12 Things High Functioning Anxiety Makes you Do

 Do you think you might have anxiety or know someone who does if not What’s the first image you have and you imagine someone with diagnosed anxiety? The popular comical image may have popped into your head with the frazzled jittery expression unkempt hair and profuse sweating the truth is some people go on to be successful and accomplish great things despite their battle against this mental illness This is known as high functioning anxiety isn’t a diagnosable condition And so it can be difficult to identify because those who have it don’t appear anxious However, the calm appearance doesn’t make it any less real serious or painful for those who have it Wondering now if you might fit in with this category Here are 12 things. You may not realize you’re doing this because of your high functioning anxiety 1 you turn down things you want to go to You eagerly await events and get-togethers with friends, but when the day finally comes you often decide not to go at the very last minute sound familiar Even though you were looking forward to it for so long You’ve talked yourself out of attending because the thought of going out leaves you wracked with worry and dread – you dislike having to meet new people When someone says to you, there’ll be so many new people you can network with. How do you feel? Mingling and social functions just aren’t your thing not due to shyness or introversion. You just don’t want to meet new people Sticking to your close-knit group of friends is comfortable and happy for you Introducing yourself or being introduced to someone else makes you feel self-conscious and worried about making a good first impression This worry is so intense that it sucks any enjoyment or intrigue out of meeting Someone new 3 you’re uncomfortable with slow responses The moment you send someone a text or leave them a voice message Do you start counting the seconds waiting for a response and the longer you wait? The more you feel anxious you overthink about why they haven’t replied yet and somehow take it to mean that you did something wrong Take a breath they probably like you just fine and their phone might be on mute For you get very little sleep We hear eight hours of sleep is required Can you remember the last time you got eight hours of sleep? We mean all at once not spread out over a few days You may be able to look at anxiety as the reason it may wake you up early and keep you from having a deep and relaxed sleep and also keep you up at night with thoughts racing through your mind Being shortchanged on both ends is why sleep deprivation is such a common complaint amongst those of us who suffer from high functioning anxiety Five you fixate on the tiniest details Is there any little thing you think about what’s keeping you up at night and depriving you of sleep Like how you said you to to the waiter when they told you to enjoy your meal? Or maybe why that person replied to your long text simply, okay? Logically, you realize this isn’t going to hugely impact your life. The waiter won’t remember you and that other person was probably just busy Still you examine it this fixation is a common feature for people with high-functioning Anxiety you tend to obsess over trivial things Especially social interactions you analyze everything and spend hours and hours wondering what it could all mean and why? Six you get hung up on old conversations Speaking of social interactions. Do you find yourself playing back old social scenarios in your head thinking about different actions? You could have taken or Not Taken Things like maybe I shouldn’t have texted him or maybe I should have given that witty reply High-functioning anxiety makes you overthink every single social interaction You’ve ever had big or small and it’s not unusual for people who struggle with it to get hung up on the past regardless of how long ago it was 7 your unforgiving to yourself Do you feel upset at yourself when you make a mistake? Mulling over it and scolding yourself for months even years Well high functioning anxiety can often resemble perfectionism With one of its most problematic characteristics being that it turns us against ourselves whenever we mess up Your anxiety makes that mistake bigger in your point of view than it was in reality. So getting over it feels difficult Eight you constantly compare yourself to others It’s normal to occasionally compare yourself to others but those with high-functioning anxiety. Take it to an extreme Are you overly concerned with how you measure up against your peers? Do you constantly worry that you’re not fulfilling your full potential? No matter how much you accomplish. Do you never feel like it’s enough? If so, you might be struggling with high-functioning anxiety 9 You’re a constant people pleaser Do you work hard to make others feel happy, even if it comes at the cost of your well-being Do you feel like you’ll never be good enough until you attain it? Everyone’s approval If you have high-functioning anxiety you may have convinced yourself that the only way others will ever accept you is if you go above and beyond what everyone expects of You all the time. 10 You need to keep yourself busy all the time Now we’re not talking about creating great Renaissance artworks or intricate business plans We just mean busy not necessarily productive If you’re not busy you feel Restless and tense. So you try to occupy yourself with just about anything during your nails. Yes Alphabetizing your games. Okay, cleaning your perfectly working computer fan with a toothbrush It’s sure the truth is you don’t mind doing anything as long as it helps distract yourself from your thoughts and worries 11 You get very anxious whenever you think about the future What does the future mean to you for many in the future is the light of possibility something to eagerly look forward to? then for some, it can feel like Scrooge and that last spirit of Christmas who looked like the Grim Reaper if You’re not feeling hope but terror and dread for what’s to come This could be a sign of high-functioning anxiety can paralyze you with fear about the unknown and what’s not in your control it can keep you from truly living your life to the fullest because you always expect the worst to happen and 12 you always focus on the worst-case scenario Do you like to prep my prep? We mean do you say to yourself? Okay, so this is the worst possible outcome I’ll be ready for it. If I’m ready for it. I can handle anything else. Do you then continue to expect the worst-case scenario? They might be high-functioning anxiety laying the plans This might lead people to misjudge you as a pessimist because ultimately you may try to share with them your preparations Where you see anticipating and being proactive they see a downer Unfortunately being so prepared often doesn’t allow you to just enjoy the moment Do you relate to any of the things listed here living with high-functioning anxiety is never easy? But most people may not see the emotional toll it can have on a person if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed with your anxiety There are many professional certified resources to reach out to Please like share and subscribe to the site to go for more psychology content.OIP-73We hope to see you in the next video and as always Thanks so much for watching.As found on YouTubeSeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years… http://flywait.darekw.hop.clickbank.net/ often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen.

5 Differences Between Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Anxiety

 [Music] hi everyone we it’s like to go would love to thank you for making us a digital family of more than 2 million it’s with your continued support that we’re able to bring you new content regularly our mission is to help everyone become more self aware of the various psychological factors that affect our lives one such factor that we hear about on a daily basis is anxiety but it’s important to know when it’s anxiety only and wanted to become something more so let’s find out anxiety in general is our normal reaction to stress in fact it can be a good thing anxiety motivates you to accomplish your assignments to study harder for a test and it can warn you when you’re in a dangerous situation it informs you to be extra vigilant about your environment the fight or flee generalized anxiety disorder or GED on the other hand is a full-fledged anxiety disorder that involves intense and excessive anxiety as a key factor along with other debilitating symptoms differentiating between normal anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder or di D can be tricky how do you know especially if you’re a little more anxious than others whether or not your anxiety is significant enough to qualify as a disorder so let’s begin with an introduction to the main concepts revolving around the – one normal anxiety is more of a friend than a foe according to the anxiety and depression Association of America anxiety is a normal and often healthy emotion which is characterized by feelings of tension worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure when we face potentially harmful or worrying triggers feelings of anxiety are not only normal but necessary for survival since the earliest days the approach of predators an incoming danger set off alarms in the body and allowed evasive action these alarms were in the form of a raised heartbeat sledding and increased sensitivity to surroundings danger causes a rush of adrenaline a hormone in the brain which in turn triggers the anxious reactions in a process called the fight-or-flight response this prepares humans to physically confront or flee any potential threats to sea all these are classic characteristics of normal anxiety such traits came in handy for our predecessors but we don’t have to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight anymore so running from larger animals is a less pressing concern in present times than it would have been for early humans anxieties now revolve around work money family life health and other crucial issues that demand a person’s attention without necessarily requiring the fight-or-flight reaction the nervous feeling before an important life event are during a difficult situation is a natural echo of the original fight-or-flight reaction it can still be essential to survival anxiety about being hit by a car when crossing the street for example means that a person will instinctively look both ways to avoid danger when the duration or severity of an anxious feeling is out of proportion to the original trigger or stressor physical symptoms such as increased blood pressure and nausea may also develop these responses are what moved normal anxiety beyond into gid generalized anxiety disorder GA D is when the trouble starts generalized anxiety disorder involves persistent and excessive worry that interferes with daily activities people with symptoms of GA D tend to always expect disaster and can stop worrying about health money family work or school in people with GID the worry is often unrealistic or out of proportion from the situation daily life becomes a constant state of worry fear and dread eventually the anxiety so dominates the person’s thinking that it interferes with daily functioning including work school social activities and relationships there are several key differences that make them distinguishable here are a few ways you can tell the two apart one presence of a stressor usually a normal anxiety occurs in response to a stressor such as an exam an upcoming interview a fight with a friend or a new job when you struggle with GID you’re anxious most or almost all of the time even when you can’t spot the source of the stress for instance people a generalized anxiety disorder can have a difficult time just getting through the day even seemingly small responsibilities like paying the bills make them feel anxious – intensity and length gid produces intense and excessive emotional responses even if you’re reacting to a stressor your anxiety is disproportionate to that stressor many people are on the edge before an exam but a person with jad might be anxious several weeks beforehand and will experience intense symptoms right before and during the exam also normal anxiety is fleeting while gid is ongoing and the feelings can last weeks or months three physical symptoms of jad excessive anxiety and wary aren’t the only symptoms that accompany GID there are physical symptoms – dizziness lightheadedness sweating trembling heart pounding headaches and nausea you feel like you can’t breathe can’t talk or have to go to the bathroom frequently people at jad also report feeling detachment and disconnected from reality they feel like they can’t think straight and have difficulty concentrating psychological symptoms are also present individuals experience racing or negative thoughts and are unable to concentrate and have worries about day to day things or impairment when you struggle with GID it affects your entire life it impairs or interferes with your schoolwork job and daily life avoidance is a symptom of jad and can be quite debilitating in other words excessive anxiety can cause you to avoid normal activities you might skip class miss a test stop going to work procrastinate grocery shopping or avoid anything that makes you feel anxious and 5 no control most people can reduce and control their anxiety through a variety of coping techniques and the ability to calm oneself however people at GID have significant difficulty finding relaxation calm and time away from their worries if you have more difficulty than other people you know in controlling your anxiety it may be more than normal anxiety did you often find yourself confused about these two conditions do these factors easier to differentiate between the two do let us know in the comments below if you are struggling with overwhelming anxiety and you can relate to some of these factors don’t hesitate to seek help from a mental health professional and subsequent treatment also remember to share this video with someone you think might benefit from these as well don’t forget to click the like button and subscribe for more content as always thanks for watching As found on YouTubeSeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years… often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen. 6ceb44da511d43c7ee8a0181a60a0e25

