mental-health

The Inner Mirror: Rethinking the Way We Reflect

/ Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

Remember the wicked queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?

That black-clad sorceress obsessively demanded that her talking mirror tell her what she desperately wanted to believe: that she was the most beautiful of all.

And honestly? For as often as we peer, study, glance, and glare at mirrors, a little positive feedback wouldn’t hurt. Based on my very scientific focus group of one (me), we probably put our faces in front of some kind of mirror dozens of times a day—bathroom, bedroom, car visor, closet doors, and those especially unforgiving Zoom calls.

But how often do we look into the other mirror?

Mirror, Mirror, in my head….

That’s our inner mirror—the one that reflects our actions, motivations, habits, and behaviors.

Looking into the inner mirror starts with self-awareness: the practice of actively noticing our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, actions, and triggers. It’s a skill—one we can learn—and research consistently shows it’s a strong predictor of success in life. Highly self-aware people tend to be more open to growth, more resilient, and to have higher self-esteem.

Yet, this inner mirror is the one many of us quietly avoid. I can hear the phrase “Mirror, mirror in my head, you’re the one I often dread.”

Why?

Well, it’s hard call to ourselves out when we’ve done or said something we’d rather we hadn’t. Our minds would rather rationalize the situation—keeping us the good person—than admit wrongdoing and offer an apology.

Honestly looking at our shortcomings also can feel overwhelming—and so much a part of our identity that we don’t even know where to start to fix them. Plus, who would we be without our sarcasm, or our bossiness?

In a Psychology Today article, Tchiki Davis, Ph.D., offers a more sobering perspective: “Our minds are so busy with daily chatter that we usually only reflect when something has gone terribly wrong.”

Ouch.

Learning to Look Inward

Why wait until life falls apart to pause and reflect? With all the benefits we gain, we can make it a daily habit to look back at our day and see what went right and what went…not so right.

How do we actually do this?

Reflection might be as simple as pausing long enough at the end of the day to ask a few honest questions. Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Dramatic? Maybe. But he wasn’t wrong.

Because of my passion for personal growth, I choose to live an examined life. For me, that’s as simple as asking a few questions before going to sleep.

  • What’s one thing I did really well today?
  • What’s one lesson I learned?
  • What’s one thing I’d do differently tomorrow?

Small questions. Big impact.

The idea isn’t to beat yourself up – it’s as much to see what went right, and how you can grow from what didn’t.

Without some level of examination, we move through life on autopilot: reacting instead of choosing, repeating patterns instead of learning from them.

When Reflection Becomes Too Much

Of course, there’s a flip side.

Too much reflection can turn into rumination—an endless mental loop where we fixate on what’s wrong. I’m reminded of the small, round magnifying mirror in my bathroom, the one I use for any wayward eyebrows. It magnifies everything about 30 times, which is great for grooming… and terrible for perspective.

That mirror doesn’t just show eyebrows. It reveals age spots, new creases, spider veins, and other imperfections. And that leads to mental hand-wringing about getting older, looking unattractive, and the darkest rumination of all: dying.

In a sense that damn mirror is the opposite of the wicked queen’s. Instead of inflating our ego, it amplifies our flaws. And when we’re prone to self-criticism, too much magnification—externally or internally—can distort reality.

Another reason why so many of us avoid looking inward at all.

A while back, I snapped at my dad. I knew from the look on his face that I hurt his feelings. But even though I apologized, that night I couldn’t stop baseball-batting myself. “What a rotten daughter you are.” “What if he dies tonight and that was our last interaction?” “I’d better go check and make sure he’s breathing.” On and on and on. I was up till 2 a.m. riding that scary-go-round of rumination. I finally let it go after another apology the next day.

Avoidance Has a Cost

The potential of ending up in that spin of rumination can tempt us to neglect the inner mirror entirely, but that’s not the solution.

When we do that, we stop growing. We become defined only by the surface reflection—what’s visible, comfortable, and familiar. No insight. No course correction. Just repetition.

Healthy self-reflection isn’t about tearing ourselves apart. It’s about learning, not judging.

So try asking yourself some simple questions at the end of the day and journal the answers. You’ll be becoming more self-aware, learning and growing.

The wicked queen only ever asked her mirror one question. Maybe the better question isn’t who’s the fairest of them all? but who am I becoming—and am I okay with that answer?

Redirecting Our Mindset: Breaking Free from the Grip of Negative Thinking

/ Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

“If you hold an anti-war rally, I shall not attend. But if you hold a Pro-Peace rally invite me.”

