Author: Leaman Ralph

Really sugar is shaky because it originates from a straight stick see the play is Granny yes Grandma plus new style luv MaryJane so listen (Granny Apple last years blue ribbon production winner AKA) I, I, I ain't on the right side of my house Jane something or the other is in my room: finally after an extermination Grannie speaks once more "let my (old man) Pacman step on it". See it is home on the range so solo as it be truity speaks got a problem it is your own. But alter scenario: Z/n time; narcotics I got that candy s.p.ee..d360 Bar itch its' and Mickey Mouse for the Sultan 7 1 4er well a hem a hem, it went early in the morning like a smack chanting sugar structure 7 -one 1 +eleven and 4 do an ate 'er 8 eight 'er? Well that aint nice. NARCO says do you know them numbers change (response) Yes it is a FiX they are MF's Ope yeah Ope Douglas is it. Surrounded by Alkaloid is both Mary and Grandma in an never ending circle of membership. French mandates declare put up their dukes... ZEN Pepsi can talk half Chocolate and your ole man Pacman down in Cuba posing as the worlds one and only Coffee Wizard "back 1:1" tis Coffee time... ||

Understanding the Need for Validation and Control with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztvS_si3mTk

00:00:13
Hey there everybody, and welcome to Happiness Isn’t Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. Today we’re going to be talking about two sort of related concepts validation or our need
00:00:27
for validation and control. So let’s start with validation what is this validation is when we get the message that we’re okay we need validation to feel good about ourselves but we don’t necessarily need validation from every
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person and that’s one of the places that a lot of us make mistakes is that we want to be loved and approved of by everybody all the time I’ll get over it and ain’t gonna happen you’re not even going to approve of yourself all the
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time but one of the steps or one of the things that you can do in order to ensure that you’re getting the validation that you need is to a make sure that you self validate you look at yourself and you say I’m okay I’m a good
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person you know I make mistakes I’m not perfect but I’m a good person and also surround yourself with significant others who validate you they may not say it and remember when we talk about love
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languages you know sometimes people communicate their validation and caring not necessarily by words but by acts of service or by giving gifts or spending quality time with you if they want to spend time with you that’s validating it
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means they enjoy being around you so we do need to you know be a little bit more open to the concept of validation we also need to know how we experience how we prefer to experience validation because you know even though people are
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not necessarily by their nature going to communicate that way we can nudge them in that direction we can let them know how we experience love what our love languages are and that will help them be able to more effectively valid
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so for me for example one of my top love languages is acts of service so when people do nice things when my kids I come home and they’ve done an extra good job cleaning the house I’m just like oh my gosh thank you so much
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that is very validating to me it validates that they respect me and they care about me as a person I’m not big on gifts you know that’s not one of those things so you need to know how you experience validation and be able to
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communicate that to others so they can communicate to you in your love language otherwise if you’re speaking two different languages you’re probably going to have an impasse we also need to look at from whom we need validation and
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why and this is a big question we need validation from other people it’s true we need to feel like we’re loved and we’re accepted by people but not everybody so I want you to think about who in your life you need validation
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from is it your kids is it your significant other is it your parents you know who is it and why you know what what would happen you know just hypothetically what would happen if one of those people that you quote need
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validation from didn’t give it to you does it make you less of a person does it make you less okay as a person you know sometimes you know I’ll take parents for example sometimes parents aren’t going to agree with the decisions
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their kids make and they’re not going to validate those decisions but we want to separate number one we want to separate them not validating decisions from not validating us you know if I make a decision that my parents didn’t agree
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with or when I did you know they were very clear they didn’t agree with that decision but they loved me and they supported me anyway which was validating they you know may not agree with the choice I was making they may think it
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was downright a mistake but they loved me and supported me anyway so you want to separate validation of actions from validation of person 4 1 and number 2 remember that not everybody is going to be able to for one reason or another
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validate you all the time so you need to be able to validate yourself if they don’t agree with it or if they’re not providing the attention and quality time and validation that you need alright where can you get it from you know so
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don’t put all your eggs in one basket rely on other people know that you’ve got other friends that are there to support you even if one friend is kind of flaking out right now
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do we need validation from our higher power and if you’re a spiritual person you may you may want to believe that your higher power approves of you so again you need that’s a relationship that nobody else is taking part in so
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you need to be able to have a good communication with that higher power or a feeling and your head heart and gut that says I am doing right by my higher power and I’m making my higher power proud of me if that is a validation that
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you need and we do need validation from ourselves in order to get love respect validation from other people we have to be able to love respect and validate ourselves so you need to look in the mirror and go I’m a good person
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it practiced that when you start criticizing yourself and a lot of us get caught up with these self-deprecating comments about you know I’m stupid I’m not good at that I’m whatever knock that off
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you know that’s maybe you made a mistake that’s okay but you’re still a good person and be able to appreciate yourself for who you are then you’re not going to need other people to always validate you because if they’re not able
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to do it because they’re caught up with their own stuff or they just are mad at you for some reason or whatever that’s okay you know that’s their right you don’t have to have them to tell you that it’s okay that you breathe the air you
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need to be able to validate yourself so what is validation look like we keep talking about this word but what is it you can have your feelings valid and force a lot of us who are feelers if you go to the myers-briggs we need to
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have when we feel upset or something we need to have our feelings validated we need to have somebody say I can see that you’re really angry or I can see that you’re really scared they may not agree they don’t have to feel the same but if
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they’re identifying how we feel and they’re going I got you I’m sensing that you feel this way that can be enough now do they have to agree with our feelings if we say yes then we’re gonna set ourselves up for a world of hurt because
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we can’t control how other people feel we need to accept that we feel how we feel based on our experiences my experiences are very different than my friends experiences so where something might stress me out you know it may not
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stress her out and there are some things that stress her out that don’t bother me a bit and you know I understand for example she is terrified of paper wasps I love the little buggers there they’re great beneficial insects they’re really
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docile but I can understand her fear of them and so you know I validate the fact that she’s afraid of them and and you know I respect that I don’t say oh well you know puh just get over it it’s not that easy you know I wish she could and
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see how cute they were but that’s not how she’s wired so I recognized that is a part of her and I validate that we want to validate people’s thoughts and they’re gonna have different opinions my son has different opinions about things
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than I do and you know I have different opinions than my mother and etc and that’s okay we want to validate their thoughts as you know their thoughts are valid your thoughts your opinions your feelings are valid for you they may not
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be valid for me but they are valid for you and I respect you as a person and we need to have our being validated we need to be validated that we are lovable good people and that is independent of what
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we do and our feelings and our thoughts it’s who we are we are good people that make mistakes that are fallible that yeah yada yada yada but we need to believe that we are lovable and we need to feel experience that other people
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believe that we are lovable and again it doesn’t necessarily come from the people that every person that we want it to not everybody is going to validate your being and that’s a lot a lot of times that has more to do with their stuff
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then then your stuff but if you let it destroy your self-esteem and your confidence and your mood and your energy then you’re giving them power validate yourself say you know what I’m good enough I’m smart enough and gosh darn it
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people like me and and move on and recognize all the other people in your life that validate who you are that person is just missing the boat and in tough tiddlywinks for them so what are some reasons we may not get validation
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from other people well they may not agree or feel the same and they may be unwilling or unable to take our point of view some people have huge control issues it’s either their way or the highway
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now remember I keep saying if they can’t validate you it’s probably more about them than about you well this is a perfect example if they are unwilling to respect your point of view or your feelings that’s more about them if
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they’re too immersed in their own stuff to be able to begin to understand your point of view whether it’s you know whatever drama they’ve got going on in their life and they just don’t have the emotional energy to pay attention to
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what’s going on to you or to listen or to be there for you it doesn’t mean it’s about you it means it’s their stuff is getting in the way so always take a step back and ask yourself is there some other reason
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besides me besides me being unvalidated all that this person may be acting this way and 99% of the time you’re gonna come up with a great big yes now why might we not get validation from ourselves well it’s really hard to
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validate ourselves if we base our entire worth on what other people say do and think about us so if I feel like I’m a worthwhile person as long as so-and-so likes me and as long as I’m in a relationship and as long as this and
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that in the other all of those things are involve other people and I can’t control other people so if those other people are caught in their own stuff which a lot of us are these days then I may be out there kind of like flapping
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like a fish out of water if I can validate myself then I can catch my breath we can’t validate ourselves if we don’t appreciate ourselves and you know that whole self-love thing people kind of laugh at it and they’re like oh
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that’s so hokey but really you need to realize and call it whatever you want self respect self love self honesty you need to look inside and go I’m a good person because and one of the ways that I have clients do this sometimes is go
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online and find a list of values and if you put in like the top 100 values or something you can get all kinds of values lists and it’ll stay things like honesty and integrity and compassion and yada yada yada and go through that list
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and highlight all of the values that represent you and then go back over that list and highlight the top five that really characterize who you are that you know if you were heaven forbid you were to die today they would put on your
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epitaph she was caring compassionate loyal you know I sound like a dog at this point but you want to identify those things that way you can recognize them in yourself and go what and and say to yourself you know what
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I’m pretty awesome I’d like to be my friend because that’s what validation is it’s being your own best friend and you may not validate yourself if you were taught that we are that you are only lovable if somebody else says you are
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and again that goes back to relying on other people to get their head out of their own stuff and focus on us that’s pretty self-centered isn’t it so we’ve got to realize they’ve got other stuff going on they’ve got their
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life and they may not agree with us whatever they’ve got their stuff and we’ve got our stuff we all have stuff but we need to be able to look at ourselves independent of our stuff and say I’m lovable I’m a good person so I
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encourage you to start working on that today identify five characteristics five values whatever you want to call them that make you a really awesome friend person whatever and focus on those for the next week to realize how cool you
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are all right so once you start being able to validate yourself it’s a little bit easier to let go of control because if you’re not having to ensure that everybody else tells you you’re okay then you can let things flow a
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little bit you can go you know what I’m good things may not go the way I planned but I’m good so when we come down to relationships and and validation and everything we need to recognize that letting go and forgiveness can be very
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scary and if we rely on that other person to validate us then letting go can be terrifying because if I let go of that person who validates me then who’s going to do it maybe I’ll cease to be so we want to be able to recognize that
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it’s important to be able to validate ourselves so that if somebody leaves our life we don’t feel like we’re going to disappear forgiveness can be scary because it means letting go of anger it means
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letting go of hostility it doesn’t mean forgetting and forgiveness is really a power play letting go means choosing not to waste your energy fighting against something you can’t control or is not worth your
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energy so again going back to a bad relationship for example if you’re in a bad relationship and that person is not validating you that person is not making you feel like you’re yourself they’re dragging you down in some way shape or
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form and it’s just it’s oil and water it may not be the best relationship to stay in but letting go is hard number one cuz you know what to expect with that person and you don’t know when you’re gonna find somebody else and
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dating is a hassle and all that but letting go is a choice you make in order to be true to yourself inside your own you don’t your own head your brain and your heart are telling you this is a bad thing this is not where you need to be
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this is not a good situation for you when you validate yourself and you say you’re right this is not a good situation for me I need to get out oh my gosh how liberating is that but then that means you’ve got to let go that
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means you’ve got to let that person go to the curb and be okay with that and choose not to waste your energy fighting against you know trying to change them not waste your energy trying to make them into something they’re not we
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cannot change other people we can help them see things we can suggest that we would like to see some changes but unless they want to make those changes they ain’t gonna make them we can’t change other people so when we let go
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we’re saying you know what I’m done I tried as hard as I can and it’s time for me to move on because if I validate my my own thoughts and my own feelings I know that the right move for me is to move on forgiveness means letting go of
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the hurt and resentment that’s draining your energy so you can move forward to what’s important to you forgiveness is for you not them so if you’re in a relationship that’s not meeting your needs and you know you’re frustrated
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with that person because you feel like they’re just they’re not trying you feel like they’re undermining you you feel like they’re not validating you whatever it is you know you can get really frustrated at you’re not doing this
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you’re not doing this okay they’re not what are you doing what do you need to do forgiveness is accepting that they either made a mistake or they did something that was unacceptable and you know you identified it or they’re not
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willing to change and you need to be willing to of them because that unleashes that energy if you stay angry at them for not changing then when you get into your next relationship you’re still carrying
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that baggage with you and you’re probably still back in the back of your mind looking for this next person to do the same thing and the next person after that so forgive that person say you know what you had you were too stuck in your
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own stuff I’m not gonna forget I’m not gonna go back there but I’m gonna forgive you because it’s not worth me staying angry over what you did or didn’t do for me and I’m going to move forward so letting go and forgiveness
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are things that we generally can only do when we start validating ourselves so can you get validation and have control at the same time well not everybody’s gonna validate you it’s it’s not their job to make you feel okay your job is to
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make you feel okay but there’s generally you generally will always have some people that you will about that will validate you you know whether it’s your parents or your best friend or whomever you’re generally going to have someone
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that will validate you if you get hung up on why a particular person won’t validate you ask yourself why do I care you know if this particular person is just not getting with your program why are you beating your head against the
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wall for that why do you keep going after something that isn’t clearly not going to resolve the way you want a lot of times this is because you’re trying to relive something from the past and you’re trying to quote get it right this
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time so if you’ve been in a bad relationship and you get into another relationship that’s similar you may be trying to make this one work out correctly a lot of times people will redo things
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subconsciously trying to succeed trying to fix it this time another question you can ask yourself is why am i trying to control this person why is it worth my energy to try to convince them to do all the things that I want the way I want
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why why do I need to do that there are millions of other people out there what is it about this person and what parts of this situation do I have control over because maybe the person’s not doing what you wanted them to do because you
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haven’t clearly communicated all right well that you have control over maybe the person isn’t doing what you want them to do because they don’t want to well you don’t have control over that so then you can the part you have
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control over is whether you choose to stay in that relationship and stay in that situation if it is not growth producing if it is hurting you instead of enhancing you when you’re in relationships when things happen and
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you’re feeling like you need validation and people aren’t doing what you want it can be a really icky place to be so practice psychological flexibility identify to yourself that you’re feeling empty you’re feeling unloved you’re
00:22:06
feeling however you’re feeling and then ask yourself what things can I do starting right now to improve the next moment what would make me happy you know what things can I do what do I have control over can you get enough sleep
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can you go out and exercise can you hang out with some different friends you know what is it that you can do to improve your next moment instead of staying stuck spinning your wheels it’s like a car that gets stuck in the mud and
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you’re just spinning your wheels and throwing mud and digging deeper into it if you try to fight this other situation try to fight and get somebody to do something that they are just not gonna do and develop heartiness commitment
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control and challenge and we’re going to focus mainly on commitment remember every single morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed kind of do an inventory of all the awesome things in your life what’s going
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for you what good things do you have yeah you know you’re gonna have some things that are not going the best you know nobody has a perfect life all the time that’s okay but too often we get stuck focusing on those things that
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aren’t going the best and then we start feeling unlovable and unsuccessful and undone everything so it’s important to remember all of the things that you’ve got going for you the friends that you have the things that are going right in
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your life and that will help you keep moving forward and remember you know commitment be committed to those values that make you such a loveable awesome person because if you’re exuding awesomeness other people are going to
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gravitate towards you if you are kind and compassionate and caring and intelligent and you know whatever the things are that make you who you are other people who value those qualities are going to gravitate toward you so
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it’s just a matter of taking a breath and living authentically other things that you can do with psychological flexibility you can unhook from your thoughts so you know ending relationships and not going back can be
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really challenging especially if you have low self-esteem or codependency you know there are a lot of reasons so one of the things to do when you get out of a relationship and you know you’re tempted to try to go back and make up
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you’re tempted to minimize what was going on and get back into the relationship a lot of times your brain is saying I can’t live without that person and you may feel in your heart like a part of its being ripped out and
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it kind of is and you feel like you can’t take it well unhooking from your thoughts that is a way of separating from that and instead of saying I can’t take it say I’m having the thought that I can’t take
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it I’m having the thought that I’m gonna be alone forever and then work through it because thoughts come and go you know let that thought go or replace it with another more accurate thought identify who and
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what is truly important in your life and acknowledge your feelings thoughts urges and behaviors in the present so if you’re feeling lonely and isolated and defeated that’s okay acknowledge it instead of fighting with it or ignoring
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it acknowledge it and then say what can I do to improve the next moment you can make two lists the first list is things that I do or think that helped me move toward the important things in my life and review this list every day because
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these are things that you want to do to keep moving forward and the other list is things that I do or think that keep me stuck drain my forward energy or move me away from what is important and you know dwelling on things chasing after
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old loves you know there’s a lot of things we do that waste our energy that could be used to to move towards our goals so you have those two lists review the positive list every day that’ll help you remember what you need to do to keep
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moving toward the important things like take care of your health you know if you want to be there for your kids because they’re important well one of those ways to do that is to take care of your health
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so you’re live a long life and finally make a choice remember that when you feel a certain way you have control over how to use your energy so you can either you know spend the energy running after that person pleading with them to change
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and to take you back and to do all these things and probably not get anywhere and be back in the same place in a month or you can choose to do something different and live more authentically moving towards other people and things that are
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important in your life and acknowledge that that one well it had its benefits also had a lot of drawbacks and for your own health sanity and happiness you need to let it go
00:27:32
so steps towards self validation here are some exercises you can do identify the values and characteristics about yourself that make you awesome we talked about that one make a bill of rights and each item starts with I deserve to I
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deserve to be happy I deserve to take a break I deserve to whatever keep that Bill of Rights going try to make twenty items that’s gonna make you really think by the time you get past ten you really start having to
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think about you know what exactly do I deserve and if you can’t think of all of them you know think about your kids for example and think about you know what did they deserve what do your kids deserve they deserve to be happy they
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deserve to be healthy they deserve to not be scared you know what else follow your Bill of Rights once you write it you got to follow it so remind yourself when you start doing things am i adhering to my own Bill of Rights I
00:28:37
if I the people in your past from whom you craved validation and never got it and explore why that may have been more about them than about you so if you wanted validation from one of your parents and you just could never seem to
00:28:52
please that parent okay you know now that you’re older and wiser and everything else let’s look back and see if that was more about them and their frustrations or their stuff than it was about you or maybe they actually did
00:29:10
approve of you but they didn’t know how to communicate it so you didn’t feel validated even though they approved of you identify why you crave validation do you want to know that you’re important and a lot of times if you’re not able to
00:29:26
self validate then you need others to tell you you’re okay and you’re important if you can validate yourself then you don’t crave validation from others make a list of people you know who fit the label that like the person
00:29:44
that you want to be who is it that is important relevant and lovable in your life and identify how you’re like those people so if you have a hard time identifying what’s awesome about you look around at your friends and the
00:30:00
people that you value and identify what’s awesome about them and then go you know do I have that quality and a lot of times you’re going to find that yeah you do have that quality or something similar so we’ve gone over you
00:30:17
know kind of a broad spectrum and we’re talking a lot about validation because the need for validation from other people is one of the reasons that many people stay in unhealthy relationships so we talked about why we may need
00:30:31
validation how we can get validation how we can validate ourselves and then we talked a little bit about letting go of control and admitting that sometimes you know somebody else just can’t or won’t validate us but a lot of times that’s
00:30:48
because of their stuff and we can’t fix that they have to be willing to fix that so we’ve got to be able to let go of control forgive them for not being willing to play by our playbook and move on and
00:31:02
then we ended with exploring some psychological flexibility activities that we can do in order to learn about and and keep present in our mind how awesome we are and why we deserve love and respect if you like this podcast
00:31:20
please subscribe on your favorite podcast app join our Facebook group at Doc Snipes comm slash Facebook or join our community and access additional resources at Doc Snipes com
Source : Youtube

