September 15, 2020 By Julio Andrade

No one knows what they’re DOING!

Hi everyone, it’s Maggie O’Connor at Breakthrough MFT, helping you reach your ‘breakthrough moment’.

Have you been feeling like ‘nobody knows what they’re doing?’

Like your school systems or your local government isn’t providing enough information, or guidance about what to do next? Or whatever they are telling you just feels scary or too risky somehow?!

Well, of course you are feeling that way.

They don’t know what they’re doing.

And neither do we.

None of us do!

Individually, we are making decisions about how to keep our kids safe while functioning as families. And we generally feel anxiety about those decisions. I imagine it’s a similar dynamic in school systems and local governments in that they are making decisions that impact entire communities.

Intellectually, we know that there are no perfect solutions.

But emotionally, it makes us feel anxious and scared, because the stakes are just so high. And the environment that feels like it’s changing day to day, just intensifies those feelings.

We’re constantly on this hamster wheel of feeling awful and then taking a breath, then feeling awful and then taking a breath…

If we could just slow it down and for a moment, and put aside our anxiety and frustration, even put aside our fear just for a moment; we might find some compassion for ourselves;

To say –

I am doing my best,

I am making the best decisions for myself and my family,

I will make mistakes and I will do my best to correct them.

In finding that compassion for ourselves, we might find compassion for those around us… for the teacher who can’t get the technology to work; for the school administrator who seems to be changing the plan week to week! As we get back to the business of educating our kids as safely as we can, we would all do well to remember that we’re all human and we’re doing the best we can.

We’ve never done this before.

And we don’t know what we are doing.

We just need to make the best decisions we can, with the information we do have.

It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t voice our concerns, when we have them; but it does mean that we do it with the kindness in the way that you wish others would do with you.

My decisions may be different than yours.

But we are all doing the best we can.

I’m Maggie O’Connor, hoping this helps you to ‘break on through’.

August 7, 2020 By Julio Andrade

The Truest Thing about Couples Therapy…

Hi everybody, it’s Maggie O’Connor at BreakthroughMFT, helping you reach your ‘breakthrough moment’.

This pandemic is an amplifier for whatever was already going on in your relationship; the good the bad, and the ugly.

You’re not alone if you’re thinking about using couples therapy to help you get through this quarantine, so let’s think this through together.

When people are finishing a course of couples therapy, the thing I hear most often is, ‘I wish we had done this sooner; it didn’t have to hurt so bad for so long’. This is when I wish that people would actually talk more about being in couples therapy outside of the room where it happens.

Here’s the truest thing about couples therapy: people do come to it much later than they probably should.

Either they’ve been spinning in their negative cycle for so long they just really do not know how to get out or they’re coming as a last-ditch effort before divorce. It makes sense – people are understandably afraid of talking about their problems out loud! Let’s break this down into two very common maybe universal factors that make people nervous about starting couples therapy

#1 – “The therapist and my partner are going to gang up on me” (also known as, “it’s going to be all my fault”)

In couples therapy the client is actually the relationship, so to take sides for the therapist would actually be abandoning the ‘client’. It wouldn’t make sense.

That said, a licensed seasoned therapist will be aware of the imbalances in your relationship that make it sometimes feel like it is all your fault or you’re being blamed… But we’re not mind readers; so if at any point you feel blamed or ganged up on, you can and should tell the therapist! A good therapist will slow it way down and make sure that gets addressed before we move any further.

#2 – “This will be the beginning of the end” (also known as “it’s not going to work”)

Sometimes people are coming into therapy (and it’s an appropriate use of therapy) to let go of each other to end a long-term relationship, either for yourselves or for the sake of children in a divorce situation… but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Assuming you want to stay together, it’s good to express to your therapist the fear that it might not work out. It might even be a good sign that you’re afraid because it reflects a certain investment in the relationship and a hope that it will work out. Most couples who come to therapy are not ‘done with the relationship’, but they are done with the destructive cycles that lead to such disconnection between each other!

As long as two people are sitting on the couch, we have potential to step back from the edge and create better ways of being with each other.

In choosing a therapist:

Make sure that you’re looking at licensed marriage and family therapists (LMFT’s) or licensed therapists who have advanced training or certification in a couples therapy modality.
Make sure you feel comfortable with them.
And then get to work, inside and outside the therapy room.

It doesn’t have to hurt this bad. There are better ways of being with each other.

I’m Maggie O’Connor, hoping this helps you to ‘break on through’.

August 6, 2020 By Julio Andrade

Do We have Good Communication?

Hi everybody, it’s Maggie O’Connor at Breakthrough MFT helping you reach your”breakthrough moment”.

How do I know if I have good communication with my partner?

If you’re asking the question, you probably are feeling like there’s something missing in this area for you.

We know if we’re being heard. We know if we’re being seen. More importantly, we know if we’re being seen even for the parts of ourselves that we don’t share so easily; and in this pandemic, we are showing more of ourselves than we ever thought we would!

So I ask you, ‘How is that being received in your life?’ because here’s the part of communication that always gets missed: It’s not just about what you’re showing or what you’re saying, but how it’s being received by your partner.

For example, in a couples session, the wife was talking about how she was putting the baby to bed and she says, ‘…so I went back in to put a blanket on the baby…’ and the husband jumps in and says, ‘So you’re saying I’m a bad father!!!’

Does she think he’s a bad father? Probably not.

But something’s happening in that system that makes it hard for the husband to see her as nurturing, because he feels so criticized. It’s being expressed, this nurturing, but it’s not being received. This couple could get lost in a negative communication cycle very quickly – sort of like, ‘this is what I heard you say… this is what I made up about it… and that’s what i’m reacting to…’

We react to the narrative instead of the person.

