© 2017 Shannon Thomas
Sunshine and Rain
In each life, there will be sunshine and rain. In Texas, sometimes these two weather events happen at the exact same moment. I have taken my fair share of pictures with sunshine in the distance and dark thunderstorm clouds overhead. Life is often like Texas weather; we can be experiencing happiness and pain all at the same moment.
In each of our lives, there are bound to be areas of sunshine and rain. The rain, or painful situations, can make showing up emotionally and/or physically for the holidays difficult. The sunshine, or reasons to be grateful, will put a pep in our step. Often people will have two parallel tracks going in life. No life is all good or all bad. It is a mixture of both in the same picture.
Regardless of where our lives fall on the spectrum of joyful or difficult, we can enjoy the holiday in our own ways. If it involves a quiet day by yourself or a small group of folks, take in the calm that can be present. Pause and enjoy that you are in control of all your own decisions for the day. Learn to see solitude as a gift and a time to enjoy your own companionship or that of a few other people. As the day goes on, collect five (5) things that happened (or didn’t happen) that you can be grateful for.
If you will be spending the day in a large group, I suggest pausing to take in the five (5) senses. What are you seeing, what are hearing, what are you tasting, what are you smelling and what are you touching? In the blur of a busy holiday crowd, tensions can sometimes come up or we find ourselves drawn in different directions that can be overwhelming. Choosing to be purposeful in staying present in the moment can help us enjoy our surroundings more.
As for me, my day will be on the quieter side spent with my immediate family. It will include our favorite food, football (come on Cowboys, don’t disappoint!) and maybe a mimosa or two. Having a day to relax in my pajamas is a real treat for me and even though life is never “perfect” for anyone, there is so much to be celebrated. The holidays are when we can choose to focus on the things in our lives that bring us comfort and small joys.
Thank you so much for being a part of the blessings in my life. It has been an incredible season and I am thrilled to get to share the journey with you.
Keep Dreaming Big!
Shannon
Four Levels of Change
People are unique and strangely similar all at the same time. By this, I mean that although no two people are identical, the way that individuals handle certain aspects of life are very similar to other people. There seem to be patterns and clusters of ways people respond to life. I especially see this with personal growth.
Having been working with individuals and families since 2000 and in private practice since 2007, I’ve had the opportunity to observe how people respond to and live through life events. I’ve noticed that people are either givers or takers and that people either get better or bitter from significant stress.
It always fascinates me as to why someone can go through horrendous things yet come out of the experience as a vastly improved version of themselves. They shine from having walked through the desert. On the flip side, someone else goes through what would be perceived as less traumatic and they seem to have gained little to no personal growth from the experience. Why do some people pull themselves up by their boot straps and others lay down on the ground in defeat next to their boots? I think it has to do with the four levels of willingness to change that I’ve noticed in all people.
First Level: “Nothing is wrong with me.”
It’s exceptionally hard to change what we don’t see as an issue. People at this first level might come into counseling for just a few sessions because a loved one externally motivated them to or it was court ordered. These types of folks are a counseling nightmare. They have no true interest in changing much, if anything, about themselves. They might throw out a few things they could see that they need to work on but quickly rationalize away any need for personal growth. The extreme end of this level are the psycho/sociopaths and narcissists. They can’t change because they don’t authentically see anything in themselves to change. In their own minds, they are the personification of perfection. I know, it’s startling to think that people actually roam the earth with this much arrogance. But trust me, they are out there. A few have landed in my office, and heads up, I’m kindly blunt. At least with me, first level folks never stay in counseling long. They might stay slightly longer with a counselor who is willing to do their perfection dance with them, but eventually all counselors need to see actual growth. That’s when these first level folks tap out of counseling.
Second Level: “I know I have some issues, but I won’t actually do anything to fix them. Ever.”
These people are not necessarily narcissists, but rather see and talk about areas of change yet won’t actually do any work to change. You’ll hear them say things like, “I need therapy” and “I want to master my thoughts and actions better” but then also say, “I’m exceptionally lazy.” In their laziness or lack of motivation to improve their lives, second level individuals live the same way today as they did 10 years ago. The seasons change, the calendar changes, but second level folks do not. The saddest part is they know they need to improve their lot in life. They’re keenly aware, and at times painfully aware, that healthy steps are needed, but make no physical advancement towards doing anything about it. My heart goes out to the second level folks the most because it’s a lot like being in a cell with the door open. They just won’t stand up and start to walk out.
