{"id":2403,"date":"2011-03-17T08:46:15","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T08:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html"},"modified":"2011-03-17T08:46:15","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T08:46:15","slug":"therapy-thursday-get-your-tens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html","title":{"rendered":"Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"pocket therapist front cover small.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/71\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg\" width=\"180\" height=\"258\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/span><em>I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pocket-Therapist-Emotional-Survival-Kit\/dp\/1599952998\">The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.<\/a>&#8221; <\/em><br \/>\nIn support group meetings, I often heard people say &#8220;if you&#8217;ve got one foot in the past, and one in the future, you are going potty on the present.&#8221; I agree with that line of reasoning, but find myself straddled too often. Nothing about staying in the moment comes naturally.<br \/>\nMy regrets cover everything I could possibly have to feel guilty about&#8211;from making my mom&#8217;s day hellish as a colicky newborn until a second ago, when a bad thought crossed my mind as a happy family waved to me from their yacht. They all live in the past. My anxiety and endless worry about what might happen next belong in the future: my kids could give birth to colicky babies and expect me to babysit or marry into an annoyingly perfect family who waves to strangers from their yacht.<br \/>\nThe present? Not much to fret about there &#8230; if I define the present as this very second: my sitting in a coffee shop devouring a warm chocolate-chip macaroon as I listen to Josh Groban&#8217;s &#8220;O Holy Night&#8221; and proofread this book. And that&#8217;s the point, I guess. So I&#8217;m trying very hard to follow the words of Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must be the most important thing in your life. Just as when you&#8217;re drinking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life. &#8230;Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. Each act is a rite, a ceremony.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><i>*&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beyondblue1\">Click here to <b>subscribe to Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thereseborchard\">click here to follow Therese on <b>Twitter<\/b><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/beyond_blue\">click here to join <b>Group Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a>, a depression support group. Now stop clicking.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, &#8220;The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, &#8220;The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.&#8221;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-17T08:46:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right - Beyond Blue","og_description":"I have decided to dedicate a post on Thursday to therapy, and offer you the many tips I have learned on the couch. They will be a good reminder for me, as well, of something small I can concentrate on. Many of them are published in my book, &#8220;The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit.&#8221;&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2011-03-17T08:46:15+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg"}],"author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html","name":"Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg","datePublished":"2011-03-17T08:46:15+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-17T08:46:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/pocket%20therapist%20front%20cover%20small.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/03\/therapy-thursday-get-your-tens.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Therapy Thursday: Get Your Tense Right"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. Borchard","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75","name":"Beyond Blue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","caption":"Beyond Blue"},"description":"Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression &amp; Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}