DR. JENNIFER JOHNSTON-JONES
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​Simple 3-Step Recipe for Creating the Life You Love by Jennifer Johnston-Jones, Ph.D.

5/28/2019

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Do you hear yourself say "I have to…" or " If I had/did this, then I would…." ?

If you responded yes, it's a sign that you may be suffering from "Unaware of Your True Power Disorder." It’s a kind of mental disease that is contagious and often starts when we are young. We are told “you have to….” We are brainwashed that we have no choices, no power, that life “happens to us” instead of seeing the truth: that we create life.

Fortunately, creating a life you love is simpler than one would imagine. with highly effective results which will transform your subconscious mind so that, with little effort, your life will begin to transform, like a flower blooming in spring, slowly, one petal at a time, just as nature intended.

The cure for "Unaware of Your True Power Disorder” is a special kind of homemade soup, taken daily, made with these three ingredients:

1. Measured doses of Intentional Decisions
Every day you make thousands of micro decisions and a few macro ones. The micro decisions, while often overlooked, become the foundation for your subconscious mind’s understanding of choice. Herein lies great power. Here is what I want you to do: think about your day from start to finish, from the time you decide to wake, to what you decide to think about first thing in the morning, to what you decide to think when you look in the mirror, to what you decide to wear, to what time you decide to break your fast, to what kind of food you decide to nourish your body with, to whom you decide to speak to, to what you decide to think of them, to what you decide to speak aboout, and so on…. As you can see, the emphasis is on the verb decide. The point is, in making these often habitual and unaware decisions intentional, great change will begin to take place. Every micro decision you make accumulates into your daily life. This requires subtle and minimal effort, but measured doses throughout the day. 
Yet, the most important and most powerful micro decision you can make is choosing how you feel. To be honest, this is my absolutely favorite teaching that the field of psychology has given us: that feelings are a choice. No one is forcing you to be low energy, disconnected, or irritated--it is a choice you are making. Obviously, no one wishes to feel this way and often the choice to feel this way comes unconsciously as a result of feeling unloved, like you are lacking, and most importantly, that people and life have power over you. To transform these unconscious beliefs doesn’t have to be complicated. Simple practices such as what you think when you are falling asleep and when you first wake can create dramatic shifts in consciousness. 
We process stress when we sleep, therefore, if you go to bed thinking about the things in your day that brought you simple joy--even something as simple as the great relief and comfort of laying on a soft bed, your brain will shift and patterns of positive thinking will emerge. 

2. A Sprinkle of Possibility Mindset 
A Possibility Mindset is a way of thinking that allows freedom--the essential block for creating a life you love. Like a cake without baking powder, your life will not rise up unless you add a sprinkle of possibility and freedom. The Possibility Mindset releases you from your unintended self-built prision to take you to a land of magic. 

Your Possibility Mindset will naturally grow as you cook your Intentional Decisions (above). But there is something else you can do that is essential in relesing you from your prision. I call it A plus A and it’s my favorite equation. You take a possitive affirmation (e.g., I am getting healthier every day) and add an action to prove that this is true (you drink one green juice a day). It’s important that your action is an easily achievable one and that your affirmation is precise. For example, if your affirmation was “I am healthy,” your mind would argue with you about a generic globilization and it will lose its efficacy. Or worse, if you have an affirmation with no action to back it up, your mind will certainly not be fooled. We’ve learned since the 80s and 90s that transformations rely on data. Affirmations without actions are simply bad math. So, what does A + A=? A Possibility Mindset. And the best part is, once you begin to see the effects of A + A, you will see the sky is the limit.