Third Level: “I’m going to see change in my life and I’m excited! Until it gets hard.”
Third level people are willing to invest their time and resources into counseling and will see aspects of growth, which can be very exciting. Unfortunately, this level is where some people retreat and return to the second level. No one said change was easy. Third level people often get hung up on fears, inconveniences and social pressures that tell them that change will cost them greatly in some area of life. For instance, I see clients who really want to improve their physical health and lose significant amounts of weight, but as they start walking towards their personal goal, people close to them start sabotaging their growth. The client has a dilemma to face and must decide to keep walking towards health or succumb and slip back into old habits. I also see this with those who want healthier relationships. They might be willing to make radical changes if the people around them don’t treat them better or engage in the relationship. Third level people see glimmers of personal growth but it doesn’t last. Weight may be lost but it’s put back on, and relationships don’t improve so they settle for the present or another version of throwing in the towel on reaching their hopes and dreams.
However, don’t lose hope yet. Some third level people do fluctuate from second to third and back to second but sometimes, they jump up to the fourth level!
Fourth Level: Lasting Change!!!
Now, this the level that as a therapist I see as the most rewarding. It’s where people go from the second level to the third, and then ultimately reach the fourth. If we look back on our own personal growth, we can see that we were probably at all the levels at some point, including the dreaded level one. We’ve all been in denial about ourselves and the need for change (first level), we’ve wanted change but didn’t make the effort to make it happen (second level), we’ve tried a few things to change but didn’t see it happen quick enough or gave up at some point (third level), but then we miraculously started over and eventually made it to the fourth level of seeing real, significant personal growth in ourselves. It’s so exciting when that happens! But believe me, it doesn’t come without a cost. All change requires us to give up things. It’s just a fact. Hopefully what we are gaining with reaching level four will be far more valuable than anything we’ve stuck out in the past.
Take some time and reflect on these four levels of personal growth. Be honest with yourself. Today, where are you? Are you happy with your level? If not, what are you planning to do about it? I truly believe in small, incremental steps toward reaching goals. Some of you know that my life story includes overcoming some major obstacles and I promise you that one step at a time truly does work. Today is a great day to get started towards your own hopes and dreams. I know you can do it if you want it bad enough!
Keep Dreaming Big!
Shannon
Entrepreneur Life: Competing Brands
This last year of entrepreneur life has been a whirlwind and there are many words I could use to describe the past twelve months. Some that I have used are wonderful, fulfilling, blessed and one that kept coming out of mouth was squeezed. I have found myself saying that word because I was experiencing the feeling of being squished in from different sides. But why? I love what I have created in my professional life. I love all of it. Every last detail, so why would the word squeezed keep coming to mind?
Therapists have a tendency (at least I do) to “therapize” ourselves and probably over-analyze our own thoughts and behaviors. While I was recently trying to understand how a career that I love so much was also causing some level of discomfort, it finally dawned on me. You know those moments when the answers flood in and you hear yourself saying something like, “Of course! That makes complete sense.” What was the root of this epiphany that I had about the word squeezed?
It’s that my two main entrepreneur brands compete with one another and as they collide, I am the middle point of contact. Ouch. No wonder.
The Two Brands
What are my two brands? I am the owner and lead therapist of an award-winning counseling practice, and I wrote a best-selling book. Both my work as a therapist and the book focus on the recovery from the types of abuses people don’t usually notice happening around them. The hidden poison of psychological abuse. Heavy topic, right? But I absolutely love the work I get to do; both in private practice and in writing the book. So how would these two squeeze together with me in the middle? It centers on the concepts of micro versus macro. The small reach and the large message.
The small reach
I officially opened the counseling agency in 2009. I took my final license exam April 1, 2009 and the doors of my practice opened May 1, 2009. I am not a wait-around-and-think-about-things type of gal. I had two years of finishing my professional license to ponder and twiddle my business thumbs. I was ready for entrepreneur life and passing the exam gave me free rein to go after it. From the beginning I knew I wanted to build what is known as a “boutique” counseling practice. Keep it small, don’t take insurance and the clients get the privacy of not having to go through office staff to make an appointment. When clients call, they get me. I do all my own phone calls, scheduling and follow up. There isn’t the experience of a crowded waiting room full of people to see one of many therapists in the same office. No secretary calling back to schedule and the first point of contact with me finally happening at the appointment. I dislike that model very much.