Abandonment Anxiety – Video doctor Snipes

 This episode was pre-recorded as part of a live continuing   education webinar on-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation   through all CEUs registered at all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox I’d like to welcome everybody today to the presentation love me doesn’t leave me addressing   fears of abandonment the purpose of this presentation is really to help us help clients   increase their awareness of their story including beliefs about behavioral reactions to situations   that trigger their fear of abandonment so how do we do that well the first thing we need to   figure out is what fear of abandonment is and how can we identify it in a clinical set setting then   we’re going to explore the concept of schemas or core beliefs and these are things that are formed   in early childhood you know if you remember prior classes we’ve talked about early childhood   cognition is generally very dichotomous in children Young children can’t look at   that gray area so these schemas if they’ve gone unchecked can lead to some very extreme belief   patterns which lead us into common traps in thinking reacting and relationships if your   schemas are based on all-or-nothing you either love me or you’re going to leave me hence the   name of the book then your reactions are going to tend to be more extreme and more all-or-nothing   which increases anxiety because then anytime a person who perceives any amount of disapproval is going to go to that extreme so we want to talk about bringing it more toward the   middle line and helping people learn to appreciate and love themselves for themselves while they may   not approve of the behaviors of other people they can still love other people so just because somebody   doesn’t approve of your behavior doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re going to abandon you so   we’re going to talk about that and then we’ll learn skills necessary to help people accept   their past as part of their story maybe they do have a lot of abandonment issues and you know   some people do and it is painful it cuts to the core especially when those abandonment   issues occur in early childhood when kids going what that does so we’re going to talk about that   and help people learn how to integrate it into their present and we’ll learn the skills necessary   to acknowledge that their past does not have to continue to negatively impact them in the present   so if they were abandoned when they were a child you know we need to deal with that however if they   continue to expect that every significant person in their life will abandon them notice I use the   word every because we’re still in those extremes then they’re going to think that the past is negatively   impacting them in the present so we’ll talk about how to sort of moderate those belief systems how   does this impact recovery whether you’re talking about addiction or mental health issues connection   is a basic human need we are not meant for the most part to be Hermits in the middle of the   woods there are introverts and in my husband’s an introvert he has a couple of excellent friends   he needs quiet time each day he doesn’t need to be surrounded by people and he’s fine but I mean   we’ve got human connection he’s not going to be one that’s just going to you know move out to the   middle of nowhere I’m an extrovert on the other hand and I tend to have a lot of acquaintances   and a lot of friends I draw energy from being around other people so just because   someone doesn’t have 150 acquaintances doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t need connections so   we want to recognize that connection is a basic human need when infants are born they are put   on their mother’s chest when we embrace each other whether it’s mother and child or friends   or whatever a chemical called oxytocin is released and it’s our bonding chemical we are programmed we   are hardwired for connection and oxytocin is a very rewarding chemical so we want to recognize   this that if people are so afraid of abandonment that they push everybody away what are they losing   as far as quality of life as infants and children survival is dependent upon the relationship with   the primary caregiver so if mom or dad wasn’t happy if mom or dad was rejecting the young   child was pretty much helpless to think about a child who’s growing up in a family that’s just riddled   with addiction and mental health issues and the primary caregiver or caregivers are completely   emotionally unavailable they may be physically there but they may be so high or so depressed or   so psychotic that they cannot attend to the child’s needs what does that communicate to   the child the child feels abandoned the child feels a sense of neglect for people’s beliefs about   other people and relationships were formed largely based on their interactions with their caregivers   so if this child was going Mom I’m hungry and nothing happened or worse yet child was going Mom I’m terrified and nothing happened or they were just given a pacifier and told to shut up   then that is they were told they were communicated to that, their beliefs their feelings their wants, and their needs were not important so they were being rejected healthy relationships serve up as   a buffer against stress so even if they had all these negative experiences in early childhood teenage years you know maybe up until they walked into your office it doesn’t mean it   has to continue and how much can they gain from having healthy relationships with a lot of clients   that I work with who have pretty significant abandonment issues can’t even fathom trusting   someone enough to be in a healthy relationship so we’re going to talk about how to sort of ease into   that because you’re not going to say don’t let your past influence your future and we’ll wave   a magic wand and they’re ready to trust people even once you point out that what happened in   the past was largely not their fault or maybe not even if their fault at they they’re still going   to have difficulty not accepting responsibility and going everybody leaves me so what talk about   that addressing beliefs that formed as a result of these relationships the past dysfunctional   relationships we can help people create a new understanding of events was mom or dad or   caregiver being rejecting were you being abandoned emotionally and physically because of   you or because mom or dad just was able to do what they needed to do to be a caregiver then they were doing the best they could with the tools they had but it wasn’t enough to meet   your needs so we want to talk about alternate explanations for why parents and caregivers may have   behaved in that way if you have a young child well an adult now but who was put up for adoption or   abandoned by their caregivers at a young age the a young child was probably very confused because   one moment their caregiver was there in the next moment they were in the system so they were   trying to figure out what did they do wrong and why doesn’t that person love me anymore it must be   me because children really can’t see well you know mom is not able to function as a parent   right now or dad is having difficulty coping we want to help people better understand themselves   in their reactions so that when they start getting this urge to just cut all ties and be like you   know what fine you know I’ll take my ball and go home no problem what does that mean at there’s a   certain point in all relationships in all healthy relationships that you know sometimes people have   to distance themselves from one another because it’s becoming dysfunctional but for the most part, people will in relationships encounter hiccups will encounter disagreements but in   healthy relationships, they can work through them in relationships with people who fear   abandonment there are going to be two extremes there’s going to be complete compliance and   please don’t leave me or complete disengagement and whatever I don’t care the final thing we want   to do is help make people more conscious of what they’re doing so they can make healthy   decisions in their current relationships so when they get that urge to either comply or disengage   is that a healthy normative reaction right now or are you reacting out of your past experiences the abandonment experience in childhood survival depends on caregivers a four-year-old left alone   for five days is not going to do so well you know they may be able to scavenge food but   once the food runs out where do they get it you know there’s only so much that a child   can do an infant can’t even get food so survival depends on their caregivers and if   their caregivers fail to meet those needs there are high levels of anxiety and I will refer regularly   to emotionally unavailable caregivers and emotionally absent in addition to physically   unavailable or absent because some parents and I worked in the field of co-occurring disorders for   over two decades and some parents just they are so overwhelmed and so paralyzed by life itself they   can’t even attend to anything else that’s going on they’re doing good just to be breathing but   if they have a child and that child’s needs are getting neglected and fear of abandonment is a natural   survival response when your food source goes away what happens you start to freak the freak out so   this is normal we look at this and say that that’s that’s natural if a child thinks about the first   time you take a child to kindergarten or pre-k or daycare or whatever it is and you drop the   child off even if they’re securely attached what do they cry because they’re afraid that   mom or dad won’t come back and they’re afraid of this new situation that’s changed securely attached   children will you know to adjust and then be happy to see mom or dad when they come back but the point   is there’s that initial oh crap reaction meeting biological needs and safety are key triggers for   anxiety at any age so we’re talking about housing we’re talking about safety we’re thinking about   Maslow’s hierarchy if somebody is not meeting the child’s needs or if the person is not getting   their needs met then they may have high levels of anxiety and I add to the safety concept not   only physical safety but also emotional safety people need to feel safe in their heads and   they need to be free from emotional abuse when focused on survival people can’t focus elsewhere   so if they’re not getting their physical needs met guess what you know if you take somebody who   is in pain who is sick who is hungry and who is homeless are they going to work on self-esteem   are they going to work on relationship skills no, they’re focused on survival they need to have   those basic needs met they need to have a certain sense of security if they are in a situation that   is dangerous physically obviously they’re not going to be focusing on how I can better myself   when they’re worried about somebody coming in and hurting them physically likewise, it’s hard to   focus on how can I better myself when everywhere they turn they perceive someone telling us you’re   not okay you’re stupid you’re lazy you’re bad you were the worst decision I ever made in my   life they can’t focus on personal growth when all they’re getting is these verbal beatdowns all the time so people need to have acceptance if they don’t have acceptance kind the opposite of   acceptance is abandonment two kinds of extremes again we’ll bring it back to the middle every   stressful situation becomes a crisis the in securely attached child now you can go back to   and read Bowlby’s work on secure and all that kind of stuff great reading but for the short version   of this presentation remember that certs securely attached children feel anxiety when their parents   leave but then they can adjust and they’re happy to see the parents return in securely attached   children feel a great amount of anxiety when their parents leave and are terrified that mom or   dad won’t come back and then when mom or dad does come back it’s your very very clingy or very very   rejecting so with this child that’s in securely attached it’s just like one to a hundred as soon   as something happens that they think they may be abandoned you see this pattern again in adults who   are still struggling with these abandonment issues that schema that they’ve formed and I’m getting a   little ahead of myself that schema that they form says if you let this person at your site or if   this person disagrees with you or if this person criticizes you they’re rejecting you and they’re   going to abandon you so we want to you know check in with those cognitions and look for trying to   make those thoughts a little bit more helpful in infancy or early childhood if caregivers were away   for long periods because of work because of the military if they were in jail if they just   chose to be away or if they passed away children may experience some abandonment issues now if   the parents are away because a parent is a way because of work or military or even jail and the   other parent can help the child work through it there’s much less drama if you will there’s much   less issue with abandonment issues in totality now if it’s whatever parent it is if the pay   if the father happened to be the one went away that person may have some residual issues with   adult figures in their life that they need to deal with but they may not know I’m not saying that   every child of a soldier or a service person is going to have abandonment issues that are so   not true however if the experiences of the time apart was not handled in a way where the child   felt secure then it could have consequences that are going into the present day if in early childhood   caregivers were consistently or unpredictably physically or emotionally present so think about   a parent who has major recurrent major depressive disorder addiction or is just ill-equipped to deal   with a child when I was working at the treatment center in Florida I had 14 15 16 year old young   women coming in and having babies and you know what does a 14-year-old know about giving birth   and raising a child it’s not that they weren’t necessarily trying you know they didn’t have great   role models raising them in most cases and so they don’t have anything to work with they don’t know   how to be a parent they’ve never been taught so it’s not always I don’t want to pathologize or   make the parents look like bad people because I believe that people do the best they can with   the tools they have at any given time parents don’t choose to be sucky parents sometimes it   happens but I don’t believe they choose to anyhow off my soapbox in later childhood as the   child becomes elementary school middle school age if they’re a poor family fit or they feel   like they’re the black sheep they just don’t have the same beliefs that the other people do   they don’t seem to have the same interest that their family does they may not feel accepted   especially if the family’s going no that’s wrong to believe and invalidate them so going back to   that psychological safety if they’re constantly being told their ideas are stupid they’re wrong   they have the wrong point of view and they can feel very isolated something can happen that   ruptures the relationship with the primary care giver whether it’s abuse or you know some other trauma and introduction of a new less emotionally or physically safe caregiver can also   lead to abandonment if the child feels like the biological caregiver chose a new spouse over him   or her say if you see where I’m going with that because if this new person comes in and is less   safe is abusive in some way emotionally physically sexually it doesn’t matter the child is going to   feel like they didn’t have a voice the child is going to feel like the biological caregiver   didn’t care and brought this other person in any way which leads to feelings of rejection   and abandonment so what are the reactions fight-or-flight whenever there’s a threat we   fall back to fight or flight or freeze but we’ll talk about that when there’s a threat our anxiety   goes up and we say in the past in these kinds of situations, if I fought, did I succeed if so then   we’ve got fights in the past did I succeed, and if the answer’s no then the response is to flee pretty simply so anger towards someone unavailable if they got angry and felt like it got them   some sort of acceptance from somewhere that might be the prevailing reaction sadness when someone   goes away a sense of helplessness this person just left me shame or self-anger about feeling   needy or about pushing someone away with fears related to rejection and isolation, nobody will ever love my loss of control or the unknown everybody always leaves see how I’m using these extreme   words again and fear of failure I can’t maintain a relationship nobody wants to be with me because   I’m not good enough so the questions for clients in these situations what caused these fears as a   child so when someone starts to have these fears about a relationship, if the relationship starts   to get rocking first question is what is it that you’re afraid of in this situation if you stay   together what is it that you’re afraid of if this the person leaves what is it you’re afraid of and how   likely is it that this person is going to leave based on whatever is going on right now so let’s   get some objective evidence here and another the tool you can use is the challenging questions   worksheet in cognitive processing therapy if you google it challenging questions worksheet   CPT or cognitive processing therapy helps people walk through the logic in some of their   cognitions and identify some known as unhelpful distortions so then after you figure out kind of   what the fear is then we say what caused that as a child in the past when you felt like this what   caused that and how was this reasonable or helpful you know in the past when you felt like this and   you reacted in anger what was the outcome and how was it helpful in some sort of way you know   did it get somebody to pay attention to you did it gets somebody to come to comfort you, okay so you   were identifying the function of the current behaviors and then we want to say what causes   these fears now a lot of times it’s the same symp or similar stuff but we could say how are these   reactions now unhelpful because as independent you know adult-type people we can fend for ourselves   we can put food on the table we can go to work we can do we can function independently whereas this   is a child we couldn’t you know there were just some barriers to that does that mean again that   we should live in isolation and say well I don’t need anybody no that’s not what I’m   saying what I’m saying is is these fears that are overwhelming about abandonment that causes   people to push others away or cling on like you know whatever clings on uh are these reactions   helpful in the present day you know do you still need to hold on to people like there’s no tomorrow temperament based on their temperament children need different types and amounts of caregiver   interaction um some children are wide open and easily overstimulated you know my son was that   way when he was born well to this very day um when he’s awake he is like the Energizer Bunny   on methamphetamine I’m he’s just going going going and talking and talking to himself and   he needed a lot of structure and he would get overstimulated easily but we were able to help   him figure out how to handle that instead of getting mad at him for what seemed to be acting   out we were able to help him channel and figure out when he needed to take a break the introvert   may not need as much one-on-one attention with the caregiver may need a comforting word   here and there but they may not need the amount of the attention that an extrovert may need an extrovert   tends to need more interaction with parents with family with other people because they draw energy   and they think while they talk and they think while they talk with other people so they feel   a lot more isolated if they are isolated so we want to understand the person’s temperament and   how they may or may not have gotten their needs met how they may have been told they were wrong   and invalidated when they were younger and you can hear some of this is kind of going towards   Linda hands DBT environment um but what we want to look at what you need now how can we create   an environment that’s accepting and welcoming to you now based on their needs and caregivers’ reactions children form schemas or core beliefs about the world and others so if they state their   opinion and it’s squashed or it’s ridiculed then they’re going to form this core belief that it   is not safe ever to share my opinions because I am always wrong now we’re talking about children here   but a lot of times think back for yourself there I think most of us have at least some all-or-nothing   dichotomous thoughts that come in every once in a while and you know we can catch them but if   these dichotomies go unaddressed the person starts feeling very lost and very abandoned because it’s all-or-nothing important points about children under 7 from 8 to 12 children are developing   alternative cognitive skills they’re starting to be able to think abstractly they’re   starting to be able to see the gray area and alternate explanations but even you know during   that period so zero to 12 children are having difficulty envisioning all the possibilities   so anything that happens before that we want to encourage them to look at the schemas that were   formed and challenge them to examine whether they are currently accurate and helpful children think   dichotomously when they’re that young it’s all or nothing it’s good or bad it’s not kind of sort   of something it is what it is I mean even think about thinking back to grades that we would get   it was satisfactory or unsatisfactory there was no ABCD F when we were in elementary school and   I don’t remember middle school then it was a dichotomous grading scale you either did it or you   didn’t children are egocentric so whatever happens they say what was it about me that made this   happen if mom’s in a bad mood what did I do if you know Mom is rejecting stupid well I’m   stupid children are very egocentric so you take all or nothing combined with all about me and you   can see we’re creating the perfect storm of children can only focus on one aspect at a time when I work   with adult clients you know they come in and they tell me that they had an interaction with their   boss he was walking down the hall and he was in a bad mood and I just knew I did something and so   we talked about that and I’m like how do you know that because he had it he had an angry look on his   face okay what are some other possibilities what else might have been going on with him then and a lot of times we can brainstorm ideas about a call he just got or where they just   left a meeting that didn’t go so well or who knows what else in this day and time when we’ve   got our cell phones and PDAs and everything there are a lot of things that can trigger a   mood besides just whoever you pass in the hallway children can’t think about those other things that   might have triggered the mood they see somebody unhappy and they’re like I’m sorry um so we want   to encourage as adults we want to encourage them to say all right what are the other possibilities even as children I try to work with my kids to encourage them to look at alternate reasons   why somebody may be acting a certain way children can’t think abstractly and consider those possible   options um even with kids you know knee-high to a grasshopper if you’re in a situation and   maybe in a store and somebody behaves not kindly to you, you can talk about that later with the kids   and say you know that was kind of unpleasant to go through what you think might have caused that   and brainstorm three ideas my favorite number is three I don’t know why but brainstorm three ideas   for alternate explanations for why that person may have been in an unpleasant mood if children   learn to do this when they’re younger it’s a a lot easier to transition to as adults schemas   are a broad way of perceiving things based on memories feelings and thoughts it’s   our go-to perception of what something’s going to be like we have schemas about everything if   you go to church you have a schema about what’s going to happen when you go to your mother’s   house you have a schema about how mom’s going to behave and what’s going to happen we form these   it’s our brain’s short shortcut instead of having to analyze every situation it says oh I remember   this been here before it’s probably going to be like X Y Z unfortunately sometimes things change   and one of the things we see in addictions treatment as is as caregivers into recovery and get a hold on it and start working that a new way of life and sobriety and all that stuff   old family members or family members still expect that old behavior they have that schema that when   Jane comes in this is what’s going to happen because they’re remembering how she behaved and   acted in her addictive self so we want to help people identify their schemas and check them   sometimes they’re still accurate sometimes not so much schemas that trigger abandonment fear center   around the cell acceptability is this person going to like me which is one of the reasons we do a lot   of self-esteem work in reducing abandonment fears because we want to reduce the need for people to   solicit external validation we want them to say I’m all that and a bag of chips and I would love   to play with you but if you don’t want to play I’m okay with that love ability if they were   told they were unlovable if they perceived they were unlovable then in the present, they   may fear isolation they may fear that they’re not lovable so they will try to do whatever they can   or likewise they will build a lead wall that is 5 feet thick around them so nobody can   hurt them they may have fears about their own competence you know thinking back to Erikson   you never thought some of these theorists from the past would keep coming up even in current practice   but they do if a child going through that period of industry versus inferiority Erik Erikson’s   stages of psychosocial development and they felt like a failure all the time or they were never   good enough the parents never recognized their positive achievements then they may question their competence and feel like a failure if they feel like a failure they may feel they may believe   that nobody wants to be around them so they will leave so if I fail they will leave and fears may   center around adaptability some people are not able to tolerate any loss of control they’re just   like that they’re holding on with a death grip to the relationship to anything that’s going on and   it starts to go wonky they are going to freak out so we want to look at what does it mean if you’re   not in control of everything what does it mean if you trust that this person is going to do the   next right thing if you are doing the next right thing as well schemas that trigger abandonment   fears can also be sent around center around others if someone is rejecting distant cold or is unable to   handle the person’s needs then the person may not feel acceptable so if they are in relationships   with people like this then we need to look at is Is it you who’s not acceptable or is something else   going on with that person that may be making them unable to deal with anybody else’s stuff   right now the person may feel isolated if other people are absent if people fail to keep promises   they may feel like nobody’s ever there for them competence if other people are always critical   then the person will question their competence and if others are unpredictable a lot of the time   when people who have anxiety about abandonment they come from situations where other people have   not been predictable or if they were they were unpredictably absent and relationship of self to   others if they are afraid about their ability to relate with others if they’re afraid of rejection   if they’re afraid that if they start to love they will be rejected and then they will be isolated   forever if they are afraid of the unknown and they I just want consistency more than anything and   as soon as consistency starts to waver a little bit because as we grow things change and people   with abandonment issues don’t like things to change because that’s not predictable and that’s   not consistent so they may have difficulty if one the person starts to change what they do I see this   a lot not saying that it’s an abandonment issue necessarily but when law enforcement officers   retire you know because they can retire after 20 years so they may start a new career and   that causes a lot of change schedule changes they’re not law enforcement anymore and the   spouse sometimes has culty adjusting to it as does the retired officer but controllability   if the person holds on to relationships and everything in their life with white knuckles   because they’re so afraid if they let go of control that they are going to disappear or   disintegrate then if something seems like it’s not in their control, it’s going to be a catastrophe so attachment Styles secure if there’s an emotionally available caregiver the child   will seek the caregiver for comfort and guess what the caregiver will be there and will more   often than not meet the need for comfort with the the correct type of comfort so hungry cold scared kind   of following the child’s upset when the caregiver leaves especially in new situations but the child   gets over it it’s not a child that’s going to sit there and cry for eight hours and then the child’s   happy when the caregiver returns in this kind of attachment the child learns to trust others will   be responsive to their needs and validate their needs a child learns to be self-reliant and try   new things but if they fail they know they can return to the home base they can go out and go well   that didn’t go as planned and the caregiver will be there to say alright let’s figure out what to do   next not You are such a failure the child learns to adapt to a variety of situations because when   they’ve been faced with something that’s a little scary caregivers have been there to kind of coach them   on and go you got this it’s scary I got it but you can do it the child learns to deal with   stress because the caregivers are there to coach them or to process it with them afterward because the   caregiver is not always physically there but if you’ve got children you know sometimes they’ll   come home from school and they’ve had a really bad day and you’d pull them aside and go you know   what’s going on let’s talk about it so in this way the child learns to deal with stress and the child   learns to have accurate expectations of others in the secure attachment, emotionally available   situation remember children are egocentric so if mom’s upset the child goes what did I do or Oh my gosh I hope mom’s not going to leave in a secure situation sometimes the parent has to   say something like Mommy had a really bad day at work today has nothing to do with you I need to go   take a timeout that helps a child understand that you know what it’s not all about me and   I can understand that sometimes moms upset for something besides me and I can understand that   if moms Up said it doesn’t mean she’s going to leave so obviously, this is the ideal situation   avoidant attachment styles the rejecting or harsh caregiver the person depends less on the caregiver   for security because every time they go saying mom Mom I had a nightmare can I come into bed with you   they’re met with going back to your bed and the caregiver rolls over it’s not oh I’m sorry you had   a nightmare let me walk you back to your room when the child is separated from the caregiver   there’s little response when the caregiver leaves or returns because the kids like what uses that   person to me the child learns not to depend on a caregiver for comfort connection or security   now imagine yourself a four-year-old child or a six-year-old child thinking I can’t count on my   caregivers for comfort connection or security that must be a terrifying place to be and I   can see why you would develop some pretty strong defense mechanisms the ambivalent relationship between the   cave caregiver is inconsistent or can bow can’t talk caregiver is inconsistent or chaotic this   is true in a lot of homes where there are at least one parent who is battling some sort of   addiction or mental health issue so the parent may or may not be available you don’t know what   the good days are going to be you don’t know what the bad days are going to be so the child may be   anxious and afraid to try new things or explore because they’re like things are going good right   now I don’t want to top will be an applecart just going to sit here and ride it out a child may be   clinging and demanding trying to elicit a response remembering negative attention is better than no   attention at all and the child is upset when the caregiver leaves but also inconsolable when the   caregiver returns because you know I was upset I was scared you went away but you came back and   that’s good but I don’t know when you’re going to go away again and if you’re going to come   back so it’s this constant anxiety of abandonment core abandonment beliefs all people leave so we   want to challenge that by identifying exceptions mistrust people will hurt reject take advantage   of me or just not be there when I need them you know what that’s true sometimes because people   have their stuff so when this happens let’s look at whether it’s happening all the time and/or   let’s also look at what else might be going on with that person that caused them to hurt reject   take advantage or not be there when you needed the emotional deprivation I never get the love I   need nobody understands me cares about me or even ever tries to meet my needs here how dramatic and   extreme that is so one of the things as clinicians we can do is say if you are getting the   love you needed what would it look like what would be different what is it that you need   that you’re not getting once we identify then we can create a plan to get it but a lot   of times other people don’t understand or may not be able to interpret what you need so let’s help   let’s try to figure out how to make this happen nobody understands me alright let’s talk about   why that might be and you know let’s look at some people who’ve kind of gotten a grasp sometimes   with clients with abandonment beliefs nobody understands me translates to I don’t give a buddy   a chance and I cut them off as soon as they become confused and because they associate confusion with rejection so we might talk about communication skills we might work on what it is that people   don’t understand and how to better communicate that and where to find people who have similar   interests nobody ever even tries to meet my needs you know where I would look for exceptions   but I would also challenge the person and I would say when do you meet your needs what do you do   to take care of yourself a lot of times clients with abandonment beliefs are so freaked   out and afraid of being abandoned that they’re not taking care of themselves either they’re   just living and paralyzed going back to fight flee or freeze they’re living a paralyzed state   of I want to be loved but if I love I’m gonna get hurt and I don’t know what to do they don’t even   love themselves so we want to start talking about if you had your best friend you know create this   best friend persona what would he or she say to you what would he or she do right now let’s try to   help you understand yourself with mindfulness exercises are good here because a lot of times these   clients don’t understand themselves they’ve got so much anxiety they’re so afraid and they don’t   know where it’s coming from because a lot of it has been going on for so long defectiveness   if people knew me they would reject me you know not everybody’s going to like you why do you need   everybody to like you why is it important that everybody likes you and failure I don’t measure   up and I’m not able to succeed I usually put pull out the obnoxious quote that if you haven’t failed   you haven’t tried and we talked about what it means to get outside your comfort zone and you’re   not going to be perfect at everything you’re not going to be Michael Phelps you’re not going to be   the president of the United States that doesn’t mean that you’re a failure that doesn’t mean you’re a failure so what things are you good at what can you and have you succeeded at and   go back and look over things like you graduated high school not everybody does that you know   raised a family, not everybody does that so we want to challenge all nothing’ languages we   want to look for exceptions and we want to look for in what ways can you provide yourself the   validation so you don’t fear abandonment you don’t need other people to tell you you’re okay because   guess what you’re telling yourself I’m okay and before I go on to unhelpful reactions I do want   to point out that if we tell people to tell themselves you know I’m okay that sounds great   but if they don’t believe it if it’s not supported with evidence, it’s probably going to slow   their growth because they’re sitting there going telling themselves I’m okay and in the back of   their head going you know you’re not so we need to get that internal critical voice to kind of   hush up by providing the person with the objective evidence of why they’re okay why they’re good   enough and that’s a slow process it’s not going to happen overnight but encourage people to figure   out why they believe what they believe and then you can work from there okay unhelpful reactions   fighting with someone you don’t want to leave me because so the person may engage in a dominant   sort of posturing behavior aggression hostility blaming and criticizing trying to tear down the   other person to say you know what I don’t care and it would help if you were grateful that I’m in your life recognizing and seeking to get attention and validation or approval so if they feel something’s going   wrong in a relationship they may start trying to do something to gain recognition to prove that   they’re worthy of a relationship for what they do versus who they are manipulation and exploitation   said lying justifying I did this because you made me so sometimes we all occasionally do things that   aren’t the nicest people who fear abandonment have difficulty saying you know what I screwed   up and they’re more likely to go you made me do I wouldn’t have done it if you would have X   Y & Z people again who are worried about a relationship is going to fall apart and may also make excuses for   other people’s inappropriate behavior it’s like you know I hate what this person does but   if I don’t make excuses for it if I condemn it then this person is going to leave in counseling   we can talk about the difference between loving a person and loving a person’s behavior you know I   love my kids to death there is no question about that but some of their behavior makes me want to   climb a wall I’m very clear to separate from them the difference between the behavior that I dislike   and them because you know like I said I love them to pieces and we want to help people start making   this differentiation if they don’t do it already and clinging and chasing is the other fight   reaction stalking and messaging somebody 47 times on Facebook in an hour all these kinds of behaviors   and even online bullying those sorts of things can be fight reactions in response to feeling like   there’s a threat of abandonment flight is more of the I don’t care if you leave so the person   will withdraw physically and emotionally and maybe even numb themselves with some sort of   addictive behavior or distract themselves with something completely different or find a new   person just proof that you know what I didn’t need you because I’ve got this new person now questions for clients about core beliefs all people leave okay so what does it look   like if somebody’s available to you if they don’t abandon you who in your past left you   or was unavailable emotionally now a lot of I find it helpful for mental health   and addiction clients to have them write an autobiography because then we can go back   and kind of review it and identify the core people at certain stages in a person’s life what did the person who left you do to make you feel rejected or abandoned in retrospect   you know it was hard to see the difference what was going on back then because you were a kid in   retrospect what are the alternate explanations for why this may have happened was it you or was it more about them who in your past has been available to you emotionally most of   the time people can point to one maybe two people who have generally been there it’s unreasonable to   expect someone always to be there who in your present is available to you emotionally you   know maybe they’ve only been in your life for six months or a year but they are available and I say   emotionally because you know not everybody can be available physically all the time we’ve got   jobs kids all that kind of stuff but can you pick up the phone and call them or text them and say   hey you know what I’m struggling right now what do you do in your current relationships that cause people to leave do you push them away if so how what are alternatives to pushing them away cutting all ties and just saying fine be that way I wipe my hands off you if you cling how do you do   this in what ways do you perceive yourself as being clinging and what are some alternatives   to holding on with all desperation and mistrust people will hurt reject or take advantage of me or just   not be there when I need them so again what does it looks like when somebody’s or what does it feel   like when someone is trustworthy and safe who in your past was untrustworthy or unsafe what do they   do they taught you this and what are alternate explanations who in your past has been trustworthy   and safe who in your present is available and trustworthy What do you do to yourself that   is unsafe or dishonest that’s one of those tricky questions you’re there talking about other people   other people then it’s like what do you do to yourself how do you lie to your   self or how are you mean and hateful to yourself how does your distrust of other people or even   yourself impact your current relationships some people distrust their internal intuition so   much that they don’t want to make friends with other people, they’re like I can’t tell who’s   going to hurt me and who won’t so just yeah I’m going to wipe my hands of it all what could you   do differently what do you think you could do to start building trust and what does   it look like to build trust because Trust doesn’t just appear it builds gradually emotional deaths   deprivation I don’t get the love I need nobody understands me so again what does it look like   when somebody understands you and meets your needs who in the past failed to meet your needs   emotionally and how can you deal with that now you know it may have been mom it may have been   ex-husband it may have been you know who knows how can you deal with it now yourself so you can   put it to rest who in your past is understood you who in your present understands you how   can you start again better understanding yourself because it’s hard for other people to understand   us when we don’t even understand ourselves and what can you do to start getting your needs met one of the things was starting to get your own needs met is to figure out what your needs are and   this is one of the exercises I have people do as a homework assignment they keep track of what is   it they want daily keep a log and then let’s talk about what common themes were seeing   if people knew me they would reject me okay so how do you know when you’re accepted or acceptable to   someone who when you’re past may make you feel defective are there alternate explanations and   how can you silence those old tapes because that person that statement stays as a heckler   in the gallery we need to hush the heckler what can you do part of it could be talking back and   saying you know what I’m not going to listen or I don’t have time for this right now who’s   been accepting and supportive who is in your life that’s accepting and supportive and how can you   start accepting yourself and being compassionate so some compassion focus training mindfulness work   to help people understand themselves and start being compassionate with themselves understanding   their vulnerabilities and cutting themselves some slack I don’t measure up I’m not able to succeed   okay that’s a pretty big success you know what is what success means success means different   things to different people so what does it look like to you to be successful let’s kind of hammer   that out what is it if you are successful what would be different what in your past has made   you feel like a failure what are some alternate ways of viewing it such as a learning experience   or something I had to go through to grow or you know brainstorming alternate explanations for   why people fail they don’t have a response to sometimes I ask them to kind of take on   a flip role and say pretend you’re a parent and your child comes home and they’ve tried out for   the football team and they didn’t make the team they failed what are you going to tell on what   have you succeeded at doing in the past what are you good at in the present and we want to   pay attention to minimization here because a a lot of our clients are not good at identifying   their strengths what does being successful mean in terms of your relationship with others do you have   to be successful to be loved and be a good relationship you know you’re going   to be successful in a relationship if you’re but do you have to be financially successful and powerful whatever you define success as in order to be in healthy relationships who are   three successful people you know and what makes them successful in your eyes does success equal   happiness you can do a whole group on that and what do your kids need to do to be successful   in life you know we want our kids to succeed we want our kids to be happy so what is it that I   envision my child’s life to be 10 to 15 years from now triggering relationships the abandoner is   unpredictable unstable and unavailable the abusive relationship is untrustworthy and   unsafe the deprived err depriving relationship the a person is detached or withholding the Devastator   is always judgmental rejecting and critical and the critic is critical and narcissistic usually   a lot of times people replay their past to try to kind of get it right the second time so we want   to look at do you have a habit of getting into relationships with people who are not safe we can   also ask them how do you exhibit these behaviors in what ways are these behaviors present your   current relationships and in what ways were these present and your primary caregiver relationships behavioral triggers abandonment and mistrust if somebody starts acting differently they change   their behavior in some way a person who fears abandonment goes oh that’s not good if they’re   not getting constant reassurance that’s that external validation can trigger   abandonment fears so again we want to work on internal validation and why is it that you   feel you need constant reassurance from the other person’s relationships feel threatening so   work relationships those sorts of things the a person who has abandonment issues won’t want   their significant other around other people and they become hyper-vigilant to rejection   and disconnection even if it’s just somebody going I had a really bad day I need 20 minutes   and go into the room and shut the door the person with abandonment issues will likely   have a high level of anxiety so we want to ask how these behaviors have threatened them in the   past what are alternate explanations for why this is happening with this person right now and what   would be a helpful reaction to these behaviors now so this is happening what would be a helpful   reaction instead of assuming that the sky is going to fall defectiveness and failure so if   somebody is critical if they have unexplained time apart there’s absent or inconsistent reassurance   or if the person tells them they’re a failure these or they fail at something these could   all be behavioral triggers they could be like I failed at something I’m not getting reassurance   this relationship is fixin’ to end questions how is this threatened you in the past alternate   explanations and what would be a helpful reaction to this particular situation right now envisioning activity what does a healthy the relationship looks like presence versus abandonment   acceptance versus rejection emotional support versus emotional unavailability trustworthy   versus untrustworthy and safe versus harmful these are extremes what does it look like to   be a middle ground there are going to be exceptions you know things are going to happen so what does   a healthy relationship look like and how do you deal with exceptions if somebody’s not always   present how can you create this relationship with yourself that’s the big one and then how can you   create this relationship with others’ mindfulness questions what am I feeling what’s triggering it   am I safe right now and if not what do I need to is this bringing up something from the past if   so how is this different how am I different then I was when I was six or four and how   can I silence my inner critic and finally what would be a helpful reaction that would move me   more toward my goals and a positive emotional experience summary core beliefs   about the self and others are formed in early life due to children’s lack of knowledge of other   experiences and primitive cognitive abilities these core beliefs are often very dichotomous   core beliefs can be formed around events or experiences outside of the conscious memory   identifying and being mindful of abandonment triggers in the present can help people choose   alternate more helpful ways of responding in the present in Secure and Loved loved me   don’t leave me are two excellent books there are Google previews if you want to look   at them to see if it’s something that you like but they do take what we talked about in this   presentation and expand upon it a whole bunch more if you enjoy this podcast please like and   subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube you can attend and participate in our   live webinars with Doctor Snipes by subscribing at all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox, this   episode has been brought to you in part by all CEUs com provides 24/7 multimedia continuing   education and pre-certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 used coupon code consular toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month you As found on YouTubeSeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) http://flywait.darekw.hop.clickbank.net/ By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years… often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen.732d01adf780998f105af3460737a431

