Brittany N. Murphy, PhD, LPC

You know that deep breathing is good for you and whatever, but if it's ever felt hard to "just breathe" here are three ways to guide your breath to regulate yourself.

If you work with me, we're going to talk about your values. And if that makes you feel like cringing, you're not alone.

It's not unusual for people to struggle to tell me what their values are. We might have some vague idea, but figuring out how values actually look like in our everyday life can be a challenge.

So to help you start finding your own values, here are three ways your values show up in your daily life.

See if you can find evidence of your values this weekend!

Sometimes we need to keep it simple.

Regret.

As a therapist who works with people who feel stuck, regret and the fear of regret are frequent visitors in my office. (I'm posting this in the midst of the Sunday scaries for a reason.)

You'll often hear me say that emotions are information, and regret is no different. If you'd like to be able to understand your own regret(s) so that you can do something with them, check out The Power of Regret by . (And maybe come talk to me about it!)

Tonight's presentation was a success! Thank you for the thoughtful questions and comments, Maryville adjuncts!

I used to bother getting offended by portrayals of bad therapists and bad therapy on TV.

I was teaching an undergraduate class when the first season of 13 Reasons Why came out, and they kept asking me about the school counselor, so I watched the whole thing in order to be able to talk to them. It made me really angry to see my profession portrayed in such an inept manner with such tragic consequences. So I had to sit with that anger and figure out what it meant.

What I landed on was this: Bad therapists make good TV.

I value good therapy, so when I see bad therapy, it conflicts with what is important to me - providing quality, competent, compassionate counseling that helps people connect to the lives they want.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying portrayals of therapy on TV, whether it's Gypsy, In Treatment, Private Practice, or any other show that includes therapy or a therapist character. Just make sure that you see it as entertainment and not an actual depiction of what happens in therapy.

(If you'd like to know what therapy is ACTUALLY like, reach out to a therapist, not Netflix.)

"Life's not fair, is it?"

I can't see the word "fair" without thinking of Scar in the Lion King.

When we're kids, it can be simpler to figure out what is fair.

You had a turn, now it's my turn. That's fair.
I got to cut the piece of cake in two, then you got to choose which piece you wanted. That's fair.

As adults, we still value this idea of fairness, but it gets a whole lot more complicated to figure out what IS fair, especially when it comes to figuring out how to spend our time and run our households.

Eve Rodsky gamifies the division of necessary life tasks in order to preserve what she calls "unicorn space" - that magical time where you connect with the things, people, or activities that bring you joy and help you feel like you.

If you can't remember the last time that you did something that wasn't work,
if you want a concrete framework for tackling what has felt perpetual and impossible,
if you and your partner are ready to change the game,
check out Fair Play.

Sometimes the most fun things are surprising or unanticipated, so if you're seeking fun, you might not find it.

Let fun come to you. Even if that concert, that dinner party, that video game, or that book doesn't *sound* like fun, you may still find fun in the experience.

That doesn't mean that any experience has to be 100% fun top to bottom. There can still be anxiety, uncertainty, disappointment, frustration, or boredom mixed in there.

Remove the pressure to HAVE FUN!!!!! And you may actually have some fun.

Think again.

Those words alone sound pretty threatening, don't they?

Why is it that we're so threatened by the idea of rethinking?

It could be that we're afraid to find out that we were wrong. It could be that we've held a certain belief so long or so strongly that we fear what others may think of us if we don't hold that belief anymore.

You know, it could also be that you find strength in your position AND you find room to consider a different position. You could end up learning more about the topic and/or about yourself in the process.

Adam Grant's Think Again is an important read for all of us. The words "think again" shift from threatening to empowering. Being willing to think about your thinking isn't a sign of weakness; it's a sign of strength.

Reading this book may challenge you and your beliefs, but then again, if you were willing to be challenged, that's the whole point.

If being critical was the best way to achieve inner peace, I wouldn't have a job.

