Therapy Blog | Mental Health | Yuba City

August 5, 2021 by Brenda Franks Leave a Comment

The Power of Vulnerability

We live in a society that rewards those with courage and valor. We are taught from a young age that it’s good to face our fears, for doing so is often the catalyst for powerful and lasting change.

And yet, how many of us allow ourselves to be vulnerable?

Think of the amount of courage it takes to allow yourself to be in a position where your heart might get broken. To say “I love you” first. How much courage does it take to put yourself out there and make new friends? Go for that promotion? Rely on others instead of only ourselves?

The Benefits of Vulnerability

We know the obvious benefits of courage. Wars are won, bad guys are put in jail, people are saved from burning buildings. But how can we benefit from being vulnerable?

More Intimacy

Opening up to another human being and sharing your deepest emotions is what ultimately builds healthy and lasting relationships. When we expose our authentic selves, we set ourselves up for potential heartache, yes, but also for ultimate connection.

Better Self-Worth

Being vulnerable also allows us to accept ourselves as we are, flaws and all. This helps us to STOP comparing ourselves to others and experience a tremendous boost in our self-esteem and self-worth.

It Begets Compassion

Getting comfortable with our own vulnerability means we can also be comfortable with others’. And this means, in those times when the people in our lives show their vulnerability to us, we can respond with compassion.

Start the Journey

As they say, every journey starts with a single step. Your journey toward embracing your own vulnerabilities will also start with a single step. This may mean spending more quiet time alone. It may mean the next time a good friend asks, “How are you?” you tell them the truth.

It may also mean digging deep and uncovering some old wounds and darkness that you have been ignoring. And for this part of the journey, you may want to consider seeking guidance from a trained therapist who can offer tools and advice.

If you’d like some assistance on your journey, please get in touch with me. I’d be more than happy to discuss how I may be able to help.

RESOURCES:

August 4, 2021 by Brenda Franks Leave a Comment

5 Awesome Health Benefits of Peaches

Your summer is about to start looking peachier because August is officially National Peach Month! One of my favorite summer memories as a kid was stopping by a fruit stand on the side of the road and getting a small brown paper bag full of juicy, ripe peaches. Back then I just knew peaches were incredibly delicious. Now, however, I know that these fuzzy stone fruits pack a LOT of health benefits!

1. Loaded with Antioxidants

Peaches are packed with a lot of beneficial vitamins and minerals. But perhaps more surprising is the amount of antioxidants they contain. Eating fruits and vegetables with antioxidants helps protect you against oxidative damage, which can lead to aging and disease.

2. Heart Health

Studies have shown that compounds in peaches may bind to your bile acids, which are compounds themselves produced by your liver from cholesterol. These acids, along with the cholesterol they contain, are then excreted through your feces. It is believed that this helps keep your blood serum cholesterol levels low, keeping your heart and vascular system healthy.

3. May Prevent Certain Types of Cancer

The fuzzy skin of the peach contains two specific antioxidants called carotenoids and caffeic acid. These two antioxidants have been shown to have anticancer properties. So be sure to give that peach a good wash and eat the whole thing, skin and all!

4. May Reduce Allergy Symptoms

Peaches contain compounds that help to suppress the release of histamines in the body. Histamines are released when an allergen triggers your senses and leads to sneezing, itching, and coughing.

5. May Reduce Blood Sugar Levels

Animal studies have shown that compounds in peaches may actually help to prevent blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance. This may mean that while diabetics must be careful with the types of fruit they eat, they can enjoy a peach every once in a while!

These are just a handful of the amazing health benefits offered by the humble, fuzzy peach. So the next time you see a farm stand on the side of the road, go ahead and buy a bag full of peaches and enjoy!

SOURCES:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/peach-fruit-benefits

https://www.health.com/nutrition/health-benefits-peaches

https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-peaches-health-benefits

June 17, 2020 by Brenda Franks Leave a Comment

Learning How to Love Yourself

You have probably heard the phrase before, “It is all in your head.” That phrase is referring to your “ego” and the impact it is having on your conscious decision making, the thoughts we hear, the thoughts we tell ourselves.

Everyone has an “ego” and understanding the health of yours and how it influences your daily thought processes can be extremely beneficial. Your ego is your conscious mind, the part of your identity that you consider to be your “self” but it’s not where our identity lies. Oftentimes, our ego is in survival mode. It keeps us protected from anything we perceive as dangerous.

To get an understanding of how your ego could be contributing to your overall happiness, we must first talk about ego development. We all have either a healthy, underdeveloped, or overactive ego.

What Happens in our Childhood

All egos are first developed as a child. A healthy ego is built when we have lots of positive experiences and a secure attachment to loved ones (like being wrapped in a cozy blanket). Those who have a healthy ego can grow up loving themselves, being resilient in times of struggle, problem-solve creatively, and develop meaningful healthy relationships. Healthy egos tend to set boundaries and know the difference between their feelings and the feelings of others. They know what they like and don’t like and they know the difference between themselves and others.

An underdeveloped ego is formed when we experience trauma or fail to have our emotional needs met as a child. An underdeveloped ego compensates by developing protective mechanisms to block out the painful things (kinda like a shield). This can lead us to be frequently reactive or codependent. When we weren’t shown proper love, we don’t trust others and when we don’t trust others, we can’t be ourselves. An underdeveloped ego is built to protect us from the outside world but because it is always in survival mode, it prevents us from learning and loving ourselves.