Broth of Everyday Joy mixed with a Practice of Loving Everyone
Everyday joy mixed with a practice of loving everyone is the most fun skill to practice. It requires you to see the world as a happy child and find connection in people. It is incredibly rewarding and leads to my next favorite teaching in interpersonal psychology and neurology: what we feel about others is what we feel about ourself.  Simple as that!
So, you can see the importance of finding love for everyone--from the grocery clerk to that person who absolutely rubs you the wrong way. Mirror neurons, the powerful forces of projection, repression, and denial are some of the forces that come into play here. 
Relationships are a mirror. Everytime we have a negative feeling about someone, it infiltrates into our psyche and creates poison. One effective tool for releasing the power that negative behavior from others can have on you is to use the “Empathic Hook.” It’s a tool that was taught to me in graduate school when I was working with someone who sexually abused children. I was told that I had to create a positive relationship with this man and I thought it would be impossible based on his past behavior. 
The “Empathic Hook” pulls you into people through empathy--that is, finding areas where you relate, connect and understanding the person’s pain. After about a month working with this man,  his stories helped me to release my judgement and love him despite his behavior--and this became the basis for his healing. I now use this with everyone in my life. Whenever I feel negatively about someone, I imagine what they must have gone through to have such behavior and I look deeply into them to see them as a wounded child. With closer relationships, I will inquire more about their history or how they view the world. I also remind myself tht trauma is relative. Just because someone grew up priviledged doesn’t mean that they didn’t expereince pain. 

Finally, there’s everyday joy. Can you remember when you were a child and how the simple forces of nature amazed you? Bring that thinking back...life is magical, amazing, and overwhelminglt beautiful when we really see it as it is. 

Cook these ingredients every day, in warm and comfortable temperatures and you will be astonished at the miracles that happen.

I would love to hear all about how this recipe works for you! 

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Why Children Misbehave

5/28/2019

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Why Children Misbehave 
 “Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need.” ― Marshall B. Rosenberg
     Children act out because they are in distress, not because they are bad people that need punishment. Acting out is a cry for help, a cry for love. When we respond to poor behavior with anger or punishment, it distances us and invalidates the child’s feelings, often sending them deeper into the feeling that caused the poor behavior in the first place. One of the biggest myths is that if we don’t punish our children that we will spoil them, but we couldn’t be further from the truth. Connecting instead of punishing creates emotional intelligence, allows us to help them process their big feelings, and increases their trust and connect.
Poor behavior is an expression of an unmet need. What is an unmet need? I often refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when going through my checklist of what my children may need. I start with the physiological needs: 70-80% of the time a poor bevavior has to do with being tired or having low blood sugar (being hungry). The rest of the time, it is often related to a need to feel safe or or an emotional need not being met.
     You don’t want children that are obedient all the time. “Yes I do! you plead. Just like many traps in life, in the short term, perfectly obedient and well-mannered children feel great. In the long term those children grow up to be people pleasers and even with years of therapy have trouble finding their authentic feelings and happiness. Children should be allowed to disagree, argue, and misbehave, they are trying to figure it out, trying o get their needs met, trying to find their way.  Misbehavior shows that they are comfortable enough with us to show us their inner pain. Of course, we want to make sure we help them learn a better way to get their needs met and can use Positive Discipline (in this chapter) and Transformational Communication (Chapter 9) to help them learn without having them be afraid of our retaliation or rejection for misbehavior. If we are too rigid then they will begin to lie and sneak. Rules should instead be simple and few. Offer explanations, “You must be so tired to hit your sister in that way.” Look to infer their behavior to help them learn emotional intelligence, “did you hit your sister because you are jealous that she got a candy?”
The goal is to teach them to articulate their feelings instead of acting them out. When children feel heard and listened to, they have no need to act out. Their feelings are accepted and validated.

What an opportunity!
     When a child acts out with us it is an opportunity for us to help them process their unmet need. Of course, in the moment it will not always feel that way. At times you may feel so angry yourself that you will realize that you also have an unmet need. What to do with all of these unmet needs? It’s an opportunity to learn together. Accepting your children then helps you accept yourself. Herein lies a beautiful learning opportunity, to teach your children that life is about learning, and that when they feel a negative emotion it is because something was not aligned with their core. When we teach them this, we can also remind ourselves, what holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl put so well, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
     Of course, this requires a change of attitude on our part. Our task becomes less focused on controlling external behavior and more focused on letting go of our need to control behavior. It is a place of acceptance instead of a place of judgement. Have you ever had the experience of being upset, telling a friend about your problem and them telling you what to do instead of comforting you? It doesn’t feel great and we do this to children all the time. We are so uncomfortable seeing them upset that we want to fix it right away. When they are sad, we feel responsible and sometimes even resentful…what do they have to be sad about? I took the day off of work, we just spent the day at the park and I just bought you ice cream…now you are crying?