Self-criticism frankly seems to be the enemy of inner peace. The majority of my clients who grapple with it find it distracting and demoralizing, not this motivating force that we somehow expect it to be.

Notice the questions that you're asking yourself.

Are they critical?
- "Am I good enough?"
- "What's wrong with me?"
- "Why can't I handle this?"

Or compassionate?
- "What is good for me?"
- "What is tough about this moment?"
- "What do I need in order to handle this?"

Shift your questions, and you'll shift your relationship with your circumstances, yourself, and the present moment.

It's tough to get back into the swing of things after a long weekend (a holiday weekend typically rife with family time, no less).

Take a note from Dr. Bruce Perry and find some rhythm this week. No, he isn't saying that you're a horrible dancer.

Dr. Perry advocates for doing anything that is repetitive, patterned physical activity because it helps to regulate your nervous system at its most basic level. Only once you're regulated can you access those higher levels of emotional and logical thinking.

Walking, running, swimming, dancing, swaying, drumming, singing, swinging (yes, like on a swing set), jumping on your kid's trampoline, even deep breathing - all of these activities help you to regulate.

If you want to get yourself back to neutral after a big weekend, build some time into your week for rhythm and regulation.

If your needs aren't being met, you're unlikely to be the best version of yourself.

HALT is a quick acronym for the states that make us less likely to respond in the way that we want because our needs aren't being met.

Hungry - needing food
Angry - needing justice
Lonely - needing connection
Tired - needing rest

This is helpful on two fronts.

1.) It helps you to understand why you couldn't tolerate just one more thing on your to-do list and blew up at your partner who asked you for a small favor.
2.) It gives you direction on how to recognize and then address those needs so you CAN respond how you want.

So while you're nursing that physical and/or emotional hangover from Thanksgiving, check in with yourself and HALT.

You know you need sleep, blah blah blah.

But do you really know how and why we need sleep?

Do you know how sleep affects your creativity, your focus, and your relationships?

Do you know why they are called "power naps"?

If the answer to any of these is no, check out Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

True story: I have been reading this one on and off for months because I keep hitting on some juicy nugget and then I need time to process it before moving on.

This one can be tough to swallow.

Our culture highly values productivity, and we learn from an early age to tie worth to something tangible. For instance, people can come to believe that they're only worth something if they make X number of dollars per years or if they achieve first place on some list that they deem important.

By the same token, we can come to believe that it's not worth doing something if we aren't sure that we'll get our desired outcome. This makes it awfully hard to ever take a risk because taking a risk, by definition, means that we aren't sure of the outcome.

But there are many things in life that we need to do and want to do, and we cannot always be sure of the outcome. That's why it's important to separate the value of the effort you put into something from the value of the desired outcome.

If it means something to you to go for that promotion, to set that boundary with your parents, to reach out and apologize to somebody that you've hurt, choose to see the value in the effort. If you get your desired outcome, that's gravy on your mashed potatoes.

Disagreements don't tend to bring out the best in us.

Most disagreements in romantic relationships are perpetual, so when you find yourself having *that fight* again, it's usually not just about what is happening in that moment.

You might be time traveling to past grievances or flash-forwarding to some horrible imagined future. You might be frozen and unable to respond in any meaningful way.

If this is you, put yourself in time-out.

This means that you take 20 minutes to regulate so that you can be the present partner that you want to be. This does not mean you go stew about how you can "win" the argument. You go walk, meditate, doodle, drink some water, or whatever it takes to help regulate your nervous system.

Taking a time-out tells your partner that you care more about the relationship than about being right in that moment.

Please note: You put yourself in time-out. You don't put your partner in time-out. Time-outs are tools to help us respond in the way we want to respond.

It's common to hear people talk about therapy as "doing the work", so why would it be weird to use notes as a tool when you're working?

Some clients will almost sheepishly look down or mutter something like "Oh I just want to write that down" when taking notes during our sessions. I'll usually jump in then and say "Please do take notes!"

You certainly don't have to take notes, but some people find it helpful to organize their thoughts prior to session by bringing some notes with them, and others like to write things down in the moment so that they have a better chance of remembering and using a particular insight or strategy.