Lavender for Generalized Anxiety Disorder

 “Lavender for Generalized Anxiety Disorder” Lavender oil, distilled from lavender flowers, is most often used in aromatherapy and massage. Despite its popularity, only recently have scientifically-based investigations have been undertaken into its biological activity, however. There have been small-scale studies suggesting a benefit from lavender massage, but maybe it’s the massage, not the lavender. There was a study on patients in intensive care comparing massage with odorless oil to massage with lavender oil, and through patients massaged with lavender oil did say they felt less anxious and more positive, there were no objective differences found in terms of blood pressure, breathing, or heart rate. Frankly, maybe the lavender was just covering up the nasty hospital smells. Subsequent studies using more sensitive tests did find physiological changes, though. We know, for example, the smell of lavender changes brain wave patterns, but what effect does this have? Well, it makes people feel better, and perform math better, faster, and more accurately, whereas the smell of rosemary, for example, seemed to enable folks only to do the math faster —not necessarily with greater accuracy. What if you eat lavender flowers, or in this case take capsules of lavender-infused oil so you could double-blind the study to compare lavender head-to-head to a drug like valium, lorazepam, known as Ativan, for generalized anxiety disorder? Generalized and persistent anxiety is a frequent problem and is treated with benzodiazepines, “benzos”, or downers like valium. Unfortunately, these substances not only make you feel like you have a hangover, but have a high potential for drug abuse and addiction, so they decided to give lavender a try. The drug Ativan certainly reduces anxiety… but so does lavender. By the end, you couldn’t tell which was which! And in fact, among those that responded to either, the lavender seemed to work better.  Since lavender oil has no potential for drug abuse and causes no hangover effects, it appears to be an effective and well-tolerated alternative to benzodiazepine drugs for the amelioration of generalized anxiety. One cautionary note, however. There was a case series published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Prepuberty gynecomastia linked to lavender. Reports of young boys exposed to lavender-containing lotions, soaps, hair gel, and shampoo, starting to develop breasts, which disappeared after these products were discontinued, suggesting that lavender oil may possess hormone-disrupting activity. Indeed, when dripped on estrogen receptor positive human breast cancer cells, lavender does show estrogenic effects and a decline in male hormone activity, though it’s unknown if similar reactions occur inside the body when lavender flowers or lavender oil is ingested.As found on YouTubeSeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years… often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen. 732d01adf780998f105af3460737a431

Addressing Negative Thoughts | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Dawn Elise Snipes

 CEUs are available at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU This episode was pre-recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through ALLCEUs. ALLCEUs.com/CBT-CEU I’d like to welcome everybody today to cognitive behavioral therapy addressing negative thoughts. Now a lot of us took courses and cognitive behavioral therapy we’ve worked with CBP for many many years so some of the this is just going to be a refresher and others you know you may pick up a few new tips or tools as we go along so we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its basic principles just get a really basic refresher on what was that original CDP about well identify factors impacting people’s choices behaviors because you know they always have a choice we’ll explore causes and the impact of thinking errors whether you call them cognitive distortions irrational thoughts or when I work with my clients I try to call them unhelpful beliefs or unhelpful thoughts because distortions and irrational seems sort of pejorative to me so I try to avoid those words as much as possible and help clients see them as not incorrect necessarily but unhelpful and then we’ll identify some common thinking errors and their relationship to cognitive distortions and some of our just very basic fears why do we care well because cognitive distortions or irrational thoughts or unhelpful thoughts whatever you want to say really impacts people on a physical level a mental level and an emotional level a person who perceives the world is hostile unsafe and unpredictable will tend to be more hyper vigilant until they exhaust the stress response system so think about you know a bottle ship and you’ve got a bunch of new people on this battleship and all the sailors every time there’s the least little thing they send off the all-hands-on-deck so a big bird flies over and I mean literally a bird and they freak out found me all hands on deck and this goes on for a week or two or six months you know let’s think about our clients they don’t usually come in right away where everything is set to OFF that startle response everything sets off that fight-or-flight response the staff starts to get exhausted all the rest of the sailors that have to drop everything and run to their battle stations after a little while they’re like really no no we just we can’t even do this and it also reminds me of the boy who cried wolf anyhow I digress sticking with the battleship metaphor so eventually the captain says you know what let’s retrain on what is worth setting off the all hands on deck because everybody here is exhausted and nobody’s even really responding anymore when they come to their battle stations they’re just kind of dragging their butts in like whatever it’s probably another false alarm the same sort of thing is true with us when we’re on on high alert for too long our brain says you know what we got to conserve some energy in case some really really big threat comes along so it turns down what I call the stress response system it turns down the sensitivity so you don’t get alerted for every little thing that would cause you stress but you also don’t get alerted for those little things that would cause you happiness either anything that would cause the excitatory neurotransmitters to be secreted you’re just not getting those anymore which a lot of people kind of refer to as depression it’s just kind of like the F whatever and only the biggest most notable things actually cause an emotional effect we don’t want people to get to that point that’s no way to live so we need to help them learn how to sort of retrain their spotters to figure out what is actually stressful a person who perceives the world is generally good and believe they have the ability to deal with challenges as they arise will be able to allow their stress response system to function normally there are going to be times you have all hands on deck whether it’s a real emergency or whether it’s just a drill but it will happen and they can go they can you know do what they’re going to do they have that adrenaline rush they have the energy and the focus to do their jobs and when it’s over they go back to their quarters they can relax refresh you know just kind of chill for a while and then there’s a low where their body rebalances before the next one and this is kind of what we want in life I mean ideally we wouldn’t have super high peaks very often but we want to make sure we give our body time to rebalance after there’s a stressor and not have to stand on on edge not be hyper vigilant constantly just waiting for the next one to come along so what is the impact of these thinking errors well whenever we have that stress response system activated the body is saying we either need to fight or we need to flee so you’re dumping all kinds of adrenaline and other neuro chemicals so there’s anxiety there can be stress when people start having this reaction you know they start having muscle tension sweating heart rate increases breathing increases people will call that anxiety some will label that as anger either way they’re both sides of the same coin they need to do something but if it lasts too long then we start moving into depression and they just they don’t have to get up and go anymore there’s just not any excitatory neurotransmitters really left they need some time to rest and rebalance behaviorally think about it if you go somewhere and you are just constantly on guard are you going to keep going there or are you going to withdraw so people who have a lot of thinking errors unhelpful thoughts tend to withdraw more they may turn to addictions to kind of numb or blunt some of the inputs sleep problems and changes when you are hyper vigilant when you have this stress response going even if it’s not a full-bore if it’s still there somewhat if you’re stressed out you’re not going to sleep as well you’re going to maintain higher levels of cortisol so you’re not going to get that restful rejuvenating sleep you may kind of goes on and off eating changes you know depending on the person some people eat the self food that some people can’t eat it all but we do see that the hormones Guerlain and lets them get all out of whack not under stress but also when sleep gets out of whack when your circadian rhythms get out of whack so we’re starting to see the Cascade effect where it’s emotional and behavioral physical you’ve got stress-related illnesses that start coming up if you’re on that lunch you’ve got muscle tension for that long it starts to hurt I mean you start to get migraines your back starts to hurt wherever you store your stress so to speak it starts to come out and most people when they’re under a lot of stress for an extended period you know a day is not a big deal for most people but for an extended period become more susceptible to illnesses they start getting sick easier headaches GI distress you know some people store their stress right in their gut socially think about the last time you were stressed were you patient and tolerant and just a pleasure to be around you may have tried to be but you’re more prone to irritability and impatience and again wanting to withdraw all of these affects contribute to fatigue and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness which often intensifies thinking errors so you’ll see this negative reciprocal interaction if somebody feels stressed out and overwhelmed and that they withdrawal then they may start feeling like they have no support and they don’t and they lose all their social buffers to the stress so they feel even more stressed so they want to withdrawal even more so we’re going to talk about how to prevent that now I like this little diagram maybe because it’s got a heart in the center I don’t know but behavior feelings and thoughts this is the outside of the circle all three of these impact diecuts each other when you do something it often impacts your feelings and your thoughts about a situation when you when you’re thinking if you think positively you’re probably going to choose more positive behaviors and more have more positive feelings you’re thinking negatively obviously you may choose more of an escape behavior Protection behavior and may have more feelings of anger anxiety depression etc so these things are going on and they’re all interacting the one really cool thing is if you break this chain somewhere or this circuit then you can stop that reciprocal negative downward spiral so cognitive behavioral helps people who are willing to show up or who are willing to address their thoughts not everybody is willing to start addressing their thoughts right away maybe they want to start addressing their sleep problems in their eating problems or something that’s more physical okay that’s fine because anywhere we interrupt this circuit is going to have positive effects assuming the intervention is positive it’s going to have positive effects on the other ones so what about the triangle well yourself so you’re feeling thoughts and behavior impact you it impacts how you feel and you’re like well yeah okay just stay with me but the way you feel think and act impacts your future and it also impacts how you interact with others so you know that kind of affects things because remember social support is a big buffer for us now core beliefs and you can do this inward to outward or outward to inward but either way it comes down to core beliefs if you have positive thoughts and positive feelings and you generally engage in positive behaviors to keep that cycle going you will probably feel pretty good about yourself have good relationships have a somewhat optimistic feeling about the future and your core beliefs may be more like people are generally good I can do this you know very self affirming and other affirming positive core beliefs about yourself in the world now if your thoughts or feelings are negative then you have this negative outer circle you don’t feel so good you start questioning the goodness and Trust ability and dependable of other people you have more of a bleak look in the future so what do you think is going to happen to the core beliefs the core beliefs may change too if someone doesn’t love me I am completely unloveable they may change to being more extreme more negative and more difficult to rectify if you want to have somebody who’s happy I mean you’re not going to have somebody who’s happy who thinks the world is an unkind unpredictable scary place going it’s just wonderful roses today so we have to help people try to adjust eventually start adjusting those core beliefs and when we get into causing that behavior remember the ABCs your automatic but well your automatic thought then your and beliefs are what happened as soon as that event occurs and those you don’t think about that’s why they’re called automatic so when you have the ABCs these core beliefs are those things that pop up that we need to address so what factors affect this and whoops you know there’s a lot of stuff right here and EBP they call them vulnerabilities you know we’re just going to talk about in general different factors that affect the choices our clients make in terms of behaviors so negative emotions if they are not if they’re feeling angry if they’re feeling anxious they’re feeling depressed they’re probably not going to be really motivated to get up and engage in a whole lot of self affirming activities they’re not probably not going to be having a lot of positive self affirming thoughts they’re going to be focused on whatever is causing that distress and maybe escaping from that physically pain and illness when you don’t feel well it’s harder to be Susie sunshine I don’t think many of us are just a barrel of monkeys when we don’t feel well so if our clients have pain this is one of those if you want to put it in behaviors behavioral areas physical areas we can address and have them go see their physician have them go see their physical therapist and get recommendations so they aren’t feeling physically painful physically and distress all the time because physical distress and emotional distress both mess with sleep unfortunately sleep is the first thing to usually go and I’m not talking about quantity I know a lot of clients who when they get depressed they’re in in bed for you know days they’ll get up they’ll maybe shower and you know go back to bed and they’re sleeping a lot but it doesn’t mean it’s quality sleep so what we need to look at is what is the quality of their sleep are they getting that rejuvenation the time for their brain and neural chemicals to rebalance so they can feel happy so they can have that nice balance of all the the neurotransmitters they need to feel happy poor nutrition well no matter how much sleep they get if they don’t have the building blocks to make the neurotransmitters and the hormones that are needed to prompt the feelings the physiological sensations that we’ve labeled happiness or excitement or you know even depression and anxiety those are all caused by different neurotransmitters being secreted in different combinations if your body doesn’t have the building blocks to make those then it doesn’t matter how much sleep you get you’re not going to get any benefit from it an intoxication and this can be uppers downers anything that is psychoactive if you are messing with that neurotransmitter balance you’re going to get it out of whack and you may either use up too much of the excitatory or cause us a lot of it or you may use up too much of the depressant either way there’s usually a rebound effect which we call withdrawal so you’re not going to be in a good space either during the intoxication sometimes but definitely when you’re sobering up there’s a period where there’s going to be negative emotions negative feelings environmentally yeah your environment can even make you grumpy introduction of a new or unique situation some people love new challenges love going to new places other people not so much depending on the person taking on going somewhere new may be really stressful for them so if they’ve already got de-stress going on because of having to go to this new situation then their thoughts may be a little bit more on the anxious side about a lot of things and they may have less patience and tolerance to deal with other stuff that comes their way because they’re already kind of on edge and exposure to unpress you know going places that you just really don’t want to go maybe and one of the places I used to work we had this meeting once a month and it was literally an eight-hour meeting and we would all sit in there for eight hours and one person at a time would get up and give their staff reports or whatever but it tended to be a relatively dreadful sort of environment or eight hours and we all knew we had to be there and that was fine but it was an unprecedented were grumbling on the way in they were getting their coffee and going well I better do this because I’m not getting out for another eight hours we need to help our clients obsess what is it in your environment if anything that is making you already feel grumpy or not as happy and likewise what can you put in your environment to make you feel happier you know I keep pictures of my kids and my animals on my phone that way if I’m having a moment or not sometimes I just like looking at them I can take a look at it it makes me smile and I’m like okay life is good you know this moment may not be so wonderful but it’s just this moment then we move on to stress of a social nature peers or family who convey irrational thoughts as necessary standards for social acceptance nobody wants to associate with those people or nobody’s going to like you when you’re like this or you read if you really want to be successful then you need to change fill in the blank it’s always a something needs to change you are not okay for who you are how you are and a lack of supportive peers to buffer stress because we all have negative people in our life it happens but if you have negative supportive peers that you can call afterwards and go yeah I had just had to meet with someone so for an hour and it was just dreadful and that person can go well I’m sorry or be there make you laugh or whatever they do it helps buffer the stress if you don’t have those positive social supports then you’re left walking out of it you’re kind of feeling shell-shocked and then you also at the same time have to figure out for yourself all right what do I do next now it doesn’t mean you can’t do it you know people do it all the time but it is good it is awesome to have supportive peers to buffer your stress so when cognitive therapy clients learn to distinguish between thoughts and feelings realizing that thoughts will trigger feelings but they don’t have to cause continual feelings and behaviors and feelings can cause certain thoughts but they don’t have to you can unhook from them and you can just say this is how I’m feeling right now now where am I going to go from here and we talked about that on Tuesday with unhooking from unhooking from your thoughts and stepping back and going what is the next logical action to get me to where I want to go become aware of the ways in which the thoughts can influence feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful being critical being jealous envious maybe you just don’t like somebody and you know there’s a whole lot of reasons for that but you don’t like everybody most people don’t like everyone and so it’s you know that’s okay but recognize how that affects your interactions with that person and your thoughts about that person learn how thoughts that seem to occur automatically affect emotions so recognize start getting down to what are these core beliefs that happen every time it’s a negative incident that make me feel angry or anxious constructively evaluate whether these automatic thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased evaluate whether the current reactions are helpful and a good use of energy or unhelpful and a waste of energy that could be used to move toward those people and things important to the person so again back kind of to that ACP sort of thing is this a good use of your energy to help you achieve your goals and be the person you want to be and develop the skills to notice interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently like I said you don’t always have to call somebody you can do it on your own but sometimes it’s nice to have that buffer in that middle moment so what causes these thinking errors how can we even start helping people address their thoughts and until we start thinking about well what caused them information processing shortcuts as we grow up we learn things you know when you were knee-high to a grasshopper you didn’t have a lot of experience so you learned things but things you learned when you were a kid unfortunately because you were cognitively a child are either our dichotomies they’re all or nothing it’s either this way or no way at all so things that you have things that you learn back when you were a child may not have been challenged if you heard something from your parent maybe your parents said you’re a bad girl or you’re a bad boy it’s all or nothing well I am a bad girl so I guess that means I’m not okay and if I’m not okay right now I’m never okay that can stick with a person so these outdated amis schemas can really trip somebody up once the person gets into you know middle schoolish the thoughts aren’t nearly as dichotomous there’s a lot more formal operational thought if you will but up until then I mean you’ve got a child who’s experiencing a lot of stuff and taking in like a sponge everything they hear and it gets sorted into a yes or a No pile there’s there’s no kind of middle pile that there’s no yes and so what we want to do is help people look at those thoughts now and say okay if they’re all or nothing is there a way to find both and so for example we’ll take that exam scenario I gave you earlier if a child hears you’re a bad girl when they’re young they take that to mean always everything about me is bad I’m unlovable so what is the both and compromise as an adult we can look back and go you know I’m a good person I may not make may make poor choices sometimes I may make bad choices but I’m a good person so there’s that both and you know I’m not perfect but I’m good so that it’s not all or nothing and I encourage my clients to really always look for that middle ground how can it be both or does it have to even be that negative one but most of the time there’s a little bit of something on both sides the brain’s limited information processing capacity and limited responses when children are young you know they hear something you know mom comes in and says you’re a bad girl and child hears I’m totally unlovable and it just crushes the child they don’t have experiences to go moms having a bad day she kind of tends to say things she doesn’t mean when she’s having a bad day it’s just it’s devastating to that child when you’re older if somebody says something that’s not necessarily tactful you know you can look at it and go yeah that really wasn’t nice but that person probably did not intend to be hurtful they may have something else going on children have fewer experiences so what was devastating or overwhelming as a child may not still have have to feel that way when you’re a child if your best friend moved away oh that was devastating it was the end of the world now as an adult you can go visit them you can call them and with the internet and everything you can email them you can still stay in touch so there are ways to do it yeah you can’t go out and swing swing on swings together all the time but it doesn’t have to mean the end of the end of time things will change and there’s a little process of grieving that has to go along with that but to an adult a friend moving away is less devastating than say to a six-year-old your parent being angry with you if you grew up in an alcoholic or addicted household you learn don’t talk don’t trust don’t feel when the parent came in if the parent was angry with you you could have been in a lot of hurt you know there could have been some actual danger to your physical or emotional person so it was scary as a 26 year old or however old your client is is it that threatening you know if your parent gets angry with you you don’t depend on them for food and shelter anymore you don’t have to be an inner household if they were violent towards you so is it as terrifying when your parent gets angry yes there’s lots of issues with wanting acceptance from your parents that’s over here there’s a whole nother issue but when your parent is angry do you have to have that person’s approval when we’re in crisis we don’t process much when you’re in crisis your body is worried about surviving if you’ve been in a car wreck if somebody has gone to the hospital whatever the case is you’re not processing all of the data in order to make it in for decision you’re processing what’s right in front of you because when we’re in crisis we generally have tunnel vision and really crappy memory so if something happened when someone was in crisis that hurt their feelings made them angry you know fill in the blank some sort of dysphoric emotion we want to say well let’s look back at that and see if there’s a pose and let’s look back at that and see if there was something that you missed that might help you understand why this person reacted that way but understanding that in crisis we just generally don’t make the most informed decisions so emotional reasoning helping clients understand that feeling or not facts and helping them learn to identify feelings and separate them from facts so if they say I’m terrified all right so you’re terrified got that about what are you terrified you know tell me what are these things that make you feel like the world is such a scary place and let’s list them on the whiteboard or a flip chart what is the evidence that those are present dangers right now that they’re actually impending threats so tell me about what the evidence is in what ways is this similar to other situations where you felt terrified and how did you deal with those situations I have a friend who actually went this morning on an airplane flight and she hates flying totally terrified of it so what is the evidence that this plane is going to crash you know what is the evidence that it is likely that this plane will crash and there really she’s flying on an american-based commercial airliner there really isn’t any when you look at the proportions so okay there’s there have been a couple of crashes over the past 20 years and in a couple of those there were some fatalities no doubt but looking at the proportions and running the numbers what’s the likelihood in what ways this is similar to other situations that you have felt terrified you know maybe there haven’t been any other situations where she’s flown and gotten through it and been like score I did that but what other situations have you had to get through that you were terrified and how did you deal with those help people develop distress tolerance skills one of the things I told her was when you’re sitting on the airplane and you know the airplane starts up don’t wait til you start getting really stressed necessarily but when we were little on the car when we’re in the car we used to find things on the drive find something that starts with a and everybody would find something that started with a and then find something that starts with B and you know so on and if you couldn’t find something that started with that letter you were out so I mean she’s going on this trip with her kids and I’m like why don’t you try doing that because there are some letters that you’re going to have to work really hard and it’s kind of like the game apples to apples you end up finding something really inane in order to get that letter and you laugh and you’re so busy focusing on that you’re not focusing on all of the things that could possibly maybe go wrong other distress tolerance skills you know you can go through the whole DBT curriculum and learn some of those the biggest thing is if you have to face the terror if you have to go through it figure out a way to not have to focus on it and fight it and go I shouldn’t be afraid I shouldn’t be because that doesn’t work if it worked we wouldn’t be talking about it and develop emotional regulation skills so prevent those vulnerabilities set yourself up so you are as prepared as you can to not feel stressed to not feel anxious she has her spouse with her who can help diffuse some of it she’s got her kids with her she downloaded some movies she’s prepared to endure the distress she’s you know trying to go into it with a positive mindset as much as possible and focusing on the destination which you know is ultimately the reason she’s getting on the plane social causes of stress and thinking errors everybody’s doing it well that’s not true there’s very real that everybody does so correcting misinformation how the client gather objective information about you know if they say well everybody else that I know has succeeded okay well let’s gather objective information about that who do you know and tell me if they’ve succeeded if I want to be liked I must do it this need for approval or low self-esteem can cause a lot of problems in thinking errors and fears of rejection so we say okay let’s look at developing some self-esteem so you don’t need to worry about if somebody likes you what would it be like if you woke up in the morning and you didn’t care if so-and-so liked you I mean we all want to have friends don’t get me wrong I’m not saying you want to be her moving out in the woods but if we’re talking about a particular so-and-so what would it be like in the morning to get up and go you know what if that person messages me today or call us me today that’s great and if not I’m okay with that how liberating would that be to get your power back and how people develop social supports that share their same values and goals at least mostly or at least can respect yours so for example when you know I work with people with co-occurring disorders and they don’t drink and they don’t use drugs so they may be around people family friends who drink if you’re going to be in that situation do you have to drink and can you be around do you have social supports that can be supportive of your choice to not drink doesn’t necessarily mean they’re it’s not going to not going to not drink in front of you but at least they’re not trying to get you to drink so the social causes of irrational thoughts if I want to be liked I must do this why can’t you be like for who you are cognitive bias negativity mental filter focus on the negatives and worry about the future most of us know some people like that most of us have had a moment where we felt like this we’ve just gotten ourselves in a tizzy and spun out of control but you can bring it back so you want to ask yourself or have your clients ask themselves what’s the benefit to focusing on the negative if you know that this is going to go south really fast what’s the benefit to just focusing on that could you focus on alternatives or Plan B’s what are the positives to the situation most people who have mood issues who present to us in counseling don’t focus on both sides yes every side you know has a little bit of negative to it if you really want to look hard enough but every side also has a silver lining if you really want to look hard enough so we need to balance the the positives and the negatives so encourage people to look for the positives in the situation yeah this really sucked but and what are all the facts what are all the things going into it sometimes people will go to work and not know or wonder if they’re going to get laid off because you know you’re not necessarily always guaranteed a job anywhere there can be layoffs but if somebody is going to work every day worried about this focusing on the negative up yep I’m definitely going to be the one that’s going to get the pink slip and they go to their mailbox each time looking for that pink slip expecting it to be there how is that going to affect their mood as opposed to alright there may be layoffs coming what can I do to make myself really valuable or and what are my options if I do get laid off let’s make a plan B and C so I don’t just feel like the rug was pulled out from under me coin toss activity if somebody tends to be stuck in negativity have them flip a coin every morning if it lands on heads they can just see their normal selves to their heart’s content if it lands on tails they need to act as if they are a happy positive optimistic maybe even a noxious ly optimistic person for the entire day you know we want them to be farting rainbows and when I say that they usually look at me and laugh and but that’s okay I’m like every time you start having a negative thought I want you to see a unicorn farting rainbows and take it from there and then have them process how they felt at the end of the day if they weren’t constantly focused on negativity and worrying and only seeing the bad stuff disqualifying or minimizing the positive if something happens when somebody says well I just got that promotion because they didn’t have anybody else to give it to okay if your best friend just got a promotion would you say that to them what is scary about accepting the positive about accepting the fact that maybe you got the promotion because you’re awesome sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet someone else’s standards so might that be true here you know maybe you got this promotion and you’re actually down deep down inside kind of proud of it but you know that your mother had always wanted you to be this over here and you’re never going to meet that expectation so you minimize it that way nobody else could say well you know better than nothing and take away your thunder egocentrism my perspective is the only perspective take different perspectives I always say three if something happens and you know maybe somebody was rude to you anyone they were rude to me okay they were rude to you what are three reasons what are some alternate perspectives why that person might have been rude maybe what you did something that triggers them maybe they were having a bad day and it’s got nothing at all to do with you you know there are options that we can look at personalization and mind-reading what are some alternate explanations for the event that didn’t involve you if you think well that person that person just really doesn’t like me and you know I’ve got to work with them every day and they hate me my question to my client would be what what’s the evidence for that and what are some alternative explanations for why that person may be behaving that way I had a staff member that a lot of my other staff members had difficulty getting along with and ultimately you know we had to sit down and look when I had some different staff meetings with people and say you know what gives you the idea that she doesn’t like you what gives you the idea that it’s about you and you know they cited all kinds of behaviors and I had to come back to well what are some alternate reasons why somebody anybody not just her might be expressing those behaviors could it be something besides you and of course they came back – yeah availability heuristic remembering what’s prominent in your mind if somebody was if you’re a supervisor for example and you’re doing evaluation for the year what are you really remembering when you’re doing that evaluation the whole year or the last three months and that’s the event fail ability heuristic so when you’re talking to somebody about their relationship with their best friend or their spouse or their kids and if somebody says well that that child has always been a problem okay let’s look at that you know the child is 18 and you’ve had a lot of problems with him lately but what about three years ago so was he always a problem or is this something that’s relatively new that something might have changed magnification people getting stuck on fearing the absolute worst so you want to ask them is this a high probability or low probability outcome if they’re magnifying something that happened like oh my gosh that is the worst thing in the world is this going to matter six months from now maybe you totaled your car and yeah that is a huge bummer and you’re safe in six months is this really going to matter that much you know there are going to be some bills and everything but the big scheme of things is at the end of the world what have you done in the past to tolerate events like these when something really really unpleasant has happened and then if they’re looking at dichotomous ways of thinking which a lot of our clients still do they’re like someone so it always does this or never does this have them look at the differences between love versus hate perfection versus failure and all good intentions versus all bad intentions because a lot of our dichotomies fall in one of these three categories this person always does this or Never or does it intentionally or you know just doesn’t care belief in a just world the fallacy of fairness encourage people to look for for good people they know that have had bad things happen attributional bearers are labeling yourself not a behavior such as saying I am stupid instead of I don’t have good math skills I am is difficult to get rid of I can’t get rid of stupidity if it’s part of me but if it’s a thought or a skill I can either get rid of it or improve it stable I am means I am right now and I probably always will be stupid verses I can change this thought or skill I can learn math and internal attributions mean it’s about me as a person versus about a skill or skill deficit or something completely unrelated so when somebody makes a global internal negative statement we want to help them challenge that global internal positive statements I’m all about but the negative ones I want to say let’s take a look at that is that true that this is about you all of the time and it means that there’s something wrong with you so we want to ask them how are these thoughts how are these ways of thinking impacting your emotions health relationships and perceptions of the world we want to increase motivation to start looking at these spanking errors because it’s a lot of work to start changing the way you automatically think because you’ve got to stop you’ve got to become mindful and then you’ve got to decide well what are the alternative thoughts because this is what I thought for so long how may have this thought has been helpful in the past most of the time thoughts we have came from somewhere and whether it was a thought we had when we were a child something we learned when we were a child that is dichotomous and not quite applicable anymore it may have been helpful in the past to help you navigate situations doesn’t mean it was wrong it means it’s not helpful in the present asking them to always ask themselves is this thought or feeling bringing you the client closer to those people and things that are important to you it’s hanging on to this negativity bringing you closer and and I like the energy philosophy if you will when you are unhappy you are letting this person have your power you are letting this person make you angry when you decide you are not going to give them your power then you may start feeling happier and I don’t always use that with clients but sometimes the power metaphor help when we talk about thinking Ayers asked them are there examples of this not being true and and or how can a statement be made less global stable and internal is it about you or is it about what you do at work is it about you or is it about your relationship with this particular person so the last couple of slides focusing on some of the irrational thoughts or unhelpful beliefs our basic fears are rejection and isolation failure loss of control the unknown and death generally the things that cause people to have this fight-or-flight reaction fall into one of those categories so some of the unhelpful beliefs that we hear a lot coming up when we do the ABCs is that mistakes are never acceptable so if I make one I am incompetent so we’ve got dichotomous thinking and we’ve got a lot of internal global labeling here rejection and isolation when somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack against me well sometimes it is what does that mean it’s about you we’re helping them address the rejection and isolation fears we want to ask them you know if they disagree with you were they attacking you and saying you were stupid or were they attack attacking you want to use that word or were they attacking the thought and saying they disagreed with the thought there’s a little bit of a difference it’s somewhat semantics but it’s a difference because they may have a lot of respect for you but they may disagree with what you just said if someone criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me again that’s one of those internal global negative statements to feel good about myself others must approve of me we want to make sure our clients can self validate and they don’t rely on external validation because they’re setting themselves up for a world of hurt if they are not their own best friend to be content in life I must be liked by all people and thanks for a second are you liked by everybody I know I’m not liked by everybody so does that mean that I should not be content in life and what does it say to give people that power to say if you don’t like me that I can’t be content because I’ve got to be liked by everybody sometimes with clients I’ll help them look at what may be going on with the other person why that person might like them because a lot of times other people’s reactions towards you are more about their stuff than about you and helping them see how that might be true my true value as an individual depends on what others think of me so these other unhelpful beliefs pertain to those thoughts of failure and loss of control none of us likes to fail don’t get me wrong it’s not pleasant but it happens and there is a saying out there that says if you haven’t failed you haven’t tried which means we need to get beyond our safety envelope we need to push ourselves behind beyond our boundaries and when we do sometimes we’re going to stumble and fall and we pick ourselves up and we learn from it but to expect to never fail at anything is not realistic so nothing ever turns out the way you want it to how many times have you heard that from your clients I won’t try anything new unless I know I’ll be good at it I’m in total control and anything bad that happens is my fault so let’s look at this locus let’s control thing here you’re in total control so you can make it rain you know it was unpleasant today because I had to come to work and it was raining outside so that was bad it happened was it your fault pointing out and depending on your relationship for your client you’re probably going to be more or less snarky when you present some of these but a lot of times I have a semi joking relationship if you will with my clients and they’re like yeah I see your point that kind of didn’t make a lot of since other times you know if they’re more serious I’ll ask them to identify things that happened that were bad that they had nothing to do with if I feel happy about life something will go wrong or I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop helping people stay focused in the moment with mindfulness and something’s going to go wrong down the road somewhere sometimes yeah it’s true this will happen let’s enjoy what we’ve got for right now the past always repeats itself it was if it was true then it’s true now so what was true when you were ten is true now that you’re forty always is that true it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted everybody conspired against me and there’s no gray area so for people who feel the need to hold on to control its dichotomous it is or it isn’t it’s got to be that way there’s no gray area and it can make life be seem very uncomfortable because they’ve got to put things in one of two buckets and sometimes things don’t fit nicely in buckets what happens if we add a third bucket that both an bucket so a quick note about irrationality the origins of most beliefs were rational and helpful given the information the person had at the time and their ability to process that information because of their cognitive development so things that we identify as unhelpful or automatic beliefs now came from somewhere and they made perfect sense whenever they were formed they may not be healthy or helpful now which is why we want to look at them and either adjust them or just throw them out the door but when they were formed they were on point irrationality or unhelpful nasaw thoughts comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without examination so again we need to look at them continually look at what you’re telling yourself and go is this still accurate and continue to be held despite causing harm to the person sometimes you’re going to look at a thought an automatic thought and you’re going to go yeah that is still spot-on now is holding on to this helping me achieve my goals you know yet the world right now is kind of a scary place is holding on to this fear and terror helping me and be a happy productive yada-yada whatever kind of person you want to be or is it causing me to feel anxious and angry and scared sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of thoughts as unhelpful instead of irrational because like I said I feel like irrationality and distortions seem very pejorative to a lot of clients so questions clients can ask themselves when they are faced with a situation what are the facts for and against this belief is this belief based on facts or feelings just because you feel scared is it a scary situation does the belief focus on just one aspect or the whole situation does the belief seem to use any of those thinking errors we talked about and if so you know what do I need to do about it what are some alternate explanations for this belief what else could have caused this to happen besides whatever I’m afraid of what would you tell your child or your best friend if they had this belief what would you took what would you want someone to tell you about this belief you could have somebody tell you something that would make you feel okay what would you want them to tell you and how is this belief moving you toward what and who is important to you remembering that beliefs are a combination of thought and fact and personal interpretation of those thoughts and facts I tend to when I talk you know you see me I kind of I’m all over the place with my arms I am a animated talker now if you are seeing me from a hundred feet away and you are seeing me talk might think I was angry because I make a lot of really big gestures because if you had grown up in a situation where there was domestic violence or something but if you had grown up in a household like I did where you had a first generation Italian first generations of ten Italian Americans talk big they talk real big with lots of gestures and sometimes loud and that doesn’t necessarily mean any anger a lot of times it’s just pure excitement so understanding that there’s thoughts in facts you know you see this going on but your personal interpretation can really affect what you get out of it or what you perceive that situation to be so we need to look at how is your personal interpretation maybe adding a negative bias and what what do we do about that it may be 100 percent accurate what do we do about it so it doesn’t keep you miserable thoughts impact behaviors and emotional and physical reactions emotional physical reactions impact thoughts and your interpretation of events irrational or unhelpful thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions my two favorite words in that same sentence cognitive distortions are schemas or shortcut ideas or memories if you will which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or understanding of the event you know little kids may not have quite understood what was going on they just understood that mommy and daddy were screaming identifying the thoughts the hecklers I call them those negative voices inside your head that are maintaining unhappiness helps people choose whether to accept the thoughts and say yeah you know that’s right I really am not good at that or whatever the negative thought is and change it or let the thought go are there any questions you you thank you miss Benson well thank you all if you come up with any questions you know you’re mulling it over later and you think you know that yet I’ve worked with a client and with something similar and I did this or you know you have a question about something I said feel free to email me the easiest one to remember is support at all CEUs com there’s only two others in the office so either my husband gets it err I do so it’ll get to me and I guess that’s it so I will see you all on Tuesday if you have any types of courses that you want to see added to the list please let me know I’m always interested in doing what you want to learn about not necessarily just where I pull out on my rabbit hat yes you can print the slides in the golly golly golly when you go into the class there’s a link that has a PDF of the slides that you can print if you want to print go ahead and print those out the video version of this will be up on YouTube by tomorrow morning maybe later this afternoon you okay everybody have an absolutely amazing rest of your day and weekend if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube you can attend and participate in our live webinars with dr. Schneider by subscribing at all CEUs calm / counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by all CEUs calm providing 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code consular toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month.As found on YouTubeSeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… 732d01adf780998f105af3460737a431 or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years… often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen.