7 Signs You Have Abandonment Issues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWufGU2h3vQ
Hey Psych2go family, welcome back to another video. Do you have an overwhelming fear of losing your loved ones? You distrust other people or have anxiety about being abandoned? Abandonment issues typically arise in childhood, but can develop later on in life as well. The fear of abandonment is a serious type of anxiety that often stems from a traumatic experience.
00:00:24
Some aren’t even aware of their own repressed emotional trauma. But it can manifest into unhealthy behaviours over time. So, here are 7 Signs You may Have Abandonment Issues. One: you’re a people pleaser.
00:00:39
Do you want to impress everyone you meet? Whether it’s your friends, acquaintances, or family members, you try to meet their expectations to get on their good side. You’re the one who tries harder in your relationship, and you’re willing to put everyone else’s needs ahead of yours, as long as it gets them to stay. If you have a strong need to please people and gain their approval, you may still have some unresolved abandonment issues. Two: you struggle with insecurity. Do you sometimes think that someday, the people closest to you will get sick of you and leave? People who are afraid of being abandoned often struggle with feelings of insecurity and inadequacy because someone you loved has walked out on you in the past.
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You’ve internalized the emotional trauma. You may have wrongly believed that it was YOUR fault that they left. This can result in low self-esteem and a need for constant re-assurance.
00:01:30
Three: you find it hard to trust people Do you find it hard to trust others to keep their promises or to be there for you? You want to be in control of your relationships and know everything that’s going on with your loved ones? Because you’ve been hurt in the past, you have a strong fear of being left alone. In certain cases, it can lead to feelings of unreasonable jealously, suspicion, and possessiveness over your friends and romantic partners.
00:01:55
Four: you’re afraid to be vulnerable Do you feel uncomfortable during moments of emotional intimacy and honesty? Are you scared of getting close to someone or needing them too much? Your deep-seeded fear of abandonment may manifest into a fear of intimacy and emotional vulnerability. You may unconsciously sabotage your relationships by pushing people away just as you start to care for them. You may struggle with commitment, and act detached and indifferent when you really do care. Five: you look for reasons to leave. Do you always look for reasons to leave in fear of getting too attached to someone? You hold your loved ones to unrealistically high standards and you only focus on their flaws. You don’t give them any room for mistakes. You do this knowing that they’re bound to disappoint you. And when they fail to meet your expectations, you use it as an excuse to give up and leave.
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Six: you move on too quickly Do you have difficulty forming meaningful relationships that last because of deep-seeded fear of abandonment? When you cycle through relationships one after another and move on too quickly, you’re not allowing yourself the time and space to deal with the emotional fallout. Instead, you dive into something new and exciting to distract yourself.
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You never want to be alone, because it would force you to confront the personal issues you’ve been repressing for so long. And number 7…
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you cling to unhealthy relationships Do you find yourself gravitating towards all the wrong people? Have you stayed with someone knowing they’re bad for you? The trauma of being abandoned, especially at a young age, can stay with you for a long time.
00:03:36
And since we’re all hard-wired to recreate our early childhood experiences for the comfort and familiarity, your childhood taught you the wrong things about love.
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It’s not uncommon for you to be drawn to people who treat you poorly.
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Do you relate to any of the signs mentioned here? I know I did…
00:03:52
Is a fear of abandonment harming your relationships and keeping you from being happy? Let us know in the comments below. If you found this video helpful, be sure to like and share this video with those who might benefit from it! Don’t forget to subscribe to Psych2go for more videos! Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one!
Source : Youtube