That is perhaps one of Mother Teresa’s most famous quotes. And it has always stuck with me – that she persistently focused on what she was for: Love and peace. Not what she was against: Hatred and fighting.

Of the 60,000 or so thoughts most of us have in a given day, it’s likely that a good percentage focus on what we’re against. This political party or that one. This issue or that one. This network or that one. This person or that one.  What irritates us, what we hate. And all of this negative thinking gets us into a full-fledged state of anxiety and dis-ease that hangs around like Pigpen’s dust cloud.

If you’re tired of going through your days like this, it’s entirely possibly to change this pattern. And good news! That’s what it is: A pattern we’re running — like a rogue bit of software we’ve programmed into ourselves over years of thinking the same thoughts.

Not saying changing it is easy. If we’ve been thinking negative thoughts for a long time, they’ve figuratively created grooves in our neural networks. Ever tried to ski a cross-country trail and NOT slide into the already laid tracks that have been gone over hundreds of times? Pretty hard to do.

But even if 59,999 of our daily thoughts are negative, we’re not doomed to live our lives this way. Our brains are what neuroscientists call “plastic,” which means they can grow new neurons and neural connections – no matter how old we are.

So how do we do it? Here are some tools to consider:

  • Catch: We can start to be more aware of what’s churning around in our head and notice when we’re hating on something (and maybe even what triggered it).
  • Accept: No need to judge yourself. You wouldn’t condemn your computer for running the software it was programmed with, would you?
  • Replace: Neuroscientists and psychologists are finding that it’s difficult to just erase a thought or stop a behavior without replacing it with something else. So, for example, every time you see a person on TV that makes your blood simmer, you think of someone that you love. Your hubby. Or wife. Mom. Dad. Puppy. You see Hated Face, you think of mom. See Hated Face, think of mom. So you learn to internally pair the two to the point where seeing Hated Face triggers seeing Loved Face.

If you’re bothered by your negative thoughts and want some relief, the invitation is open to giving these steps a try. And let us know how they work.

Unloading That Extra Weight: Tools to Release, Heal and Thrive

/ Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

So many of us have a weight problem.

But it’s not a number-on-the-scale problem.

Or a clothes-too-tight problem.

It’s the emotional weight we lug around like a bag full of rocks. Disappointments. Resentments. Regrets. Shame.

These negative emotions – these rocks – serve no helpful purpose. None.

They make our lives heavy. Hold us back.

The rational and commonsense solution is to “just let it go.”

But remember, this emotional weight is more akin to a boulder, not a balloon. You can’t just grab one, open your hand, and it floats away. If it were that easy, we wouldn’t be schlepping them around in the first place. We’d be flinging rocks away like a flower girl scattering rose petals at a wedding.

Plus, “rational and commonsense” is not the language used by the part of us that’s carrying around this trauma.

So how do we release them?

1. Start Small:

    Which of the rocks should we get rid of first? Most of us would probably vote for the big ones of course – the ones we’ve dragged around the longest time. But in this case, it might be easier to start with the pebbles. Maybe a negative thought. Or an irritation with a rude driver. Try to let breathe and let those go.

    It’s like deciding to work out. You wouldn’t walk into a gym and immediately try to bench press 200 pounds. You’d start with 50. Or 20. Or 5. Or whatever you could handle. And work up from there.

    Eventually, you’ve got some strength and tools for disposing of the big rocks.

    2. Let them:

    This one might be a bit tough, depending on those face is impaled upon which rock.

    Author and podcaster Mel Robbins recently published a best seller, “The Let Them Theory”, which she describes as “a simple mindset tool that has two parts. The first part is telling yourself to, ‘Let them,’ during any moment in life where you feel annoyed, frustrated, stressed out, or worried about a situation or another person. As soon as you say those two words, you are releasing control of what another person thinks, says, does, believes, and feels.

    “Any psychologist will tell you that whenever you try to control something that you can’t, it just creates more stress and frustration and anxiety for you….

    “Once you say, ‘Let them,’ you recognize you can’t control what another person thinks, says, or does. Therefore, it is not worth your time and energy to try. Then you say, ‘Let me,’ reminding yourself of the things that are in your control: what you think about another person or situation, what you do or don’t do in response to another person or situation, and what you do in response to your emotions.” A good Q&A with Mel on her book is here: https://www.wondermind.com/article/let-them-theory/

    3. Share them:

    A beautiful thing happens when you pick up the phone (yes, dial and talk live) to a friend or family member about whatever rock is weighing you down most. I just did that this morning. And even as I started talking, I could feel that weight lift, and I felt lighter, almost buoyant by the end of the conversation.