8 Signs of an Anxious Attachment Style

 (upbeat music) – [Narrator] Hey Psych2Go Welcome back to another video, before we start, we’d like to thank you all for the support that you’ve given us. Psych2Go mission is to make psychology and mental health more accessible to everyone, and you help us do that, so thank you, now back to the video. Are you always insecure about your relationships? Do you need constant reassurance from your partner or loved ones? Attachment theory categorizes the way we act in relationships into three-man attachment styles, in today’s video, we will be focusing on the anxious attachment style, which according to mind-body green is a type of insecure attachment style rooted in a fear of abandonment and insecurity of being under-appreciated. The anxiety or insecurities you may feel in your relationship today may be due to an anxious attachment style you developed as a child. Remember if you find yourself relating to the points we mentioned, be kind to yourself, and know that you can always work towards improving your behaviors, with that said, let’s look at the eight signs of an anxious attachment style. Number one is feeling insecure in relationships. Are you always worried about not being good enough for your partner? Does it get in the way of your happiness? A sign of an anxious attachment style is feeling insecure in your relationships, and this insecurity may manifest in several ways. For instance, you may find yourself very reactive to your partner’s words and actions, or find that you need constant reassurance from your partner to feel okay. Number two is, the looming fear of abandonment. Are you scared that your partner will leave you even when nothing is wrong? This fear of abandonment is pretty common for people with an anxious attachment. It’s likely stemming from feelings of abandonment and insecurity about your parents when you were a child. According to how Healthline this fear and worry that your partner will leave you, often results in a tendency to become overly dependent on your partner, which may negatively impact your relationship and your emotional wellbeing. Number three is trust issues. You have a hard time trusting your partner. Maybe you find it hard to believe in your partner when they say they won’t leave you, or when your friends tell you that they truly care about you, whatever it is, this difficulty to trust others may stem from a combination of feeling insecure about your relationships, and fearing that your partner or your friends are going to abandon you in time. If it gets out of hand, this distrust of others may result in losing your relationships. Number four is clinginess. Have other people called you clingy when it comes to you and your relationships, maybe you’re over-reliant, or overdependent on your friends, family, or partner. Unlike some of the other signs, clinginess can be a common coping mechanism for fears that come with the anxious attachment style. According to the attachment project, people with anxious attachment develop clinginess because they’re afraid of being alone. Number five is emotional neediness. Do you always need other people’s attention? According to Abby Moore from Mindbodygreen many people with an anxious attachment style are emotionally needy because they did not receive the proper emotional nurturing and security as a child. And this emotional neediness may manifest into behaviors where they constantly seek reassurance, soothing, and attention from the people in their life. Number six, harsh reactions to criticism. Are you the type to take criticism to heart? Does it have a strong impact on your self-esteem? While it is not uncommon to be sensitive to criticism those with an anxious attachment style might view criticism more intensely.  Instead of seeing criticism as a way to help you grow, you may take it as a rejection, and let it amplify your fears and insecurities, which may ultimately lead to low self-esteem. Number seven is ambivalence towards intimacy. Do you crave intimacy, or do you find it overwhelming? Some people with anxious attachments walk this fine line between craving and fearing emotional and physical intimacy. And this perception of intimacy may be due to emotional neglect during your childhood. So while you have a deep craving for intimacy, you may not know how to, or be comfortable with accepting it. And number eight, feeling unworthy. Do you feel unworthy of love, or that you aren’t good enough for your relationships? People with an anxious attachment may have low levels of self-esteem, and a negatively distorted view of their self-worth. This lack of self-esteem is likely to stem from insecurities and fears of being abandoned, or unwanted by your parents or loved ones, which may lead to a belief that you’re not worthy enough for your relationships. We hope you enjoyed learning about some of the signs of an anxious attachment style. Do you relate to any of the things we’ve mentioned above? 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 and hit the notification bell icon to get notified whenever I decide to go post a new video. The references and studies used in this video are added in the description below. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in our next video.As found on YouTube

SeanCooper🗯 The Shyness & Social Guy ⇝ The 3 WORST Mistakes You Must AVOID If You Want To Overcome Shyness (PLUS: 1 weird trick that targets the root biological cause of shyness so you can stop being nervous, awkward, and quiet around people…) By Sean Cooper, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Guy. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me you may have already reached a point where you feel your shyness is NOT going away on its own… or you fear it’s getting worse and worse. And I don’t want you to waste one more day living a life where you feel left out, bored, or depressed because you don’t have the relationships which would make you happy. That’s why I’ve put together this page to help you avoid the worst mistakes that keep many people stuck with shyness for years…

often giving up hope of ever improving as you watch other people have interesting “normal” lives without you. Yet this doesn’t have to happen.