7 Types of Anxiety Disorders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuPPRLv_YSw

00:00:06
Do you find yourself feeling stressed out when you’re studying for an important exam Or when you’re practicing repeatedly in front of a mirror before a presentation? It’s perfectly normal to feel stressed out or anxious every now and then Unfortunately for some of us our anxiety can get so out of hand that we feel this way constantly That chronic feeling of anxiousness and fear is the marking of an anxiety disorder Before we begin we’d like to make a short disclaimer Please don’t use this video to self-diagnose! If you can relate to most of the signs, we do advise you to go to a qualified medical health professional for proper diagnosis With that being said, Psych2Go presents to you the Seven Types of Anxiety Disorders One) Generalized anxiety disorder also known as GAD It’s the most common among anxiety disorders to be diagnosed People with GAD suffer from intense and persistent worry a GAD sufferer can worry or feel anxious about a number of events Ranging from school or work to their family life at home This anxiety is associated with at least three of these symptoms: Restlessness, Fatigue, Difficulty Concentrating, Irritability, Muscle Tension, Insomnia, or Difficulty Falling Asleep People with GAD, often can’t explain their anxiety using specific fears like those with more specific anxiety disorders can And this is because their anxiety stems from various stimuli Those who suffer from GAD can find relief in a number of treatment options Ranging from mindfulness meditation and brisk exercise to cognitive-behavioural therapies and medications.
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Two) Separation Anxiety Disorder This type of anxiety is more common in children than adults.
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For many, the mere thought of separation causes a high amount of stress People with separation anxiety worry that something unexpected could separate them from their attachment figure Or that their attachment figure will abandon them This anxiety presents as nightmares of being alone and a persistent refusal to leave their attachment figure Kids with separation anxiety may be clingy and insist on sleeping with their parents at night Children often grow out of separation anxiety disorder, but if it persists for six months or longer, they should be provided help Adult sufferers may also find benefit from the available therapies Three) Social Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia and Selective mutism Social anxiety disorder also known as “S.A.D.” refers to the fear of public situations and exposure to unfamiliar people S.A.D. sufferers tend to avoid situations in which they’re in the spotlight because they’re worried that they’ll be embarrassed or judged by others The thought or the anticipation alone of an upcoming social situation can cause major anxiety-related symptoms like panic attacks or severe stomach pain People with S.A.D. may show signs of stress in these forms: Little to no eye contact, Freezing in place, Running off, or Avoiding tasks like eating in public Children and adults alike can suffer from S.A.D.
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But some children with social anxiety may also have a more intense and ability to function in social situations Selective mutism is a type of social anxiety in which a child is unable to speak in social situations Despite being able to speak normally otherwise Often times, this problem arises at school or in the presence of strangers If a child with selective mutism is able to communicate at all. They might only be able to nod or whisper Four) Panic disorder It becomes a disorder when an individual experiences panic attacks multiple times in their lifetime Panic attacks are intense bursts of fear followed by a range of physical symptoms, these include at least four of the following: Cold sweats, Muscle stiffness or Trembling, Hyperventilation, which is fast, shallow breathing Lightheadedness, Numbness or the Fear of death and/or Insanity The fear afterward of another panic attack. Sometimes actually provokes more panic attacks More often than not, panic attacks are had in combination with other anxiety disorders Therapy along with medications can help in handling panic disorder Five) Agoraphobia Does your local train station seem intimidating? You feel faint in a crowded place? Agoraphobia is the fear of public places Anxiety arises because they deem them as too open or dangerous It’s triggered by fears like becoming a victim of crime or of contracting a disease or illness Its sufferers coop themselves up in their homes where they’re comfortable and familiar with their environment Agoraphobe often become over-dependent on other people to compensate for their inability to cope in public Agoraphobia can develop at any age and can be extremely debilitating Exposure therapy works effectively against Agoraphobia in conjunction with medication Six) Specific Phobia These are persistent and extreme fears about a specific object or situation and cause a ton of stress to the sufferer Phobias can be environmental like Acrophobia, the fear of heights and they can be animal-based Or even situational like Taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive Such phobias often arise due to traumatic experiences that cause people to make negative associations with these objects or situations Someone who was clawed in the face by a cat in their childhood might have an avid fear of cats in their adulthood In cases where exposure therapy may not be safe or applicable Cognitive behavioural therapy can be effective in changing a person’s negative association to their feared object or situation Seven) Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder OCD and Post-Traumatic StressDisorder PTSD Yes, OCD and PTSD were categorized by many psychiatrists as disorders to be grouped with the aforementioned anxiety disorders Recently there have been new findings about these disorders that team them both unique enough to be in categories of their own However, this is not to suggest that OCD and PTSD are any less important to deal with The common thread that group disorders like GAD, S.A.D., panic disorder and phobias together Is that sufferers of these anxiety disorders experience future-oriented fear? OCD differs, and that though there is anxiety felt in the sufferers obsession They are able to find temporary relief in their ritualistic compulsions Unfortunately for OCD sufferers, this means a life of cyclical ritualism that can affect daily living Those are suffer from PTSD May suffer anxiety-like symptoms similar to GAD or even panic disorder But PTSD is unique and that its past oriented The sufferer suffers flashbacks that bring them back to the event of their traumatization If you’re diagnosed with anxiety disorder, it’s okay Millions of people around the world understand what it’s like to suffer from an anxiety disorder, so you’re not alone Understand that every single one of these anxiety types is often treatable and manageable Also, if you know someone who may benefit from online counseling we’ve partnered up with Better Help, an affordable online counselling platform that you can utilize They’re constantly striving to improve their services and terms and conditions. The link will be in the description box Did you find this video helpful? If so, remember to share this video with those you think might benefit from it As always, Thanks for watching!
Source : Youtube

Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxktavpRdzU
It’s perhaps the most stigmatized and misunderstood psychological disorder of them all, even among psychologists. Maybe because it’s pretty rare, affecting about 1% of the population, schizophrenia causes more anxiety in the media, in the public, and even in doctors’ offices than any other mental illness. As a result, its sufferers have often been shunned, abused, or locked up. And among the many fallacies that surround the disorder is simply what it means. The word “schizophrenia” literally means “split mind” but contrary to popular belief, the condition has nothing to do with a split in personality or multiple personalities.
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The term refers instead to what’s sometimes called a “split from reality.” Multiple Personality Disorder, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, is a totally different type of condition, a kind of dissociative disorder. And these too, are shrouded in misconceptions, partly because they were the subject of, probably, the greatest psychological hoax of all time. While many of us can relate on some level to the emotional swings, nervousness, and compulsions that come with mood and anxiety disorders, it can be a lot harder for those without direct experience to relate to the symptoms of schizophrenia and dissociation. Unfortunately we tend to fear and avoid what we don’t understand in each other, whether it’s a friend of family member or just some stranger on the bus. But thankfully part of the psychologist’s job is to demystify the things that can happen in our heads, and as is often the case, understanding may be the key to compassion.
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Schizophrenia is a chronic condition that usually surfaces for men in their early to mid-20s, and for women in their late 20s. For some the disorder comes on gradually, but for others it could arise more suddenly, perhaps triggered by stress or trauma, although no event can actually cause the disorder.
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Once thought of as a single discrete condition, schizophrenia is now included in the DSM-5 as a point on a spectrum of disorders that vary in how they’re expressed and how long they last, but they share similar symptoms.
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Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders are currently thought of as characterized by disorganized thinking; emotions and behaviors that are often incongruent with their situations; and disturbed perceptions, including delusions and hallucinations.
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They all involve a kind of loss of contact with reality on some level. The resulting behaviors and mental states associated with this break from reality are generally called “psychotic symptoms” and they usually impair the ability to function.
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When someone’s experiencing psychotic symptoms, their thinking and speech can become disorganized, rambling and fragmented. This tendency to pick up one train of thought and suddenly switch to another and then another can make communication painfully difficult. People exhibiting these symptoms can also suffer a breakdown in selective attention, losing the ability to focus on one thing while filtering others out.
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In extreme cases, speech may become so fragmented it becomes little more than a string of meaningless words, a condition given a name that sounds like its own kind of non sequitur, “word salad.” Classic schizophrenia is also often marked by delusions or false beliefs not based in reality. These delusions can be rooted in ideas of grandeur like “I’m the queen of England!” or “I won an Olympic gold medal for the luge!” Or they can become narratives of persecution and paranoia, believing your thoughts and actions are being controlled by an outside force or that you’re being spied on or followed or that you’re on the verge of a major catastrophe. And there are some complicated variations on these delusions, like feeling that you’ve died or don’t exist anymore or that someone is madly in love with you or that you’re infested with parasites. Delusions of one kind of another strike as many as four out of five people with schizophrenia.
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While some delusions can seem fairly logical, they can also be severe and bizarre and frightening. Unfortunately maybe the most memorable examples of people suffering from severe delusions come from serial killers and yeah, while Son of Sam did claim that he was taking orders from his neighbor’s dog, that kind of stuff is in the tiny, tiny, tiny minority.
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Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd both suffered psychotic symptoms. And then of course there’s John Nash, the Nobel Prize winning American mathematician and subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” Through proper treatment, some people with schizophrenia have not only learned to live with their illness but also made fantastic creative contributions to the world.
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Maybe people with schizophrenia also suffer from perceptual disturbances, or sensory experiences that come without any apparent sensory stimulation, like hallucinations. This is when a person sees or hears something that isn’t there, often lacking the ability to understand what is real and what isn’t. Auditory hallucinations, or hearing voices, are the most common form, and these voices are often abusive. It’s as if you’re inner monologue, that conversation that you have with yourself or the random things that float through your head, were somehow coming from outside of you. It’s as if you couldn’t sort out whether the voices in your mind were internal and self-generated, or external and other-generated. To me, it sounds terrifying.
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Other common symptoms include disorganized, abnormal, or incongruent behavior and emotions. This could mean laughing when recalling a loved one’s death or crying while others are laughing. Acting like a goofy child one minute, then becoming unpredictably angry or agitated the next. Movements may become inappropriate and compulsive, like continually rocking back and forth or remaining motionless for hours.
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Broadly, most psychotic symptoms fall into three general categories traditionally used by psychologists: positive, negative, and disorganized symptoms. Positive symptoms are not what they sound like. They’re the type that add something to the experience of the patient. Like, for example, hallucinations or inappropriate laughter or tears or delusional thoughts.
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Negative symptoms refer to those that subtract from normal behavior, like a reduced ability to function, neglect of personal hygiene, lack of emotion, toneless voice, expressionless face, or withdrawal from family and friends.
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Finally, disorganized symptoms are those jumbles of thought or speech that could include word salad and other problems with attention and organization.
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Symptoms like these are useful in diagnosing a disorder on the schizophrenia spectrum, but there’s a physiological component too. Like many of the disorders we’ve talked about, schizophrenia has been associated with a number of brain abnormalities.
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Post mortem research on schizophrenia patients has found that many have extra receptors for dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in emotion regulation and the brain’s pleasure and reward centers. Some researchers think that overly responsive dopamine systems might magnify brain activity in some way, perhaps creating hallucinations and other so-called positive symptoms as the brain loses its capacity to tell the difference between internal and external stimuli. For this reason, dopamine blocking drugs are often used as anti-psychotic medications in treatment. Modern neuroimaging studies also show that some people with schizophrenia have abnormal brain activity in several different parts of the brain.
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One study noted that when patients were hallucinating, for example, there was unusually high activity in the thalamus, which is involved in filtering incoming sensory signals. Another study noted that patients with paranoid symptoms showed over-activity in the fear processing amygdala. So, schizophrenia seems to involve not just problems with one part of the brain, but abnormalities in several areas and their interconnections.
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But what might be causing these abnormalities? Earlier I mentioned how a stressful event might trigger psychotic symptoms for the first time, even though it can’t actually create the disorder. Psychologists call this the “diathesis-stress model.” This way of thinking involves a combination of biological and genetic vulnerabilities — diathesis — and environmental stressors — stress — that both contribute to the onset of schizophrenia. This model helps explain why some people with genetic vulnerability might not always develop schizophrenia and why the rates of schizophrenia tend to be higher with some degree of poverty or socioeconomic stress.
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And it seems too that there is some kind of genetic predisposition for the disorder. The one-in-a-hundred odds of developing schizophrenia jumped to nearly one in ten if you have a parent or sibling with the disorder, with about 50/50 odds if that sibling is an identical twin, even if those twins were raised apart.
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One recent landmark seven year study looked at genetic samples across 35 countries, examining more than 35,000 people with schizophrenia, and another 110,000 without the disorder. The study identified more than 100 genes that may increase the risk of schizophrenia. As expected, some of these genes involve dopamine regulation, but others are related to immune system functioning. Researchers continue to tease out what is exactly going on here, but many are hopeful that these new findings will lead to better treatment.
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Clearly, schizophrenia is a challenging disorder to live with and one that’s hard for outsiders to understand, but maybe even more rare and more elusive are the dissociative disorders. These are disorders of consciousness, called dissociative because they’re marked by an interruption in conscious awareness. Patients can become separated from the thoughts or feelings that they used to have, which can result in a sudden loss of memory or even change in identity.
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Now, we might all experience minor dissociation at times, like maybe the sense that you’re watching yourself from above, as in a movie, or like you’re driving home and get so zoned out that suddenly you find yourself in front of Taco Bell thinking, like, “How did I get here?” Those things would generally fall into the normal range of dissociation, but most of us don’t develop different personalities.
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Dissociative disorders come in several different forms, but the most infamous of the bunch is probably Dissociative Identity Disorder. This has long been known as Multiple Personality Disorder and, yes, it is a thing. It’s a rare and flashy disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating identities and the best known case was that of Shirley Mason, whose story was famously rendered in the 1973 best seller “Sybil” and later in a popular mini-series.
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The book was marketed as the true story of a woman who suffered great childhood trauma and ended up with 16 different personalities, ranging from Vicky, a selfish French Woman, to handyman Syd, to the religious and critical Clara.
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The book became a craze and within a few years reported cases of multiple personality skyrocketed from scarcely 100 to nearly 40,000.
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Many believe the book was essentially responsible for creating a new psychiatric diagnosis. It turns out though, Sybil’s story was a big fat lie.
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Yes, Shirley Mason was a real person and one with a troubled, traumatic past and a number of psychological issues. As a student in New York in the 1950s she started seeing a therapist named Connie Wilbur and taking some heavy medications. And somewhere in there, maybe because she was coaxed, or maybe because she wanted more attention, Shirley started expressing different personalities.
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Dr. Wilbur built a career and a book deal out of her star patient, even after Shirley confessed that her split personality was a ruse.
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The Sybil case is a powerful reminder that we really don’t understand dissociative disorders very well or even know if they’re always real. Indeed, some people question if Dissociative Identity Disorder is an actual disorder at all.
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But some studies have shown distinct body and brain states that seem to appear in different identities, things like one personality being right handed while the other is left handed, or different personalities having variations in their eye sight that ophthalmologists could actually detect. In these cases, dissociations of identity may be in response to stress or anxiety, a sort of extreme coping mechanism.
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Either way, the debate and the research continue.
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Today we talked about the major symptoms associated with the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including disorganized thinking, inappropriate emotions and behaviors, and disturbed perceptions. We also discussed brain activity associated with these disorders and talked about their possible origins including the diathesis stress model.
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You also learned about dissociative disorders, and Dissociative Identity Disorder in particular, and the scandal that was the Sybil case.
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Thanks for watching, especially to all of our Subbable subscribers who make Crash Course possible. To find out how you can become a supporter, just go to subbable.com. This episode was written by Kathleen Yale, edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat. Our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins, the script supervisor is Michael Aranda. He is also our sound designer and the graphics team at Thought Cafe.
Source : Youtube