You writing something down shows me that you're engaged in what we're discussing. I will never see that as a bad thing!

A lot of us are carrying around other people's stuff, and we may not even be aware of it.

One common way that it shows up is being irritable, frustrated, or just sad and really not knowing why.

If you're an empathetic person, you're especially vulnerable to picking up on and then taking on other people's stuff.

So if you notice yourself feeling out of sorts and you don't really know why, look at the people around you. Are any of them feeling this way? If so, you could be taking on somebody else's stuff.

The main problem with this is that you can't deal with somebody else's stuff for them. That means that you're stuck with the problem and no power to improve the situation.

By asking yourself "Whose stuff is this?", you can figure out if 1.) it is indeed your stuff and you need to deal with it, or 2.) it's somebody else's stuff and therefore you can't deal with it effectively.

As you head into this weekend, give yourself permission to be yourself, even if it isn't comfortable.

Be you, even if it's just to get a sense of what it feels like.

Exposure to anything increases openness and decreases resistance. Just like Negronis, cold showers, or TikTok, it may take multiple experiences to make you a fan.

Burnout was an issue long before the pandemic, but the past 19 months have really thrown it into overdrive for a lot of people.

If you feel like you have nothing left to give (but you have to keep giving because otherwise your job/family/life will implode), this book is for you.

One point that really stuck with me was the idea of having a backlog of uncompleted stress response cycles. This explains why somebody's flippant advice to "Take a bubble bath!" feels like inadequate and insensitive advice for self-care. You need to complete each cycle in order to discharge that stress, and if you don't, it builds up into this unpleasant, demoralizing, and seemingly hopeless experience of burnout.

If you'd like to learn more about why this happens and what to do about it, check out Burnout by Emily and Andrea Nagoski.

I'm pretty sure I have to thank for this one.

The vulnerability hangover shows up differently for all of us, but it's generally that visceral "icky" feeling that we get after sharing some more typically hidden part of ourselves.

That means it could hit after a big work presentation, an intimate conversation with a loved one, or even a therapy session. (In fact, I warn all of my new clients at the end of their first session to pay attention to if/how their vulnerability hangover shows up.)

Feeling "off" after sharing a piece of ourselves doesn't mean that sharing was the wrong decision. In fact, we probably shared for a very good reason. Let yourself notice the feeling - the irritability, sadness, anger, frustration, numbness, or whatever flavor shows up for you - and recognize it for what it is - a vulnerability hangover.

Just like any other hangover, it'll pass (maybe with some extra hydration and sleep). Let the feeling(s) come and stay and go in their own time.

Sometimes I'd like to share what I'm reading so that you can see how I'm learning and broadening my perspective along with you.

has some truth bombs to drop, and she drops some of them here in What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat.

Part of what makes bias challenging to discuss is that it can be hidden or taboo to discuss, and the bias against fatness and the privilege of thinness is no different. Aubrey Gordon does a great job of providing specific examples and solid evidence that helped me to re-think how I've seen fatness in the past and how I will address my own biases going forward.

You might feel uncomfortable, you might feel seen, but you'll definitely feel something when you read this book. I know that I did.

If you're a podcast person, occasionally I'll recommend podcast episodes that I found especially interesting.

My first offering - a two-parter from from a few years ago. (Originally posted on June 1, 2017.)

We're taught about emotions as universal experiences that mean the same thing to everybody, but what if our emotions aren't that universal? What if sadness for me doesn't mean the same thing for you? How might that shape our understanding of other people and ourselves?

If you're interested in re-thinking how you understand your feelings and the emotional experiences of others, you'll find some food for thought here.

Heads-up: Both parts include discussions about death, so I wouldn't recommend listening to it with kiddos in the car.

Many people come to therapy because they think they're broken and need to be fixed.

1.) Therapy doesn't "fix" you or anybody in your life.

2.) Therapy CAN help you get better - better at understanding yourself, better at articulating your needs, better at holding boundaries, and better at being in relationships.