The NYU Training Program for Psychedelic Psychotherapy – Jeffrey Guss

 It is an honor and so much fun to be here and it’s been a lot of fun preparing this talk Each time I give this talk, things change and I learn more about the training program. You know I’ve been a psychiatrist for 25 years and when I first trained, I did an anxiety disorders fellowship and I started teaching about anxiety and anxiety disorders. And that was a hard topic to like get a big picture of and to do in an interdisciplinary way. And then I started working with addictions and teaching about that, and then gender and sexuality, and each one had its challenges in terms of how to teach residents and fellows about how to practice in some way. That was not just a cookbook, and you know cookie cutter about. This is how you treat this problem in this way, but I think that psychedelic, psychotherapy training has been the most challenging thing that I have ever undertaken and it continues to teach me a lot about doing therapy and being with patients and in teaching. So I’m going to try to cover several different topics. In my talk today, I want na ask the question: What is psychedelic psychotherapy And in particular, What is psychedelic psychotherapy that we do at NYU with our participants in the cancer anxiety study? I answered this question by looking at who was doing psychedelic psychotherapy today, who actively participates in offering and consuming psychedelic therapy, and also with some of the methods and techniques that are important, even if psychedelics are not involved. I’m gon na show a little bit about what it is that we do with participants that are in our study, and what kinds of experiences they undergo when they go through the work with us. I’m going to talk to you about how we train our therapists, what kinds of experiences we put them through, what kind of teaching we do, and how it is that we conceive of their going from one place to another. I want na ask the question: Why do we call it therapy a theme that you’re gon na hear me address throughout the talk today is why this is therapy and why we are not guides or monitors or sitters, but we are therapists who are Doing therapy with patients We call them participants or subjects, but for the clinical work that we are doing, it is therapists who are very well trained, who are sitting with human beings that are suffering, and we’re doing a short term therapy that has Psilocybin Sessions that are part of it – And I’m gon na close by asking What are the goals of our training program? What do we hope to accomplish in training people to work in the study? So what is Psychedelic Psychotherapy? It is a collection of psychotherapeutic processes that are facilitated by psychedelic agents, So the important part here is that psychedelic therapy has, as its basis a therapeutic process that already exists in the mind of the therapist and in many ways in the mind of the participant when They come in all of the experience all of the training that they’ve, had that patients or the participants experience in therapy. All of this comes to bear on what happens to people when they enter our research project in this way, it’s distinct from psychedelic agents as neuroscientific probes, into the function of the brain and the mind, and it’s also different in some important ways from psychedelic journeys that are undertaken for a recreational purpose or a spiritual purpose, or artistic creativity or individually. So this is a very specific therapy that’s done with people who are suffering from a certain condition. So what we do is not shamanic healing. It is not neo-shamanic healing. However, it does absorb many of the core teachings and the wisdom that come from those traditions. Psychedelic therapy is deeply embedded and inextricably embedded in the knowledge systems of the subject and the guide. Here we see Copernicus looking at the sky with a very primitive telescope and what Copernicus saw was the data that he gathered and how he interpreted. It was all very much based on what he knew about the heavens and what he thought was going on in the heavens. Now he may have seen things that surprised him that caused him to revise what he thought. But basically, what happened with that? Telescope was profoundly influenced by what he expected to see what he was surprised by and the basic knowledge base that was going on in his culture at that time. 300 years later, we have a much fancier instrument looking at the sky, but it’s more or less the same sky and more or less the same kind of instrument. But the way the data was gathered, the questions that were asked the way the data was manipulated and interpreted and the kinds of impressions that were drawn from it were very different. However, the same kind of instrument and the same kind of sky, So this shows how deeply it is in the mind of the observer and the looker and the person that’s participating in the experience that the catalyst or the technology which in our case is psychedelics. You know has to be understood, So I want to reintroduce the idea of psycholytic therapy. Psycholytic therapy is much referenced, but not that much talked about anymore. It’s a kind of therapy that was done in the Fifties and Sixties. It existed more in Europe than in America, although there was quite a bit of psycholytic therapy that happened here, in the modern psychedelic research Renaissance, there’s much more emphasis on psychedelic therapy, which is if you want na, be – and this is quite reductionist, Though, to say that psychedelic therapy has ego death brought about by the agent followed by a peak, spiritual or mystical experience, So this tends to be more unitary in the concept that is it’s more or less the same for everyone, and in fact, all of you Have probably seen the nine the list of nine criteria that define the mystical experience and in our study, we like to measure people to say how many of them they’ve accomplished. You know: do they get three or four or five, And if they get nine, then they’ve had a complete, mystical experience. So in this way, the idea is towards a kind of universal experience, and this is seen as having somewhat magical properties to heal. It brings about decreased death, anxiety, and transformation in character, which is seen, and it’s sort of a goal that people look for in research. However, it is a goal that is deeply bedded in contextualization. It’s more likely to happen with someone who’s prepared for it and who knows how to experience it. It’s not like it never happens in unprepared people, but in our study, people who have experienced meditators and have worked with ego death as it occurs in meditation retreats. That kind of person is more likely to experience ego death, followed by a spiritual or mystical experience, And this quasi-religious preparation is, you know, more likely to bring this about for this kind of individual, And in this case, the therapy supports the medicine experience. So the goal of the therapist in the context is to support this profound and shattering medical experience. Psycholytic therapy, on the other hand, is more biographical and more psychodynamic. It’s more individualized and has more to do with that individual’s, time on the earth and their experiences in childhood and adulthood, and it’s also deeply embedded in the relationship with the therapists who are in the room. In this way, the medicine supports the therapy experience and there’s a lot of writing that happened about psycholytic therapy that advanced whatever kind of therapy that patient and that therapist were doing in the Fifties and Sixties if they were Jungian therapists, if they were Freudian Therapists or Rogerian or relational therapists, the psychedelic experience used in a psycholytic manner advanced that particular kind of therapy. In our study, we measure and look for a mystical or spiritual experience, but many people have a combination of a psycholytic and a psychedelic experience, and some people have only a psycholytic experience, and this falls then, of course, to the therapists to interpret this and help. The patient, the ah participant works with it in a meaningful way To make this point one more time. Ana s, Nin said We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. So why is this point so important? Why do I hammer away at this point? Because when you teach a certain kind of therapy, you’re called upon to explain much of the basis of that therapy. How it works, why it works? What you’re doing, what distinguishes it from other kinds of therapy – and these are very difficult questions to answer about psychedelic therapy. For many reasons, One is that it’s not been done very much in the last forty years in an overground above-board way. And secondly, because there are so many different forms of psychedelic therapy. But when you want na teach something, especially in a rather traditional setting as we have at NYU, you have to have a matrix or a structure in which you’re setting out to teach a body of knowledge to therapists who don’t have it. So you have to decide What is the body of knowledge? What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Most people would agree that we are opening up something inside. So What are we opening up to with psychedelics? Why are we opening up to this? Why do we think it’s a good idea to unleash or open up these kinds of restrictions that happen in the brain, naturally, for a period of six or eight or ten, or twelve hours? Why was it closed in the first place? What are we looking for And are we instead opening up to something outside the self rather than inside the self? And these are all questions which it’s easy to ask. But when you teach it, it’s important to have some answers, and yet these are answers. We don’t have immediately at hand So an important question: How do we develop new narratives out of being involved in the study? That is How do the people who come to us for help come away feeling better feeling, like their life, is more meaningful, less afraid of death, and deeper engaged with the life that they have and able to know and experience that and speak of it? What can help these changes become long-lasting? All of these are questions that go into teaching psychedelic therapy and they’re questions that I wouldn’t say that I have all the answers to which makes it especially hard to teach And when you work at NYU or any academic setting, you have To make certain that what you’re doing fits into quite a traditional model of education, So part of the goal that we’re grappling with is how to develop a coherent model for teaching psychedelic-assisted therapy to conventionally trained therapists. All of the people that have been through our training program are trained and have extensive experience in working with patients, either as psychiatrists as psychologists, nurses, social workers, or family therapists. So they’re all fully trained therapists. And how do we teach this additional method? Or this additional kind of intervention, Or how do we teach therapists that know how to work with patients, then to use this new kind of experience using their unique skills and abilities and in some way trying to bring about a coherent treatment? Because if you’re saying This is psychedelic psychotherapy, you’re, defining it as something specific. You’re saying This is a certain kind of therapy. This is what it is, and this is what it is, ‘t and that kind of boundaries are problematic, if you think about things in a holistic way or a nondual way, that isn’t the way that psychiatry works. You know if you’re, defining a certain kind of therapy and you want na say have a fellowship in psychedelic psychotherapy. Then the chairman is gon na say Well. What is that, And how do you know it’s something, And how do you know when someone’s doing it, And how do you know when someone’s doing it well, And how do you know if somebody’s not doing it, but it Looks like they are, And these are all questions that you have to have at least practical answers to You also wan na answer, questions like Who can become a psychedelic therapist Who should become a psychedelic therapist And who shouldn’t. We tried to answer the question: How is our work different from the psychedelic therapy that’s done by underground workers, Of which hundreds? If not thousands, of sessions, are, ah, you know happening every year? And how do we integrate our training with the therapist’s existing approaches, And how do we bring our responsibilities, as you know, trained professional therapists to the psychedelic therapy setting? So this is the title of our study: Effects of Psilocybin, Assisted Psychotherapy on Anxiety and Psychosocial Distress. In Cancer Patients, This therapy occurs in a very specific context. It occurs in Manhattan at NYU. This is our research center in the upper right-hand, corner of the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research. People walk around with white coats on and stethoscopes around their necks, and so the people who come are, for the most part, very mainstream individuals who have cancer. Some of them quite advanced cancer. Some people are not too ill, but many people are quite ill and they’re involved with traditional cancer regimens with scans radiation chemotherapy, and these are the patients who come to us and enter our study by and large. These are the members of the NYU team, Steve Ross, who I think might be here in the room Steve Over there And Tony Bossis, who spoke on the first day of the conference, Gabby Agin Liebes, who might be here also over there And Carey Turnbull. Ah, director of development, Alexander Belser, who might be here, Alex No and Effie Nulman, another consultant and somebody who helps us with development – And this is an overview of our study for those of you who aren’t familiar with what it is we are doing. I thought I would show you what it is that the therapists do in our study and what it is that we’re preparing them to do. There are two dosing sessions: Dosing A and Dosing B. They’re, separated by seven weeks Before Dosing Session. There are three preparatory sessions. These are about two hours long. Then there’s Dosing Session, A which is either a placebo or an active drug. No one knows not the participant or the therapist or the PI or anybody. The only person who knows is the compounder who makes up the pill on a milligram per kilogram basis and puts it into a special envelope and then a special bottle and it’s all a very special audience. Laughter After Dosing Session A there’s a seven-week period and then there are integrative psychotherapy sessions Now if the person received a placebo or it appears to everyone that they got a placebo, then those next three sessions tend to be more continued preparation, because the experience With Psilocybin is the high point of the experience, so they either have in essence, six preparatory sessions and three integrative or three preparatory and six integrative sessions, And there’s a subtle. Well, you know not so subtle, dynamic differences that happen when a person is disappointed if they didn’t get an active drug first, but everyone knows that by the end of the study, they will have received a dosing session in both conditions. So, after the Dosing Session B, then there are about four weeks or five weeks during which there are three more integration sessions. So we have nine therapy sessions and two dosing sessions. Who are the psychedelic therapists of today To think about what we needed to learn, what we needed to do? I asked myself the question Who is doing work with psychedelics and who is doing work that feels related to psychedelic therapy, I came up with four categories: The Shaman, the Neo Shaman, the Meditation Adept and the Palliative Care Therapist, and the Psychodynamic Therapist of today, And I’m going to go through each one and talk a little bit about what we learned from them and what I think we needed to incorporate from these different disciplines. The shaman is the earliest and longest-lasting longest known psychotherapist in recorded history. A core of shamanism is communication with the spirit world. This occurs quite concretely. It’s, not a metaphor. It’s, not an aspect of the mind. It is a literal communication with spirits and the ability to work with unseen and mysterious forces and to intercede for the benefit of the sufferer is a core activity of the shaman. The shaman enters a trance state voluntarily, either with or without psychedelics, and experiences their soul or spirit, leaving the body or journeying or traveling on behalf of the individual, who is suffering The shaman interacts with spirits and will command intercede or commune with them in some way. To bring about a benefit for the individual who is in the ceremony or for the tribe or community as a whole, There’s quite a similarity between shamanic training and psychoanalytic training In both the individual by definition, suffers from some kind of malady. Some kind of unhappiness, frustration or fear, or anguish, some kind of suffering, which is both defined by and treated by a particular knowledge system. To become a psychoanalyst, you have to be, you know, upset neurotic troubled in some way by audience laughter seek treatment with an analyst, and undergo a genuinely therapeutic psychoanalytic process, And anybody who doesn’t do. That is probably not going to be very much good. As a psychoanalyst, enthusiasm for the method is a requirement for practicing it effectively also you learn a great deal about what it means to be a patient and what it means to be a therapist from working with your analyst. So the analyst, as well as the shaman, suffer from some kind of malady, and often both are, you know, marked at a very early age as headed towards a particular career. This is true for many therapists, And so this malady is cured or ameliorated in some way by shamanic practices or by psychoanalytic practice, and this is the embodiment of the wounded healer paradigm, in which the person who’s conducting the ceremony or conducting the analysis is Not expected to be perfect or flawless, but is expected to be someone who lives with a spirit wound and is working at healing it or has had it healed in some way and developed compassion and a unique ability to relate to other people. As a part of that process, Part of the culmination of a shamanic quest – and this is quite different from psychoanalytic training – is a confrontation with death. This confrontation with death, which often is accentuated in psychedelic experiences, is a catalyst for moving to a different stage of being without the encounter with death and the experience of dying either in a trans state. You know nonpsychedelic induced or with medicine the reaching out the hunger, the need, the expansion and extension of oneself to find a new way of relating to life to oneself doesn’t happen, And so it is this very terror and reaching through the sense Of groundlessness and shattering that transformation and rebirth can occur, And this is one of the things that is most important, I think for therapists to be able to work with participants in this study And to approximate this, we have a great deal of emphasis in The training process on confrontation with one’s, own mortality, fears about death and experiences of death and mortality in friends and family and patients The shamanic practitioner may take medicines and, as I’m sure everyone here knows, the practice may be that the shaman Takes the medicine and not the seeker or sufferer in their culture? That is not what happens in our study. It is the person with cancer anxiety who takes the medicine and the therapists in the room with him or with her are quite sober, although there is sometimes a kind of contagious experience of entering a trance with them, but we’re all sober pharmacologically speaking And in Shamanism psychedelic plants are considered gifts of the gods. They are mediators between the gods and humans and may carry special communicative potential, and it is also believed that it is the plant itself that is the god or the plant, contains the spirit power Mushrooms are found widely available in nature. If you know where to look – and you know when to look, They are not secreted away and they are not expensive. You just need to know what to do with them, where to find them, and how to use them In research. The molecules of Psilocybin are considered to be inert and to not have spirit within themselves, and yet they’re considered to be very dangerous and we had to install a very expensive and huge safe to protect a relatively small amount of Psilocybin. It’s weighed every day and there is some kind of danger that exists with the human beings around the Psilocybin because it needs this much protection. So, while these mushrooms are available growing in cow dung in certain places, when they arrive at First Avenue and 25th St, we need a big safe to keep everybody feeling. Okay, about it audience laughter. Now the shaman is a person who exists at the margins of society, but that doesn’t mean that he or she is a counter-cultural agent, because those who exist at the margins are very much a part of culture a part of society. The center can’t define itself if there isn’t a margin against which it can say. Well, we are not that, but we’re glad that person is here, because we can find what we don’t have in ourselves in them or we can hate them or we just need them in some way, But the shaman, perhaps a person marginalized in Society is a very well known and respected and valued person in society, so there are culturally bound narratives of illness and healing that the shaman knows and that the other members of the community know So even before a person goes to a shaman. What’s wrong? How it gets better, all these are cultural narratives that exist. You know as a part of the culture. There’s a highly ritualized training process, with a strong respect for tradition. So, although working with psychedelics is counter-cultural and edgy and kind of outlaws in the underground circles in the Western world, I think within indigenous cultures it’s not that way at all. There’s a training program. There’s an apprenticeship which I’ll talk about in a little bit and it also may be a part of the shaman’s job in a ceremony to reinforce pro-social values and social regulation and it’s. This function that’s thought to be significant in the ways that certain psychedelic-based religions facilitate recovery from alcoholism and other addictive disorders. Okay, so we’ve covered the indigenous shaman. Now I want to move on to the Neo shaman or Psychedelic Sitter. The training and practice for the Neo shaman are much less well defined. The practitioner may know of yoga may have a meditation practice, may do Chinese medicine or acupuncture, and uses intuition and many concepts from Transpersonal Psychology that are brought together as part of his or her method for doing psychedelic sitting or guiding The neo-shaman is generally naturally Emergent or self-selected A person says I would be willing to sit for you, and I believe that I have the credentials to do that or an individual may say I want you to do it And there’s little training or apprenticeship program that empowers the Sitter or the guide to know what they’re doing, except their own direct experience and reading and observing other people. The neo-shaman again has direct contact with the spirit world and enters into spirit reality through altered states and often in neo-shamanism. You see skepticism towards monotheistic religions, allopathic medicine, especially psychiatry, and overvaluation of the scientific method which is known as scientism, which is the irrational over belief in the scientific method and the belief that scientific knowledge is somehow harder or firmer or more powerful or more important or more Reliable than other kinds of truth, I’m not sure why this is capitalized. It shouldn’t be Neo. Shamanism is a descendant of the ideology of American Transcendentalism, which I’ll talk about in just a minute. Another distinction – and this is, of course, a generalization that shamanism there is generally a greater emphasis on searing pain, hardship, and terror than you see. You know by and large, in Neo shamanism, The Neo, shaman theory and methods are generally prohibited, prohibited discourse in medical circles. You know when you are talking to oncologists or nurse practitioners at the cancer center, and you start using the language of shamanism. You can see people start to roll their eyes and glaze over and stop listening to you, And so, since we’re trying to persuade them to refer patients to us and to take what we’re doing seriously. You know this whole discourse is prohibited, even though it may have a great deal of value in communicating with the subject in the study And so is the Neo Shaman. This discourse is not preferred in medical science, PET scans are preferred, And yet we have many people who are bridges, Stan Grof, famously bridged, psychiatry and Neo shamanism and no course or lecture on psychedelic therapy would be complete without giving credit to James Fadiman. Who’s written this extremely useful guide? The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and Neal Goldsmith his book, Psychedelic Healing, and numerous others, So the mindfulness adept? Ah, it was clear to us early on that many of the practices and teachings within meditation are important for us, as practitioners, and for the participants to know how to do. Meditation is a technique for developing the skill of mindfulness, focusing on self-regulation through careful attention. Focusing on immediate experience and developing curiosity, openness, and acceptance, One of the underlying themes that happen in existential anxiety is that there’s little context to speak about the terror rage and disappointment that occurs after the development of a cancer diagnosis or cancer treatment and the looking Away the encouragement to cope the encouragement to fight the encouragement to be positive. All of these draw attention away from the most difficult, painful searing, hard questions and processes that need to occur, and this capacity of curiosity, openness, and acceptance of what is that is central. Mindfulness is something that I thought was quite important: to bring to training. Mindfulness and meditation are established techniques for entering altered states of consciousness, with the idea that entering them can be inherently transformative and bring about an improvement in outlook mood, and connection to other people Nonjudgemental. Radical self-acceptance is also important in meditative practice, something which we bring to bear with each person as they prepare for their psychedelic experience And Psychodynamic Therapist. There are many many things that we could say about what a psychodynamic therapist knows how to do, but much of it is embedded in his or her training. One thing that I think cuts across all schools of psychotherapy is that we help the patient, develop, alternative meanings and narratives about life. We do that in different ways. We do that in different with different techniques, but we all hope to help someone have a better sense of what their life means and how they can speak to themselves and understand themselves in it, and in particular, here. Cancer, illness, and death Narrative therapy is a particular form of therapy, in which truth is not just something that is discovered objectively. It is something that is constructed in the development of a narrative between the speaker and the listener, and this is a theme that I think comes up again and again when trying to understand how to use psychedelics in working with cancer-related anxiety, Like the shaman and The neo shaman, the psychodynamic therapist, believes in unseen forces. We don’t call them spirits or ancestors that exist in the spirit world. We call them the Ego, the Superego, the Id internalized object, relations, and internalized schemas. Many many of these metaphors, I believe, are for the similar processes that occur, But again, the psychoanalyst and the psychodynamic therapist are trained to work with these forces and just like the shaman to intercede on the patient’s behalf. To try to make things better Within psychodynamic therapy, there is a deep commitment to a personal healing journey, and extensive work toward self-knowledge, and understanding of transference and countertransference. All of these are invaluable in working with patients in our study And there’s a long history that’s not hidden from the people who are here in this room, but certainly hidden within traditional psychiatric and psychoanalytic circles of using LSD and other psychedelics to Facilitate psychotherapy – and here are three books – This one in the right-hand corner. I’d never seen it before, and I was kind of intrigued to see it showing up in my Google Images search My Self and I, with its nice 60’s graphics. Now, psychodynamic therapy is very consistent with Western norms, medical ethical norms, and standards, so it fits in comfortably with what we’re trying to do. So before telling you about the structure of our program, I want na do one more theory-based excursion and talk about the set and setting. We often think about set and setting as the set being the participant’s intention and the setting where the therapy occurs in some ways, this is our setting Manhattan streets Bluestone. This is the couch that the sessions occur on, but I’d like to suggest that two other contexts are deeply influential in the work that we do, and these are existential psychotherapy and American Transcendentalism. In particular, we work with Victor Frankl’s, Logotherapy Logotherapy, I’m gon na try to reduce it to just a few soundbites as its core that life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones, and this biography of Frankl, showing this concentration Camp march at the top, and then this very thoughtful image of him as a young man, I think, says volumes about how he came to develop this philosophy. He believes that our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning And that, when the search for meaning is blocked, there is psychological damage that occurs According to Frankl. We discover this meaning in three different ways.  Earlier today, Steve talked about meaning-making therapy, which is a kind of practical technique for bringing these philosophical ideas to bear in the clinical situation. So the meaning is discovered in three different ways: by creating a work or doing a deed. By experiencing something or encountering someone or by the attitude we take So by creating experiencing or taking an attitude, Frankl says that everything can be taken from Man, but one thing: the last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. This is his famous book Man,’s, Search for Meaning – and I want na point out now that Logotherapy is not a psychology of the mind. It’s not about the Id. The Ego. Psychology internalized objects, relations, developmental stages, and perinatal matrices, It’s not about. Oh, if you look, this is what we find like you, ‘re making a map. It is a therapy of action about the creation of meaning the intention choice and the creation of meaning And Irving. Yalom can’t be left out. American Transcendentalism is a philosophy and a form of literature that had its origins in the 19th century and some ways, lives on today. In the New Age movement, American Transcendentalism holds in the inherent goodness of both human beings and nature. Now this is quite different than Freudian psychology of the late 19th century and 20th century which said that the inherent nature of human beings is filled with steaming, cauldrons of Id and rage and libidinal energy that needs to be modified and modulated to fit with The demands of society, It’s quite different than American Transcendentalism, which says that the individual is pure and it is society that is corrupting American Transcendentalism is an inherently optimistic philosophy. There is a great deal of belief in the self and the self-identity, in creativity and infinite possibilities of the human soul. There’s a belief in spiritual progress and the interconnection of all beings, the immense grandeur of the soul, and that the interior is a source of goodness and wisdom. So I’d like to come back down to Earth now and tell you about the structure of the training program that we have, and this is the structure that we have used just in our last year of training, which is the third cycle of training that We’ve offered.