Narratives are stories we construct about why people do what they do, and they can be really helpful as we organize our daily lives. But sometimes they’re more accurate than others.

In a healthy communication system, it feels safe to be curious and explore with your partner what just happened there. So, in in this situation the wife could say, ‘…hey, what’s going on? Do you really think I think you’re a bad dad?’ The husband could consider the question, and respond to that.

In a less healthy communication structure, the narratives are all we have so we hold on tight they repeat and make it reallllly hard to see the other person for who they are what they’re saying. This husband will insist that he can’t get it right with his “critical wife” and they will lock into a defensive cycle that will make it impossible for them to share this nurturing moment with their baby.

Neither of them will feel seen; neither of them will feel heard.

Therapy can help you recognize and define some underlying patterns or issues that might make it harder for you to be curious with each other. Therapy can help you run more accurate narratives rather than letting them run you.

I’m Maggie O’Connor, hoping this helps you to ‘break on through’.

April 6, 2020 By Julio Andrade

Crisis Mode Explained… and Contained

Hi Everybody, I’m Maggie O’Connor at BreakthroughMFT, helping you reach your Breakthrough Moment.

My last post talked about how we really can only live in crisis mode for two weeks, and I understand that you might say things like, ‘well I LIVE in crisis mode’ or I’ve been living in crisis mode for the past three years. I say to you – No. You’d be dead.

Here’s the difference between living with a crisis and living in crisis mode. And we’re all learning that right now.

In ‘crisis mode’, there’s a singular focus. It’s like an extended fight or flight. All your time and energy is focused on this one thing. Your cortisol and adrenaline levels rise and your entire amazing body is working just to get you through this one thing.

You ‘lose track of time’ because your awareness of everything outside of that area of focus is severely diminished.

But we can only go like that for so long – it’s about two weeks on average.

When the crisis continues anyway, you need to find a more sustainable way of being. This may have been signaled for you recently by an emotional breakdown – and you make total sense to me! That’s your body letting you know that you can’t keep going like this.

If you’ve ever had a loved one with a chronic illness, you might be familiar with this dynamic of needing to figure out a way of being that lets you work, play and have some semblance of a life outside of treatment and caring for them, so that you can sustain.

Right now, coronavirus is creating an environment your body is struggling to handle. Why wouldn’t you feel stressed?

We need to find a way out of the crisisSelf- care is how we pull ourselves out of crisis mode, how we create new energy for ourselves so that we can handle when we do need to be stressted.

Give your body some space to recover – feed yourself with structure to feel predictability, with exercise to sheathe your nerves against stress, with laughter and fun and creativity to feed your mind and heart. Get the comic relief, whatever you need to sustain yourself through this.

SEE PEOPLE you care about on FaceTime, Zoom or whatever you use to maintain that cornerstone of sanity only our relationships can hold.

Some days will take more out of you than you can put in; and that’s okay. So go ahead and give yourself that ugly cry, forgive yourself and ask forgiveness for your irritation and frustration. Remember you are only one person and you are doing the best you can. Find your tribe and lean on them. It’s the only way we get through.

Stay safe. Be well.

I’m Maggie O’Connor at Breakthrough MFT, hoping this helps you to break on through.

April 6, 2020 By Julio Andrade

Sustaining through Crisis – #FindYourTribe

Hi everybody, I’m Maggie O’Connor at Breakthrough MFT, helping you reach your ‘breakthrough moment.’

Where are you with your ‘crisis mode’? Have you had the ugly cry yet? Have you lost it on your partner or children or the jar of jelly YET?

I say ‘yet’ because time is UP for crisis mode – we first started social spacing in NY about 2 weeks ago. Remember? Feels like a millin years ago!

At the time, people were really focused on how to manage all of the aspects of a suddenly volatile world by arranging schedules and child care figuring out family situations. We were also buying up all the toilet paper at the store…

Our priorities shifted suddenly and sometimes what came out as most important was surprising; but there it was.

But then something happened. All of a sudden the wheels came off! Collectively it seems, we all had our breakdown. We all had the sense of

I can’t…
Keep going.
Like this.

And you’re right. Our body only has a a limited amount of time it can sustain in ‘crisis mode’ before it really breaks down. I’ve most often heard it put at 2 weeks before the collapse. And guess where we are in NY? At about 2 weeks of ‘social spacing’

So… you can’t keep going in crisis mode, but how do we live through the ongoing crisis which seems to have no clear before and after?
That’s where self care comes in – that’s where we talk about taking it one day at a time.

There will always be room for bad news and grief; the hard stuff about this. Self care is a way of taking yourself out of that, and remembering that we’re people.

We’re talking about structuring; having a schedule, getting dressed and bathed even if you’re not working right now or all your conference calls are audio only. Get exercise. Get outside.

Keep making those FaceTime calls – our relationships are the cornerstone of our sanity. We need our tribe now more than ever.

It means consciously seeking what makes you laugh or reminds you of the joy and beauty of life. There are a ton of free resources online to see Broadway shows, opera, live concerts.

Art & creativity will make us feel truly make you free, even in quarantine.

What you put in front of you is what you reflect back out into the world, and how we get a nice positive cycle going.

Sure there’s still room for the tough stuff; I’m not saying to look away from it, but I am saying to look toward the things that feed you to get you through the longer term of this crisis.

I’m Maggie O’Connor wishing you good health and safety, and hoping this helps you to break on through.