Those “Not Enough” Feelings

People with an underdeveloped ego may frequently feel not good enough, feel broken, turn to substances for comfort, expect perfection, and require a lot of emotional validation. For example, if you worked hard on a project for work and turned it in and heard nothing you might become depressed or anxious. That is not to say that what you turned in was bad, it might have been great, but because you didn’t get that pat on the back you were longing for you assumed it was the worst. This is when the ego contributes to making you unhappy. Think of it like a plant. Your ego planted a thought seed and it continues to grow unless you acquire the skills and knowledge to kill that thought. This is how an underdeveloped ego can sabotage relationships, too.

People with an underdeveloped ego tend to develop codependency behaviors. They want to make others feel happy so they can feel happier about themselves. That might sound like a good thing but it can also be dangerous to a person’s self-worth. You are not in control of anyone’s happiness EXCEPT your own. If you are dependent on those around you and they are not happy, you won’t be happy and will think negatively about yourself because you couldn’t make the external world perfect or happy.

Believing What Your Brain Is Telling You

Someone with an overactive ego tends to generally be defensive, have narcissistic traits, and dislike being wrong because they feel if they are wrong then their survival mode will be threatened.

When you have an overactive ego you aren’t able to talk yourself down and convince yourself that your spouse is really ok or your friend really was just busy. You start to believe all the negative things your brain is telling you. “My husband must be dead on the side of the road.” “Guess I am not friends with that person anymore.” This type of ego can make it difficult to keep and maintain relationships.

Overcoming Your Ego

The good news is by recognizing that it is potentially “all in your head,” you can take steps to heal and move forward with a healthier sense of self. Pay attention to your unhealthy habits. Are you always comparing yourself to others? Do you frequently jump to the worst-case scenario? Do you not believe that you are good and deserving of things? Do you have trouble admitting you were wrong?

I can work with you to identify why you might feel the way you do and what can be done to heal. With the right tools you can grow a healthier relationship with yourself and others. You are worthy and deserving of self-love. You are NOT BROKEN.

September 17, 2019 by Brenda Franks Leave a Comment

Negative Thinking

Most negative thinking is automatic (Automatic Negative Thoughts-ANTS) and goes unnoticed. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU HAD ANTS IN YOUR KITCHEN? GET RID OF THEM RIGHT? WHAT IF YOU DON’T GET RID OF THEM? THEY MULITPLY…AND BECOME HARDER TO GET RID OF THEM…. That’s why it’s important to start therapy and start working on those ANTs right away.

With negative thinking, you’re not really choosing how to respond to a situation, it’s being chosen for you by your bad brain habits. To find out what is really true you need to question your thinking patterns.

Below are 9 of the most common ANTS people have. Even though we slip into each one of these at some time or another, we usually gravitate towards one or two main ANTS in our lives. By catching what the negativing thinking pattern is, we start to have the ability to chose our responses in life and live a little more productively.

1. “Always/Never” Thinking
This happens when you think something that happened will “always” repeat itself, or that you’ll “never” get what you want. All-or-never words like always, never, no one, every one, every time, everything are usually wrong.

2. Focusing On The Negative
This occurs when your thoughts reflect only the bad in a situation and ignore any of the good things. Its getting 100 reviews back and all you can focus on are the 4 bad ones, forgetting about the 96 positive ones. Think of a social media post where everyone told you how beautiful you looked or how much fun they had…but then you had that one person say, I wish there would have been more pizza or that you didn’t wear that lipstick…You ignore ALL the positives and focus solely on those negatives.

3. Fortune-telling
This is where you predict the worst possible outcome to any situation. When you go into a conversation assuming that the other person won’t like what you have to say, you change the way you communicate to usually make it come true.

4. Mind Reading
This happens when you believe that you know what other people are thinking, even though they haven’t told you directly. Taking someone’s silence as “They’re mad at me” is a perfect example of mind reading. They may just be thinking.

5. Thinking With Your Feelings
This occurs when you believe your negative feelings without ever questioning them. Feelings are very complex and often based upon our past stories. Feelings are not always about truth. Feelings are your perception of certain situations.

6. Guilt Beating
Also called shoulding on yourself, guilt beating is when you think words like should, must, ought, or have to to most situations. It’s healthier to say, “I’d like to be able to help them out” instead of “I should help them out”.

7. Labeling
Whenever you attach a negative label like jerk, arrogant, irresponsible, or stupid to yourself or to someone else, you stop your ability to take a clear look at the situation. I hear so many patients label themselves in session and when I stop them they tend to say, “Oh wow, I didn’t even realize I was saying that to myself, about myself.

8. Personalizing
This happens when you invest innocuous events with personal meaning. “My boss didn’t talk to me, so I must have done something wrong.” There are lots of reasons people do things. You never fully know why people do what they do. Ever think when the person you walked by looks away, I wonder what I did to them, or they must not like me…… This is personalizing. The truth is, we have no idea what that person is thinking or going through and MOST of the time, it has nothing to do with us!

9. Blaming
When you blame something or someone else for the problems in your life, you become a passive victim of circumstances and you make it very difficult to do anything to change your situation. Probation did help me, my parents never do anything for me, CPS took my kids without giving me a chance. When we externalize blame, we don’t allow for internal growth and acknowledgment. We live in a sense of denial that WE can do something to improve out life.