When Care Becomes Overcare

Posted on | by HeartMath

Compassion and care are powerful attributes of the heart. Hopefully most of us know how good it feels to be cared for. From the smallest acts like someone holding the door open for you, to bigger expressions like a community deciding to crowd source funds to help someone pay for their hospital bills.

Compassion and care provide a regenerative energy for both the sender and receiver – even if we don’t always see the ways it nurtures and heals.

On occasion our care and compassion can leave us feeling drained and stressed. Emergency relief workers will tell you that compassion fatigue is very real – it takes practice to care for people without becoming overly identified with their challenges.

The energy drain and depletion we sometimes feel can happen as a result of being out of balance with our care. Sometimes our care can cross a line and turns into worry, anxiety and stress. In other words, our care and compassion start to drain our energy and becomes what is called “overcare.”

It’s important to balance our care so it doesn’t adversely affect our relationships, our health or other areas of our lives. Here’s an example of how one person’s overcare caused him a lot of stress.

Isaac recently told us about his father who has an unresolved health issue. The father learned about the issue a few years ago, and was told it should be taken care of within a few months. Isaac has been urging his father to take action ever since.

Recently Isaac was speaking with his father and found out that nothing had been done. Instead of his doctor’s recommendation, the father intended to try something different he found on the internet.

Having a deep care and concern for his father, Isaac couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was losing sleep over it and the more he reviewed the conversation, the more upset he became. The next time Isaac spoke with his father they had a huge argument over the issue and they didn’t speak for a couple weeks as a result.

Isaac realized that his care for his father had turned into worry and anxiety. He could only think of the worst case scenarios and was convinced they would end up happening. Isaac’s care turned into a stress producing overcare event in his life and also his fathers. It was the opposite of what he intended.

Once Isaac realized this he decided to talk with his father. Back to a place of balanced care, the two were able to come to an agreement that left them both feeling connected in the heart again.

Isaac said he was able to see how his overcare was driven by being over attached to how he wanted things to go and to the timing he felt was most appropriate.

Overcare isn’t bad, and it certainly doesn’t mean we don’t genuinely care. Yet it can block the flow of regenerative care between the sender and receiver.

Our hearts have an amazing capacity to care, and by all means we never want to stop caring – it is one of the greatest gifts we can give or receive. Adding more balance can amplify the power of our care and the regenerative quality it can provide.

– Your friends at HeartMath

TIP: In the book, Heart Intelligence, chapter ten provides valuable insights about care and overcare. It also offers suggested practices that can help with learning to identify overcare and ways we can more quickly return to balanced care.

3 Facts to Make You Smarter than Stress

Posted on | by HeartMath

Stress knows no boundaries – it robs us of sleep, our health and happiness and drives us to make choices we often regret. The only way to defend our self against stress is to become smarter than stress.

Understanding how the stress response works gives us an advantage by allowing us to take proactive steps. The following three facts will help you think differently about stress and provide some direction for positive action

Your body doesn’t care if it’s a big stress or a little one.

The human body doesn’t discriminate between our frustrated response to a bad cell phone signal or the surge of fear triggered from a near miss on the freeway. Stress affects the body in very predictable ways. The fight or flight stress response begins with a cascade of 1,400 biochemical events in your body.

The best strategy for stress is to address it the moment it triggers.

Stress accumulates so addressing it in the moment helps to minimize the strain we put on our body, especially with the smaller irritations that are more manageable. The binge-and-purge approach, like waiting to decompress with an evening workout, extended weekend or vacation, may be too late. While these are great activities for overall life balance, learning to shift a stress reaction in the moment can significantly reduce the cumulative time our body spends in a state of fight or flight.

We can learn to retrain how we respond to stress.

We can learn to intercept our reactive responses to life challenges with emotion-refocusing techniques. They’re easy to learn and when practiced often, they can help us to re-pattern the older emotional habits and create a new baseline reference and response. They also help us increase our flexibility so we can remain resilient in the face of challenge. Start re-training your stress response with these simple strategies: Use the Notice and Ease™ tool from HeartMath. Practice being an observer of your inner responses. These simple steps help us become more attentive to the moment, and can also help us take the intensity out of emotions like worry or frustration.

  1. Notice and admit what you’re feeling.
  2. Try to name the feeling.
  3. Tell yourself to E-A-S-E as you gently focus in the heart, relax as you breath and e-a-s-e the stress out.

