you love your wife/husband and the two of you as a couple?
Do you buy flowers because you know she/he will be upset?
 
Are you going to therapy to heal from your sexual transgressions because your relationship is important to you?
Are you going to therapy to heal from a sexual transgression because you can’t stand the guilt you’re living with?
 
Are you spending time with your kids because you cherish them?
Are you spending time with your kids because you do not want to be a bad father/mother?
 
The behavioral outcomes (i.e. you bought flowers) are the same, yet the emotional experience is vastly different. If we make decisions and do things because we are avoiding consequences, we never truly connect to the emotional benefits of our actions. Making a choice out of willingness - rather than avoidance - allows us to be immersed in the experience. Most importantly, the choice will feel natural and effortless. 

​I used to wonder what makes one individual more resilient than another when faced with a painful situation or struggle. Linehan M. speaks on the concept of radical acceptance and its usefulness in painful situations. When one is faced with a painful or challenging situation, there are several ways in which he or she can perform: they can solve the problem, change how they feel about it, accept it, or stay miserable. However, Linehan talks about total and complete acceptance – radical acceptance – as a way to manage life’s challenges. When one accepts his or her situation, it doesn’t necessarily mean the person is glad about it. In actuality, radical acceptance may bring about sadness; but this is accompanied by an added feeling of centeredness. On the other hand, when we don’t radically accept our situation, the sadness may not be present. Instead, a deep sense of unbearable pain may take its place. 

There are times when reality is painful and, as a result, we try to push away the associated emotions and or fight against it through unhealthy coping mechanisms. Although this form of coping tends to bring about a temporary relief, in the long run, it intensifies the unwanted feelings. This happens when we bury the underlining emotions or situations and instead resort to obtaining temporary relief through unhealthy coping mechanisms. When one incorporates radical acceptance into their daily life, they are committing to accepting their reality as it is, and understanding what they can and cannot control. Furthermore, part of radical acceptance is being nonjudgmental and looking at just the facts of the situation, in addition to letting go and not fighting against the reality of the situation. While Many of us find it difficult to be present when dealing with uncomfortable and painful moments or emotions, that is all part of radical acceptance through which we can achieve a meaningful life.

​Taking a step towards self-betterment, and achieving a sense of centeredness happens when one completely and totally accept their reality, even if they think the reality is unbearable. Through psychotherapy, therapists and clients work together to bring about a radical acceptance of the past and present, in order to accomplish a more centered sense of self in any given situation.




Reference
Linehan, M. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York: The Guilford Press, 1993. ​