Big Emotions Are an Opportunity for Growth
       Instead of viewing big emotions such as crying, temper tantrums, becoming angry easily, and anger outbursts as something inherently wrong or that needs to be “fixed,” the interpretation can shift into a learning opportunity. Through interpersonal neurobiology, we can understand these meltdowns from a neurological perspective. It informs our parenting practices significantly. For example, we know that most young children have not yet learned defense mechanisms to suppress their feelings. The temper tantrums and meltdowns that children express are in fact the way we often feel inside also, but as adults, we have become experts at suppressing or denying emotions.
     What happens when emotions are denied? When emotions are denied, there is a consequence.  From living in denial or living an inauthentic life, to feeling lack of pleasure or connection to others, denying our emotions is chock full of negative results. Other consequences that result in denying emotions include addictions such as being “busy,” overeating, overspending, and generally dissociating from our body. Sometimes we unconsciously create situations to replicate what needs to be healed from our childhood.
Therefore, one of the most powerful gifts we can give them is to accept them in all of their manifestations: the pleasant and unpleasant.  We need to learn to allow them to be in pain. Don’t teach them your patterns of minimization or denial, stay present with them, and the emotion will run its course and resolve itself. When we try to thwart the course of emotions and control them, we confuse our biological responses to stress and our yearning for authenticity with mind-games to hide from big feelings.
     But it’s so hard to see our children in pain! When they experience rejection, or a scraped knee, or a tearful outburst, we yearn to comfort them, as much for them as for ourselves. It hurts us to see them in pain. “Don’t cry,” “Don’t be angry” and “It’s Ok” are well-meaning communications, but have a disastrous result. We are, in essence, telling them that how they feel is invalid. This unintentionally teaches them that uncomfortable feelings are not allowed. Instead, the best thing we can say is, “I’m here for you.”
     This avoidance of pain is understandable, it’s in the air we breathe. As a society, we have a hard time allowing pain. We medicate fevers, which, within limits, are beneficial and meant to resolve themselves. We over-prescribe painkillers. We are so afraid of pain that we have become addicted to shopping, food, drugs, and being busy in order to distract ourselves from it. But pain does not go away when avoided or masked. The only way to process pain or uncomfortable feelings is to sit with the pain. The only way through pain is to go in it. To allow it to be, to teach us what it is we need to shift, to change—not to ignore it. And pain, can increase pleasure. Without pain, we wouldn’t recognize happiness. And when you have pain, you can experience a relief from pain and greater appreciation for what you have.
     Often, when a child has a tantrum or acts out in anger, it is leftover from a previous time when they did not fully express their emotion. My son likes to say “I’m getting my sadness out.” The emotions do not disappear with time. Emotions stay with us until we release them either intentionally or unintentionally. When emotions pent up, they can lead to outbursts in children as well as adults.
What do you think? Do you agree? What has been your experience?

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Do you rob your child of self-acceptance?

4/1/2019

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Many of us do, without realizing it, of course.

​We're trying to be helpful, to be supportive...but then it backfires.

​Parents Rob their kids of Self Acceptance When:

1. They communicate in a way that teaches external motivation. For example, when they use generic praise such as "good job” (which teaches kids external motivation/to please others). 

Instead parents can: use encouragement which focuses on effort such as “I’m proud of how hard you tried,” (which teaches kids internal motivation / self-acceptance).

2. They do things for their kids instead of allowing kids to do for themselves. This starts as early as toddlerhood and preschool years. When kids could be making a peanut butter sandwich with the parent (even though it takes longer and makes a mess) and the parent is always doing for them, they learn they are passive participants in life. Moving onto school-age when parents nag their kids about their homework or even do their homework for them, which robs them of the data they need to know they can do it themselves. Likewise, into college where the most extreme examples include having someone else write their child’s essay or even worse, as we’ve seen, lying and cheating to get their kids into designer colleges instead of accepting their kids’ natural placement.

