TORI TALK

10 Ways to Inspire Your Kids (my new article at womansday.com)

Check out one of my new articles on womansday.com - link below. Enjoy!

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Lifestyle/10-Ways-to-Inspire-Your-Kids.html

New Food & Body Image Groups for Men & Women

Struggling with food & body image issues?

You’re not alone!

 ~Announcing new therapy groups~

(one for men and one for women)

 You’re invited to work through your food & body image issues with creative exploration and lively discussion in a laid-back, supportive environment.

We’ll use tools like:

        *Mental imagery                    *Writing                         *Movement

                                *Mindfulness                               *Media literacy                        *Movies

                *Books & magazines                          

Where, When & How Much:

• Cost: $40 per weekly session (1 ½ hours per session); group to run for 12 weeks
• Day & time: TBD based on needs of group members
• Location: Tori’s office in Roswell: 16 Norcross St, Ste 220, Roswell, GA 30075

Tori Rodriguez, MA, LPC, is a psychotherapist, writer and mind-body expert.                                  

 Contact Tori for more info:

• Email: [email protected]

•  Blog: torirodriguez.typepad.com

•  Phone: (404) 886-7065                                              

Learn to Love Your Body

One of my articles from last year at WomansDay.com:   http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/learn-to-love-the-way-your-body-looks-116941?click=main_sr

Let Go of Resentment in Your Relationships (my new article on womansday.com)

Check out my new article on womansday.com. Here's the link:

http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Lifestyle/Let-Go-of-Resentment-in-Your-Relationships.html

Enjoy!

The Role of Choice in Creativity

One of the biggest challenges and blessings in being creative is how central a role choice plays in the process. When else do you get to make so many choices every step of the way (albeit often with limited resources) about which direction and specific form a project should take? So, in addition to being a conduit for our unique gifts, creativity is the expression of our autonomy and agency, and being in charge, so to speak, can feel overwhelming at times.

I suspect this is why we often get stuck in the creative process, sometimes before we even begin, and why many find the prospect of engaging our creativity so daunting in the first place. Too many decisions to make! (This is where creativity can teach us the value of not overthinking things.)

Take writing: It can be so difficult to pick out exactly the things to say that people need to know in order to get what you want them to get. Even now with that one sentence, part of me thinks, Should I say “challenging” instead of “difficult”? “Words” instead of “things”? Should I have even said “so”? Another word instead? Or nothing there? “Write” instead of “say”? And on and on. And on. I mean, each word has so many alternatives - why does one word win? (Welcome to my mind. Ha!) The beauty of it is, there’s no objective right or wrong – only what feels right to you.

Build Muscle with Your Mind! (my new article at menshealth.com)

Here's the link to my new article at menshealth.com. Enjoy!

http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/build-muscle-with-your-mind/2011/03/15

Switch (a bit of fiction by Tori)

This was my entry into the WOW! Women On Writing Flash Fiction Contest, my toes-in-the-water stab at fiction writing. I didn't win but got some encouraging feedback. Enjoy! 

Switch

“Ain’t it somethin’ how you git all dolled up, jus’ to come home lookin’ like somethin’ the cat dragged in?” her mama once said. Recalling the words, Shaya pondered a theme:

Assembling                               

Disassembling

Building up

Tearing down

Elevating

Devastating

There was something she just couldn’t seem to resist about those pendulum swings.

Funny how hate can feel like love the way hot can feel like cold in the split second before your brain registers the difference.

At least it's something. It's intense and it's something. But....

"Another round?" repeated the bartender.

"Please," Shaya nodded, and continued contemplating, feeling onto something she was never taught but suddenly felt she needed to know.

Synapses firing... neural impulses migrating... new roads forging...

Now she was starting to get it: this love is different from good love insomuch as Christmas lights are different from stars.

Good love makes you feel more like you, she decided. The you you really wanna be and can be and are. It made sense to her inside even if it seemed ironic. Good love won’t try to change who you are “for your own good”, like Jesse did. It just loves you like you are and then you become even better for it.

“Ready for another?” the bartender offered.

“No thanks, I’m done.” She settled up and slipped out to the street. She walked the two blocks and climbed her stairs, unlocked her door and turned in for the night. And never again did she have a need for a love that's so hot it's cold.

 

Negativity Isn't So Bad (my March 2011 column from The Roswell Current)

 

Studies Show... Feminism Is Good for You! (Part 1 of Series)

Studies Show…. Feminism Is Good for You! (Part 1 of Series)

One of the many thorns in the collective feminist side is the way research is used as a weapon in promoting gender division and inferiority of one gender in particular (just venture a guess as to which one). Even when the research itself is unbiased, findings are often spun to neatly align with interpretations by certain “evolutionary psychologists” (a title that often seems to be an alias for Professional Guesser). They’ll take a study involving gender as a variable and hold it up as proof that men and women really are “hardwired” differently, with no regard to the countless other variables present in both research and life. This spin then gets funneled to the masses, where it’s used even further to divide and deride.

What’s annoying to me as a mental health clinician is – well, first, that word hardwired: It’s overused, often meaningless, and sometimes harmful – great way to make people feel hopeless about the possibility of change. Oh, wait… I reckon that’s the point, huh? But more than that, these folks really should know better. I do, and my training focus didn’t even include research.

As such, it’s a delicious surprise to come across studies that illuminate the benefits of feminism, which I’ve been blessed to know firsthand. I can’t help but imagine these researchers saying “Screw this - let’s do our own study!” This also speaks to the importance of equal representation in the sciences, in particular.

Below is the first of the series in which I’ll highlight research that reinforces the awesomeness of feminism.

Why feminism is good for you, reason #1:

It can strengthen your self-esteem, body image, and overall health. In a study that appeared in Psychology of Women Quarterly, researchers found that the more invested women were in gender ideals, the worse they scored on measures of self-esteem, depression and disordered eating. The reason cited was that their self-worth was dependent on external validation. In another study, from the journal Personality & Individual Differences, women who scored higher on the Femininity Ideology Scale (specifically, prescribing to stereotypical beliefs about “how women should be,” including ideals about purity) had lower levels of body appreciation.

My take on it is this: The more strongly you believe in prescribed ideals, the more your self-esteem is at the mercy of others – essentially making it a moving target. Feminism provides a buffer to the negative impact of societal expectations of appearance and other aspects of identity, since it a) calls bulls*!# on gender and other arbitrary ideals in the first place; b) encourages awareness about these influences and rebellion against them, which simultaneously strengthens one’s sense of personal power and autonomy; and c) fights for each individual’s right to be, and be valued for, who they are, regardless of size and appearance or anything else. Mind you, that doesn’t mean feminists are above these influences; it just means we continually strive to resist and overcome them - to not let them win, if you will.

So there you have it - feminism really IS good for you! But then, I already knew that. Do yourself an enormous favor and find out for yourself!

http://www.torirodriguez.typepad.com