Reset with the Quick Coherence® Technique. This simple technique can help you reset if you do lose your cool. As you follow the steps you learn to create what is called heart-coherence, a psychophysiological state where your mind, emotions and body become more balanced. It’s an excellent tool to use when you begin feeling frustration, irritation, anxiety or even anger. When we are more balanced we’re also less likely to react in the first place. Get a mobile trainer for your purse or pocket. There are personal technologies that are highly effective for retraining your response to stress. They work by providing personalized visual feedback combined with the coherence-building techniques. This method of retraining your stress reactions works to create a new baseline allowing us to see, feel and confirm when an emotional shift happens. Two of the more widely used of these technologies are the emWave2® and the Inner Balance™ transformation systems. We really can influence how much we allow stressful circumstances to affect us – and with a little direction and personal commitment we can change our response to stress. With Care,
Your Friends at HeartMath

Spring Cleaning Old Beliefs

Posted on | by HeartMath

With springtime comes new beginnings; a freshness in the air that encourages us to start new and let go of what we don’t need. We often turn our attention to neglected areas at home like the cluttered closet or messy corners. With the energy of fresh starts in the air it’s also a great time to look inside at old-beliefs and tired attitudes that limit us.

Self-limiting attitudes are about as useful as an old shoe with no sole. Why hang onto them if they cannot help you in a positive, useful way? It’s time we let these go!

Try playing with this simple exercise to interrupt self-limiting attitudes and create something new:

  • Start with a 30-minute time period and tune your inner awareness towards old beliefs so you can begin to catch them. Increase the duration or how often you do it as you desire.
  • During the designated time period watch for limiting attitudes such as: I can’t do that, I’m not smart enough.
  • Once you identify an old belief that you want to change, center in the heart and ask yourself what would a kinder attitude to replace the old one?

For example, if your limiting belief is, “I’m so stupid; this is why I don’t try new things – by now I should know how to do this.” Stop those thoughts and instead say, “These thoughts aren’t helping me. Goodbye old thoughts!”

Replace the old belief with a new, positive inner message adding a compassionate attitude like you would use with someone you love. A positive replacement attitude might be, “I’m still learning how to do this. No worries, I know I’ll get it down soon.”

It may feel a bit superficial to start, but the more you play with this easy practice, the more your attitudes and feelings will start aligning with your positive inner dialogue.

With Care,
Your Friends at HeartMath

Balancing Compassion and Care

Posted on | by HeartMath

It’s become almost a weekly event that a story goes viral about someone that acted with compassion for another in need. The viral momentum of these stories is a reflection of what a lot of us desire in our hearts – a more compassionate and caring world.

Compassion is one of the most supportive energies of love we can give. It benefits the sender and receiver. While we may not always see how our compassion nurtures, supports and heals others, we instinctively know that it is important to feel and essential for humanity.

As we witness our world going through waves of chaos from extreme weather, acts of terrorism, man-made and natural disasters, etc., we feel our hearts being pulled towards those who are affected.

At times we might feel drained and stressed from what we thought was giving compassion. Like when a friend is going through a really tough time, we might feel that our efforts to care are actually pulling us down. This energy drain and depletion comes mostly from unbalanced empathetic care. Empathy can produce strong feelings of care but often comes with tentacles that create an over-attachment to what we care about.

Learning to balance our empathetic interactions can help us understand the tone of true compassion -and as we balance and manage our care we increase the effectiveness of our compassion.

The topics of care versus overcare and understanding true compassion are important subjects discussed in chapter ten of the book Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart. Doc Childre, one of the book’s authors and the founder of HeartMath, provides a deeper understanding around these topics and offers practices to help people find their balance point.

As we’ve seen in Brussel’s this week, it’s our care and compassion for each other that can help us stay strong and resilient. We can use our heart’s intelligence to maintain our balance – and it’s within that balance that our care and compassion will be its most effective.

With Care,
Your Friends at HeartMath

The Practice of Patience

Posted on | by HeartMath

Hurry up and wait. It might sound like a humorous oxymoron, yet in our hyper-connected world perhaps it’s truer than not.

Here’s an example – have you ever had someone send you a text message and a couple minutes later they call you to see if their message was received? Or maybe you caught yourself getting frustrated after waiting a minute for a webpage to load.

It seems that our patience threshold has lessened as life has sped up. If you think about it, practicing patience can really help to reduce a lot of stress in our lives.

Impatience can have great costs. Not only does the stress caused by impatience erode our health and well-being, but it has other consequences too.