The owner of a boutique counseling practice is intentional in keeping things from feeling like a medical office. It is created to be an experience that feels like going to chat with a close friend, but with all the healthy professional ethics and boundaries firmly in place. I purposefully started and have fought to keep my counseling agency small enough to stay quaint and full of personal attention. I have no plans to ever change from that model.
The large message.
Now enter in my second brand. My book. I launched the book almost one year ago today and it has done better in sales than I ever could have imagined. It has been a best-seller on Amazon, featured in international news and lifestyle press, audio rights acquired and released by a well-known publisher, and our first international translation is slated to be released this fall. Side note: the first language translation will be in Italian so I am unabashedly jockeying my family to book a trip to Rome and Naples next spring so we can go visit the publisher. Sounds like a great excuse to see Italy!
With the launch of the book, my message about healing from hidden abuse (also the title of the book) has gone literally around the world. At www.healingfromhiddenabuse.com we maintain a list of available book studies. The list currently has 118 book studies in 8 countries, including 37 U.S. states. Press coverage about the book and my work has been featured in outlets like Business Insider, Teen Vogue, Bustle, Romper, PsychReg and PsychCentral. I will be a featured speaker at the national #NoMeanGirls conference October 2017. I even had to hire a publicist and am truly blessed to have Bolt Public Relations (Dallas) join me in the quest to spread awareness about healing from hidden abuse. I couldn’t maximize the reach without the incredible Bolt women. There are many other macro aspects to the book, but you get a glimmer of what has gone on this year. It has taken my breath away at times; both in excitement and exhaustion.
Small reach versus large message. That is where my two brands collide. The look and feel of a boutique practice and the international exposure as a genre author. I am the center point in which these two meet. The word squeezed makes a little more sense. My dilemma as a entrepreneur who loves both brands is how to maintain these two competing worlds.
What is my point in sharing this with you; besides using this space as my own form of therapy to see it all in typed words? The actual main point is that I am 100% I am not alone in feeling like two aspects of life collide, even though you may love both. Where can we see this happening? Marriage, parenting, work, or any other environment where we find ourselves squeezed by different demands. What are we to do to thrive through the pressure?
Identify Priorities
After the launch of the book and the speed at which it took off, I had to quickly assess where my daily work life priorities were going to be. We all have a limited amount of capacity and must make decisions about what will get our first fruits of energy. For me, that lies with my counseling clients. That does not describe the people who email asking questions, or even calling in for an appointment. In the world of therapy, a client is someone who has filled out their necessary paperwork, come to the first appointment and we both have decided to continue in the therapeutic relationship. A client is not someone who emails asking questions. A client is not even someone making an appointment. The therapist/client relationship and professional obligations start after the first appointment.
As you assess the collision of two competing interests in your life, what will be the priority that will receive your first efforts? Write it down somewhere. Remind yourself that you have chosen to make this area your focus. We do this so when other things come creeping into the schedule, it can serve as a grounding point to get back to business.
Set Boundaries
Since my true clients are my first professional priority, I had to figure out how to set boundaries so I could meet my obligations to real life, in-office clients. One area that helped with boundary setting was to establish an auto-reply on my work email. The word “inundated” does not even begin to describe what my in-box turned into after the launch of the book. Since I had established a boutique counseling practice, I did not have the assistant infrastructure in place to help me manage the new workload. Since I love owning a small counseling agency, I have no interest in changing my business model to fit the demands of others. Some emails are really nice. Some are really mean. Some are just weird and real weird ones are reported to law enforcement. I waste no time with nonsense. The auto-reply has helped me tremendously in sorting through the emails from true clients, those that are looking for more information and those who want to be ugly to me via email. The auto-reply gives all the necessary information of what next steps people can take. This boundary has helped me beautifully.
Now that you have established your priority, what boundaries need to put in place to help you stay focused on what is most important?