http://adgenie.gotop100.com/

http://topdogsrotator.com/r/leroymoco

https://flybybuffy.blogspot.com/

This is Shira Schuster, who is soon to be a Ph.D. and has been my co-instructor in the course for this year and has been a tremendous help and creative force in putting the training program together. So there are three core aspects to the training program: a one-year mentorship with one of the three investigators in the study, Steve Ross, Tony Bossis, or myself, a didactic series and work with two study subjects. This is the schedule with which we began last year. It unfortunately, was blown to bits by Hurricane Sandy, but by about February we started to recover and get back on track to all the papers that we wanted to discuss, and I’m going to talk about the didactic first. I don’t have all of the didactic papers here summarized, but just a few of them. We start with this fabulous paper by Matt, Johnson and Bill Richards, and Roland Griffiths on the safety and basic medical knowledge of psychedelics. This paper covers what ten other papers would be needed to convey the information about who is eligible, and who shouldn’t be taken into treatment. What are the risks? What are the basic techniques? It’s a great paper and offered a tremendous amount of information in a quick, ah, not a quick, but in a concise way to people who were going through training. The next is a wonderful article by Alison Witte, no relation to Stephen who’s organizing our conference today. This is a paper that I found in a journal on holistic nursing. She worked with nurses, who had worked with people who were seriously ill in Eastern Kentucky in Appalachia, and she looked at who had spontaneous mystical experiences while they were in the hospital and what contexts led to their arising. What nurses did that facilitated people being able to have mystical experiences being able to talk about them and what kinds of things the nurses learned about? How to help the person utilize that mystical experience in their life afterward? She also, interestingly, talked about the impact on the nurse that was doing the listening and participating in the creation of this shared experience. So this is a really useful article, nothing to do with psychedelics, but is really about how you occasion a mystical experience. What do you do that enhances the likelihood of that happening? We did some historical papers looking at LSD, assisted psychotherapy, and the human encounter with death by Bill, Richards Stan Grof, and others, and Pahnke’s groundbreaking article on the transcendental mystical experience in the human encounter with death. We studied contemporary scholarship in psychedelic research, Roland Griffiths et al 39, s paper on Psilocybin, occasioning, and mystical experiences, and we took a crash course in Yalom and Frankl by studying this paper by Bill. Breitbart Psychotherapeutic Interventions at the End of Life, A Focus on Meaning and Spirituality. So here I think you’re hearing again the ongoing theme of the establishment of meaning as a core process, that we encourage our therapists to bring to people in the study, So that’s the didactic series. If you want a copy of it, I’d be happy to send it to you by email. The next part I want to describe is the mentorship program. The mentorship program is defined as just that, and not as supervision. We used the idea of supervision at first but decided that mentorship is better for several reasons. A mentor is more of a guide, a friend, and a supporter. There’s more equality in a mentoring relationship than in a supervisory relationship, And since all of the people that are trainees in our program are fully trained therapists, we felt that they were enhancing or developing or extending their skills rather than learning something from scratch. So we use the term mentorship. Also, there’s a certain amount of teaching that comes back the other way that can be quite profound, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about that later. The mentorship relationship is confidential. The mentor doesn’t say anything and holds the material found in the mentorship sessions, with equal confidentiality to what you would hear in therapy. The intention of the mentorship is an integration of all aspects of the experience. The trainee is encouraged to discover new aspects of himself or herself and others through the relationship. In other words, How does my existing identity as a therapist change grow to transform? What do I leave away? What do I do more of? How am I changed in this experience? In learning how to work with psychedelic therapies And a core part of the mentorship is dyad training. Now, when you work with two study subjects, which is a third part of the program, you work with your mentor for at least one of the sessions, So each therapy team each therapy dyad – has to do dyad training And the dyad training, which I’m, going To tell you about in a second is the central part of the mentorship relationship at the beginning, So you meet for these six two hour sessions, doing dyad training and by that time usually, you’ve gotten started working with your first patient, Your first participant So At that point, you’re doing clinical work. You’re talking about what’s going on. You’re talking about what’s happening in the reading, But the dyad training is a central way that the mentor and the trainee get to know each other. The dyad sessions occur six. There are six of them, They’re about one to one and a half hours, and only the therapists are present, so it’s a group of two and what happens in there also is confidential. Each session has a defined theme, even though you’re encouraged to do free-flowing discussion and talk about anything that arises that you think is going to be relevant to working together as a dyad team, And we used to have supervision after the third and sixth Sessions, but I think that’s pretty much fallen by the wayside, So the goal is the establishment of a close relationship. If you’re going to be a dyad team, you have to know one another as therapists. You have to understand how somebody thinks about life, death suffering, and when I first picked this picture, I thought that it was just kind of cutesy, but I realized that one of the times I’ve, given this talk before that there, something quite similar Between this tin can string telephone and that’s that you either are listening or speaking and to change, you have to change your position And the dyad sessions occur in the same way when you’re speaking, a person is expected to say what They have to say to describe their experience and the other person listens. It’s, not a therapy session. You’re not expected to ask questions to deepen the experience, But it’s a practice of a certain kind of meditation. Listening The first session early memories and contemporary experiences of death and losses, Family members, pets, friends, and patients that have died, Each person is invited to talk about their life from their earliest memories to the present time of what death and mourning has been like for them. This is also the time to talk about early memories of awareness of your mortality and thoughts and feelings about your death and the death of loved ones. The second dyad session is an invitation to talk about profound, mystical, or spiritual experiences, including experiences with entheogens. So confidentiality is also a part of the protection of this because speaking openly about entheogenic experiences or psychedelic use in a context like this brings about certain kinds of ethical and legal anxiety in people. So only with confidentiality, I think, are people free to speak openly about what they’ve done, what they’ve, not done, what it has meant to them, and the part of them that they’re going to bring to their dyad work, which is The work with the participant that relates to their own experience or lack of experience with entheogens. They can speak about their experience as a sitter and as a guide with shamans or guides or meditation teachers that they might have had. And this allows a basic kind of groundwork to be established between the dyad, as they’re, getting ready to sit with someone who’s going to enter into a state which is rather unpredictable in terms of what they’re going to be confronted with. Holding The third session involves looking at pain and suffering in family members, friends, and patients and experiences with cancer or other terminal conditions, including experiences in working with patients who are disfigured and whose bodies are failing, and the impact that this has ten minutes. Okay, so session. Four near-death experiences Session, five audience laughter beliefs regarding heaven and hell and religious history Session, six extreme states in psychotherapy, but actually by session six, everybody’s pretty much done and we’ve talked about everything there is to talk about So that’s, The one-year mentorship and I’m – going to skip over that and talk about the study and what happens during the sessions. So I presented this slide before, but I’m going to go over it again. You’ve got three prep sessions. A dosing session, three more sessions, a dosing session, and then three more So there are nine therapy sessions and two dosing sessions. The three preparatory sessions: this is the study room. This is what it looks like. This is a model pretending to be in session and the first prep session. So during the first prep session, it’s divided into two parts: there’s education to the participant regarding goals, the purpose of the study, time tables expectations, and education regarding the range of possible effects of the medication side, effects, rescue medications that we have On board what we’re going to do to try to help them through a difficult experience, and after that, then we do a history during which we take a psychosocial history, in particular a cancer narrative. We talk about family relationships, hobbies, work, political, social, and religious affiliations, the experience with psychedelics, meditation practice, and anything that you would want to do to get to know somebody and develop a trusting relationship with them. The second session is a life review. In this, we do a rather structured exercise, which I’ll show you an example of in just a minute, but you go over much of the same material you go over where you were born growing up where you went to school when your dad transferred to Another state: what happened when your grandmother died? You know if you had to go into the service like whatever these important turning points are in your life. We talk about them literally on a timeline and examine the meaning of those events in the individual’s life to see how their life has come to have meaning how events were made, the meaning of how catastrophe or disappointment or anger or exaltation moments were Given meaning and came to structure the way their life worked, In particular in the life review, we look at the cancer narrative, which has to do with how you reacted to the diagnosis, what the diagnosis meant and the relationship between cancer spirituality and how the individual found, Meaning So this is a life review exercise on the left hand, the side you can see birth about two-thirds of the way across you can see. Now this is a man in his late forties and on the very right-hand, side. He writes his death, So you can see between birth and now there’s. Many many events and I’ll give you a closeup in just a minute and about halfway through. You can see that he didn’t leave enough space, which is like the proportion wasn’t right. So he wrote a little. U going down to write in some more information, And this is a close-up of what he wrote At the bottom. He wrote his regrets loss of friends. He had to care for his mother when he had pneumonia. He was mean to Scott when he was a kid and did well in school and became a quarterback. All of these were things that he felt were important and just getting this information writing it here and taking this time was a profound experience for him each person that we work with says You know I’ve never done anything like this before and It’s quite illuminating to have these memories sought in this relatively structured way, And then the third is taking a spiritual history. To take the spiritual history, we use these two mnemonics, HOPE and FICA, and I’m gon na skip over this because I’m running out of time. But these you know information about these is easily available online, The spiritual history. What are your beliefs More about the spiritual history more about the spiritual history, The dosing sessions? Now I’m not going to say a great deal about the dosing sessions, because what we do is not vastly different than what is written about quite extensively. How do we handle people in various kinds of situations, what do we expect, what do we invite them to do, and how do we handle crises? This is quite extensively covered by many many people and what we do. Isn’t different from it. We have headphones with music. The therapists take a supportive role and respond actively if necessary. We have an opening ritual that focuses on internal direction and immersion in the inner experience. The therapists are invited to watch, listen and be attuned and very careful. Listening to the first post-journey, narrative, usually around two or three, the person sits up, takes off their headphones and eyeshades, and starts talking about what they’ve been through, and this first narration of the experience is quite important, and listening to it Carefully, I think, sets the ground for how you’re gon na work with it in subsequent sessions. Then you have a closing ritual So the integration sessions. These are the least well-defined part of the process, and they vary considerably from one dyad team to another, and while there is an effort in academic research to have uniformity and to have a manualized approach to things, I think that these integration sessions are a place Where it’s going to be quite a challenge to do this, because what the person brings, what happened to them in their session and who the therapists are and the bond that they’ve tied the bond that they’ve made. The tie that’s happened among the three of them is going to define what happens in the integration sessions So again making meaning of a psychedelic experience and incorporating that meaning into one 39. S perspective on yourself and in the world is an essential part of what we’re trying to do Now. This is Reverend Mike Young, and this is a slide that I didn’t know about this quote, and it was Cody Swift. That turned me on to this wonderful quote, and this is in some ways the idealized experience in which the ego, which is constructed by memory and determines what we think under Psilocybin. You transcend this ego. It’s not who I am, and the loss of self is not as distressing as it was before. So this is kind of the idealized experience and this is a picture actually of Marsh Chapel, where the Good Friday experiment happened, and people praying in that very same chapel. But not everybody has this full experience. Some people have a much more biographical experience and I don’t think I’ve read a description of what you need to do better than what came forward quite recently in this lovely small monograph by Torsten Passie. Describing what kinds of things can happen in a session – and I don’t think that much of what’s here is going to be new to anyone here, so I’m not going to go through this in the interest of time and again. Well, one point that I wanted to make about this is that Sometimes you hear you know when people are talking about Katherine MacLean’s report on openness that 14 months later, openness was found to be increased by a single psychopharmacological event, And when that phrase is Used it reduces the experience to the drug itself and I think that the mystical experience is sometimes seen as kind of like the magic that brings about some kind of transformation without being contextualized in a certain kind of therapeutic process. And I’d like to suggest that it really isn’t quite this way and that, even when a full mystical experience occurs, the way that it is held, the way that it is worked with the way that it is applied and connected to the individual.’s, life is very much a part of a therapeutic process that occurs So what have we learned from working with our trainees? This came out of a discussion that I had with Steve Ross and Tony Bossis a month ago, and I’ve got nine points that I want na make and that will bring me to the end of my talk. For today. There is a complex relationship between spiritual states, the cancer narrative, and experience with altered states. Now we hear these words – and these words are said a lot, but sitting with people and trying to figure out what their cancer narrative means to them, what their life meant and how life has meaning, how cancer affected the meaning in life and the relationship of Those two to this one psychedelic experience: these are like bridges that need to be made and they need to be made actively Just sitting back and saying. So what was it for? You are not going to bring about a very powerful connection unless it’s. Already happened So this complex relationship, I think, has much to be found and discovered about it, but it’s quite important. Secondly, that there’s a great variety in the way that spiritual distress and existential anxiety present themselves In general, the greater the mystical experience, the less active integration is needed. So this is what you know. Some of our mentors have felt that when there’s a more full mystical experience, the integration sort of happens on its own or kind of happens. Naturally, When it’s less and there’s more of a biographical or psychodynamic, then more dynamic work is needed. Number four involvement, as a therapist in a study, brings about deep personal changes in the relationship to cancer, death, and therapeutic stance. For me, this had to do with facing patients who were dying and talking about dying. Looking at my feelings about death, illness, pain, cancer pain, and my mother,’s, death from cancer. All of this got activated in me and I realized how much I had been living. You know once or twice removed from these very deep existential issues, because when you work with addictions, you’re almost always working with somebody who’s going to have a new birth and a new life in sobriety, and there’s much of a hopeful Perspective so this reduction in lifespan and the threat of dying from cancer brought about a change for me. On the other hand, I work in my therapy dyad with somebody who’s been working in cancer care for 15 years, and her attunement to defenses denial around cancer, anxiety, diagnosis, anxiety. The way that somebody hears or doesn’t hear information that they’ve got is very, very refined for her imagining this new technique. This new way of helping a certain kind of suffering that she was so familiar with was quite different for her. It is like What is a psychedelic experience for this particular patient, going to do for this very familiar form of cancer care that she’s done? Number five – and you know this – is like beating a dead horse. The centrality of the construction of meaning healing existential anxiety due to cancer. Core processes that were necessary for the therapist are the cultivation of authentic presence, meditative attention, and balance between overactivity and overinvolvement, usually caused by anxiety in the therapist or detachment, which can be caused by an overvaluation of a certain kind of calm or a certain kind of meditative Observation when a more engaged or forward-leaning approach might be helpful and the skills helpful in bringing about a mystical experience Each therapist’s. The trajectory is embedded in his or her past and path and there’s a great value. When you’re doing short-term therapy like this, to know how to work with patients to know about transference and countertransference and skill about what to open up what to leave closed, how to work with things that emerge how to work with crises that arrive, how To handle the subtle and important things, that you might not recognize, or you might not notice, if you weren’t well trained there’s a great deal of value in being a well trained, therapist And number nine. The unquestioned value of personal experience with entheogens in working with integrative sessions, especially in working with difficult passages during dosing sessions. So I’m going, to sum up with two slides, So I want to talk about the goals of the training program. There are two sets of goals: One is the goals for the therapist, so you know the goals that go in, and the other is goals that go out. The goal of the training program for therapists is to develop the capacity to support spiritual and mystical experiences in the subject and to relate these to illness and mortality and existential anxiety So to conduct short-term therapy, work that integrates spiritual experiences and facilitates psycholytic work. So these are a lot of words to encapsulate what I think is the core task of what we’re trying to do, and that is to be both psychedelic therapists and psycholytic therapists and short-term dynamic, psychotherapists. The therapist’s goal is to become safe, skilled, and knowledgeable in all aspects of the process, meaning patient selection, patient preparation handling the session, and whatever occurs in the psychedelic session and the integration that happens afterward, whether that’s three or six sessions or For several years, which can occur, you know one of the people who were in our research study stayed in treatment with her dyad for several years, because it was just clinically the best thing to do So being able to know when to do what is a very important part of adding this kind of technique to your work And, lastly, to support each therapist’s, talent, maturity and individuality and to practice therapy that is creative, adventuresome and unknowing. And by that I mean where the therapist is comfortable with not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing what should happen but having an open mind and an open heart to be ready to respond to what does happen And the external or the far-reaching Goals for the training program: these are out for the community First to define a training process and evaluate its effectiveness in an ongoing way. So we had to develop a training program before or you know, without any training ourselves and without actually having done very much psychedelic psychotherapy in this particular context. So we sort of hit the ground running and now by the third round of training, and we’ve done twenty-five subjects in the study. I’m starting to have some preliminary ideas about what’s effective in training. What’s important? What’s not so important, So creating a training process was an essential part of what I was trying to do, and to do this, I just started with one that I thought up and did and said: Okay, how is this working? What’s important and what’s not The next is to provide education and normalization of psychedelic discourse within the highly traditional medical setting. So in this study, the information goes out to departments of psychiatry departments of oncology. We have a journal club, the PGY 4 39. S sometimes comes to our lectures and the fellows in addiction, psychiatry, and in other fellowships, are invited to attend. So there’s a place where psychedelic medicine is being taught and talked about, and when we go to the cancer center. We talk about this. So, even though only twenty-five people have enrolled in our study and received dosing, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the NYU area have heard about the study and are seeing psychedelic medicines being taken seriously and being studied in a rigorously academic way. Thereby creating a conversation for reintroducing these agents into our discourse. The third is to prepare the needs for a Phase III study in which we would be doing two or three or even four hundred subjects in the study. So we’d need a lot of therapists for that and third to establish at least one model for a post-rescheduling world. In other words, if we were going to have Psilocybin offered as a form of therapy and therapists were going to offer it, how will they be trained? What will that therapy look like? How will we know when someone’s a good psychedelic therapist and somebody’s not pulling their weight or not doing a good job, And with that we’ll bring it to the end. Thank you very much.As found on YouTubeHUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

How to Release Fears and Traumas with Hypnosis

 Alright, we are living. Welcome, guys. Welcome to the journey within It’s a journey of deconstruction and reconstruction of death and rebirth and today, I’ve got a very special hello hypnotist the founder of Twin Ravens Hypnotherapy and Research J Robert, Parker, In The House. Thanks for having me, man. Thank you. Thank you, dude. I think this will be a fun conversation cuz I mean, we. Absolutely. We both study hypnosis and I’d be very interested to get your perspective, you know, and how you got into this. So, um yeah, if you can share a little bit about who you are, how did you even get into this strange world of hypnosis? Uh, that’s an odd story. Um so, previously before the pandemic had been working as a chef uh that restaurant was actually where I met my partner. We did the stereotypical line cook ends up with the waitress thing. Interesting. And uh the the pandemic hit. And I had kinda seen the writing on the wall long before it had an effect. Long story short, you’ll say we both ended up out of jobs and it failed me to kinda pull something out of my bag of tricks to make money. I live in a very, very small town and there’s not a lot of ways to go about that. So, I ended up reading tarot cards professionally. And I was making a pretty good living doing that. And I noticed that I was reading people’s fortunes so to speak. And more using the archetypes of the tarot cards. Uh reframe their problems to them and help change their perspective And I got a lot of satisfaction out of that. And I started looking into what is a way that I can do only that. Uh and of course in an abnormal way. That I can do that cuz why not? And the Facebook algorithm. uh that one random point but HMI in front of me. previous to that, I hadn’t had any experience with hypnosis. I wasn’t even sure if it was real. I was in that camp And I talked to someone from admissions and they intrigued me. I figured why not give it a shot? This seems very interesting. And I think I was about two classes into 101 before I got my mind blown. The first time I saw the physiological responses of hypnosis. The things that can’t be faked. That is just reactionary. it just blew my mind. And then eventually I got to perform hypnosis and then, eventually, I got to experience it and that was a profound thing because uh going to that school, taught me a lot about myself and one of the things I came to learn is uh a lot of what I considered to be unusual behavior in myself. Uh wasn’t and a lot of what I consider to be unusual behavior in others, was it? I was just very extreme on one end of the suggestibility scale and I remember in class, they were explaining the traits of the intellectual suggestible of it’s like, oh, cool. That’s me and I took the suggestibility test and I scored like, eighty-two, my first time I wanna say. Jeez, man, that’s such an interesting thing because you’re, I mean you’re so rare and for you to be in hypnosis and experience hypnosis, uh I’m curious like who hypnotized you and how do they do it, right? Because you’re like the hard type. it was actually in a practice and it was with somebody I mean, I guess I should mention, this guy named Paul Villa Real and he’s since graduated, I believe. And uh, I told them what my suggestibility was and he said, cool. Can I try something? And he did what’s called an auto dual induction and that was the first time that it happened to me and that got me. It got me well enough that the next day, I wrote my custom version of that script uh based upon what worked for me and that was a very unusual thing because Previous to that, II did most of my experience with trance with self-hypnosis. Like, I can kinda help people along whenever they’re practicing on me because I was very aware of that state in myself and where I’d been there in the past, all that stuff. but in terms of outright just being hypnotized by somebody, uh that was the first time, and uh That was profound. Uh, the things that I learned and saw in that first time still kind of uh guide a lot of what I do for my clients. Because one of the things cuz I don’t remember too much of what was addressed. But one of the things that stands out to me as I was introduced to the future version of myself like 5 years in the future or so And that was profound to me. And that person that I saw kind of sticks out in my head and every day I think about what I can do to get to that point. And I have used that to a very great therapeutic effect with certain clients. Uh, I got the specialization in transgender hypnotherapy And one of the things I found with my transgender clients is that that class made me realize so much that it wasn’t just a psychological thing that it was a it was a physiological thing. And in that, that means that your brain is telling you that you look one way. And what you’re seeing in the mirror is telling you something very different. What if you were able to meet who you know you are? What if you were able to meet the person that looks how you know you’re supposed to look? And I find that having that, giving that to that person is substantial to their sense of self and their sense of well-being. Interesting. So, that does sound intriguing for so for someone who is, you know, they’re looking to meet their future, you know, 5 years from the future self. How how can we do that? Um, do you do that through self-hypnosis? Is this a visualization? Um. Um. Visualization. Visualization. I tend to use the LAL. Uh the uh for anyone listening that doesn’t know what that is. It’s a type of hypnotic induction or deepener where you start at a certain floor on an elevator and go down. The elevator opens and you meet this person and I make no attempt to describe this person. It is simply you in advance and II tell you to notice how this person looks, how they hold themselves, how they smell, like how, how they and depending on your suggestibility is kind of how profound that experience is. I um I don’t get hardly any visualization. Uh, I get weird flashes. Uh, I can’t smell anything. I don’t get anything auditory but I get a very heavy kinesthetic response. Uh. Interesting. Fuel things. Yeah. In imagination, right? In hypnosis. It’s not like you can’t smell things right now. Yeah. In the context of hypnosis. Right. Um. feel like if you tell me to walk downstairs, I will like to feel the stairs under my feet and things like that. That’s fascinating. Okay. So, uh for people who are listening, they’re like no idea like suggestibility type, intellectual, physical, you know, you know. Maybe like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cuz like we know, we know exactly what we’re talking about cuz we’re from the same college but um I mean, you break that down and uh yeah. Yeah, just go from there. Okay. Well, you’re the host. Why don’t you explain suggestibility to your audience? I’m Good, man. I could, I could. So, I was like, yeah, why not and you can critique me. But I’m not the one So as you, like you were saying, right, we’re all, first of all, we all can go into hypnosis. That’s a very, very natural state. And um, we, but we’re just on this kind of this uh, scale of suggestibility and some people do better with certain suggestions. versus others, and I lean towards kinda where, where you’re at, where it’s like, we do the, the indirect stories, and then on the other side is the very more paternal, hey, you’re gonna feel this, this is gonna happen, you are now in hypnosis, X, Y, Z, right? And that still does, that can work for me and you know, for others, but, not honestly for you, right? Cuz you’re, you’re very objectively something. If you are literal with me, you just hit a brick wall. Yeah. So I mean like go ahead. Go ahead. I respond very well to stories and um that is so my entire life like I literally when I was a teenager my friends used to text me and just say tell me a story. I just make something up. And to this day if you tell me to make up a story, I can. Like, just off the top of my head. And I uh, a big revelation and it was initially thanks to the man that uh ended up being my mentor. uh, Joe Burns. Oh, dude. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, and he told me, to throw the script away. Don’t work off script and I took that to heart because it’s much more intimate and so now, that’s what I do. I make up stories. Those same stories that I used to make up for my friends. I now just make up for clients that a lot of the paperwork that I have them do uh for their life history and the um the questions that I ask and the initial consultation and session are kinda getting to know like what story you wanna be told, how you want your story told, and for example, I have a client who recently came to me and this person is a software engineer. Uh a somnambulistic software engineer nonetheless and II just decided because this came at a time in my career I become very frustrated with pre-written scripts. Like I had thrown one away in the middle of a session. Hm. And those three sessions that I had that day I told myself like I’m not gonna prepare a script. I’m gonna figure out my inductions. I’m gonna ask some questions. And I’m just going to make myself go. And I did. And those were three of the best sessions I’ve done. And what I end up doing with the software engineer is I spoke to them with metaphors of code, visualizations of computers, and debugging. And um, Sure enough, that that that safe place in their head was represented as a computer bank. what the way they perceived that computer bank uh mandated where I took that therapy. Just to kind of adjust their visualization. And that’s had fantastic results. Right. So, it’s like when we tailor the therapy to the individual client who’s gonna have, you know, a different background. They’re gonna have different metaphors and um now, this is good cuz um the way I explain like the unconscious and the conscious is that the unconscious is just the realm of metaphors and emotions and it that that seems to be the reason why uh we humans love stories. It’s all. Yeah. Metaphors. Exactly and I ask people. One of the examples I give is, have you ever watched a movie and gotten angry or sad or happy? Uh based on what was on screen. Of course, the answer is inevitably yes. Yeah. So, yes, why? You consciously, logically know that you are watching a falsehood. You know these things aren’t happening. So, why do you feel these emotions? And the answer is that. Your subconscious does not differentiate fact and fiction. It’s a metaphor. It’s a and that’s all it sees that’s well, everyone but the high physicals. Uh, the high physicals don’t tend to dig the metaphor or anything like that. You just gotta tell them how they wanna be and it’s fine but uh for everyone else, it’s and at this point, because of this mentality I’ve taken with my I guess be hypnotic storytelling. Every time I watch a movie now or read a fiction book. I start noticing ways that I can retell that story for different applications or specific scenes. One of the most amazing movies I’ve seen recently is uh have you ever seen that Disney movie Inside Out? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Yup. Have you seen it recently? No, that was like, wasn’t that like a decade ago? Yeah. You should rewatch that. Uh mental health professionals helped write that movie and it is still used in the mental. Well, that makes so much feel today. Yeah, that makes so much sense, dude. Yeah. When you rewatch it, with knowledge of the subconscious and metaphor It’s it blows your mind. So, okay. There’s that scene where they enter the subconscious and the critical mind is represented by those two idiot guards. And how do they pass by the critical mind? They confuse it. That’s my hat. No, that’s my hat. Wow. They do a confusion abduction to get rid of the gatekeeper of the subconscious. And more than, when they’re actually in the subconscious, and this speaks to a lot of what I say about fear. One of the first things they see is a giant vacuum cleaner. Um because the way that girl’s subconscious remembered that is because the way we remember our fears is in that moment in time. Frozen at that moment in time. So to that fear and that perception. That’s a giant vacuum cleaner because she was very small when she got that fear. And that has a lot to do with how I address fears and hypnotherapy. Because one of the things I stress is when we have a fear or a trauma which I argue is the same thing because we’re not afraid of something and we as we’re traumatized by it and if we’re traumatized by something, we have a fear. And what I it’s all where it happened at the time. For example, if you became afraid of a vacuum cleaner as a baby or a very small child, the vacuum cleaner would appear much larger because according to your memory and your perception, which cannot be changed until it’s addressed in hypnosis, that thing’s giant or maybe you were bitten by a dog when you were a child and you remember it as just Kujo, some giant, hell hound that almost tore your ankle off because it was so intense and traumatic. Where and hypnosis, maybe it’s just a Jack Russell Terrier that bit your ankle. Hm. When you were 6 years old and you had the emotional intelligence of a 6-year-old. So, you’re going to retain that memory as a 6-year-old until you readdress it and allow that person to uh gain a new subconscious understanding and association of that event. So, I’m gonna try to play advocate here and say, okay, I get it that, you know, when we were six, maybe we’re scared of a vacuum cleaner cuz it seemed very big or a dog or whatnot and we had to distort perception, right? But now that we’re adults and that we have developed our prefrontal cortex and our reasoning and now, we can go and we can experience that, you know, dogs are generally safe for the, for the most part, and happy and man’s best friend, or the vacuum cleaner, you know, it’s fairly harm is. Right and so uh why can’t we just maybe um do a little bit of exposure therapy, a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy, and just say, hey, this is uh, this is false, this, you know, you can, sometimes. Um, and it depends on how traumatic the memory is. And really, a lot of the way that fears are addressed in hypnosis has to do with uh, desensitate, desensitization, that the same things you would do in the physical world you can do mentally. If you were afraid of dogs rather than go so far as to address that fear live and in person with the dog you could go through that same process of consciously and realize that you have control over that emotion. There’s uh as you know there’s something called circle therapy. Where in hypnosis you are presented with a fear or an anxiety and you are asked to recall that fear and the emotions associated with that fear. Consciously. So, you bring it up on purpose. And then it’s at the same time you tell them to bring it back down. And the purpose of this is for one, every time you tell them bring it back up. It’s a little less. But they gain the understanding that your emotion and your reaction is under your control. The way that you choose to react to this fear is 100% under your control. And once there is that realization, fear tends to fade. or it’s not yours. Uh, that’s an interesting thing I’ve encountered before. What do you mean? Oh, it’s not yours. just that. Um so, I did uh a podcast couple of months ago. Uh about fear. It was called fear. It’s run by two clowns and they were interviewing a German spy who had a fear of heights. And I uh and this is on my website by the way. Everything I’m about to say you can listen to this interview. But this person, this man, um not the shy away from it. He’s a government killer. Like he is what he did. He was in special operations. He went into places he couldn’t talk about and did things he couldn’t talk about. He was afraid of heights. As unusual as that is. And uh this was all done in about twenty minutes. I transit him. I took him back to that moment on the plane. Cuz he got that fear from his first training jump when he was seventeen. And in the process of just walking him through that moment. He realized something. That he had forgotten about until that moment in hypnosis obviously, this person was a very high physical. So, they said they could feel the vibration of the engines. They could smell the gas on the plane. They were there. Um, the kid that jumped before him screamed in terror and he went from being fine and calm to terrified. But he didn’t remember that. And so at this moment, he realized that this fear he had been carrying for decades wasn’t even his and I called him out of a trance, and within 5 minutes of that, he was hanging off the side of a balcony. Saying like, I don’t feel a thing. Huh. So, yeah. This is all in hypnosis. Yes. Um. And not the balcony thing. Yeah. That’s what’s interesting. So, he remembered in hypnosis the um. The other kind. Where’s my cause? Just got scared. And it wasn’t even his fear that that kid’s fear transferred to him and before he had time to process it, he was kicked out the door. So, this entire time, he’s been perceiving this event as his fear when as you know, if we’re around someone afraid or scared or happy, if but for a short moment, we feel that before we process it out as not ours but what if you didn’t get that chance? What if you feel that fear and before you could be like, man, that kid was scared. Somebody’s grabbing you by your collar being like, your turn. and he just perceived that as his fear. So, yeah, fear didn’t belong to him. Wow Yeah. So, I’d be curious um on your philosophy when it comes to trauma, right? So, for that particular case, I guess he just, he was able to kinda remember and and and bring up that unconscious material and then, oh, hey, this is not my fear. Um but do you think for trauma? Before we even get to that, what do you mean when you say trauma? Trauma is any event. leaves an impression later down the line. Usually negative. Uh, I guess it should be specifically negative. Um, something that leaves an imprint, something that uh like, okay, this would be just seen in the movie Inside Out. Trauma is when a negative memory becomes a core memory. that that it becomes a core memory is an aspect of your personality. So, it’s. Oh. Whenever something negative becomes a core aspect of your personality. Because of course, we all go through negative things but what if that negative thing is so extreme or its perception is so extreme that it formed every opinion and perception that you had after that event because it was a core part of your personality? Hm. That’s why that movie’s so good. Like, dude, I need to rewatch. You do. I took notes. I’ve got notes somewhere on that damn movie. Well, yeah. I feel like I’ve matured so much since then and then with the knowledge of hypnosis and now, parts therapy. So, I don’t know if you ever heard of uh internal family systems or any kind of parts therapy. I’m sure you, I mean, we, it’s, it’s been mentioned here and there in the college. Yeah. But um yeah, it’s so amazing now that I’m in like parts therapy and I’m sure it would, you know when you see all the different emotions like, oh, that makes so much sense. Like, yeah, we have all these different parts of us that sometimes different things and it gets into conflict, you know? So. One of the things that I’ve really kind of come to realize through doing this work and that I tell all of my clients is we are all at our core children. We are all scared eight-year-old kids. We’ve kind of got that cuz that’s when we form our core beliefs from zero to eight. So, by the time we’re eight, that’s our core self. Yeah. And that, that you, all exist and that what it means to be an adult is to learn how to parent yourself. How to parent your inner child. And that’s a perspective that I ask a lot of my clients to take. Because II asked them especially the ones that have children. Like the way, you talk to yourself. When you talk to your child like that. Yeah. But is that the way your parents talk to you? if you didn’t like that, why are you continuing to treat yourself like that? Why, why don’t you give yourself that same understanding? Because what, think about it. We all wanna stay up later than we should. We all wanna eat **** that we shouldn’t but we have that voice in our heads. Like, no, you have obligations in the morning. You have to get up or you know, that’s gonna upset your stomach or whatever have you and it’s the same things you tell a child but you have to tell yourselves. So, the way that you speak to yourself in that regard is very important. Yeah. Um what I’ve realized at least for myself, is that there’s even more than one inner child. Yeah. You know, there are lots of parts of us um that that have different goals and different perceptions and might get, you know, yeah, might get into fights or something. Um and so, it’s not even just the inner child but like, how do we parent all the different parts of us and realize that there is no bad part? You know, you wouldn’t call a child bad. You just would. Exactly. You know. Um, re-educate them. I heard something. I can’t remember if it was in class or in something I was watching. But it said that everyone has good intentions. Yeah. Everyone. No matter how evil or messed up. If anything there are always some manner of good intentions at their core. Yes. It could be wildly misperceived. It could be a mental illness. there are always even, even crimes of hate, even when somebody murders someone else, they’re trying to satisfy something in them. They’re trying to make something in them go away. So, they’re trying to take care of themselves. Yup. Or they feel some weird obligation to fulfill. It’s all manner of reasons but all all of these things boiled down to. They are for themselves or someone else or whatever have you. It’s good intentions. Just like your subconscious Yes. Always has your best intentions in mind. Even with traumatic things. Even with bad reactions. It is still just trying to protect you. Yeah. Just trying to preserve its homeostasis. It’s normal. yeah. Now, that’s powerful. And I think when we understand that, you know, I think sometimes we can like vilify the subconscious or vilify these different behaviors but they’re all serving some kind of purpose. So, you know, if you’re, if you’re traumatized, it’s trying not to get you into that painful situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you have crippling anxiety, it’s you’re subconscious, it’s your mind trying to protect you. You just have this fear reaction that’s out of control. And It’s there’s a lot to be said in terms of healing just for the awareness of that. So much of my work and especially my breakthrough work with clients has been through subtle changes in perspective. And that’s it. It’s not much more than that. It’s sometimes there are some changes to behaviors or thoughts changes. But a lot of it has to do with um the way you look at a situation, how you perceive it, why you think this way, why you think this way about yourself Although it’s stereotypical in therapy, I find myself asking the question, why are you feel that way? Where does that come from? A lot. Right. And there’s always something. There’s always another layer deeper until you get to that aha moment. And you can tell whenever something has left their mouth that even they didn’t think of. They’d never even made that association before. And just by having that come into their conscious mind by being able to consider that logically. You’ve already gone so far in that healing. It’s like when we raise our awareness and take different perspectives, then, behaviors start to shift. Well, it’s like uh I’m not a big NLP guy but there are some aspects in neuro-linguistic programming that I like and one of those is the mindfulness aspect. The idea of being aware of what you’re thinking. Uh taking control over your thoughts. I thought Joe did a very good example when he talked about how he was crossing the road and he started getting this perception of these men in this car at this crosswalk about how they wanted to do him harm and he started getting anxious about this imagined situation and he stopped himself and he forced his thoughts to something ridiculous. I forgot what he said he pictured those guys in this car doing but immediately changed his thought pattern. Yeah. And he was able to just walk away and he looked back and he said, they’re just both on their phone doing nothing. And that’s right. He’s told me that story too. That’s right. Yeah. And II love that story. It’s hilarious But it’s a very good example. Because so so often we let our thoughts kinda run out of control. And it does us some good to stop and think like why do you think that? Why are you thinking that way? Why? Why do you believe like there’s something to be nervous about in this situation? Where is that coming from? Hm. All your trail back. Figure out why you’re nervous. So we’re so for somebody who likes you asked them that like oh why are you nervous? Why are you afraid? And they’re like I don’t know. No idea. Well. What? How did you ask? Mhm. What makes you nervous? How do you feel when you’re nervous or afraid? Um did you, were you always afraid of this? If you weren’t always afraid of this, when’s the last time you remember not being afraid of it? When is the first time you remember being afraid of it? most time in my experience, people haven’t taken that logical path back. They just stop with, I don’t know. They it’s that self-examination is difficult. Um, a good example of this is I had a client that said that They wish that they were able to perceive themselves as others perceive them, as strong as others perceive them and I said, well, why don’t you think you’re strong? got into a car wreck and I felt like I could have done better and I felt like I failed. Why do you feel like you failed? Well, because I couldn’t be there when my grandfather died. and there was just this dawning realization when they said that. And I was like, you never said that out loud, have you? No. There you go. So, that is currently on the table for the next time and uh it’s just a good example of just keep following the path back. If you do, there there’s always a reason for the behavior. It’s never an I don’t know. There’s an I don’t want to remember. There’s uh I choose not to know but. Yup. There’s not a mystery. There’s always a reason that Could be had through questioning, figuring out when and where, and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I’m curious cuz there are different schools of thought and not even hypnosis but in therapy that maybe, hey, don’t go back to the cause.  You know, that’s just bringing up things that um that don’t necessarily need to be brought up or you can retraumatize people. X, Y, Z, focus on the solution, focus on the future, and more of like the positive thinking kind of approach. Um, I’m curious about what your thoughts on that are. It depends on the trauma Uh if it’s something like that they view as very grievous, it is something bad. I don’t ever ask people what their traumatic thing is. Like, you can just tell me that something bad happened in 2,000 seven. And that’s all I need to know. Uh, beyond that, all I, with, with that, I will, there’s a couple ways. But you, there’s no direct reexperience. You don’t take them back and make them live through it again. It’s antithetical to the goal. What you do is you take away that association. You make that not a core memory. They don’t focus on the events. They focus on the resolution. And the letting goes after that resolution. There’s a method that I very much enjoy that involves having them perceive this event on a screen. And they fast forward and rewind and fast forward and rewind until all that exists before the event and after the event. that that association is. And then after you establish that, you let them let go of that memory, of that association. And Trauma is very dependent on what happened. And uh sometimes it’s dependent upon um my referral. Because many times whenever it’s complex trauma uh I’m speaking to them on referrals from a mental health professional. Mhm. And a lot of it has to do with my communications with that mental health professionals. Whatever you learn. You know you’ve done. What do you need to be done? Um, it’s very important if you do find yourself working with uh medical doctor or mental health professional to get on the same page with them. Like involve yourself in that client and have them help you, help them, help that client. It’s a team effort at that point. It’s so dependent because II work with people with combat PTSD. I have uh postpartum depression. It’s just a matter of where this trauma and negative behavior come from. Often, uh with the combat PTSD, it’s always really heartbreaking to do those and I’m very happy that I get a chance to work with those men and women. there’s a lot that’s, for example, like what they’re not allowed to feel. Because you’re expected to, I literally soldier on. Hm. And there comes a time that that’s not a thing anymore. That you have to address what has happened to be able to heal. And I see a very similar thing in combat veterans that I see in people who suffer from trauma. they’ll go back to the closest safe save point in their head Uh it’s usually sometime when they’re a late teenager or soldier. It’s generally seventeen, or eighteen. And they’ll start adopting the traits that age. because they have all of these traumatic memories from older when they were older. So, it seems like psychologically, they just go back to the last time they were safe and untraumatized because it’s no longer safe to be an adult and I see that repeated time and time. Yeah, it’s. Wow. Interesting yeah, it must be very, very difficult to work with. Yeah, people who experience extreme, extreme trauma. Mm-hmm. So. I’m glad you are. But it’s one of those things like, once I realized what hypnosis was capable of and what it could do I kinda felt obligated to offer my services to them because it doesn’t matter what you think politically. It doesn’t matter what you think about war or the war or soldiers, the government, or anything like that. It has to do with these are deeply traumatized people who not getting the care and resolution that they need. I just feel obligated that if I have this toolset that allows me to give them that resolution, I should, that it doesn’t matter anything at all if I’m anti-war, pro-war, anti-government, pro-government, none of that. None of that matters. It’s just people. It’s just men and women who have seen things and done things that no one should be asked to see or do. And that’s it. That’s all it is. I’ve had a chance to see a wonderful change in those people because so much of it is it’s just difficult for them to deal with that, to face that. Whatever it is that they see. to do that is profound. To give them a safe place to do that. That is guided and secure. And it’s an interesting thing that for some reason people are hesitant to seek out psychotherapy. I have no problem with hypnotherapy. That. Really? Yeah, and I don’t know why that is. it’s fine and generally, I will encourage someone that if this isn’t something that they’ve seen a therapist for and they need to in the process of things, just be like, okay, now that we’ve kind of helped you through this, you need to consider bringing on someone else as well.