Instead parents can: provide many opportunities for kids to do things themselves, whenever possible, it’s more often the case that it’s much better for a child to do almost everything on their own, assuming it doesn’t impede with their safety and it’s age appropriate.

3. They say unflattering things about themselves in front of their children. Children internalize negative talk that parents have about themselves. For example, when a mother looks in the mirror and complains about how she’s overweight or doesn’t like her chin, and the child is told that he looks like his mother this becomes internalized in the child. 

4. They allow media messages to infiltrate their home. Beauty or workout magazines tell almost all children (especially teens and pre-teens) that they are not good enough as they are. Commercials on YouTube or pop up ads are designed to make us feel bad about ourselves so we will buy their product and kids are much more susceptible to this than we adults.

Instead parents can: leave their magazines at the office; pay to not have ads on YouTube (easy to do); and monitor media closely.

5. Lastly, one of the most important ways for parents to teach their child self-acceptance is to work on their own self-acceptance. When a parent slips and says something negative about themselves in front of their child, as soon as a parent realizes they did this, they can tell their child that they are working on loving themselves better and this was an example of negative thinking they are working to change. 
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The true meaning of discipline

9/20/2018

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      When you hear “discipline” do you think “punishment?” Most people do…the meaning has been altered from its original form. The true meaning of discipline is “to learn” or “to teach” which came from the Latin disciplina. We know that for children to  learn why behaving positively is important is better than teaching that if they don’t that something negative will occur.
The traditional view of discipline is that our children behave because they learn to be scared of us. This creates not only disruption in the parent-child relationship, but emotional pain. We don’t have to teach them to be scared of us in order to behave. One of the major problems with using punishment as discipline is that children learn extremal motivation (to behave through fear of being punished) instead of internal motivation (to behave because they are motivated to behave). You see, punishment robs children of critical thinking—they comply to our wishes out of fear instead of understanding the reasons why positive behavior is important. In my work with helping adults process their childhood, I’ve heard “My parents called it discipline, but I now know it was abuse” so many times. Traditional discipline risks our children feeling as though they have been abused. When we are overly tired and our children are afraid of us, our yelling out of exasperation can be interpreted as abusive. In many countries, spanking is illegal and considered abusive. Why risk our children experiencing discipline as abuse when there are better ways of promoting positive behavior.
     The trouble is that punishment works (so does bribery) but only in the short-term. When children are raised with punishment, when they come of age to begin to question the behavior of their parents (often just before the teen years), they no longer will tolerate a threats and respond with extra rebellion and defiance. However, when children are raised with internal motivation and critical thinking, the teenage years are much less rocky for everyone and the parent-child relationship endures successfully.
Another issue with punishment is that when we are in a state of anger, we are likely to botch the discipline process, and punish more than we intended. This is often where yelling comes in. I’ve met with so many parents whose primary parenting goal is to stop yelling, yet when punishment continues to be used, this goal is almost impossible. The truth is that we can only respond to our children (or anyone for that matter) appropriately when we are in a neutral state.  As parents, it is our obligation to not become triggered by our children no matter what they did to provoke us.
     So, what should I do, you ask? I find that the simplest solutions are the most helpful: when deciding on discipline, ask yourself this: will what I say increase or decrease the connection with my child? If it lessens your connection with your child, don’t do it. The first rule of raising children consciously is to prioritize the relationship. Positive behavior is the result of a positive relationship.
Often, there is a misperception that relationship-based parenting means permissive parents who never say “no” to their kids. In fact, the kind of relationship we are going for is a balanced, honest, loving and safe relationship, not an unhealthy relationship. Funny enough, this parent-child relationship that psychologists have found to develop incredible children also happens to look a lot like the relationship that psychologists have found makes the best marriages. Ideally, the relationship we want to have with our children is much like the relashipships we want to have in our life in general. These relationships are based on authenticity, feel inherently safe, allow for mistakes and are mostly drama-free. These relationships have love at their core and don’t need manipulation. These relationships allow us to be our best selves.  The same is true for parent-child relationships.
Generally, most parents fall into three parenting styles: Permissive, Democratic (also called Authoritative), or Punitive (also called Authoritarian). Permissive parents are very loving but have few rules or guidelines. Punitive parents are very “do it or else” and Democratic parents, which Jane Nelsen describes in her book on Positive Discipline, as “kind and firm.”
Again and again, Democratic  parenting styles have been shown to be the best approach to raising children. Democratic parenting is related to higher self esteem and life satisfaction. The democratic approach has also been found to positively influence social competence and social and emotional skills.
       Sounds great on paper, but if you were raised with a too permissive or overly punitive parenting style it can be hard to find the middle ground on your own. Most who know that the way they were raised was not ideal tend to sway too much in the opposite direction: children that were raised with too much fear, tend to be permissive parents, parents that were raised too permissive or neglected tend to be either too strict or overly involved. It can be hard to find the middle ground alone yet raising children isn’t something that has to be guessed at. We know what works and what doesn’t.

