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This journey of journaling and writing about my experiences in class and outside of class, finding the connections and differences has honestly been quite fun. I feel like I have been able to think about the content a lot deeper and really reflect on how it affects my life and how I think just day to day. I read back some of my earlier entries and it's really cool to see the contrast in my writing and my thoughts on how they have changed or stayed the same. I enjoyed this project.

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" the problem is the problem, the person is not the problem" (Michael White and David Epston)

This quote holds so much more than I would have thought. Separating yourself from the problem and not internalizing it is something so hard to do sometimes but is so vital to understanding it and moving on.

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This lecture started off talking about problem-saturated stories. This was intriguing because I feel like sometimes we get caught up in or only can view our perspective of situations. This is like so important I think to really understand the world becuase every single person has a different way the story went. I like that the goal is to look for different views of the situation at hand.

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The painting I previously showed captured and represented the idea of letting my feelings flow and change. It represented a mix of emotions and that we are all complex beings but we can be broken down by the skills we learned in class. Each skill is like each corner in saying that theres different thing we can do to help ourselves emotionally regulate.

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To practise mindfulness I painted this. I had never really painted before but I really enjoyed how I could freely play with colours and shapes.

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I've been feeling a lot of stress with schoolwork and my hobbies lately. Taking the time to learn these skills in class I feel has greatly impacted my life becuase I take them and I use them even though we are learning how to use these skills in a therapeutic sense. I appreciate each skill we learn.

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I read this article after the class where we talked about radical acceptance and it was very interesting. It starts off by saying that "resisting reality leads to an internal struggle"(Brown,2022). I liked how it talked about honouring difficult situations, not saying that they're good by any means but honouring your feelings in them and I feel like that leads to a sense of self-validation which I find I lack and many others lack as well. I always struggle with wanting to find validation from outside myself; whether it is a feeling or an action. I think it's also about pulling out feelings that are hidden or pushed deep down and meeting them with kindness. The article also talks about how some may get confused with this meaning to give up but in reality, it is setting goals and a non-judgmental approach to one's feelings.

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When we were learning about this I thought it was similar to acceptance therapy. This connection was made becuase one fo the skills is accepting the reality to tolerate the things that you cant change. I think the five senses exercise is actually something that works so well. I know I use it in my life and I tell my friends about it when they are in distress. I like developing skills like this to help improve my emotional state and regulation.

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I thought this was so interesting, our "three" different minds. And like it made me think how sometimes your reasonable mind over powers the others or like the emotional mind over powers the rest and you need to find mindfulness to be able to have a balance of logic and emotions.

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I like dialectical therapy, it's my favourite thing to reference with my friends becuase I think we always forget that two things can be true at once, even if they're conflicting. The thing I struggle with understanding is the difference between CBT and DBT, I've done both but I feel like they heavily overlap.

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I'm reading the article on how acceptance therapy works and it asks you a what-if questions about allowing yourself to feel even if it's negative. This I really connected to because I actively try to do this in my life. I struggle with processing situations and feeling down about them or myself and in doing this I feel like I am affirming myself that each and every feeling is okay.

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I had mixed feelings about learning about this. I thought it was interesting as a means to accept things in your life that aren't changeable or that you weren't expecting and can't fix, but it also felt a bit frustrating because I think I am always trying to find a way to fix or change the reality that is in front of me. Looking at the big picture of it, I think I could use this for myself more in my life; connecting with the present moment and understanding that what I value and care about is still important but at the same time accepting what situation I am in. I really like the part of defusion in this process, like taking a step back to detahc yourself from thoughts and feelings and remebering that you are in control of those things and that sometimes your thoughts are just thoughts. I think this is again is something I can use in the future and use this to help other people.

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I just completed my mindfulness therapy assignment and I was honestly suprised. It was quite hard to do as someone who doesn't do mediation often. I don't know that I would continue with this but I think I learnt some new things about myself. I didn't realize how face and often my mind is running feeling overwhelmed by the future of my week and my lack of patience in taking time to do something for myself.

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This week we talked about emotional regulation. I think it's really interesting how each emotion can influence our body in a certain way. I think I am often dysregulated because when I have a change in feeling, it often feels intense and I forget for a minute how to deal with it in a way. The strategy of labelling is something I found helpful, like when i feel sad sometimes I am unaware of why I am sad or like why I am angry and in that makes me feel more frustrated so when I take a moment to just label my emotion it really helps. This is something I am working on becuase I work with children already and I would love to continue in this field but I know that my own self regualtion needs to be improved becusae it has an effect on others.