    4. Write about them:

    I just learned about something called the Pennebaker Protocol (sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel, right?) created by James W. Pennebaker, a renowned social psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Here are the steps:

    1. Pick a topic you worry about – something you worry or ruminate about, or avoid thinking about because it’s too overwhelming.
    2. Write about it for 15 minutes – set a timer, focus on your thoughts and emotions, and free flow – no grammar, spelling or style checking.
    3. Repeat on four consecutive days – chances are new insights will surface

    Sounds suspiciously simple, but there have now been over 2,000 studies on the benefits of expressive writing and the results are clear: It not only provides an outlet to vent pent-up emotions, but it also reduces the cognitive burden of rumination and intrusive thoughts (which frees up our working memory to deal with more constructive tasks), and it allows psychological closure, among other things.

    I hope some of these tools help with whatever rocks you might be carrying. Drop a comment below and tell us what worked the best for you.

    The Paradox of Setting Boundaries to Free Ourselves

    / Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

    Would you go wash your neighbors’ car in their driveway if it was dirty?

    Plant a tree on their lawn?

    Paint their house?

    Throw a wild party in their backyard?

    Of course not.  And if someone did these things to us, we’d feel massively violated. Because there’s a thing called legal property lines that most of us are well aware of and respect (even if we can’t see them).

    There’s also something called personal property lines, but many people aren’t aware of them, and some just flat out don’t respect them (even though these boundaries are just as or more important as the ones on file at city hall).

    For example, many of us don’t think twice about allowing a friend’s addictive behavior to keep our lives in upheaval because we think always being there means we can fix him. Or we let a coworker’s abuse and bullying denigrate our sense of self-worth because we’re afraid to stand up to her.

    In both cases, we’ve let those people bulldoze across our personal property lines. And in a very harmful way.

    I love the way author Melody Beattie writes about this subject: “If another person has an addiction, a problem, a feeling or a self-defeating behavior, that is their property, not ours. If someone has acted and experienced a particular consequence, both the behavior and the consequence belong to that person. Other peoples’ choices are their property, not ours.”

    Author and podcaster Mel Robbins also covers this topic beautifully in her best-selling new book “The Let Them Theory”:

    “When you say Let Them, you’re not giving up or walking away. You’re releasing that grip you have on how things should go and allowing them to unfold the way they will go. You’re freeing yourself.

    “You’re making an active, empowered choice to release control you never truly had. You stop giving power to other people and forces outside of you, and you reclaim it for yourself.”

    If we’ve let people violate our property lines again and again, it can be hard to suddenly start enforcing our boundaries. To tell that addicted friend: “I love you, but your behavior is unacceptable to me. I can’t help you, and until you get professional help, you can’t be part of my life right now.” To tell that colleague: “Your comments about me are inappropriate and demeaning, and it needs to stop now.”

    This is where we take our power back. It’s really necessary for our own emotional, mental and physical health. And it’s so freeing.

    The 5 Biggest Insights I Learned in 2024

    / Debbie Frakes / Leave a comment

    1) Make your bed. But get out of it first. Admiral William H. McCraven delivered a famous commencement address to the University of Texas-Austin in 2014, in which he outlines 10 lessons he learned in SEAL training (https://news.utexas.edu/2014/05/16/mcraven-urges-graduates-to-find-courage-to-change-the-world/). The first was “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” Great advice; however, I need to add, “but get out of it first” because that was the harder part of the equation for me this year. I suffer from depression, and there were many days when I simply didn’t want to, nor did I feel the strength to, get out of bed. But here’s what I’ve learned. Probably 80% of the time, if I got up and did one small thing, like take a shower, or go into my office, the depression lifted, even if just a bit. But for the other 20% of the time, there was another lesson.

      2) Give yourself grace if you’re in a bad place. I am a high-achieving perfectionist, and I wore that identity as a badge of honor for years. To live up to my own flawless standards, I’ve always pushed myself hard. Really hard. If I struggled, I pushed myself harder. I’ve always believed that if I let up on the pressure, I would just slack off and spend the next year on the couch eating truffles or never get out of bed, ever. I’m learning, albeit slowly, that there’s no honor in believing you need to be perfect, and no honor in baseball-batting yourself when you’re struggling. When you choose grace, find your gentle voice and tell yourself it’s okay to be where you are, your body and mind relax too, and that allows healing. As my yoga teacher said the other day: “We cannot shame ourselves into change, we can only love ourselves into evolution.”  