Impatience can lead to things such as: miscommunications because someone is only half listening and feeling pulled to the next moment; poor decisions because hurried ambition overrides our intuitive discernment; disconnection with others because judgment, anger and other byproducts of impatience can preclude our true care and the higher expression of our heart.

A good way to practice increasing our patience is to start with the common day-to-day events; the long lines at the store, being put on hold during a phone call, traffic jams and no cell phone reception. These common occurrences are opportunities to exercise our practice of patience.

Try this Heart-Focused Breathing™ technique from HeartMath, as a quick and simple way to reset whenever you start to feel impatient.

  • Focus your attention in the area of the heart.
  • Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.

Tip: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable).

A great resource we can recommend for learning simple exercises to increase patience and ease is the new book, Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart.

The practice of patience allows us to approach situations with more care, kindness and understanding- the very attributes that make life enjoyable.

Making Choices From the Heart

Posted on | by HeartMath

Have you ever been faced with having to make a choice that seemed to send your mind into an endless thinking marathon? Or maybe you felt completely frozen inside, unable to discern which in the mix of triggered emotions you should focus on first. Choices are something we’re all faced with and they’re constantly either creating or disrupting our peace, happiness and self-security.

Should I relocate and take the job offer? Which medical treatment will be best for my health condition? Choices can set into motion understandable fears, anxieties and insecurities. The mind and emotions can be overstretched when we have to make difficult decisions, often very quickly! These feelings of overwhelm can make it even harder to access the clarity we need in order to feel solid about our choices and decisions.

In the new book Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart, co-author Doc Childre explains;

“Rushed, impatient energy diffuses our capacity for favorable outcomes when we’re involved in sensitive discernments regarding choices. When we push energy, this cancels the experience of flow and creates hiccups in our intentions. Patience and ease actually create the energetic environment for flow to take place in our communications, choice selections and actions. It’s our mind that tends to rush energy; our heart chooses balance, rhythm and flow. When cooperating together they increase outcomes that fit the need of the situation.”

Enlisting the mind and heart partnership when making decisions can make the process less confusing and less taxing mentally and emotionally. The book, Heart Intelligence explains further how the mind/heart partnership works and offers suggestions and exercises that can help cultivate this connection.

We’re living in a time when the world is changing rapidly. There are more life complexities than we’ve known before and it can feel as though everything is moving faster. Developing the mind/heart partnership combines our best decision-making assets and allows us to clear a space where we can view our choices with more clarity and heart discernment.

With Care,
Your Friends at HeartMath

The Heart Hears More Than Just Words

Posted on | by HeartMath

The lack of feeling heard can really put a strain on relationships. This is true whether it’s a couple, a parent and child, best friends, co-workers; any relationship.

Have you ever had a communication with someone only to realize what they said, and what you heard, were totally different? Even the simplest of interactions can get misconstrued if we only listen to the words.

Authentic communication requires both learning to speak from a genuine heart place and learning to listen more deeply. We call it deep heart listening because as we focus in the heart when someone is speaking with us, we can learn to hear more than their words.

Deep heart listening involves hearing on three levels. The words of what is said. The feelings or the emotions behind the words – and the energetic essence of what the words and feelings combined really mean.

Most of us pay close attention to the first level of listening – the actual words being said.

To practice the second level of listening we need to also feel the communication. That’s where we start to understand a person deeper. When listening, try and sense the emotions driving what the other person is saying. (ie: are they frustrated, are they worried, are they excited, etc.)

The third level is the essence of a communication. This is where we can discover the real meaning of what someone is trying to say. To do this we have to slow down what’s going on inside our own mind, put our own emotions in neutral, and remain open to the other person.

Practicing appreciation with others as they’re speaking and making a sincere effort to deep heart listen strengthens the communication bond with each other. Offering this kind of “safe zone” to openly communicate is a way of putting our love into action.

With Care,
Your Friends at HeartMath

Living Heart Connected in a Hyper-Connected World

Posted on | by HeartMath

Our world has become increasingly hyper-connected. News updates are broadcasted not just by media, but even by citizens witnessing events first hand and sharing it via social media. Information floods our lives at an astonishing rate and many of us are physically anchored to this data surge via our smart devices.