Stay humble and authentically grateful
I strongly believe in the mind/body connection and the power of what we put out into the world with our attitude. Just because we might be going through a time of success, does not mean it will last indefinitely. Actually most things do not. Everything is a season and we must embrace, love, enjoy and be really present in the good moments. Even though I have felt squeezed at times this last year, I quickly felt the overwhelm but then replaced it with soul touching gratitude. I am lucky to do what I do. Sure some days are busy and I need more coffee than is probably healthy, but it is a season. I want to embrace it and feel every moment. There will be a day for retirement, but that day is not today so I will enjoy as much of the roller coaster now as I can!
What will help you remind yourself to not take your season for granted, thinking it will last forever? What can you do to fully appreciate where you are right now?
My hope is that you can enjoy being squeezed by things in your life and learn to recognize them, set limits and embrace every moment!
Keep dreaming big.
Shannon
Adult Bullies: The Calculating Bully
In this series on adult bullies, we have looked at the Accusing Bully who has a need to make you their scapegoat so they don’t have to look at their own shortcomings. We have also examined the Bitter Bully who may have started out as someone close to you, but when your life took off in some great way, the Bitter Bully became threatened. Both of these adult bullies are driven by their insecurities. Not so for the next bully. Calculating Bullies are driven by rage. They want your life full of misery and are willing to be the vessel to make that happen. Wonderful, right? Even though we may not want to acknowledge that terrible people exist in the world, they do. We are naïve to think we will never cross paths with someone who would love to see us fail.
Who are these Calculating Bullies? They could be a family member, co-worker, someone pretending to be a friend or romantic interest. They can also be people we meet while involved in a ministry or church. Basically, there are multiple ways a calculating bully can enter your life. My hope is that being able to identify how these folks operate will help you to create solid boundaries around a calculating bully so their poison doesn’t fully engulf your life.
I am often asked why Calculating Bullies set out to pick apart someone’s sense of self-worth and goodness in life. This form of adult bully encompasses both the accusing nature and bitterness of the previous bullies we have already discussed. They take those unpleasant character traits and add gasoline on top.
From my personal experience having run into this type of bully, and as a professional counselor, I believe there are a few key methods the Calculating Bully utilizes and I want to share two with you today.
“You Will Not Have What I Cannot Achieve”
This inner-dialogue is similar to the Bitter Bully but the intensity is different. The Bitter Bully often uses passive-aggressive methods to let you know that your success or joy has stepped on their toes. The Calculating Bully will try to remove those items from your life. They go to great lengths to use flat-out lies about you to smear your reputation. They will call in their troops to further spread the hateful message of the Calculating Bully. They will target you and try to make you look incompetent in whatever way fits the environment. If the Calculating Bully is in a family, they may discredit you as an adult child or parent to your own children. If the bully is within a workplace, the Calculating Bully could sabotage you by going behind you and changing your work to have it include errors that you did not make. If it is in a church environment, the Calculating Bully will spread rumors about you to make leadership question your appropriateness for ministry.
These adult bullies are out for blood. They feel no shame about how they try to reach their goal of destroying you and everything you have achieved, but they have not.
“I Will Make You Think Everyone Hates You”
The Calculating Bully wants you to feel isolated. They desire to know that you feel rejected and left out. It makes them smugly happy. In reality, your rejection is usually just smoke and mirrors. Sometimes they are able to achieve a successful smear campaign and people do actually turn away from you. More often, I have witnessed the Calculating Bully trying to create a false sense of reality. If the adult bully is a former friend, they will encourage people to give you space for a season to let the dust settle on whatever conflict may have happened. The Calculating Bully knows this will land with you as the silent treatment and that’s the goal. In the workplace, this adult bully will purposefully steer other people away from inviting you to go out to lunch or after work together. The Calculating Bully enjoys the moment when you find out that you were excluded. In a family, this bully will flaunt their affection and often times, gifts, intended for other people in the family. You are never honored. Never celebrated. The Calculating Bully in a family with cut you off from the nurturing that all humans desire. This bully likes to see you long for what other family members are receiving right in front of you.
What are you to do if you have a Calculating Bully in your life? Quickly get away from them. Seriously. I know some situations are incredibly difficult to remove yourself from but every effort must be made to put as much distance between yourself and this form of adult bully.