The Myth of Punishment
     When we punish our children, yell at them, spank them, scold them, shame them, or lecture them, it creates fear, not learning. The brain gets flooded with stress hormones and cannot process our attempts at teaching. Best to wait at least a few hours after. When humans are scared, they cannot learn! “Tough love” creates fear, distance and resentment. In teens, parents often use the idea of “tough love” thinking that they should “know better” by now. But teens, need our connection more than ever. It’s hard enough to connect with teens but when we use “tough love” with them it creates isolation from who they need to rely on the most : their parents.

But What About Rewards?
     The problem with rewards is they don’t help children learn to be responsible because the parent is the one monitoring. Rewards take away a child’s potential for feeling good about their accomplishments and their ability to feel capable. Instead of teaching children how good it feels to behave considerately to others and to achieve on their own, rewards teach children focus on “what’s in it for me.”  Rewards rarely produce lasting changes in behavior. When the rewards stop, children often go back to behaving the same way they did before the reward. Research has also shown that children whose parents make frequent use of rewards tend to be less generous than their peers
Rewards also produce less quality work. People expecting to receive a reward for completing a task (or for doing it successfully) simply do not perform as well as those who expect nothing
     Alfie Kohn has been researching this predicament for decades. His essay “The Risks of Rewards” explains “There are several plausible explanations for this puzzling but remarkably consistent finding. The most compelling of these is that rewards cause people to lose interest in whatever they were rewarded for doing. This phenomenon, has been demonstrated in scores of studies.”
One of the reasons why I feel that the most connected parents and teachers end up rewarding their children and students is because rewards make us feel good. It’s kind of like giving ice cream to a child. It makes you feel good to share it with them but you know it’s bad for them.

The Myth of Being Permissive
     Just as parenting with threats and punishments can be harmful, likewise, parenting with few rules or guidelines can also be scarring. A child is taught that relationships have no boundaries and that love means you can do what you want to do without regard for others. I began my parenting journey on the too permissive side. Just like every parent cliche, the pendulum was swinging far on the opposite for me. In the beginning, I avoided saying “no” when my daughter was a small child at all costs. When she would ask for more candy I would offer her a fruit. When she would ask for a toy, I would distract her with a bird outside the toy store. Looking back, I can see this was just a form of fear of conflict that was completely unconscious. I was teaching the balanced kind and firm way of discipline but my subconscious fears kept arising. In my childhood, it was not safe to disagree and so my permissiveness with her was a form of avoiding a feeling I had not yet learned to resolve. What a gift she gave me. I was able to see that my fear of conflict was teaching her to avoid conflict. By the time her brother came around four years later she had taught me to be comfortable saying “no” and I finally was able to update my programming away from what worked for me as a child (to avoid conflict) to a healthier relationship (to be direct in communication). If I hadn’t been open to that lesson, my daughter may have grown up in a passive state, accepting what was given to her instead of communicating her needs directly. So you see that being too permissive can create future suffering.
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    Author

    Jennifer Johnston-Jones, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder and executive director of Roots & Wings Institute for Personal Growth and Family Excellence. In addition, she keynotes conferences and conducts workshops for parents, educators and clinicians. Dr. Johnston-Jones lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband and two children whom she adores.

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