Being there for your kids - Are You Ready to Soar?

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

When we face adversity, our "stuff" brings us down and we can get stuck. Some people actually say their life feels "like I'm spiralng out of control. Getting through our adversity and stress involves changing direction, from downward spiraling to upward spiraling. Mentalligent psychotherapy is a means for changing your life direction and soaring, that is, finding ways to manage your stress and maintain resilience when life gets you down. Check out this podcast for more. Blessings, Jon

Hi, I'm Dr. John Robinson, and this is Teachable Moments. Let me ask you something. Have you ever tried soaring? Wait, I'm sorry, what? Yeah, soaring isn't usually what comes first to mind when thinking about psychotherapy. More like less soaring, more grind. Well, not so when you practice intelligence psychotherapy. Back in my college days, when I had more money and fewer fears, I learned how to fly a glider.

As you may know, a glider is a plane without an engine. A glider is also known as a sailplane, and gliding is a fun process of soaring with the wind. When you are soaring, a tow plane pulls you up to 3,000 feet. At that altitude, you loose the toe cord and bank right while your toe plane banks left. At that point, it is you and your sailplane, looking for thermal air updrafts. When you find one, your sailplane spirals upward on the drafts. increasing your altitude. Find several updrafts sequentially and you can soar upward on a sunlit blue sky day for hours. No engine sound, no distractions, only the wind, the thermals, and you.

What a great time. The rules are that when you run out of thermals and your altitude dips below 1,000 feet, you have to begin your landing pattern. While soaring, you never leave sight of your designated landing strip. Soaring is as calm and peaceful as life can get. With my new psychotherapy paradigm, Mentals in Psychotherapy, my goal is to guide patients on their healing journey of upward spiraling through their lives, finding their thermal updrafts to keep soaring. Any kind of stress or adversity can generate an historic, familiar, downward spiral that can lead patients to become stuck in their stuff. While I help patients look at their stuff and the attending feelings briefly, my time there is only to help them understand a context for

their healing. To get unstuck, I help them identify upward spirals in their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and learn to soar. Within this new paradigm, the traditional medical model of illness and diagnosis is set aside. I'm not their doctor who will make them well by fixing their problems. I'm their guide on their healing journey to help them process their stuck spots and make positive use of their defined adversity, thereby promoting continual soaring. We have no control over our stuff in life. We have every control over what we do with our stuff and how we can grow from it. Traditional psychotherapists are why doctors, answering multiple why questions from the foundation of a medical model. When practicing mental intelligence psychotherapy, therapists are what

doctors? What's going on now? Over what do you have control? What outcomes do you want to pursue? These and other what questions come up and shape the path to the good life on our patient's healing journey. Traditional psychotherapists bounce around their patient's past looking for their answers to the why questions. With mental and psychotherapy, we focus on our patient's present, that part of their personal timeline over which they have control. As I acquaint my patient with their present, I often ask them to stretch out their arms from their side. Modeling what I want them to do, I sweep my left arm down to its resting point on the arc at my waist. The movement on my left arm represents all of your past. Depression frequently grows from our past.

I then ask my patient to make the same sweeping motion with their left arm. I then sweep my right arm from horizontal to its resting place on the arc at my waist. The movement of my right arm represents all your future. Anxiety frequently awaits you in your future. I then ask my patient to make the same sweeping motion with their right arm. With the demonstration and concluded, I then asked my patient, where on your life timeline does your two hands together at your weight represent? Your present. What happens to your depression and anxiety at your present?

It is at least minimized and perhaps goes away. Helping patients embrace their present using mindfulness to explore their five sensory experience in the now gives them opportunity to find their third. thermal updrafts and learn to soar. As patients bring up and recall their stuff and issues, we guide them on their healing journey to convert stress and adversity into resilience. This is where mentalized psychotherapists make use of Daniel Seligman's positive psychology. We help patients find their EU diamonia, a Greek word translated human flourishing. To the extent that patients can stay in their present and develop EU diomonia, their downward spiraling with stress and adversity corrects, and their upward spiraling leads to greater resilience.

In all of our lives, bad stuff happens, often through no fault of our own. Rather than moan and groan and wallow in it in an e-or moment, patients of mental and psychotherapists find the blessing in their personal hell of the moment. Mike and Baum's cognitive behavioral therapy helps patients trade in their negative extreme thoughts and feelings. Such extreme words as, never, ever, only should, would, could, and must are challenged as downward spiraling triggers. Learning and growing from the stress and adversity creates upward spiraling moments. Mentalism psychotherapy helps our patients identify and find upward spiraling opportunities. The language of mentalism psychotherapy eschews the medical model and embraces the healing journey

our patients have chosen to take with us as their guide. The intricate weave of mindfulness, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral interventions promote patient responsibility for their own health and well-being. They can learn to soar through stuck spots, finding resilience on their path to the good life. If my comments stir questions of your own, contact me through my website at www. ThereformyKids.com or email me at John Robinson Zero0 at Bellsouth.net. I'm Dr. Jonathan C. Robinson, licensed clinical psychologist, and author of Teachable Moments, Building Blocks of Christian Parenting, and my new book, The Healing, The Healing, Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life. Teachable Moments, Building Blocks of Christian Parenting, is available online at Amazonbooks.com and in local and national bookstores.

More on Dr. Robinson at TMC-P-I-N-C.com.