Dissociative disorders – causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, pathology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2zeOdE5GY

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Maybe you’ve had the experience of driving on “autopilot.” One minute you got in your car, and the next minute you’ve arrived at your destination, but you can’t actually remember the details of the drive.
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This is an example of normal, everyday dissociation, a term that describes a mental state of disconnection from what is going around you.
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Normally this day-dreamy state doesn’t last very long, and most people can snap out of it if something or someone requires their attention.
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But for some people, dissociation is more pervasive, and can’t be turned off so easily. In fact, the feeling of disconnection may become so intense and happen so often that it stops a person from functioning in their daily life.
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When this is the case, we say the person has a dissociative disorder. Dissociative disorders are a group disorders that cause an impaired awareness of your own actions, thoughts, physical sensations, and even identity, which is a sense of who you are.
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Dissociative disorders tend to stem usually stem from trauma, usually early childhood abuse or neglect, and are thought to be a way of adapting to negative feelings and experiences.
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Dissociative disorders are divided into three main types: depersonalization/derealization disorder, dissociative amnesia, and dissociative identity disorder.
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Each of these disorders fall along a spectrum of severity, with depersonalization/derealization disorder being the least severe of the dissociative disorders, dissociative amnesia falling somewhere in the middle, and dissociative identity disorder being the most severe.
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Typically, individuals with more severe dissociative disorders may have elements of less severe ones as well.
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With depersonalization/derealization disorder, depersonalization refers to a feeling of detachment from oneself, your own person, while derealization refers to a feeling that that the world around you is not fully real.
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Those with the disorder often feel as if they are watching themselves from the outside, maybe watching a movie about their life.
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They might feel emotionally or physically numb, or have a weak sense of self. Individuals with depersonalization/derealization disorder might speak in a deadpan manner, with little emotion, and have trouble forming relationships.
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In severe cases, a person may have trouble recognizing familiar places, people, or objects, and this can make it had to learn tasks.
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Other symptoms include an altered sense of time, where things seem to move too fast or slow, brain fog or light-headedness, and being prone to rumination and anxiety. Dissociative amnesia is when a person blocks out or forgets important personal information that most people would remember for a lifetime, like where they lived as a child, or what their mother looked like.
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Dissociative amnesia can be divided into four types: localized, generalized, systematized, and continuous.
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Most people with dissociative amnesia have localized amnesia, meaning they have trouble recalling a traumatic event.
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Sometimes the memory loss is broader, and includes months or years surrounding the event. Generalized amnesia is where a person can’t remember any of their past, even the non-traumatic parts.
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The onset of generalized amnesia can be sudden, stress-induced, and may be accompanied by a dissociative fugue, meaning a temporary period of disorientation and wandering or travel.
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In a fugue state, a person may be confused about who they are, or they may believe they are someone else.
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They may also temporarily lose deeply-ingrained skills.
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For example, a computer engineer might forget how to use a laptop. In systematized amnesia, a person only forgets a category of information which is in some way associated with a trauma, like forgetting everything about a certain person, or a specific location, even if it was a significant part of their life.
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And finally, continuous amnesia happens when a person forgets each new event after it happens, and retains nothing but the present moment– a bit like the fish Dora in movie Finding Nemo.
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And continuous amnesia doesn’t always relate back to psychological trauma. The third type of dissociative disorder is dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality disorder.
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Dissociative identity disorder can be broken down into two types: covert dissociative identity disorder, and overt dissociative identity disorder.
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By far the most common type, covert dissociative identity disorder occurs when a person experiences sudden and dramatic shifts in the way they perceive, think, or feel, as if they have taken on characteristics of a different person or people.
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Some people with covert may hear that person’s voice, and feel that it is speaking to them.
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Those with covert dissociative identity disorder are usually aware that their experience is unusual, and may feel disoriented and powerless to understand their moods and behavior. On the other hand, those with overt dissociative identity disorder outright assume two or more distinct identities, sometimes called personalities, or alters. The identities are distinct because they tend to talk and act differently than the original person.
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They may have opposing tastes or political views, be different ages, genders, or nationalities. These alternate identities completely take a person’s body and mind, suppressing all other identities temporarily.
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Those with overt dissociative identity disorder are not aware that this is happening, and may report forgetting whole portions of their day.
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They may find groceries they can’t recall buying, or discover injuries to their body that they can’t recall getting, and it’s not unusual for some people to have a period of fugue, and suddenly find themselves in a different town or city.
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Having overt dissociative identity disorder can potentially endanger the person, especially if one identity engages in self-mutilation or risky behavior. The prevalence of suicide among those with the condition is very high, with almost three quarters attempting suicide at least once in their life. Diagnosing dissociative disorders can be tricky, and some of the symptoms can be seen in substance intoxication, especially of hallucinogens like LSD, and dissociative drugs like PCP and Ketamine.
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Other causes include seizures, brain trauma, as well as chronic conditions like dementia. Psychiatric conditions like an anxiety disorder can cause an impaired sense of identity, time, and sensation, especially during a panic attack, but these symptoms usually last minutes to hours.
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With dissociative disorders, the symptoms can persist for years.
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Finally, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia can also cause dramatic mood swings mimicking dissociative identity disorder, but while these depressive or euphoric moods can last for at least a week, the change in personality in dissociative identity disorder only last for minutes to hours each time. Treatment for dissociative disorders typically involves psychotherapy so people can process their trauma safely.
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In the case of dissociative identity disorder, the goal of therapy is to facilitate fusion of identities, where a person’s personality states are integrated and the person feels more whole.
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All right, as a quick recap, dissociative disorders often develop in as an attempt to adapt to severe or prolonged trauma.
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Falling on the least severe end of the spectrum, depersonalization/ derealization disorder is due to a disruption in the normal perception of events.
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Falling in the middle of the spectrum, dissociative amnesia is due to a disruption in memory. Falling on the most severe end of the spectrum, dissociative identity disorder is due to a problem with having a single, complete identity.
Source : Youtube

So, You’re Having an Anxiety Attack (The Calm-Down Method for Stopping Anxiety Attacks)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGG7MGgptxE

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[Music] If you’re right in the middle of an anxiety attack, this video is for you. You may feel overwhelmed or be freaking out.
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Maybe you’re shaking, crying, feeling sick to your stomach. Or maybe you feel irritable or like running away.
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I’m gonna walk you through a process to calm down. Now, you’re going to be okay. These feelings will pass.
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You can do this.
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Just notice where you are. What can you feel around you? Name three things that you can touch, and describe them. So for example, say, “Oh, I can feel my pants. They’re soft.
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I can feel the chair. It’s cool.” Do that with three things.
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And now, can you slow down your out breath? Just breathe out a little bit more slowly. You are safe right now.
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You’re not in physical danger. You are safe.
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Now, anxiety is uncomfortable, but it won’t harm you. So these feelings that you’re having, you can handle them. You can feel them and be okay, and they will pass. Okay.
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So now let’s do something sensory.
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Let’s help you get grounded in your senses.
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If you can, go wash your face in cold water or hold something cold, like an ice cube.
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Now, if that’s not an option, then I want you to just gently pat your face. Breathe out slowly. Notice the sensation of your hands on your cheeks, on your forehead, on your nose, on your lips, and on your chin. Just notice what that feels like.
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In this moment, here and now, you are safe. If you’d like, you can try giving yourself a little hug.
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Take a slow breath in, and if you can, breathe out slowly through your nose. Let’s slow things down. Can you go to a quiet, safe place where there’s less stimulation? Maybe a bedroom, a bathroom.
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Or step outside for a breath of fresh air.
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Or maybe it’s with a pet or with a safe person.
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[Music] Slow breathing. If there is somewhere you can go that is quiet, safe, and calm, just pause this video while you go there.
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If you can’t leave, just close your eyes for a moment and visualize that place, or pull up a picture of that place on your phone.
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My safe place is in a beautiful desert canyon early in the morning when the air is cool and crisp.
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This is where I go in my mind when I can’t leave the place that I’m in. Now, again take a few slow breaths. You don’t need to force it.
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Your body has a natural calming response, and you can ease yourself into it.
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Name three things you can see around you. Try faking a big yawn. This helps your body remind your brain that in this moment you are safe. Take another slow breath. These feelings will pass. You are capable.
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You can do this.
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Thank you for watching. You got this.
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Take care.
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If you’d like to learn more ways to calm your body down, feel free to check out my Grounding Skills course.
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It’s free, and the link is in the description.
Source : Youtube