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Mindfullness therapy reflection assignment 

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Mindfullness therapy reflection assignment 

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For my assignment, I chose to do the three weeks of meditation and write my relation on that, which turned out to be an exciting assignment for me that I enjoyed but I wanted to share that I was considering doing this as an art assignment instead. I strayed away from the art side of things because I was having difficulty coming up with something and I think when theres guidelines in my art I tend to have trouble being as creative. This past week I decided I wanted to start drawing, i've never really drawn much before and I wanted to share a piece I did with respect to the assignment.

This is a piece I drew without much thought of what I wanted it to be, but the feelings behind were to demonstrate what my is going through my mind and I was surprised at how much I felt understood and validated by myself. And as I was thinking about all this it reminded me of the assignment we had just done.

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These past couple of weeks we have been diving into mindfulness and what it means to be mindful in many different ways. I don't know if I would consider myself a mindful person as taking moments to reflect in silence truly feels difficult. I didn't enjoy the meditations we did during class, I thought it was hard to stay silent and still for a period of time. It did make me think why and I still don't really know but I am excited for the mediation project we are about to start doing.

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Sometimes I find it silly, our practice conversations in class and I feel in a sense that most others are very engaged and serious while doing this, as they should but that I lack that. I always think that but then I go home and tell my roommate about my day, about my class and our discussions and I come to the same thought. That it is actually important because I feel like we all can easily understand what an engaged and informed conversation looks like but in reality I think we as a society arernt good at listening or conversation. I once wrote in a poetry journal that " The art of listening is an issue in a world that promotes soft-core narcissism. It becomes distinguishable to encounter an avid listener. To look into you, as you begin to pour words into reality, you notice their head tilting to the left and their eyes enlarging by the smallest millimeter. They squint in curiosity toward you. Apprehensions and yet subtle admiration. To have another utterly engulfed in your presence and respective to your story while submissive to your words. It is incredibly sorrowful that we will never be completely understood by anyone, we only understand people to the extent we do ourselves". Although this isn't speaking within an academic demeanour I feel it speaks greatly towards our natural lack of this skill and that's why even after the days where I feel like I should've already known the content we learn, that we all should've, I remember how we are, at our core.

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The more I think about the more I actually think I am constantly motivated. I've hidden the parts of me that are driven, I've always been driven. I think that I forget because of my fear of perception. In my art, in my academics I am always afraid of the perception I will receive.

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I've thought about it; people inspire me, and music moves me. Those two combined are my motivation. The irony is that only in my head am I an artist. I'm in school for behavioural science, and there seems to be no in-between, no matter how hard I try to find it. My determination to be impactful and acquire knowledge in my hopes of helping people keeps me motivated in school. I also hope I'm an artist one day. I want to do both. I find more motivation to be an artist, though that makes me feel uneasy. In being an artist, I believe there is no right way to be or to do something so I know I will be both. Above all my motivation is Patti Smith, she is a wonder to me as I am beginning to read her book " Just Kids." That is inspiring to me. She is inspiring me to be both, and that is how I spend hours writing papers and doing math while simultaneously coming up with new chords to a song I hear in my head.

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We started our first week learning about motivational interviewing. I've never heard of it before. At first, I had a closed mindset, thinking this was common sense, but now I would say this was developed for a purpose that I believe is lacking in many places. From my lived experiences and being educated of others, systems like healthcare, rehabilitation etc are flawed and many times I feel like the goal isn't to help people but rather to make money. That takes away from the goal of assisting people to improve their goals to an almost unempathic approach. I would have had much greater experiences if this approach was used consistently in our systems.

One thing that caught my attention in class was our conversation about motivation and what motivates each of us individually. This was a difficult questions, its always been. I feel like my whole life I have always been grasping at each sliver of motivation I have as it comes and goes. I think this is due to my neurodivergence, I find that I have limited sensory and emotional resources which makes it hard to put my best effort into tasks or activities, especially ones I don't like. I also find that I will typically opt out of emit a low level of effort into things I don't enjoy so I can do ver well in the ones I do. Obviously this has never been ideal but this is the way my brain works and I do wish more people understood this and I wish that society could accommodate for this but I understand that's not something that I could ever really hope for. Growing older I realize that all I can do is hold my self accountable and try to do my best in a society that doesn't fit around my needs.