Self Image / Dance Therapy

Self Image / Dance Therapy for Women

Do you judge and compare yourself to others? 

Do you want to feel more comfortable in your own mind and body? 

I have combined my years of knowledge as a Mental Health Therapist and Dance Instructor to create this helpful workshop. 

I will be teaching Stress reduction techniques and Therapeutic self acceptance exercises through the form of Belly dance. You don't have to know how to dance to attend! Women of all ages, shapes, sizes and skill sets are welcome! Wear workout clothes or anything you feel comfortable dancing in. Bring a scarf to wrap around your waist to accent your hip movements. It doesn't have to be a coin scarf, any scarf will do. There will also be brand-new belly dance scarves sold at the workshop for $20. 

You can wear tennis shoes, dance shoes, ballet slippers, or bare feet. Just don't wear socks by themselves as the floor is slippery.Dancers for life dance studio is located in a small plaza between AutoZone and Ramey's. It's also located directly across the street from Villa Bakery. Parking is in the rear.

What's the difference between Guilt & Shame? How do we overcome them? Here's how:

It is important to know that overcoming guilt and shame does not mean you are letting yourself off the hook. It is merely determining responsibility, ownership, acceptance and making amends with what has occurred. 

Guilt - Based on negative Actions - What makes us feel guilty? What makes us feel shame? Both guilt and shame are closely connected to our emotions and we tend to feel them when we believe we have violated a rule that is important to us. Every person has their own set of intrinsic rules that are standards for how we should live our lives. We often tend to feel guilty when we perceive that we have done something wrong, or broke one our rules. Have you ever found yourself saying, “I should have done this”, or “I ought to have done that”? These kinds of thoughts are associated with feelings of guilt. This is because we feel that we should have done something better or more close to our standards. 

Shame - Based on negative sense of self - When we feel shame, we also tend to feel we have done something wrong. However, feelings of shame are connected to a highly negative view of ourselves. Shame can leave us feeing, inadequate, flawed, awful and no good. Moreover, secretiveness often surrounds shame and we may believe that others would think less of us if they knew “the secret”. Or that revealing our secret would result in criticism, condemnation or rejection. Because of this, we often do not share our feelings of shame, which, when remains hidden, can be emotionally destructive. 

So how can we begin to overcome our guilt and shame? Below are 5 aspects to consider:

1. Assess the seriousness of your actions. To begin assessing the seriousness of your actions you have to consider if the actions were small or large events. How you determine this will be based on your own internal rules. You can complete a thought record to help evaluate the situation and decide if the evidence supports the thought/behavior to warrant the degree of guilt/shame you are feeling. You can also ask yourself some of the following questions to obtain a different perspective on the situation: Would a friend consider this situation to be as serious as you do? Would other people consider it less serious? Why? How important will this situation be to you in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or 5 years from now? Can any damage that occurred be corrected? How long would this take? And was there an even worse action that you considered and avoided? 

2. Weighing personal responsibility.  One way to weigh the responsibility for your guilt and shame is to complete a responsibility pie chart. To do this, you would start by listing the situation/event which contributed to your feelings and then list all the individuals/things involved in the situation/event. Once you have these listed, you can draw your pie chart in slices reflecting the appropriate amount of responsibility each person/thing played in the situation. Be sure to draw your slice last, as to not assign too much blame to yourself before considering other parts. Being able to visualize the responsibility can help to decide your course of action.

3. Breaking the silence. As mentioned, secretiveness often surrounds shame. Therefore, an important method to overcoming shame, is to be able to share with a person with whom you trust. Also, when you do decide to share, ensure that you have adequate time to be open and receive essential feedback. 

4. Self-forgiveness. Recognize that part of being  human is knowing that we all make mistakes and being a good person does not mean that you will never do something bad. Self-forgiveness includes recognizing your good and bad qualities, as well as your weaknesses and strengths. All of us at some point have violated a rule or standard. To forgive ourselves we have to change our interpretation of the mistakes we made. For example, changing your thought of “I made this mistake because I am a bad person”, to “This mistake happened during a difficult time in my life and when I didn’t care how I behaved” “This is not who I am as a person”. "I have learned from this and will do better in the future."