Automatic Negative Thoughts – Break the Anxiety Cycle 11/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLZ-3TSoe9E
Let me tell you a story about the invisible thing  that fuels anxiety and depression, and then I’m   going to teach you some skills to stop letting  it control you and how you feel. So one day when   I was super pregnant, super tired, exhausted,  overwhelmed with parenting three little kids and  
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growing a human inside of me, I had to go to Home  Depot to fix something in the house. And I pulled   into the closest parking spot I could find, but  then I realized that the truck in front of me in   the stall in front of me was sticking out into my  stall a little bit so I couldn’t pull all the way  
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in. And twisting around to like back out find a  new spot just sounded like painful and exhausting   with my huge stomach. So I just checked to make  sure that my van was in the lines, and then I went   into the store. I got what I needed, came back  out, and when I got to my van I found that someone  
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had left a business card on my window. But it  wasn’t a regular business card. It said, “You suck   at parking.” It said, “F you. Learn to drive, you  idiot.” And he gave me the finger. Now, normally   I would have laughed this off, but not today. Not  at 8 months pregnant. “Why are people so cruel?” I  
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thought. “Poor me. I’m having a bad day, and this  mean person needed to come make it worse.” Right?   “What’s their stupid problem?” I thought. “They  took the time to print out you-suck-at-parking   business cards.” Okay. I definitely cried a little  bit on the way home, and I’m going to blame that  
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on the pregnancy hormones. So why was I so upset?  It would be easy to say that I was upset because   someone put a mean card on my window, but that  is not true. Our emotions do not come from the   situation; they come from how we think about the  situation. I wasn’t upset because of the piece  
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of paper; I was upset because I interpreted that  card to mean that people were attacking me, that   I was surrounded by a mean and dangerous world,  that they were out to get me. And this triggered   the stress response, the fear response. Without  even realizing it, I interpreted that situation  
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as threatening. And this was thanks to automatic  negative thoughts. We are all deluded when we   think that the situation, the trigger is what  makes us feel a certain way. You see, there are   hundreds of possible ways I could have interpreted  that situation. If I had just thought, “Meh,  
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they’re probably just an unhappy human being with  nothing better to do. Meh. Whatever,” I probably   wouldn’t have cared much. Maybe I would have  felt a little calloused. If I had thought “Hm,   maybe they’re working on their anger management.  They put a card on my window instead of slashing  
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my tires,” then I would have felt relieved. And  if I’d thought, “Maybe they’re actually a chronic   people pleaser who is doing therapy homework to  be more assertive and this is the way they’re   learning and practicing,” I would have left  feeling like really happy for them, proud of their  
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accomplishments. How we think about a situation  directly impacts how we feel. Automatic negative   thoughts are involuntary, habitual thoughts. They  focus on the negative. They exaggerate problems,   or they predict disaster. the impact of automatic  negative thoughts is profound. they can distort  
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your perspective, trigger strong emotions, and  influence your behavior in harmful ways. So for   example, you might not go to a social activity  because your automatic negative thought says   you’ll have a terrible time, and that can lead  to missed opportunities, which leads to isolation  
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and a cycle of feeling worse and worse. in this  video you’ll learn about the automatic negative   thoughts that fuel the anxiety cycle and lead  to feeling overwhelmed or hopeless. you probably   aren’t even aware of the types of thoughts  that take you there, so we’ll explore them,  
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and then we’ll talk about both a CBT and  ACT approach to dealing with them. [Music] Most people don’t know that when you have  depression, some physical structures in   your brain actually shrink. But most people also  don’t know that when you change the way you think,  
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you can actually change the physical structure of  your brain. Modern imaging has given us a window   into the brain to show us that the brain has  plasticity, meaning it changes depending on how   you think and how you act. Now, most people have  never been taught these simple ways to improve  
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mental health, so that’s why I made the course  Change Your Brain: 10 Essential Skills to Combat   Anxiety and Depression. In this course you’ll  learn a bunch of ways that your mind and body are   connected. You’ll learn what to eat to combat  depression and anxiety and how light therapy  
00:04:43
actually changes the serotonin levels in your  brain and research shows that it’s more effective   than anti-depressants for mild to moderate  depression. You’ll learn that when you improve   your sleep, 87% of people see their depression  symptoms decrease. These skills are all all backed  
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by research, and many of them only take a few  minutes each day. So if you’d like to learn more,   check out the link below. The course is backed  by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so if you’re   just curious about what the research says about  how to change your brain or if you’re ready to  
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improve your depression or anxiety, check it out.  Your life can get so much better. I saw this meme   the other day. My top three assumptions when the  doorbell rings: number one, murderer. Number two,   police telling me that everyone is dead. Number  three, that book I ordered on positive thinking.  
00:05:33
Isn’t this how anxiety works? But usually it’s  on a much quieter, like chronic scale. We are   swimming in automatic thoughts that we don’t even  know are there. People have between 6 and 60,000   thoughts a day. I don’t know many people who only  have six. We are constantly making assumptions  
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about what others think about us, about some  imagined future that we’re worrying about,   about the catastrophic outcomes that are sure to  occur. Now, you’re most likely not anxious simply   because of your genes; you’re anxious because  you perceive the world to be a dangerous place.  
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And you perceive the world as a dangerous place  because you’re buying into automatic negative   thoughts. When we look at the anxiety cycle,  there’s some kind of stimulus that we interpret   as being dangerous, and that’s what triggers the  fight/flight/freeze response – the interpretation.  
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So the vast majority of the time it’s the  interpretation that makes us believe we’re   in danger. But most of the time we don’t realize  that. We think that it’s the stimulus that made us   feel a certain way. Victor Frankl said, “Between  the stimulus and response there is a space, and  
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in that space lies our freedom and power to choose  our responses. In our response lies our growth and   our freedom.” And he would know – he survived  the Nazi concentration camps when his family   didn’t. He survived the horrors of World War  II as a Jew, and he managed to find purpose and  
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meaning and goodness in life. When we feel fear  and anxiety, we usually don’t realize that we are   looking through the lens of our automatic negative  thoughts. And these thoughts are often fearful.   These thoughts are like we’re walking down the  street in Las Vegas, and there’s people selling  
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stuff. Right? “Hey, you need a new phone.” “You  probably need an all-you-can-eat steak dinner.”   “You definitely need to see this show.” “Hey,  buy a hot dog.” “Hey, want some porn?” Right?   It’s a normal experience to run across people  selling stuff, and it’s a normal experience to  
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have random thoughts pop into your head. But most  of us don’t realize that we’re buying into these   thoughts. It’s like we don’t have any skills to  brush them off, and instead we feel the need to   talk with each salesperson, listen to what they  say, and buy what they’re selling. This is what’s  
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called buying your thoughts. It’s when you believe  them and invest in them without even questioning   if you want what they’re selling. And you don’t  even realize it. We don’t even realize that the   reason we’re feeling the way we are is because of  how we’re thinking thinking because the thoughts  
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are just like the air we breathe. Let me share  some examples with you. I asked my audience what   their automatic negative thoughts are, and here’s  some of their responses: “It’s my fault for 100%   of everything going wrong, and then I shame  myself.” “I’m such a failure.” “I’m all alone.  
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I’m not lovable. I’m broken.” “I won’t be able to  sleep again at night, and I won’t be able to sleep   at all in my life.” “It’s too much. I can’t handle  it, and it will break me down.” “This depressive   episode is never going to go away.” “Something  good has just happened, so something devastating  
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is about to happen next.” “Why am I like this? Why  am I like a terrified Chihuahua when other people   around me are relaxed and don’t seem to anticipate  doom at any moment?” “They’re just saying that to   sound nice” (about any praise or compliments).  “I always mess things up.” “No one really cares  
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about me.” “I’m never going to be good enough.”  “Everyone is judging me right now.” Notice how you   feel in your body after hearing those. Honestly,  when I read through the comments I felt a little   heavy, a little discouraged, a little anxious.  So what do we do about your automatic negative  
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thoughts? Step one is getting super clear on  what these thoughts are. In the next segments   in this um section of the course, we’re going to  talk about some Kung Fu with your thoughts. But   for now we just have to take these thoughts from  being invisible little whispers to being concrete  
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thingies. Right? You’ve got to catch yourself  thinking your worst thoughts. So go back to the   section in your workbook where you wrote down  the situations where you tend to feel anxiety.   Now we’ve got to explore the thoughts that are in  between the situation and the anxiety. I’m going  
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to give you some examples. Okay. So my sister once  told me this um awesome story about this time she   was hanging out with a brand-new friend. And they  went to the beach and they hung out together with   all their kids. And then she gets home. And this  friend was kind of a like very clean and tidy,  
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afraid-of-germs type person. They get home, and  my daughter finds a nit, like one baby lice in   her daughter’s hair after playing with the clean  family. So she started having these thoughts,   “Oh my gosh, she’s going to hate me. She’s going  to tell others how gross I am. She’s never going  
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to hang out with me again. No one will.” And then,  you know, that creates the anxiety response. Why   would our body have an anxiety response around  rejection? Well we used to as, you know,   a species completely depend on our community for  our survival. So our brain is like, “Oh my gosh,  
00:10:35
if I get rejected I’ll die of starvation.  I’ll be kicked out of my village, and I’ll,   and I’ll die.” So when we notice these thought, we  can challenge them, or we can separate ourselves   from them and realize, you know what, we’re  probably not going to die. She might not even  
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reject me. She might not even be mad. She might  not hate me.” You know, things like that. We can   challenge those thoughts. We separate ourselves  from them, defuse them. Okay, let’s take another   one. You’re laying in bed, got a big day ahead  of you, and you can’t fall asleep. You might  
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start having thoughts like, “I’m never going to  get enough rest. I’m going to be tired all day   tomorrow. I’m going to snap at my kids all day or  I won’t be able to work very well. it’s going to   be awful to get back to sleep.” Um and that leads  to really big fears, catastrophizing, right? “Oh,  
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I’ll ruin my relationship with my kids, and  they’ll cut me off when I’m older.” And again,   that’s that rejection fear, like now I’ll die  starvation or I’ll be alone forever. I’ll feel   pain. I’m afraid of pain.” These are the core  fears, right? Um rejection, um humiliation, pain,  
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death, failure, loss of identity. These are the  four fears we worry about. Okay. Here’s another   one: your boss gives you some negative feedback  at work. Your thoughts around this: “I’m such a   failure. I never do anything right. He’s such a  jerk. I’m never good enough.” Um that could lead  
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to “I’m going to get fired.” Yeah. That’s that’s  a survival threat to your brain, so it’s going   to kick off the anxiety response. “My husband is  going to be disappointed in me.” Rejection. “We’re   going to run out of money and die of starvation”  Right? Again, there’s that survival response. Now,  
00:12:12
what would happen if instead of those thoughts we  could challenge those thoughts and be like “Well,   this is an opportunity to learn. I can learn  new things.” Or “Oh, my boss must care about my   development if he’s willing to give me feedback.”  I mean, there’s different ways to think about this  
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situation, right? Or you could just say, “Oh, I’m  going to notice those thoughts. Hello, failure   story. Man, you sure come up a lot. I don’t really  have to believe you.” Okay, we’ll get back to that   later though. Okay. Uh here’s another example:  I feel anxious or depressed. You might think,  
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“This anxiety is never going to go away.” “This  depression is never going to go away.” And then   that thought leads to the belief, “I will feel  miserable forever, and my life is ruined.” Okay.   So how are these automatic negative thoughts  impacting your life? How do they impact how you  
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feel? Okay. Step two: thoughts aren’t facts. Your  brain makes stuff up all the time. Okay. So you   spend your day with these thoughts swirling around  your head, and they trigger the anxiety cycle. And   the crazy thing is, you don’t even realize it.  So how are we going to take another step toward  
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stopping the anxiety cycle? The second step is  realizing that your brain is a word machine. It   literally just makes a ton of thoughts all the  time. Its job is to crank out random thoughts.   So your job is to create a little space between  you and the thoughts. There are two approaches to  
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managing automatic negative thoughts: CBT and ACT.  Now, I think they both have merit, so let me teach   them to you. The classic approach to negative  thoughts is from CBT, cognitive behavioral   therapy. With CBT it’s like mental Judo. You learn  to spot these thoughts, challenge them, and swap  
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them out with thoughts that are more balanced and  realistic. You’re basically engage, engaging with   the thought in order to choose something more  helpful. So if we take the thought, “My boss   gave me negative feedback at work,” the classic  CBT approach is to say, “Are these thoughts  
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accurate?” and then replace them with thoughts  like, “Sometimes I succeed. I often do things   right. Last week I did a great job with that  problem we had with widgets,” and then you bring   to mind these alternate facts. Right? Say like,  “Oh, I messed up, but mistakes happen.” Or “I’m  
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going to learn new skills to solve this. I can get  through this. I always do.” Right? It, this can be   a really simple but a powerful way to stop buying  these negative thoughts and then replace them with   something more accurate and helpful. And there’s  a worksheet in the workbook to help you go through  
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this process. And just as a reminder, during this  course I’m going to teach you a ton of skills. And   it’s not like you can just do them one time and  then it’s all better. Like these are exercises   that you’re going to want to practice over and  over for a while until they become easier and  
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easier for you to do throughout your day. Okay.  So let’s talk about the second approach, what   ACT calls cognitive defusion. With acceptance and  commitment therapy you don’t fight the automatic   negative thoughts. Instead, you learn to sit  with them, notice them, but not let them boss you  
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around. Um you’re also encouraged to take actions  that line up with your personal values. This can   give your life a sense of meaning and purpose,  which makes the ants less powerful. So if anxiety   is believing the salesman, you know, um believing  those negative thoughts that say everything is  
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awful, freedom isn’t arguing with the salesman;  it’s not debating with them. Sometimes when we   argue with our thoughts or we spend a lot of  time ruminating on them or analyzing them,   we just end up overthinking and feeling more  confused and miserable than ever. This is called  
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cognitive fusion, right, where we might buy the  thoughts or we’re so engaged with our thoughts,   arguing with them and debating them, that we don’t  really have space to be present, to live our life.   We just keep going in circles. Like, it’s like  you’re in a debate with the salesperson. So even  
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if we aren’t buying what they’re selling, if we’re  arguing with the salesperson or debating facts   with them we aren’t going where we were going. We  aren’t walking down the sidewalk in the direction   we’re going. We’re just stuck there arguing with  our thoughts. And this is a typical overthinking  
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pattern with anxiety and depression. Freedom  is knowing where we’re going when we’re walking   down the street, knowing what we do and we don’t  want, and it also means choosing to engage with a   salesman only if it helps us. Right? So to do this  we need a little bit of space from the salesman,  
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and this is called cognitive defusion. So instead  of debating our thoughts, we need to learn to   notice these thoughts, separate ourselves from the  thoughts, and then choose what thoughts are going   to be helpful for us to live the life we dream of.  Maybe I want to buy that churro, but I definitely  
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don’t want to see that show in Las Vegas. Right?  We need to get better at distancing ourselves   from the salesman so that we can evaluate what’s  going to be helpful for us. This is a skill you   can learn and you can practice a lot, but you  can also just simply switch from saying like,  
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“I’m such a loser” to saying “I’m having the  thought that I’m a loser.” Instead of saying,   “I hate feeling anxious” you could say “I’m having  the thought that I hate feeling anxious.” All   you’re doing is creating a degree of separation  from your true self and your word machine. So  
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there are some really practical ways to learn to  do this. So this this video is already getting   too long, so we’re we’re going to practice more  cognitive defusion skills in the next segment.   I just wanted to give you an overview. So from  my perspective both CBT and ACT approaches can  
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be quite helpful. I’ll often try the CBT first,  so like to a salesman, “No thanks, I don’t need a   vacuum cleaner.” Um or to your negative thoughts,  “No thanks, I’m I’m not a complete loser.” And   then if that thought is super persistent I’ll just  let it be there and I’ll redirect my attention,  
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essentially ignoring the salesman and walking  on. “Dear mind, thank you for that thought,   but it’s not super helpful. Okay. Now, back to  what I was doing.” Just allowing that thought   to be there and redirecting your attention back  to your value, direction, or the present moment.  
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So just to summarize: automatic negative thoughts  are the habitual, involuntary thoughts that our   word machine of a brain pops out all the time.  They’re often false, unhelpful, and they directly   contribute to anxiety because that perception  of danger, that interpretation that a situation  
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is dangerous or threatening triggers the fear  response. You can learn to notice these thoughts   for what they are – just thoughts – challenge  them, and replace them with something more   helpful to you, whether that’s a more realistic  thought or a shift in attention to what really  
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matters to you. Automatic negative thoughts don’t  have to control your life. Okay. Your challenge   for the next week: sit down with your workbook  and explore what kind of interpretations lead   you to feeling anxious. See if you can explore  the automatic negative thoughts that make you  
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feel feel like you’re in danger. Do this at least  once per day for one week. And it’s probably best   to just schedule in a time to do this instead  of waiting until you’re anxious to do it. Um   and you can print extra copies of the worksheet  from the paid course. Okay. Thank you for being  
Source : Youtube