Wherever you are right now, you have room to grow, and that is part of being human.

If you'd like to get better (at doing the things that are important to you, at being the person that you want to be), therapy can help.

When I think of relationship research, my mind immediately goes to .

This book gives you the things to watch out for in your relationship, and more importantly, it tells you how to avoid them and how to repair when they do happen. (Because things like the Four Horsemen happen in every relationship. What really matters is that they don't become your predominant ways of communicating with your partner.)

I find The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work to be accessible and interesting. It is written from a perspective that emphasizes relationships between men and women, but I believe that these ideas are applicable to relationships (romantic and otherwise) between people of all genders. Enjoy!

While the title of therapist tells you what somebody does, it doesn't necessarily tell you about somebody's training. (And you want somebody with appropriate training and experience!) There are a few professional routes to becoming a trained therapist.

Only qualified mental health professionals can provide therapy, and these professions include counseling, marriage and family therapy, social work, psychiatric nursing, and psychiatry.

This means that there are a lot of us who are eligible to provide therapy, so if you're looking for a qualified therapist, look for somebody with the appropriate graduate degree and licensure.

If people call themselves therapists but don't have an appropriate degree and license, they are not qualified to provide therapy.

Have you ever disagreed with a decision that somebody else made?

Of course you have. Social media makes it easy for us to witness the myriad choices that other people make, and it encourages us to have an opinion about those choices. (Like how you're encouraged to "like" this post.)

The more of other people's lives we're exposed to, the more opportunities we have to see something that we disagree with and thus the more opportunities we have to get upset about the thing that we saw that we disagree with.

If you find yourself getting lost in that cycle of disagreeing and being upset and then getting more upset, give yourself the out of saying "Good for you, not for me".

Don't like the outfit that that celebrity wore? "Good for them, not for me."
Don't want to follow an Instagram therapist's tip for self-care? "Good for other people, not for me."
Don't agree with your sister's decision to use cloth diapers? "Okay, sis, good for you, not for me."

Next time you notice yourself getting upset about somebody else's decision about how to live their life, give them (and yourself) some grace and some space by saying "Good for you, not for me".

Let's talk about advice.

Advice is when your parent, friend, or boss tells you, "Here's what you should do." Sure, sometimes we would LOVE for somebody to solve a dilemma for us, and sometimes we follow the advice of these important people in our lives. But your therapist is not your parent, your friend, or your boss.

It is never appropriate -- ethically or otherwise -- for a mental health professional to tell you what you have to do.

As therapists, part of the reason why we're helpful is that we're outsiders in your life. That distance can give us some objectivity so that we can provide meaningful feedback on a given scenario, but we don't have to live with the consequences of a given action, and even if you tell us a lot about your life, we will never know enough to make a decision for you. (Also we value your autonomy, so we will never threaten that by telling you how you should live your life.)

So even when a client asks me for advice with something, I will always frame my feedback as "something that you could do" or "something that you can consider". Shoulds, have tos, and musts have no place in therapy.

introduced me to and her fantastic book Digital Body Language.

Filled with practical tips, this book helps us translate our effective face-to-face communication skills to the demands of online communication. (And if you don't think that you're a great communicator in person, you'll find this book helpful there too!)

I particularly appreciated the Trust and Power Matrix as a tool to assess what strategies are most likely to be effective in a given situation.

Most of us spend our days in charge of something, whether it be a project, a classroom, or even our own families. The pressure to perform can feel huge and draining.

That's why one of the best antidotes is intentionally doing something where you're not in charge or not the best (like taking an exercise class or learning a new language or nurturing your newfound passion for birdwatching).

This is especially important for high achievers and perfectionists who spend much of their time and energy in the pursuit of peak performance.

Give yourself permission this week to do something, even if (especially if) it's new to you or challenging for you. The next time your friend invites you to go axe throwing, say yes! Practice doing things because you want to do them, not just because you have to do them or because you feel you need to prove something by doing them.