http://adgenie.gotop100.com/

http://topdogsrotator.com/r/leroymoco

https://flybybuffy.blogspot.com/

And therapy isn’t the cure-all. It’s great for a bunch of things but sometimes you need other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, like, the way I see it is to attack it from every angle. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. There’s no reason not to bring in everyone who could help. Yeah Perfect. So, uh I’m just going back to um you know, how you got into hypnosis and you talked about, you know, self-hypnosis and I’m sure that that has helped you and I mean, it’s helped me. I think it can help a lot of people where they can just utilize this modality, get over, get over some fears maybe, you know. Absolutely. I’m curious how, how you do self-hypnosis and what’s worked for you. So, that’s changed recently Longest time I did it as we were trained. And uh one of the things I’ve started to focus on recently. my self-hypnosis work and with my clients is nostalgia. This weird thing that exists in our minds seems to be separate from everything else. And what I do to self-hypnotize now is II focus on one of my far-off memories. Like one of my distant distant nostalgic childhood memories. Now form that as solidly as I can and just start doing breathing exercises. And focusing on that nostalgic moment and gets me right into a trance every time. Interesting. And do you think that would work with other intellectual suggestions? You know, high E note? Uh, I have clients that nostalgia has started to become a major part of our work. Because, um, I don’t even know how to define it. It doesn’t exist in a space like other memory. It’s it’s different. It’s more intense. It’s standard memory. It doesn’t have that feeling that’s associated with it. And I don’t know what that feeling is. Um actually, that’s one of the things that I want to focus on the most with research as that’s what nostalgia is and what its uses are about hypnosis. Yeah. Um and it’s, I’ve already started using it with a few clients, this notion of focusing on intense nostalgia to facilitate trance and I’ve had very good effects. Yeah. Well, that’s that reminds me of Erickson and I’m sure you know his story by the way, for people that are watching that and not familiar with Eric’s uh Milton Erickson, he was one of the greatest hypnotherapy of all time and did very indirect, artfully, vague, lots of metaphors and stories and god just brilliant results as a genius and um you know, when he was younger, he had polio, couldn’t move, thought about a memory of when he could and then all of a sudden 30 minutes later, he found himself Maybe. Well, that’s why a lot of the clients that I’m working with nostalgia are my clients that have self-perception issues and self-confidence issues Because nostalgia exists in a point of pure happiness. You don’t have negative nostalgic memories. Really? And yeah. This nostalgia by its very definition is positive. Huh, and it’s it may or may or may not be true because memory sucks but it doesn’t matter because your perception of that memory is nothing but positive. Nothing but happy. And so by recalling these memories, you’re able to recall this happiness. Uh, one of the more interesting bits of homework. That I’ve given my clients is uh sometime between now and our next session. Go on YouTube and look up an hour of old commercials or old cartoon intros from your childhood or something Like that. Um. Cartoon Network. Yeah. Something. I’ve uh I spent like 2 hours one night just watching intros to cartoons from the nineties. Like that’s it. And I’ve kind of become very focused on it. I very much love that sensation of nostalgia. I think it’s important therapeutically. That’s kind of why I put so much effort into exploring it myself. Yeah. Uh, Anytime I have like a nostalgic memory or thought, I kind of try to capture that and examine it and like figure out what I could do to bring myself back to that time and just that ponder ance alone has a hypnotic effect And I don’t know what it is about where nostalgia exists in the memory. it’s its present. there is an odd field of science. That’s kind of coming up now. That’s the quantum sciences. And there are some individuals doing work right now. or up to it including hypnosis that are fascinating. Um, the main person I’m speaking about is this guy named Doctor Dean Raiden who is the head of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. And yep I heard of them. Uh, he wrote a book called Real Magic. That is the scientific research and analysis behind certain processes. Like ESP whatever have you. Um, and it’s done strictly from the view of science and research. And These things are related to hypnosis because if the institute can be said to have any goal or direction, it’s consciousness research. Why? What are we? Why are we? I kind of think. Yeah. And the book doesn’t answer any of those questions but this book does provide uh an interesting indication of the direction of science and what we’re looking at in the next twenty years. One of the most fascinating things uh about living in this time certainly isn’t the plague or climate death but uh there is a concept called the singularity and there’s a version that exists in AI and there’s a version that just exists as humanity and the idea of the singularity in terms of humanity. Are that human technological eras exponential? That to get from the bronze age, the iron age was like two 2,000 years from the iron age to the industrial age like a thousand. Industrial age. It only lasts two hundred. Then, you get to the point now that the internet age only lasts twenty years. So. Oh, we’re not, are we, Oh yeah, you’re right. Uh-huh? I was just trying to think like, well, yeah. And. Previous to that, the computer age only lasted like fifty And so, now we are approaching this point in human evolution and development that um progress. The human era can no longer be measured. That each human technological era begins to overlap itself. And that progress became becomes foreseeable by the organic mind. we have a date for that. And it’s twenty-forty-five. Uh between twenty forty-five, 2055 is when the singularity is supposed to occur. And what? So what is that what is that mean exactly? That means human technological progress becomes infinitely fast. Every day there are new technological breakthroughs. Every day there is more progress. Um. How does even determine this state? Do you know? Well. I don’t know. Smarter men than me have done this math. Yeah. But it’s you see it evident in human evolution. These cuz there’s there were times in our history when thousands and thousands of years were spent the same. centuries were spent the same. There was no real development. It was just kind of an age. Living in the era that we live in now, it becomes very difficult to conceive of that. Because even if you’ve been around for twenty years, you’ve seen insane amounts of progress. And that simply just didn’t happen. Previously. Right. Ever since the industrial age for better or worse, we’ve sprinted towards this exponential progress, and as to what singularity looks like, oh no. Uh, I surely just hope it’s not a new iPhone a day. Uh, I’m hoping it’s not the AI, you know, um. Oh, god. Take me over the world and. The matrix. I uh. I’m kind of opposed to AI. Kinda not. Because to get AI, we have to first solve the consciousness problem, and we solve the consciousness problem. Good luck. That pretty much unlocked the singularity right there. But at the same time okay, let’s say if we unlock consciousness, let’s say we’ve created an artificial intelligence. We have created a thinking, feeling machine. The feeling of what? How do you know that consciousness implies emotion? What, how do you know what that emotion is? Right. Right. It’s defining consciousness. Mm-hmm. Which is the tricky part. So, and then one of the interesting questions I’ve, it’s been posed to me is does emotion evolve? Are we more emotionally intelligent now than we were 500 years ago? You gotta remember 500 years ago, what was considered fun was watching the local heretic gutted in the public square. So, I have to think that, yeah, we have grown. I, I do think we’ve owned in some ways, and at the same time, you know, there’s always going to be some kind of watching people get, you know, it’ll be a violent movie. Um. Yeah. Yeah. US, UFC, you know, we I mean II remember. Yeah. I don’t know how old you are but. I’m almost forty. There was a show on in the 90s called America’s Funniest Home Videos. That’s right. And it was hosted by Bob Saggett for some reason. And uh there used to be a rule. But it first came out. That no one could get hurt. And the video. It was an explicit rule. What? no1 could be injured. Yes. Well and then the dude getting hit in the nuts by a football One 3 years in a row. And they realized their entertainment value. Exactly. Cuz when I watched it, it was like 80% of people getting hurt. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And uh that’s an interesting aspect of humanity that to my knowledge, only the Germans have attempted to quantify. Uh, they have a word called uh Shodden Freuda. Which basically if I remember right, translates to the sad joy. And it is the pleasure that you get from other people’s pain. It is you who laugh at someone falling downstairs. It’s the reason you laugh at anything like that. Though the Germans have a word for it. It is Yeah. It exists Universally. And that is the very reason that um that that things like America’s funniest home videos or **** exist. Yeah. And it has to be II wonder really what is it psychologically that makes us like that? Is it a survival aspect of that ain’t me? Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Well because one of the weird questions I’ve never heard answered is uh why do we laugh? Like what even is laughter? Right. What is humor? Yeah. Uh-huh. and um because it wouldn’t exist for no reason. Laughter has to have a function the most interesting notion that I’ve heard is it was made as a diffused mechanism. The whole idea of why we find humor or awkwardness humorous. Because of like let’s say you were walking around the pack way back in the day. And you heard the Bush’s Russell. And everyone gets scared. You see the rabbit jumps out, so you laugh. And that signal which creates a neurological response in any human that hears it Is a way to signal the all clear. And maybe it’s a way to signal that hey that wasn’t me that just slammed into a **** curve on a bicycle or something like that. Like I don’t know what that is. I don’t define what humor is or why we laugh, to begin with. Right. Difficult question. And then you make it even more complex by the fact that some animals laugh. Really? Uh. Huh. Rats will laugh. Horses will laugh. Um, horses have displayed complex humor. Rats will laugh. Rats, you could tickle a rat. It’ll laugh. Giggle. That is so strange. Wow. They’re hyper-intelligent. Um, A horse. There’s some search horse prank on YouTube and you will get nothing but videos of horses taking revenge on people and laughing about it or playing a prank on their handler or something. it’s pretty. That’s always been the strangest thing to me because that implies very complex emotional intelligence to have humor. Yeah. Well, we’ve strayed. This is a very interesting topic for sure, man. Philosophical, psychological, like cultural, uh what’s called anthropology, anthropological questions. Um kinda tying it back to hypnosis. Well, I mean and you were talking about singularity and consciousness. Was that, were you going somewhere that in terms of hypnosis? Who knows? Um well, probably where I was going with that. Um if not, where I’m going now is that what we do is going if it’s not already it is going to become vital to consciousness research and what it means to have that type of increased development that we can analyze ourselves and others in ways that we haven’t been able to in the past. I’ve heard some theories that the notion of metaprogramming. Being able to actively change our thoughts and behaviors is uh an evolutionary step that is not something we’ve always had. That this ability to change everything about ourselves to suit our purposes is evolutionary. And I will take that one step further one of the things that I propose in many of my interviews is we don’t have free will. If everything of what we do is a product of association and learned behavior. How is that in any way an expression of choice? Now where free will comes in is when you choose to alter that behavior to suit your life when you choose how you want to view something. When you choose how you wanna act and react to something. Right, but aren’t those also dictated by past programming, by culture, um your knowns, so to speak? Yeah. You know. Could be. But it is the conscious choice of say if you have anxiety and you wish to resolve it. That is a conscious choice. Um. Right. Another example of a guess is if you don’t like a certain food, well, it stops. Like it. But you can’t. Okay, well, what if you could make that choice? What if you could just choose to make a certain food or like reading or like something in particular? What if your association was different? And that’s where the change comes in. That’s where the choice comes in. At least I think. That’s just uh the logical quandary that I like to present to people. Yeah. You know, this whole free-will discussion, man. That’s above my pay grade. I do mean on most days, I lean towards, you know, there probably is in free will but What I will say is I think it’s important for us to believe that there’s free will even if there’s not. Just to function in society and for mental health and yeah. Um, there are a lot of things like that that you don’t have time to get into today but it exists for you. You just have to play along to function. The biggest landmine in thought projects I could think of is simulation theory. Because you can neither prove it nor disprove it. So you could just continually fall that rabbit hole. So what is simulation The idea that we live in a simulation? Okay yeah, the matrix. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah. There is no way to prove it. There’s no way to disprove it. Yup. And I have no couple of people that fell far down that hole. Yeah. So, now, this is not a lot of quantum physicists, okay? And obviously, I’m not anywhere near that realm and intelligence but from what I’ve heard and read and understand as a layman is that there is an interpretation that will lead to us being in a simulation, there are some quantum physicists who would say that, and um. Uh, who’s the deal? That it is. Yeah. Statistically more likely that we’re in a simulation than not. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. And it the singularity comes into that because it assumes that any civilization that gains enough technology to run a simulation will do so simply to gather information and that given our technological progress, it is more likely that we have reached that point and we are in a simulation, then, it is not. So, wait, maybe the similarities are just when our when our holes pop open and we all get to come to to play in the real world. You know what? I think this ties nicely into hypnosis. Yeah. Okay. Because our beliefs, our core beliefs, a lot of them, are just BS. Yeah. It’s all perception. Reality is perception and as hypnotists, we can help you change that perception. Yeah, I don’t know if you, if you’ve been part of like a stage hypnotist show, hypnosis show? No, I’m opposed to stage hypnosis. What? Uh. It’s something I’ve to develop and like, yeah, I get that reaction a lot but speaking to clients and speaking to podcasters doing interviews, Stage Hypnosis is responsible for 90% of the misconceptions and falsehoods about hypnosis. And I could say To me, hypnosis and hypnotherapy is a very, very, very powerful tool and it needs to be regarded as such and if we’re up on stage using what is supposed to be a powerful tool to make people stand on their head, that doesn’t allow people to view it with the, the gravity that they should because, to them, it becomes this, this parlor trick this and more than that, I’ve encountered people who’ve had negative experiences with stage hypnotists. Uh because of what they’ve experienced on stage, they would never get hypnotized again. I’ve thought about that a lot. Would I ever do stage work? And I think at this point, the answer is no. Uh, I would do parlor work within a small setting like Transing one person in front of a small group just as a demonstration. That’s fine but doing it as a spectacle in front of a crowd. I think personally, this is only my opinion that it robs hypnosis of some of the dignity that it deserves. Hm. And I understand why it exists cuz yeah, it’s a neat thing But like, given how important I feel that hypnosis is to, in the understanding of it is to our health. Did damages its capacity to do so, by it being a stage show. Here, here’s my kind of argument. Um, because if show somebody that, you know, hey, I can make you bark like a dog, cluck like a chicken, uh via the power of hypnosis. Imagine what it’ll do therapeutically. Imagine how easy it is for you to quit smoking or lose weight or you know. How many are to go to anxiety? Going to be convinced with that versus how many people are going to be convinced that it’s fake or that? Yeah, I know I get a process or that it’s mind control. Yeah. And that’s the contribution to the negativity that comes in. And the media doesn’t help because every time you see a movie where hypnosis is involved outside of uh black magic, that one movie from the forties. Um, it’s all **** Like it’s all just weird. if that’s not actually how that works. But it makes people believe it. That’s why you ask someone to imagine what a hypnotist is. The first thing they think is that. Yeah. I have one somewhere. Hey, it’s a legit induction man. It works. I know. That’s the whole reason I dug mine out is because like man if I’m a hypnotist I wanna trans someone with a pocket watch. Exactly. That’s why I got it too. Just for that. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. Oh, I feel like this might be a good stopping point, man. It’s been a fun conversation. I don’t know if there’s anything that you. Yeah, man. Thank you for coming on and um uh is there anything maybe you wanna end with before um you know, ask you how people can find you and work with you? Um well, one of the things I always like to end with, you’ve already mentioned that hypnosis is natural. It’s normal. It’s not a metaphysical thing that this is a natural function of the human mind and that there’s no reason not to utilize it for positive change. It’s there anyway. We’re not adding anything. So, it’s something that I believe anyone can benefit from But if anyone wants to get a hold of me, uh like I was so enthusiastically introduced, my name is Jay Robert Parker. I own Twin Ravens Hypnotherapy and Research LLC and you can get a hold of me through my website at WWW dot Ravens dot ORG. Very nice. And you are doing group hypnotherapy as well. Oh, yes. Um I, if you go to a meetup, uh meetup .com and search for twin ravens hypnotherapy. I have a bi-weekly group hypnosis that I’m starting up. Uh, just kind of as an experiment, see how well it catches on but it’s just uh every other week, just doing some general relaxation, motivation, just basic stuff, and way. Anyone that wants to be able to experience hypnosis gets the opportunity. It’s not the same as one-on-one but your results may vary. Some people get a very profound experience. Some people likely do but you always get something. You let them know what it is. Yeah. And awesome. Great talking to you man. Absolutely. And I just wanna vouch for Robert’s skill and his compassion and passion in this work cuz I’ve been in one of those group uh hypnotherapy sessions. And it was very powerful. So I recommend anyone who wants to experience the power of hypnosis, to change their lives, to go with, to with Robert and you’re in good hands. So, thank you, man. Thank you for coming on. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Alright. Peace out, guys.As found on YouTubeHUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