Daily Habits to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EX1Xnvvk5c
I don’t know about you but for me 2020  has been a bit of a stressful year   so i thought i’d share with you some of the things  that i do every day to manage stress and anxiety   but in this video i’m also going to explain a way  of thinking about stress that can transform stress  
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from something that is you know just something bad  that happens to you into something that you can   channel to be more productive and also help you  feel calmer so in this video you’re going to learn   10 daily habits to reduce stress and anxiety and  don’t worry i’m not going to tell you to meditate  
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this video is sponsored by better help where  you can get a professional licensed counselor   who can personally coach you through anxiety and  stress for around 65 dollars a week so check out   the link in the description for 10 off your  first month so i’ve been reading the little  
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house on the prairie books to my daughter and in  book three we’re reading a story about almanzo   and his farming family in the 1800s  and they survived off of what they grew   and in one of the stories right before the fourth  of july they’ve got their corn starting to sprout  
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in this in the fields and the weather starts  to get weird so it seems like it’s going to   freeze so before they go to bed the parents  start to worry a little bit about the crops   and they they don’t go to sleep they stay up and  they watch the temperature and sure enough it does  
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start to freeze so they get all the kids out of  bed in the middle of the night and the only way to   save the corn is to pour water on each of these  tiny little stocks before the sun comes up and   if they don’t their corn is going to freeze and  they’ll have no harvest that year so every member  
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of the family anxiously runs through the night  hand watering each little corn sprout in their   acres and acres of fields and by the time the sun  rose they’d managed to save most of their crop   they were exhausted but they were also content  and after they did the rest of their morning  
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chores they were able to sit back and relax  and appreciate the hard work that they’ve done   so the stress response is your body’s activating  response when you sense a threat in almanzo’s case   this was their livelihood about to be destroyed  your body turns on this sympathetic response it  
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sends out some adrenaline to spur you into action  it heightens your breathing and your heart rate   to prep you for performance and almanzo and his  family they use their stress response to spur   them on the worry helps them to be vigilant to not  sleep to take this you know impressive physical  
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action and this stress response potentially saved  them from complete crop failure so anxiety isn’t   just something bad that happens to you it serves a  function but our modern language confuses anxiety   with anxiety disorder and it’s given this  negative connotation to the word anxiety  
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but anxiety isn’t out to get you it’s your body  and mind’s performance mode so the stress or   the anxiety response can help you have more energy  and get more done and then it’ll naturally resolve   if you know how to channel it so i’m going  to teach you some daily habits you can use to  
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naturally resolve your anxiety when you think of  anxiety as a motivating energy to resolve problems   anxiety can become a powerful tool instead of just  something bad that happens to you that you want to   avoid and even if you do have an anxiety disorder  these tools will help you reduce your stress  
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levels and get healthier so let’s talk about a  modern problem that we all have one of the reasons   that so many people struggle with stress and  anxiety is that we face a few modern problems that   make it a lot harder for us to deal with stress  than almanzo and his family back in the 1800s  
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because our anciently evolved brain isn’t so good  at dealing with modern stressors we all need to   take an intentional approach to managing anxiety  so the first problem that many of us face is that   so many of our modern stressors are connected  to problems that we can’t solve physically  
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so in almanzo’s case when they were worried  they got that jolt of adrenaline and cortisol   and they were able to use that physical energy to  solve a physical problem they didn’t feel stressed   afterwards because they burned off the adrenaline  and cortisol when they were running around solving  
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the problem so for many of us our modern stressors  are things like deadlines and assignments   traffic noise and our crops are sitting  at a computer instead of planning corn   so if i’m stressed about a problem at work i may  not sleep and i might even solve that problem  
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but the adrenaline and the cortisol stay in my  system until i physically burn them off so this   is where exercise becomes clutch daily exercise  is an essential part of reducing pent-up anxiety   five minutes of exercise has been shown  to reduce cortisol and adrenaline levels  
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exercise can decrease overall levels of  tension it can elevate your mood it can   improve your sleep and it can improve your  self-esteem so aerobic exercise you know where   you’re breathing really hard that tends to be  the most effective type of exercise at reducing  
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stress but really any kind of movement is helpful  so going for a walk or a bike ride or even just   doing like wall sits or stretching for a minute  in your office those can all be helpful so the   first thing i’m going to encourage you to do is  just find a way to add some movement to your day  
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now let’s talk about your morning routine how  you start your day is going to set the tone for   your entire day so if you’re like many people the  first thing you do makes your anxiety worse so um   this is what it looks like for a lot of  people you’re tired because you went to  
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bed a little bit late and the first thing you do  is start scrolling through your phone you look   at social media or the news and then you drink  some caffeine now caffeine is the most widely   used psychoactive drug in the world it crosses  the blood-brain barrier in seconds and it makes  
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you feel more alert by reducing adenosine but  adenosine is a relaxation chemical in your brain   caffeine can also increase adrenaline and it can  make you feel more irritable more anxious and   more agitated now you can develop a tolerance  to the alerting effects of caffeine meaning  
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you’re going to need more coffee the next time to  feel alert but you don’t develop a tolerance to   the anxiety effects of caffeine so caffeine  use can impact your sleep and your anxiety   for up to 48 hours and caffeine has been shown  to contribute to anxiety and depressive disorders  
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so if you’re serious about decreasing your anxiety  try getting caffeine out of your system for at   least three days and see how how that impacts  you i personally don’t use caffeine because   of the impact it has on on my anxiety levels  if you feel tired one thing you could try is  
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getting more sleep sleep helps your brain  function better which makes it so you can   better solve problems and resolve situations  that bring you anxiety so if the idea of   making these changes seems overwhelming um i’m  just going to encourage you to start slowly just  
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make one little change every month there there is  no quick and easy fix for anxiety like if you’re   looking for some magical cure you’ll have to  check some other channel because that’s not what   i’m selling but you can drastically reduce your  anxiety by making small and sustainable changes  
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okay so now let’s talk about your  media consumption so our ancient   evolved brain is much better adapted to the world  of little house on the prairie than it is to our   modern media almanzo and lara may have gotten a  newspaper once a week or heard the news from town  
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occasionally but that news was often about  local events the news was brief and infrequent   and actionable so stress about the news could  be resolved by taking action so for example   if a couple in town got married they could make  them a present or if a barn burned down in town  
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they could go help their neighbors build a new  one this is the opposite of what we have today   so these 24 7 streams of disaster around the  world these trigger our stress response as if   as if we’re in physical danger but they they  don’t give us any place to act to create safety  
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so if you wake up in the morning and you just  start scrolling through your feeds or you start   watching the news you’re basically giving other  people the power over your adrenaline glands   i do not recommend starting the day off with the  news instead sit back for a second and think what  
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do you want the tone of your day to be for me i  want it to be upbeat calm self-assured peaceful   and powerful now what kind of media does that for  you for me it’s prayer and scripture study first   thing in the morning for you it may be meditation  journaling uplifting music but the important thing  
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is that the first thing you do is something you  choose so i don’t i don’t just bury my head in   the sand when it comes to the news i choose to to  check a couple of of straightforward news stations   um once or twice a day but i don’t do it first  thing in the morning i also i also choose to focus  
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more of my time on areas that i can take action  on instead of on areas that are out of my control   the stress response is supposed to help you  it’s about performance and taking action but   it’s also supposed to be the short-term reaction  so it’s healthy for bursts of speed but it becomes  
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unhealthy when it’s chronic and when that stress  remains unresolved so if you take the little house   of the prairie story they worried they didn’t  sleep they took action they did what they could   to save the corn and some plants lived and some  plants died but then they relaxed our body has a  
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natural balancing reaction to the stress response  this is called the parasympathetic response but   most of us don’t know how to turn it on so you can  choose to turn on this parasympathetic response   through grounding exercises or breathing exercises  which i’m going to talk about later but the most  
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natural way to resolve the stress response is  to simply complete a task so if you feel worried   about an assignment and then you turn it in ah you  feel that stress go away and this is one of the   reasons why coping skills can only go so far in  helping anxiety because anxiety is best resolved  
00:10:21
by doing one of two things either taking  action to resolve the problem or threat or   whatever it is or practicing active acceptance  so letting go of things that you can’t change   but in our virtual world even when we do complete  a task or we resolve a problem it can be hard to  
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see the results so my next tip is that you find  a way to acknowledge when you can set down a task   you you make it concrete so for me i really like  checklists um i’ll even like if i complete a task   and it wasn’t on my checklist i’ll write it on  my checklist and then i’ll check it off so that  
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i can um feel that sense of completion now there  are lots of ways to do this but find some way to   mark off or to acknowledge when you’ve completed  a task mike boyd just made a really interesting   machine that does this or simone yertz gertz i  wish i know how to say her name right um they also  
00:11:14
have some interesting ways to kind of mark off  when they’ve completed something so i encourage   you to find some way to give yourself some  physical tangible way to celebrate your success   now this can be really hard to do with  long-running stress or long-term projects  
00:11:31
but you can learn skills and practice them to  turn off the stress one skill that i learned from   michael barrett who was the director of the center  for change this is an eating disorder treatment   program is to every day when i leave work to make  a conscious practice of setting that work aside  
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so for me i just say a little prayer about my  clients i say lord i’ve done the best i can   i’m leaving them in your hands now there is a  lot of different ways to do this but the basic   idea is choosing when to carry something mentally  heavy and when to set it down so this could be as  
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simple as turning off notifications on your phone  or setting boundaries at work about when they can   and when they can’t contact you when your job  is mostly mental or mostly emotional or virtual   i also really find it helpful to choose something  manual to complete it can be really nice and  
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relieving to see physical progress on a task so  this could look like cleaning something mowing   the lawn fixing something physical there’s just  something about physical tasks and completion   that seem to click that like ah switch in the  brain it triggers that parasympathetic response in  
00:12:39
our brain that says okay you’re all right you’re  safe now and it turns off that stress response   now managing anxiety is about being intentional  and in control instead of reactionary so i have   this picture in my head of me as a little kid  coming home from playing at a friend’s house um  
00:12:57
you know it’s evening it’s starting to get dark  and i i grew up in a super safe town but when it   started to get dark and i was walking home um you  know how it feels like there’s like that tingle   in the back of your neck and maybe you wonder  if there’s something behind you in the dark  
00:13:13
um now of course in every single situation there  was nothing back there but if you start running   then you get more scared and you get you  get more and more scared the faster you run   and then you get through the door and you slam the  door whatever you look out the window and there  
00:13:27
was nothing behind you now that is how i visualize  daily low level stress and anxiety it’s like you   start to feel that tingle in the back of your neck  and your impulse is to run so if you’re at work   and you start to feel a little bit stressed you  try to work harder you try to work faster and you  
00:13:43
try to get more things done but that doesn’t  make you more effective i have the tendency   to try to fill every waking moment with busyness  you know checking your email or just keeping busy   all the time by always staring at your phone so  just like me as a little kid we perpetuate anxiety  
00:14:00
when we run from it when we run from ghosts  so instead of running like stop slow down   turn around and look around you and  you’ll see that there’s nothing there   so what does this look like in my day-to-day  routine this looks like taking the time to breathe  
00:14:18
taking the time to slow down to do something  calming or to do something grounding   this is this is how you regulate your nervous  system throughout the day you may feel like you’re   getting more done by just going faster but you’ll  be a lot more effective and less stressed out  
00:14:36
if you take a minute every hour or so to  just clarify and to breathe and to slow down   our brain is not very good at multitasking that  can trigger that sympathetic that fight flight   freeze response so another way to help strengthen  your parasympathetic response is to monetise so  
00:14:56
our brain gets super overwhelmed by multitasking  basically interprets too much stimulation as   being unresolved threats so close those tabs do  one thing at a time and then just you know one   of the things that i do throughout the day that  helps me calm down is to just notice where you are  
00:15:14
so just notice right now that you are watching  this video now i promised that i wouldn’t tell   you to meditate but mindfulness is different it’s  just slowing down and noticing the present moment   noticing that you are doing what you are doing and  then you can move on and get back to you know your  
00:15:28
work or whatever so another essential skill to  manage anxiety for your daily routine is to do   what i call big picture small picture so stress  is not the problem chronic unresolved stress is   the problem this is the problem of the brain not  knowing how to sort and manage all the stimulation  
00:15:48
and all the triggers and all the threats that come  at it and when we feel too many things coming at   us our brain interprets that as if we’re being  attacked as if we’re in danger if if you’ve got   so many things that feel urgent but you can’t  do them all your brain can go into shutdown mode  
00:16:06
so what do we do with this right no one no one has  the time to do everything they want or need to do   so so how do i manage this i personally take  the time to intentionally sort out and choose   what i’m going to work on what are my priorities  and and what i can let go of and this i really  
00:16:23
believe can help clear up that chronic unresolved  stress so for me i don’t know whether it’s anxiety   or whether it’s add but i am i constantly  feel like my brain is overflowing with ideas   and tasks and to-do lists and then on top of  that there’s the screaming children so the way  
00:16:38
that i i manage this is i’m constantly throughout  the day writing down my to-do lists so i’ll write   down a list of everything on my mind and then  i’ll just choose one or two things clarify   what is most important what are my priorities  and then i just get to work on a couple of them  
00:16:55
and that helps me manage my stress and anxiety so  for some people clarifying looks like journaling   and this can really help with anxiety because it  helps your brain sort through the confusing mess   and and to get clarity and then to get going  again um another thing you can do like i do is  
00:17:11
these priority or to-do lists but then just make  sure to highlight only the few that you’re going   to work on or journal the journaling skill of  a brain dump or journaling about your locus of   control each of these things can help you you know  clarify and manage your stress throughout the day  
00:17:29
now i’m going to jump ahead here to sleep you  know you think going to sleep would be my last   daily routine but sleep is really  important so to be able to sort through   all these tasks you really need the executive  functioning part of your brain to be working  
00:17:43
and for that part of your brain to  work well you need to get enough sleep   so when your mind is rested it can  better manage all that excess stimulation   and it can resolve anxiety when it comes up but i  know it can be hard to sleep when you’re anxious  
00:17:57
i have a hard time sleeping sometimes so if  you’re not getting enough sleep or you’re having   a hard time sleeping i would say just choose  one small step you can take to sleep better   now in order to manage anxiety another skill  that i’ve had to learn was to get a little bit  
00:18:13
better at saying no so resolving anxiety is about  regaining self-control so if you want to resolve   anxiety you may have to say no to the occasional  party so that you get enough sleep so that you   don’t need coffee in the morning so that you’re  not stressed out and anxious throughout the day  
00:18:28
choosing a sustainable path instead of a frantic  one requires like a careful sorting of priorities   in your life so when we consciously choose  to not overload our brain it can handle these   tasks with more composure so this is something  i have to work on all the time is just saying  
00:18:45
no to a lot of things that i want to do but  i know are not going to be helpful for me   now next one i want to talk about is getting time  in nature i’m not going to spend a lot of time on   this but there is a bunch of research that nature  is really good for anxiety and i personally love  
00:19:00
it so i’m going to encourage you to try to get  some nature into your day-to-day life i am blessed   to live in an area where i can get out in nature  every day but you can get a dose of nature even if   you’re trapped in the city so go for a walk look  at the sky water a plant keep a fish visit a park  
00:19:18
or even just watching a documentary or looking  at pictures of nature can be really soothing   for your brain so i’m gonna encourage you to make  nature a part of your daily routine the last part   of my daily habits that i use to reduce stress and  anxiety is i make sure that my day is not too full  
00:19:36
i make sure that i turn off at some point during  the day so take time to wind down in the evening   so that you have time to get ready to go  to sleep and and get a good night’s rest   and and wake up ready to take care of yourself so  for me my wind down routine looks like turning off  
00:19:54
my phone taking a hot bath reading some random  book and even though i’m super busy with three   little kids and a job and a business i make it a  priority to get a few minutes of peace most nights   so comment below what are you going to do for  your wind down routine what helps you manage your  
00:20:11
day-to-day stress levels when you take the time to  resolve problems and to work with your brilliant   ancient brain you really can learn to reduce  anxiety and to get a lot of things done okay   that’s it i hope you find this helpful  thank you for watching and take care
Source : Youtube