      3) Find what moves you and move. I’m talking about what puts you in flow – that state identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in which you are completely absorbed in a task. I’d been feeling a bit stuck this year, and in looking for ways to enhance my leadership skills, I discovered a leadership course offered by Yale. So I signed up, immersed myself, learned so much, and felt a sense of accomplishment I haven’t felt for a long time. I felt in flow. After completing that course, I completed a second one. I’ve always had an intense need to learn, which is one reason I’m an avid reader, and these university-level courses sparked that passion in me again.

      4) Trauma can trigger powerful actions. I will do anything to protect my friends, colleagues and family – from people who want to take advantage of them, people who are bullies, situations that are unfair. I’ve always jokingly referred to this as my “Mother Hen” instinct. But it goes way, way deeper than that. I realize I’m so fervent about protecting the people I care about is because no one protected me from school bullies as a child and teenager, and I had no way to protect myself. That realization led to another one: the people I’m so passionate about protecting now are adults and don’t necessarily require the level of protection I needed all those years ago. These insights helped me ease off the control pedal, release some angst and find some peace.

      5) Don’t believe everything you think. Perhaps my most powerful insight of all. We have over 60,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of them are repetitive – generally worries, fears, what-ifs, old grievances, and so on. I can get myself in a panicked state within 20 seconds of wakening, thanks to my brain’s creative scare-mongering. But, at least for me, 99% of these thoughts simply aren’t true. So I’ve started calling them out as intruders. If you watched Star Trek at all, you’ll remember the disembodied voice saying “Intruder alert, intruder alert!” anytime some unwelcome alien got on the Enterprise. This does a couple things: It separates us from our thoughts and it helps us recognize the “fake news” our brain tries to pass off as truth.

        What are your biggest insights from 2024? And how can you use those learnings to make your life more joyful, peaceful and fulfilling in 2025? Share your thoughts in a comment.

        The Five Stages of Resistance

        / Debbie Frakes / 1 Comment

        What we resist, persists.

        That quote, often attributed to personal growth guru Tony Robbins, is an inconvenient and irritating truth.

        Inconvenient and irritating because when you’re in the midst of a strong emotion or thought pattern (usually brought on by our reaction to things we can’t control) the last thing you want to hear is just another version of “go with the flow.”

        Say you’ve just learned your job is going away, or you’ve just moved your only child to college for the first time. Or, there’s a coworker who has a surgical and sneaky way of getting underneath your skin. Or you have to go to a cocktail party and your introverted self – to whom the thought of minor surgery without anesthesia is more appealing than spending two hours making small talk – is screaming “No, I will NOT do it!”

        But what if this reaction is perfectly fine?

        Not that we can stay in the “ABSOLUTELY NOT” mindset permanently, though, because very often despite our best efforts to control everything around us, situations change, people change, our world changes. And we don’t get a vote.

        As someone who deals with anxiety, I’ve started seeing a pattern of stages we go through when faced with situations like this. Because you can’t simply go from “I will not” and “Make it go away” to a Zen-like dreamy, “whatever” in two seconds. If you can, you’re a unicorn, and you should write a book.

        Here are what I’ve defined as the 5 Stages of Resistance:

        1. Rejecting: We first find out about something that causes major mental and emotional upheaval, and the first thing we do is say, no, I won’t, I can’t, it’s not happening.
        2. Resenting: It’s becoming clear that the “thing” we said isn’t happening, is, in fact, happening, and we’re pissed. Why should this happen to us? It’s not right. This is where we get a little or a lot peeved at the event or person(s) behind the thing. There’s a whole lot of stewing going on in this stage.
        3. Releasing: Around this point, when it’s clear that our best efforts won’t stop the “thing”, we start to let go a bit. And as we release, we allow some new thoughts to form. This is happening anyways, so how can I get through it?
        4. Relaxing: More releasing, more opening, more ideas on how to find good in the situation, maybe even tools on how to deal with your inner angst.
        5. Receiving: The highest level we can get to. Our mindset changes from complete closure to expansive opening. What good can I receive? Maybe I’ll meet someone interesting at that cocktail party. Maybe when Joey goes off to college, I’ll finally sign up for yoga teacher training. Maybe just letting go of my coworker’s behavior gives me peace, and that’s enough?

        It’s okay to be in any of the stages, and always remember to give ourselves grace no matter where we are. But it’s the last stage that truly frees us if we can get there.