May 13, 2020 By Julio Andrade

Feed Your Quarantined Soul

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

I’ve been thinking so much about that saying, “…you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…”

I’m hearing it everywhere, and I’m right there with you! ‘I didn’t appreciate this person even seeing them every day,’ ‘I didn’t appreciate the places I could go, the things I could do, the experiences I could have.’ Maybe I took a lot for granted.

Everybody is feeling this way; you are not alone.

I also hear from people, ‘You know, I was I was just on the verge – I was ready to do this thing, or get started with this thing, and now I can’t… because everything is shut down.’

While I might agree with you that you’re not going to be able to do it in the way that you thought you were going be able to do it but because this is taking much longer than we ever thought it would take, (and for good reasons!) We have to stop waiting for it to be over to feed our soul, to feed our hearts, even to stimulate our minds! So I challenge you to think about – what is the thing that you most want to do when you get out of this?

What do you want to taste?
Who do you want to see?
What do you want to feel?
Where do you want to go?

I encourage you to think about ways that you can do that in some form while staying quarantined, while staying safe. There’s so much out there online; we can’t go to the ballet, but we can see it onscreen, we can’t go to a concert but we can hear one… we can’t go to a different country but we can learn about it.

We can see people virtually…

We need to shift our thinking about this time about it being limiting, and recognize the opportunities it might present.

I’d love to hear from you about ways that you have taken your interests into the isolation of quarantine and been able to feed them! I love to hear where you’re challenged and maybe we can be helpful.

I suggest to you to meet me online and on social media – let me know what you’re struggling with and I can help. Let me know what inspires you and I will give it a ‘Like!’ I look forward to hearing from all of you.

I’m Maggie O’Connor hoping this helps you to “break on through.”

May 13, 2020 By Julio Andrade

Broken Hearts in Quarantine #FindYourTribe

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

What happens to a broken heart in quarantine? I’ll tell you, it breaks.
Like a falling tree thunders when it crashes to the ground, whether anyone is there to hear it – it breaks.

But a broken heart needs witnesses.

WE need witnesses.

To feel seen and heard by others to validate that our experience is worthy, or it’s even happening at all.

And in quarantine, those opportunities for witnessing are fewer, and further between.

But here’s the good news – though the opportunities may be fewer, they have potential to go deeper. Your witnesses, your friends and family – are more available and less distracted.

Also a side benefit is that everyone in the world right now is grieving a loss, at least of control and freedom – they are going through something ‘with’ you, or at least at the same time.

Also on the down side is that you have fewer opportunities to distract yourself from the pain of your loss – which is how we get relief from the intensity, and part of how you’ll eventually come out of it. Going to work, or a party even though you don’t feel like it, rebound dating or whatever – we don’t have it available.

So we are left with ourselves. And the body wants to do its work. The body wants the grief to move through, and discharge it.

And so, you can take the opportunity to become your own witness – to become curious about the parts of you that chose to be with someone who wasn’t right for you, or who would hurt you so bad.

It helps to acknowledge what was so good about the relationship and recognize what was important about that for you, what it ‘fed’ in you. Name it, and you know what you need more of in your life.

You may need to create your own distractions, especially if you’re not living with other people – kids and homeschooling can get you out of your head as much as going for a run, doing a puzzle or learning a new skill.

Broken hearts need witnesses; whether from outside or inside of 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.

March 31, 2020 By Julio Andrade

#Find Your Tribe – Opportunity in Crisis

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

You can see some other videos I’ve already done on coronavirus, anxiety and #FindYourTribe at BreakthroughMFT.com/blog .

Today what I want to talk about is that one thing that I’m really happy about in this crisis is that everybody seems to understand that we need to address the isolation; and we need to address all of the social norms that are being violated by this crisis! You know, there are a lot of things that you can do to stay emotionally and physically healthy. Google is full of resources, and I might do

another post on it if you’d like; but today what I really want to talk about is why it’s so important for us to remain healthy.

Crisis is an amplifier for whatever else you already have going on and you combine that with the isolation which takes away the distractions and obligations that usually keep the distance from whatever bothers you, or excites you. We go more toward those anxieties or things that bother us or we go more towards the things that excite us and make us happy! That’s why there’s an uptick in divorces and pregnancies during times like this!

There’s an opportunity in this crisis. An opportunity for greater connection with the people around you and with yourself!

Also, there’s another little opportunity here – you know how you say you don’t have time for therapy? Well, a lot of therapists are going online with great success, so as you come up against the parts of yourself or the parts of your relationships that you just can’t distract from right now, I’d really encourage you to consider going toward that piece of the crisis as an opportunity to actually resolve something!

I think we are stronger together. We are better together; and when these connections start to feel a little warped we can get really depressed about it. So if you find yourself on the ‘divorces’ side and not so much on the ‘pregnancies’ side of things, give us a call here at Breakthrough MFT.

We are here for you. Or, if you’re not local to Westchester, NY, you can certainly reach out to a therapist in your location. I encourage you to take good care of yourself and the people around you. #FindYourTribe and stick with them.

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