20 Anxiety Symptoms Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eaoh89a0YD8
Anxiety can wreak havoc with the body  and the many symptoms it can produce   can make you worry that there is something  seriously wrong with you. Understanding   what causes these symptoms can be the first  step in learning how to manage your anxiety. So in this video I’m going to  explain 20 common and sometimes   uncommon symptoms of anxiety and what causes them.
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Number one is headaches tension in the  suboccipital muscles at the base of the   skull can cause anxiety headaches. See my video  on anxiety and headaches for more information.
00:00:36
Number two blurred vision. When the body thinks  it’s in danger it releases a lot of adrenaline.   This causes the pupils to  dilate to see the danger better   but paradoxically it can  actually cause blurred vision.   Number three is ringing in the ears. The cause  of tinnitus is a bit of a mystery even to the   ear specialists but changes in pressure and  blood flow in the ears are popular theories.
00:01:01
Number four is concentration problems or brain  fog. The release of adrenaline and cortisol have   an effect on how the brain operates. This may be  an evolutionary response where your brain shuts   down unnecessary thinking processes to focus  on functions to deal with the perceived danger.   Number five. Dizziness and feeling faint are  common symptoms during a panic attack. Changes   in blood flow in the ears and hyperventilation  can both cause dizziness. However as I explained   in my video ‘will a panic attack caused me to  faint ‘ fainting is unlikely in most people as   blood pressure increases during a panic attack and  fainting occurs due to a drop in blood pressure.
00:01:42
Number six. A feeling of a lump in the throat  difficulty swallowing or a choking feeling   are all caused by the glottis expanding  to allow more air into the lungs   because your body thinks it has to run or  fight. I have a whole video on this subject   so if you want to know more  click the link in the top right.
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7. Breathing difficulties. Some people who  suffer with panic disorder are abnormally   aware of their breathing ironically it can be the  constant checking if their breathing is normal   that triggers the panic attack and when a panic  attack begins the surge of adrenaline causes   faster breathing. This then leads to more panic  and a greater attempt to control their breathing,   but this often results in fast and shallow  breathing from the thorax instead of the abdomen.   This hyperventilation causes levels of carbon  dioxide in the blood to drop which can cause all   sorts of other symptoms which we will talk about  later. Number eight. Chest pain or tightness in   the chest is another subject I’ve made a whole  video about but the two most common causes are   muscle tension and the arteries or blood vessels  in the heart constricting. And why does this   happen? It’s because as mentioned hyperventilation  causes blood carbon dioxide levels to drop which   makes the blood more alkaline which in turn causes  constriction of the arteries and blood vessels.   Although this can be quite painful  it is not dangerous for most people.
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Nine is palpitations which may be felt in the  chest or throat. The reason you get them is simply   because your heart is pumping much stronger  to deal with a perceived danger that is not   there and the reason you feel it in your throat is  simply because that’s where your carotid artery is   and an increase in blood volume and speed  through this artery is very noticeable.
00:03:27
10. The feeling of skipped heartbeats.  It’s not easy to explain this briefly   so if this is something you experience I  recommend you watch my video on ectopic   heartbeats and anxiety but suffice  to say they are generally harmless. Number 11 nausea or the feeling  of butterflies in the stomach.   When the body senses danger digesting food  is not a priority so it diverts blood from   the stomach to the arms and legs to fight  or run and that can upset the stomach.   It can also affect the stomach in other ways  like causing acid indigestion so 12 is GERD. 13. Bowel changes. Anxiety can cause  digested food to move through the bowel   quicker leading to loose bowels. There is also a  link between anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome   which can cause diarrhea or constipation  as well as abdominal cramps and bloating   and yes you guessed it I  have a video on that also.
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14. Overactive bladder. An increase in the need  to urinate is a little understood anxiety symptom.   Tense muscles squeezing the bladder is a fairly  simple explanation but there are more complicated   theories about the serotonin system and the  effect of cortisol on the bladder. One thing   is sure is there is definitely a correlation  between anxiety and frequent urination   and by the way a type of  social anxiety called pauresis   could cause the bladder to completely lock and  I have a whole series of videos on that subject. 15 is tremors and twitches. To  deal with danger the nervous system   sends more blood to certain areas ,tightens  muscles ready for action, increases blood sugar   and primes the whole body ready to fight or  run. Any of these can cause twitches or tremors   sometimes even in unusual places like the eye.  Oh and hyperventilation can also cause twitching. 16 is one of the strangest symptoms of anxiety.   The feeling of your skin crawling or burning can  be caused by changes in blood flow. When anxious   the release of cortisol can also make the skin  sensitive to allergens chemicals or even sweat.
00:05:41
17. Derealization or depersonalization. In  derealization you feel the world around is unreal.   People and things around you  may seem lifeless or foggy.   With depersonalization you feel  disconnected from yourself.   This is mainly caused by hyperventilation and the  effect of alkaline blood that I mentioned earlier,   only this time it affects your brain  causing these strange sensations 18 is heat. The reason you get  hot when anxious is simple.   Your circulation increases  just like when you exercise 19. Weakness or fatigue. In a panic  attack or a prolonged period of anxiety   your body is called on all its resources  to protect you from a perceived threat.   Afterwards it needs to replace those resources  so it shuts down for a while to do that. 20 Aches and pains. If you  suffer anxiety every day   it’s like your body is fighting a  tiger every day or running for its life   so it’s not surprising the aches and  pains can appear pretty much anywhere.
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But you may ask how do I treat each of  these symptoms? The answer is you don’t.   These symptoms are signs that your body  is doing exactly what it’s designed to do   only it’s doing it at the wrong  time because there is no danger.
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If you try to suppress these  symptoms not only will it not work   but the part of the brain that deals with  danger will think the symptoms are dangerous   and activate the fight or flight  response causing even more symptoms.
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To make all these symptoms go away  you have to retrain your anxious brain   not to go into fight or flight mode at the wrong  time and that’s what I teach you to do in many   of my videos so check out the playlist  for whichever anxiety disorder you have.
Source : Youtube