Rarely do these bullies make lasting changes in their behaviors. That would require a tremendous amount of self-reflection and repetitious internal corrections in order to re-wire their internal compass.
A Calculated Bully doesn’t relate to other people in a normal way and that is why they can treat you so poorly. It is truly about them, and not you.
As a therapist, I believe it is therapeutic to engage in the simple of act of acknowledging what we know to be true. As you have read this blog, maybe a particular person has come to mind and you have begun to see that they are not only accusing and bitter, but their ugly actions are actually calculated. If you identified someone as a Calculated Bully, please say out loud the following:
I believe ____________________(name of person) is a Calculated Bully.
I believe he/she would like to see my life ruined.
I will stop giving ____________________(name of person) the benefit of the doubt each time I am hurt by her/him.
I will use everything available to me to put healthy distance between myself and ____________________(name of person).
I deserve to have people in my life who treat me with kindness and care.
My hope is that every Calculating Bully will face clear and solid boundaries from the people around them. It won’t change the bully’s toxic behaviors, but fewer people will have their lives negatively impacted. We must stop giving harmful people full access to our lives and hearts.
Keep dreaming big!
Shannon
Adult Bullies: The Accusing Bully
Disclaimer: For those of you who know me and my work around healing from abuse, please note that this blog is not about clinically abusive people (aka narcissists, sociopaths, or psychopaths). This series on adult bullies is about the other type of difficult people. The average garden-variety type of folks we run into out in the world.
The Different Types of Adult Bullies
This is the second post in a series on adult bullying. If you missed the first one on the topic, you can read it here at The Bitter Bully.
Who are these accusing adult bullies? They are individuals who, for some reason, need you to play the role of scapegoat. The accusing bully doesn’t know the real you. They know their distorted, constructed version of you. The accusing bully has created a false image in their head and since what we think is what we feel, they feel like you deserve their scrutiny. They might snap, be annoyed, and you have no idea why.
Now, we know not everyone is going to think we are fabulous. We sometimes just do not gel with certain personality types and that’s perfectly normal. The accusing bully doesn’t have an actual aversion to you. They have an aversion to how they see you. That’s the crazy-making part of being the target of an accusing bully.
When this happened to me, I found myself on the receiving end of someone saying that I was going to respond to conflict in a way that is not at all how I handle myself or disagreements. I thought this individual knew me well too so I was taken aback by their perceptions. It caused me to do some immediate soul searching. How do I carry myself in the world that I am perceived in such an incorrect way by this person? Was it incorrect or do I not know myself very well? Am I the type who would react the way this person expected me to? As you can see, the accusing bully can really challenge your views of yourself. At least for those of us who take the time to be self-reflective; in an effort to always be growing as individuals.
After spending time rattling around in my own thoughts, I asked a couple of people who knew me even better than the individual who was accusatory about my responses to conflict. Those closest to me confirmed that I didn’t have some false view of my conflict resolution skills. These conversations helped cement the idea that the accusing bully had their perceptions that had nothing to do with the real me.
Why do some people adopt a distorted view of us and do so on purpose? Yes, I do think the accusing bully chooses to paint an inaccurate picture of our character.
This is especially true if they should know better but still go ahead and scapegoat us. Watching this in my own life and with some of the clients I have worked with as a therapist, I believe that the accusing bully has a need to misunderstand us. Our role as scapegoat somehow works for them. Maybe they want to continue in their own unhealthy behaviors and if we can take some of the responsibility, then less ownership lands on their lap. Perhaps the accusing bully projects their own areas of growth onto us, rather than addressing their limitations. In the case of my accusing bully, I honestly believe that rather than taking a hard look at their own issues of conflict resolution, they projected outward and onto me. Luckily, I was able to catch this tactic and not allow their words to have a lasting impact on my view of myself.
What is the best way to address an accusing bully? You might try pointing out that you don’t see yourself in the way the bully is accusing. It is possible that you are going to get push back and a level of denial from them. If you are not able to openly discuss that you feel scapegoated, you may need to consider distancing yourself from the person. It is very difficult to have any level of authentic relationship with someone who feels the need to create a falsehood about you and then treats you differently because of the lies they have told themselves.
Keep dreaming big!
Shannon