5. Making amends for the harm done. If harm was done related the the experience or situation it is important to make amends. This involves recognizing your wrongdoings, being able to face the person you hurt, asking for forgiveness and determining what you will do to repair the hurt and damage that occurred. 

By utilizing these 5 aspects you can minimize or even eliminate the guilt and shame you have felt. It is important to know that overcoming guilt and shame does not mean you are letting yourself off the hook. It is merely, determining responsibility, ownership, acceptance and making amends with what has occurred. 

Written By: Lara Pomnitz, graduate level intern.

Edited by Charity Loring, LMSW Loring Therapy, LLC http://www.loringtherapy.com/

Adapted from: Mind Over Mood

You can face your Social Anxiety using Exposure Therapy

If you ever have experienced social anxiety, then you know just how difficult and challenging it can be to find yourself in social situations. However, a key factor to being able to overcome your fears is being able to face them. You can face your anxiety through a technique known as exposure therapy. Exposure therapy, simply put, incorporates the act of exposing yourself to the feared situation or anxiety inducing situation and learning ways of overcoming the fear. Exposure therapy is clinically proven to help individuals overcome fears and anxiety.  Below are some tips to aid in the process of exposing yourself to assist in overcoming anxiety: 

You can begin by identifying your catastrophic belief related to your anxiety. Your catastrophic belief is your belief associated with the anxiety inducing situation, that overestimates the likely hood of a negative event to occur. Most often, people with social anxiety overestimate the degree to which others are evaluating and criticizing them. Furthermore, they believe that they are unable to cope with the criticism, rather it be real or imagined criticism. 

Try the gradual exposure approach. This can be done by breaking down your fears into a series of steps, starting with mildly challenging steps and increasing in difficulty.  You can do this by creating a list of situations which elicit anxiety or fear and then number how much distress you would feel if you were in each situation. Then rank each situation from the least distressing to the most distressing situation. The first exposure attempt should be difficult enough to induce some anxiety but easy enough that you feel able to complete it. It is extremely important as to not try and confront a very difficult/feared situation to soon, because you have the potential to become overly anxious which can induce a panic attack. A negative experience such as this, would only strengthen the connection between the fear and the setting.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. A key factor to overcoming your anxiety is to repeatedly place yourself in the same situation until you feel very little to no anxiety inducing distress from the situation. This means placing yourself in the situation frequently enough to become habitual. If your exposures are too far apart your fear will rise again by the next time you attempt the exposure. 

Prolong the exposure. Another key factor to ensuring effectiveness of the exposure is to remain in the situation until your anxiety level decreases. It is very common behavior to want to escape the situation the moment the fear or anxiety appears. However, when we leave or avoid an anxiety inducing situation we will further strengthen our belief that the situation causes anxiety. Furthermore, due to the decrease in anxiety once out of the situation, we come to believe avoidance to be a helpful strategy. However, by staying in the situation until our anxiety decreases, we actually help ourselves to feel less anxiety when confronted with the same situation again. 

As we find ourselves in anxiety inducing situations, it is important to remember to remain in the situation until the anxiety has decreased, as this is an important aspect in being able to overcome the anxiety. However, if you feel your anxiety level is too high, you may find that you will benefit from taking a timeout from the feared situation. 

For example, if you were attending a wedding you can choose to either step outside for a moment or break away to the bathroom. During your timeout, you can allow yourself time to think over the situation and rationalize the anxiety. Remember what your catastrophic belief is and think about how it may be effecting your ability to overcome the situation. Try some deep breathing or other therapeutic stress reduction exercises if needed. Once, you feel less anxiety, you can then go back to the wedding. Keep reminding yourself of your goal and how essential the exposure is to your ability to overcome. 

Written By: Lara Pomnitz, graduate level intern.

Edited by Charity Loring, LMSW Loring Therapy, LLC http://www.loringtherapy.com/