To remain grounded and balanced in our hyper-connected environment, it’s essential that we’re consciously choosing to stay heart-connected. Here’s a true story of how we can become disconnected without meaning to:

A woman who is totally dependent on a wheelchair asked a visiting friend to help her lower a window blind that had been left open and she wasn’t able to reach it to close it. Without looking up, the friend responded from a disconnected state as she stayed immersed in her smart phone. The response was, “Don’t you realize how busy I am.” The irony is that this friend had stopped over to see if she could be of service. Obviously the requested favor would take mere seconds. The friend allowed herself to get so fixated on her device that her response was out of touch and disconnected from that moment.

Becoming disconnected is a real issue of the 21st century. This isn’t to say if you have a smart device you’re disconnected — though most of using these devices can probably relate to the need of exercising balance. People can get immersed in many other things too, and the disconnection only happens when we allow it to.

Here are a few suggestions we can use to keep heart-connections the priority:

  • Start each day by setting a heart intention to be energetically present and connected with others.
  • Make a daily habit to connect with your heart using practices like Quick Coherence® that help you to align with a still and quiet place inside.
  • Value your connection with others. Instead of multi-tasking, put your device on airplane mode or vibrate to lessen distractions.
  • Pick up the phone or walk over to talk with someone instead of defaulting to text and email.
  • Take in your environment. For a moment or two breathe in the fresh air and look around. Appreciate nature; admire the architecture; smile and connect with people you pass by.

With life moving at a faster pace, it’s even more important that we pause the busyness and really connect with each other. With care, Your friends at HeartMath

Upgrading that Voice in your Head

Posted on | by HeartMath

“Geez, you’re such an idiot!”

Would you let someone say this to your best friend? Probably not. But let’s be honest, how often do you say things like this to yourself?

We each have an internal “voice” that can run in the back of our minds all day long. When this self-talk is critical and demeaning, it reinforces negative beliefs and attitudes about who we truly are.

The good news is that we can replace the inner critic with a new “upgraded” voice that is more aligned with our heart essence.

Let this be a year of creating something new within our self. Let’s upgrade that dialogue inside, and choose a voice that better represents our authentic self.

Making a list of the more frequent self-defeating dialogues that go on inside can help increase awareness. After you create a list, then focus in the heart and ask yourself what would be a better outlook and attitude? Instead of saying I’m too out of shape to join a gym, for example, try, “This will be a good experience and it’s going to help me get in better shape.”

Daily reminders built into our routines are also helpful. For instance, say your positive attitude statement out loud each day. Do it in the morning when you’re getting ready for the day. Write your positive attitude statement on colorful sticky notes and place them where you’ll see them. Create reminders on your smartphone.

Another exercise to try is to take 30 minutes each day to pay attention to your inner dialogue, watching for negative self-talk. Whenever you hear a negative comment, stop that thought immediately and replace it with a new, positive inner message. Use the kind of compassionate approach that you’d have with someone you care about.

The more we can genuinely engage with these simple practices, the more our feelings and thoughts can start to align with a positive inner dialogue.

Remember: You deserve the same encouragement and compassion that you give to others!

With Care,
Your Friends at HeartMath

Taking It In Segments

Posted on | by HeartMath

New Year’s Resolutions often come from our good intentions to better care for our self. Yet making behavior changes isn’t always easy. Even though we may know this, we often set goals that are hard to keep and then if we don’t reach it we get down on our self. No wonder it’s not a very effective process for so many of us.

What if we approach our resolutions and change one DAY at a time instead? We’re suggesting taking things in segments. This can really help prevent the feelings of overwhelm – and the self-bullying we tend to do when we think we won’t ever make our goal.

Using a segment approach allows us to be more present with each step we take towards a bigger goal, which makes for a more successful, lasting commitment.

This year consider the segment approach. Start by tuning into your heart for what change would most benefit you. You can do a heart focus exercise to quiet the mind and get the clarity needed. The Quick Coherence® technique works well for this.

Let’s say you want to create change towards being healthier. Identify the key steps you’ll need to take to reach that goal. For example, I can exercise more often, I can eat more fresh food, and I can get more rest.

Now, take it in segments. Try to do just one of these steps daily until you’ve integrated it into your routine. Once you’ve established a routine with that particular segment, add one more step into the process and so on. Stay present with each segment instead of projecting ahead and worrying about the future.

Some days may be better than others. If we have an off day, remember it is okay – that’s part of the process. Let’s be kind to our self and appreciate the brand-new day ahead of us – and see it as a fresh start.

Working on our resolutions in segments allows us to get better traction towards our goal while celebrating smaller victories along the way!

Wishing all of you a very happy and healthy new year!
Your Friends at HeartMath