FIGHT DEPRESSION – Powerful Study Motivation [2018] (MUST WATCH!!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I9ADpXbD6c
You just want to- to step out of it to step out of the whole race, the whole business, the- the monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you. If you have depression if you have anxiety, if you have post-traumatic stress disorder, if you have any kind of mental health condition, this is not something to ignore.
00:00:23
Depression, frustration, anxiety, pain disillusion, it’s just a natural part of the process of becoming a stronger version of yourself. The thing that keeps one living is a sense of future. That there will be a tomorrow and tomorrow I’ve got to do this and then the day after I’ve got to do that. Get started and I’m gonna tell you right now, it won’t be easy. It will be hard because life is hard. That’s what life is. With depression, one of the most important things you can realize is that you’re not alone. I have been places and someone has said well you lost an arm and a leg so you have a right to be depressed and I stopped and I was like depression is real. No matter what you’re going through right now it doesn’t mean that it’s not gonna end. I think too often we’re thinking about the stresses that we’re dealt with right now and we think that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. All that you can see is darkness and everything that you try to do just kicks you right back in the face and you just can’t seem to get yourself up. You don’t even have to go through something traumatic. Some are caused by you know, something traumatic some can be a chemical imbalance in the brain. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Life is hard. Life is challenging. There are ups and downs and these challenges- these challenges that you face they’re gonna do their best to take you down. Do not let them. Of course you have to work, of course you have to show up, your team needs you, life needs you, your family needs you, life is for the living.
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Depression is not only normal, it’s essential and be grateful for it because it allows you to reorder yourself at a higher level.
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I speak what’s on my heart and I gave my speech and as I was closing, I kind of mentioned some depression because I was I was coming out of the winter months and it hit me again this past winter and I went and saw the doctor so it was on my mind and it came up and as I was saying, I thought this generation of people probably aren’t connecting to what I’m saying. When I walked off the stage and they lined up the amount of people that thanked me for talking about mental health and here I was- I thought they didn’t want to hear it I thought I was stepping out of line. No it needs to be talked about because it’s not just this generation, it’s- people are realizing more and more there’s an issue and the more we talk about it the easier it is for people to be honest with themselves and get the help they need. Line up those problems and confront them.
00:03:17
Face them, fight them. Do not let them bring you down, do not personally identify with your depression. See it as you see winter and winter always leads to spring and summer again, see it as you see nighttime. Nighttime becomes daytime again. Hold on to that fundamental quality of faith and on the other side of your pain is something good. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. No matter what you’re going through right now doesn’t mean that it’s not gonna end.
00:03:56
Stand up, dig in let those challenges raise you up, let them elevate you, let their demands and their trials make you stronger. Adversity you face today turning you into a better person tomorrow. You are worth more than diamonds, all the diamonds in the world you are so precious, every single one of your hearts. You can do something. Life is not always good, life is always not rosy but life is worth living. There’s one thing one thing that if you did every single day it would make an extraordinary difference in whatever mental health issue you’re struggling with and that is exercise and the reason you’ve gotta exercise every day is because what we know about human beings is that when you physically move, your physiology changes and that changes your brain. Take the time to rest because just what if that resting is the key to world-class producing? Get outside and exercise every single day as if your life depends upon it because you know what? It does. Your brain needs it your body needs it, your mental health needs it and I feel like if you had heart problems and saw a cardiologist well everyone would be concerned about you and know you’re doing better and it would be open and honest with the crew but the most complicated organ in your body, if you have a problem with it suddenly there’s a- we don’t want to talk about that? No and you can get over it and that’s what people need to realize. You can be cured, you can get past it. I assure you the clouds will lift, right? There is sunlight above the clouds, you’re just looking at the clouds right now and they will lift and crisis has come to teach you the big lesson you’re meant to learn to move to your next level in the next chapter of your greatest life. This depression will pass. It will go away and something much better will take its place but for right now all that you really need to know is that you have to make it through. Getting your heart rate up, getting outside, breathing, feeling connected, getting out of your house which may make you feel depressed and trapped. The man I am with you right now as I speak with as much authenticity as I know how to share is the result of my times in the valley of darkness. Doing that everyday, that physical push you don’t have to run, you don’t have to go to an aerobics class- class get outside with your dog in the woods, walk with a good friend for two or three miles, doing that every single day not only moves your body which changes your mind it gets you out of your physical environment which is one of the things that people with depression tend to have a hard time doing and it also creates a bit of momentum and a bit of a routine in your life. Every time I experience a bout of depression I come out on the other end a different person, doing different things but it’s because I’m aware of what’s happening and I’m looking, I’m aware, I want to see the opportunities as they present themselves to me instead of falling into the depths of a spiral down depression because I’m personally identifying with what is happening when I’m upset and your schedule is not full and you actually feel like you’re wasting your life because you’re not this epic producer.
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What if those times were actually a different form of productivity, what if those times were actually being productive in a different way where you’re actually producing not in the world but producing within yourself producing strengths, producing new insights, producing new ideas, producing new capabilities, producing new energies producing new emotions, shifting from fear to love because when you go through difficult times what do you really do if you feel your fear and your pain? You release it. It’s out of your system and you grow in love and bravery and strength, what does that do to your craft what does that do to your power, what does that do to your bravery, what does that do to the light that you bring into the world? You become this incredible force that is undefeatable. I suggest to you that if you are facing a challenge don’t stop. Stay busy, work your plan continue to do those things that you know that work for you after you have evaluated yourself in the situation. Continue to move, stay busy, stay busy stay busy. You are part of a larger cosmos whether you know it or not and communing with nature allows you not to see the bars of the prison cell but the stars of the universe and if you can connect with those every day, my dear friend you will use your pain as an instrument for your greatest growth and then you try something new and then you’ll also go to school and people will put you down and parents will tell you that you’re a failure because you failed at a test and you start believing the lies around you saying that you’re not good enough and no one’s gonna want you and you’ll never ever do anything good in your life and you’ll never ever- you know achieve the dreams and goals that you wish you had done, or wish that you could do and these steps take you closer. That voice saying you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough and all you need is one more step to fall so you have a choice to know which step you’re gonna take today.
00:09:53
I want you to know that no matter where you are in life, no matter how low you have sunk no matter how bleak your situation, this is not the end. This is not the end of your story, this is not the final chapter of your life, I know it may be hard right now but if you just hang in there, stick it out, stay with me for a little while you will find that this tough moment will pass and if you are committed to using this pain, using it to build your character, finding a greater meaning for the pain, you will find that in time you can turn your life around and help others going through the same struggles. The world right now is in the middle of a mental health crisis.
00:11:01
It’s estimated almost half the population suffers from depression at some stage throughout their life rather than join the queue, it’s important we learn why we get down and then how we can change it because believe it or not we create our own negative feelings and we can also ensure that we turn our lives around and be a positive change for others. The reason anyone gets depressed always comes down to the consistent thoughts we think and the consistent beliefs we hold. Let me say that again. The reason anyone gets depressed always comes down to the consistent thoughts we think and the consistent beliefs we hold. The point here is that anyone that is depressed is so because there is an external factor that didn’t materialize in their life. They have lost something outside of their control or don’t have something that is out of their control. In school we are taught how to get a job but no one teaches us how to live in a state of happiness. No one teaches us how important our conscious and unconscious thoughts and associations are. Is our happiness not worth more than a job? Yes it is and before you say happiness won’t pay my bills, happiness will pay your bills. When you realize you will be 10 times more energized, focused and take positive action in your life when you first choose to develop yourself as a priority and then get to the stuff of the world. I’ve seen some people who many would consider to have it all in their life because they thought they were not good enough, a though,t a belief within them told them they were not worthy. These people that many were jealous of, many envious of, were not good enough.
00:12:58
You must value yourself enough to take the time every single day to work on you to engage in something that will ensure you are a positive influence on the world. This of course doesn’t mean life will suddenly be perfect, the same life challenges will show up but if your mind is strong, if your mind is at peace, your reaction to the challenging times will be very different. Your reaction will be how can I make this work, not why is this happening to me and then others will look to you not with pity but with hope because your strength will become their hope, their strength. You really can be that powerful. You can ditch the victim story, you can leave the pain behind and focus on how you will react next, how you will react positively. Read, read all you can read to get your mind in a positive place, take steps to ensure you will be in a better position next time, whatever pain you are suffering from how you can ensure it won’t show again. Take little steps and soon you will be at the top of the staircase. Don’t give up, you are worthy you are more than worthy, you deserve to experience how great life can be and you owe it to the world to be that positive change for others, to inspire others who will look to you and say he did it, she did it and I can do it too.
Source : Youtube