How Does Exposure Work For Anxiety? Habituation vs Inhibitory Learning (Podcast Ep 226)

 Drew Linsalata This week on the anxious truth. We’re going to get a little geeky with it. We’re going to talk about how exposure works. Why sometimes? It only works part of the way and you wind up prone to setback or relapse. We’re going to talk about habituation versus inhibitory learning. I promise not to get too technical. We’re going to keep it friendly. Let’s go Hello. Everybody welcome back to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number two to six recording in September of 2022. I am Drew Linsalata creator and host of the anxious truth. If you are new to the podcast or the YouTube channel and have just stumbled on the anxious truth is the podcast that covers all things: anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety, recovery. Welcome. I’m happy you’re here, And I hope you find it helpful If you are a returning listener or YouTube viewer. Welcome back, Always happy that you’re here. Thank you for your continued support. Today we are going to talk about the mechanics of exposure, how exposure works sometimes and why sometimes it doesn’t work fully and why some people wind up in setbacks, and how we can maximize the value of our exposure. Essentially, this was requested by a lot of people when they asked about the difference between habituation and inhibitory learning, So it’s gon na get a little bit technical and a little bit geeky, but I’m such a nerd about this stuff. I dig this way back in school, at the masters level, to go through all of this stuff, But I promise I’m going to keep it a little bit friendly and that we’re not going to get too technical here. I’m going to keep it within the context of recovery, So before we get to the meat and potatoes of the episode, I just want to remind you that the anxious truth is more than just this. Podcast episode There are 200, something other free, podcast episodes. There’s a bunch of years worth of free social media content. There’s my free morning newsletter and podcast called The Anxious Morning. There are three books that I’ve written about anxiety and anxiety disorders and recovery. There is a free one-hour recovery, one on one seminar and there is a webinar that I do every month with my friend Joanna hardest. She’s an anxiety and OCD specialist from Cleveland. We do a webinar on the art of distress, and tolerance. All of those things are the anxious truth. Com Go check them all out. If you are already reading my books and you’re digging them maybe head on over to Amazon and review them for me, it helps me out And if you are enjoying my work, it is helping you and you would like to help to keep it Free of sponsors and advertisers All the ways that you can do that are at the anxious truth, com support. It is never required, but always appreciated, And thank you guys for all the different ways that you support my work. I appreciate every one of you So let’s get into this habituation versus inhibitory learning, So we know about exposure and we know about going toward the things we fear and not avoiding or trying to escape. We’re not trying to engineer our life so that we never get triggered. We know that exposure is an effective tool when it comes to anxiety disorders. We’re going to start from that premise because we know this to be true, But how does it work? I’m going to give you the TLDR. It the too long and didn’t read if you want to stop listening now ready Here. It is Old school exposure based on habituating to anxiety, which is all about learning that you’re, okay, as long as anxiety decreases or disappears Now that sort of works, But it leads to a fragile state of recovery and frequent relapses and setbacks. Current models of exposure are, in many cases a little bit harder. They’re a little harsher, but they’re based on learning that you are okay and can handle it even when or if you get anxious or panic. That leads to more durable and wider states of recovery, So habituation will get you to I’m okay. As long as I don’t get anxious, whereas inhibitory learning we’ll when we allow it to happen, we’ll get you to. I’m no longer worried about being anxious. It doesn’t matter Now, which do you think is better? I can tell you this when you encounter a fully recovered person that does not experience relapses or setbacks. You’re talking to somebody that wound up with the second result, not the first Alright, so that’s like the Reader’s Digest version of this episode. If you want to hit the eject button, go ahead and do that now, But we’re gon na get more detailed, So this can get super technical and geeky as I said, but I’m not going to get technical and geeky on you here. Now I could link a bunch of research papers in the show notes for this episode, which will be at the anxious truth com two to six, But that is probably a bad idea, And here’s, why. I know that many of you listening wind up almost obsessively researching recovery techniques and methods reading and reading and trying to make sure that either you have the best way to guarantee that you are doing it right because you need to do it right to Try to guarantee that you absolutely will recover or to get immediate relief. It can be way too easy to dig yourself into a ditch and a hole based on obsessively trying to research recovery and get it exactly right. So you can Google on your own. If you must, but I’m going to say if you are prone to that kind of habit, Please sort of think twice about doing that. Alright. So a few important points point that we want to get into here I’m working from notes today, which is a little bit unusual, but it is a little technical. So I want to make sure that I hit all the points So exposure. Let’s talk about exposure Exposure is not the thing that you are doing: right, driving, walking staying home alone, or holding a knife in your hand that’s not the exposure. The exposure is to the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that you will experience when you do those things right. So nobody listening to this podcast is using exposure to learn how to drive again or to walk to the park or nobody’s. Doing listening to the podcast to learn how to stay home alone or to hold a knife, We’re learning, and you’ve heard me say this so many times, probably sick of it. By now, we’re learning how to relate differently to the way we feel when we do those things. This is important, right? Keep this in mind as we go through this podcast episode. The exposure is the anxiety, the symptoms, the thoughts, the sensations all of those things, the emotions that are the exposure. We only use driving staying home alone, and holding a knife to trigger those things. So keep that in mind. Exposure is about coming into contact with good exposure right Where we’re going to try to leverage the mechanism mechanism of inhibitory learning. Good exposure is about coming into contact with those sensations. Those scary thoughts, then the emotions, the feelings, the symptoms, or trying to come into contact with those things, while also resisting the urge to perform safety rituals or compulsions that you are hopeful will take away the bad feelings And the fear that, because you hate that right, So what are some examples of that would be going home when you panic at work, if you’re out trying to practice driving turning the car around when you get anxious, while you’re driving and going home like exiting the exposure, only Doing certain things with a safe person Using safety devices like men,’s or snacks, or essential oils or ice packs, or always having had water with you in case you get anxious Another one would be automatically calling somebody a partner or a friend or somebody to Have them talk you through? If you get anxious And the last one is, I mean I’m involved in this one instantly. Turning on a podcast episode, when you get anxious, If you start to feel yourself panic, if you immediately run for your favorite episode of the anxious truth or your anxiety, toolkit or the panic, pod or all the hard things, whichever podcasts you like, if you immediately Run to a podcast episode that’s a safety and escape behavior right. Do you do any of those things? So let’s talk about those things that speak to the idea that when I do difficult things I’m trying to make my anxiety decrease. I need to make it a lesson that speaks to habituation Right? Habituation is a natural process, humans and animals habituate. So the idea of habituation is that you start to get used to it right When we looked at exposure based on habituation getting used to something so so that your reaction to it decreases. We kind of had that right, But we were missing some important parts of the puzzle And when we looked at some of that, when I say wave the royal way, everybody in the behavioral sciences and clinical circles, not me and you. But when we looked at this stuff over time, we started to see that hey CBT is super effective, like old-school CBT. That was just you know, exposure get used to it, get used to it, and then it goes away. When we looked at the success rates there, they were way better than other forms of therapy. True but then the relapse rate was pretty high Right, So the relapsing setback rate was pretty high with that And what is the situation we find ourselves in now? Is that a lot of people, because they tried to get a basic understanding of exposure like okay? I get it, I just have to do the things. So if you think that exposure is just doing things, then you are kind of accidentally relying on habituation. You expect that, if I do it, then anxiety will lessen over time because I’ll get used to it And yes again, that happens. Habituation is part of this for sure all the time, But that’s kind of an old-school way where exposure was done incrementally Sounds familiar right? Lots of repetition Sounds familiar, but more simplistically, simply trying to get someone acclimated or habituated to anxiety. So if you are hoping that you can just keep pushing through your exposures and engineering them so that they are as easy as you can make them and remember our list of safety behaviors, then you are purely banking on habituation to get you to a recovered state. What’s the problem with that? This often leads to partial recovery or good enough recovery. The acceptable bubble you hear me talk about this is where you can do most of what you need to do and manage life daily. You’re not completely restricted anymore, but you’re usually doing that with a big set of conditions and restrictions. So I’ll get I’ll. Give you a couple of examples. I can do the school pickup now, But if I’m having a really bad day, my partner does it. I bet this one. I can stay home alone now As long as they know that they’re or someone around that. I can call in case. I get anxious or have at this one I’m pretty good at handling my intrusive thoughts now, But I still can’t watch any movies that have babies in them or I spiral Right So that’s sort of good enough recovery. Partial recovery is acceptable, but a bubble recovery that kind of recovery has a limit. And when you cross that limit, you often experience anxiety and fear again, which you then think you can’t handle, because you’re not used to it in those contexts across your limit lines right? So a partially recovered person does some things with conditions but refuses to do other things because of how they might feel if they do them A partially recovered person just got used to it by powering through over and over and over or learned how to make It stop or lesson will tell you that they are okay in the supermarket, but still can’t go to the movies and are afraid to try So fear extinction, which is like an old term that we used to use you’re trying to make Your fear go extinct Based on habituation, tends to be very specific like habituation is okay, But it essentially teaches us that we are okay as long as we can be sure that anxiety won’t be there or it won’t last very long, And we see this when a partially recovered person may experience one or two episodes of intense anxiety and then winds up in a setback or relapse. Now, as a side note a little bit of geekiness that I’ll throw in here, we kind of know that we never actually unlearn our fear right? That’s, not a thing. I know we talked about that And I mean other literal people who are sort of building a brand on unlearning anxiety, but you don’t unlearn that fear response, So that response is kind of coded permanently in your brain once we learn it and we Have experiences that are associated with that response And this kind of helps to explain how sometimes setback and relapse are so easy for people to fall into to some extent right. We’re, not unlearning our fear. What we are doing when we recover is that we are learning new ways to relate to it and new ways to handle it and new ways to get through it And those new pathways get encoded into your brain alongside the old pathways. So you will still kind of have that fear for the rest of your life, But that’s, okay, Because now you have stronger pathways that you can travel down in your brain is a gross oversimplification just for visualization purposes. When, when it comes up, I can pick that pathway as opposed to the old one, but the old one is still there. We never actually unlearn it if you will erase it. So if we’re aiming at fear, extinction, or making your anxiety go away, relying solely on habituation, getting used to it, just repeating it enough, so that you get used to it, makes for a bit of a fragile state, full of conditions and prerequisites for being. Okay See the problem there So now let’s go into inhibitory, learning, enter inhibitory, learning, So inhibitory, learning, isn, ‘t so much concerned with making anxiety go away as it is concerned with teaching us that we can tolerate and navigate through anxiety when it happens And at this point, you’ve got to be sick of hearing me say words like tolerating and navigate You’ve heard me say them 1000s of times, but now you’re starting to understand the reason. So let’s bring it back to some of the things you hear me talk about on this podcast And you see me write about all the time when you hear me talk about changing your reaction to anxiety and fear or giving up the fight or surrendering All those words that I use all the time, Where are we are in inhibitory learning territory there. When you hear me tell somebody to mix up their exposures and have varied experiences, because that’s most effective, We’re banking on the mechanism of inhibitory, learning right, it works better And again. This is a lot of research on this. It works better when we have a varied range of experiences to work from When I tell you to be incremental and keep adding difficulty to your exposures over time. We need them to be difficult. We’re leveraging the power of how inhibitory learning works in your brain And when this is a big one when and it’s a big one. To me, to be honest with you, When I plead with you when I’m practically begging you to take the lessons that reality hands you, and I did an entire podcast episode on this one. I’ll link it in the show notes because I don’t remember which one it is When I beg you to. Please take the lessons that the universe hands you after an exposure that nothing happened, except that you were afraid and had thoughts and sensations. I am pointing you in the direction of inhibitory learning when you refuse to take that lesson Yeah, but I had I was anxious I was afraid, but I panicked You’re, you’re saying I can only be okay. If I don’t panic – or you can only be okay if it decreases, You’re, relying on the fact that you might get used to it That’s the habituation model, I’m simplifying. But when I tell you, no, you it doesn’t matter. You just have to take the lesson that said you’re afraid, but nothing bad happened. I’m trying to get you to move closer to the way your brain works in terms of inhibitory learning, So it’s important for me. I think to say that inhibitory learning it’s not so much a technique like this isn’t a technique. It’s, not a method. Inhibitory learning is not a method. It’s more of a model that we came up with to describe how brains achieve a wider and more durable state of recovery. I’m relating it to recovering from an anxiety disorder, so be careful. Like don’t go to a therapist and say: do you do inhibitory learning here I mean a good therapist who specializes in anxiety sort of should understand what you’re saying, But they would correct you like inhibitory learning is not a therapy. It’s. This is not a therapy type, It’s, not a method. It’s not a technique. It’s a model that we use to describe what’s going on in our brains. When we learn more deeply and effectively that we’re okay – And we can get better that way, Alright, it’s a different way to get better And our brains are. We can do it. We just have to make sure that we do things that use the power of our brains to be able to do those things. So this is not so much about guaranteeing that your fear goes extinct, which would be the old way, But rather it’s about knowing that. Even if you do wind up afraid, you’re still, okay And you can move through and past that. This is why, if I have a rare panic, sell panic attacks now, but they’re very rare for me. If I have one a comes, it goes. It’s over. I’m, literally not thinking about that panic attack an hour later. I just don’t care, So you know this ties into some of the other things that we’ve talked about, And I just wrote about this in the anxious more newsletter last week. How can I not care? Well, the mechanism of inhibitory learning, if you gear your exposure to take advantage of the fact that your brain can do it, that way, will teach you that you, don’t have to care. So it’s not like you, can just snap your fingers and decide to not care about your anxiety. You can stop trying to do that because it’s not going to work, But when we leveraged the inhibitory learning model and our exposure work and our recovery work, we learned that it’s, okay, to not care anymore right? So it’s really important. That’s, why I say we’re learning this way, newer ways that, even if we do end up anxious and afraid we’re okay can move through it at that moment and then past it going forward in the long term. So then, let’s bring it back to sort of recovery And what that means, Because if we don’t have, we have no way to apply this in what we do, the things we do to try and get better then we’re good at it, So I can give you some hints here and I’m – going to wrap it up in a couple of minutes here. I don’t want to get too long on this one. I literally could go for hours on this stuff. It’s, goofy, I don’t know why I’m so into this, but I always have been So. That explains, I guess why I’m behind this microphone Anyway. What are the hallmarks of exposure and recovery work? That kind of taps into the power of that inhibitory learning process right, So your exposures should be focused on tolerating and navigating through anxiety, not making a decrease. That is huge Because if you’re approaching your recovery, so that’s okay Drew says, I have to do scary things. I’m going to do scary things, But I’m going to try to make them as less scary as possible Because I don’t I’m trying to make the anxiety not happen or happen at a low level. You’re missing the point. You want the exposure to teach you how to tolerate that anxiety and move through it. Yes, even full-blown panic. So some of this, if you’re going to try to gear your recovery work toward this model. Some of that involves an openness to say: if you insist that panic is too much and you can’t do it that way, then that’s – okay, I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise, But you can’t. Have it both ways? You can’t draw a line in the sand and say I cannot tolerate certain levels of anxiety and also want to do this. You can’t have both, So you got to have that openness to accept that this might be true and that what I’m saying might actually work for you And that you actually can do things. You think you can, And you have to focus your exposures on the act of tolerating and moving through anxiety, not trying to make it not happen. So if you’re gon na go drive on the highway today and you’re going to try and find ways to do that without being anxious, you’re missing the point. You want the anxiety you want that to happen, and you want to practice moving through it that’s important. The other thing that you need in your exposure and recovery work is an openness to experience all anxiety during exposures, rather than trying to minimize it, which is what I was just talking about. So we’re looking for exposures that have varied experiences. Now the cool thing is like you can’t just recover, you’re also living your life. So often life will hand us a lot of varied experiences. You can’t very few. People have the luxury of just sitting on the sofa and just doing exposure for a day and then going back and sitting on the sofa until it’s time to do more exposure. You’re gon na be challenged all the time except the challenges that life hands you, even if they are small, take even the small ones that’s fine, and use them to have varied experiences. I don’t care. If you drive every day Now, I did it by driving every day, but I also started doing other Things like what I did Mike And it’s funny cuz. When I wrote the anxious truth, I talked about how recovery will accelerate, But recovery accelerates. When you can take the lessons from one exposure and bring them to the other, that’s when you need those varied experiences, So mix up your exposures, Remember what I said at the beginning of this episode. The exposure is the anxiety and the panic, not the task, So drive walk, stay home alone. Go shopping, go to a pizza place and sit down, have a slice of pizza, whatever it takes, mix them up as best you can Right? So we’re still talking about using, like fear ladder and moving up you don’t go from housebound to a world cruise in two days, But within that fear ladder just mix things up that are in sort of that same difficulty level. It helps Important is super important. We’ve talked about this, the RP part of ERP exposure and response prevention, which all exposure ultimately is ERP, whether you’re dealing with OCD or not resisting the escape avoidance and safety rituals is very important. You can’t, you can’t try to hang on to your meds, your water, your phone, your partner, your safe person, your oils, your ice pack, and also do this. Now, if you are going to hang on to those things to get started, I’ve said this before go for it. I would rather, you see get started and then start to leave those things behind than never. Stop Just know that at some point you’re going to have to leave the safety, the escape rituals, the safety rituals, and those safety devices you’re gon na have to leave the crutches you’re gon na leave him behind. Keep that in mind you’re gon na, have to at some point next thing. The difficulty we need exposure to be difficult. They are supposed to be difficult. That’s the whole point of the exposure, Like one of the things that we know from the research and a lot of the stuff around the inhibitory learning model is difficulty is important, And in fact, a lot of the. If you look at some of the literature in the OCD community, they’ll, they’ll acknowledge that like yeah, we need it to be harder now, So that your life can be easier later. Keep that in mind, But we need your exposures to be challenging If they’re not challenging, then they’re, not exposures Right? So I say this all the time. If you are bored now taking a walk to the park with your kids that’s not an exposure anymore, So it’s good, to go ahead and take the walk. The park, the kids, that’s life. I hope it’s good and you’re enjoying it. It’s a good thing for you guys, But you can’t keep calling it an exposure. So exposures are a difficult thing. We need them to be challenging tiptoeing through life, trying to not be anxious and doing things here and there When you feel good That’s not exposure, So that’s just tiptoeing through life And then the last thing that I’m gon na throw In here is when I wrote the anxious truth, I talked about changing your reactions And the third reaction is the reaction.

http://adgenie.gotop100.com/

http://topdogsrotator.com/r/leroymoco

https://flybybuffy.blogspot.com/

After and in that book, I wrote about the story that you tell yourself and everybody else after the challenge is over. The last thing I’m going to talk about is that it’s an openness to accept the outcome of the exposure based on the fear of disaster not happening rather than how you felt like this is where you hear me say again and again, and it Sounds cruel and it sounds cold and it sounds all of those things. But when I tell you that I don’t care how it felt, I only care what happened That’s, where I am like begging you to see that. I know that it was hard And I know that you were terrified. I know that you thought you were going to die And I know that it felt like you were going to go insane, But you are now here an hour or a day, or a week later telling me that story Because none of those things happened So it’s so important to be open to the lesson that the exposure teaches us, which is that surprise. The thing that you are terrified of will happen. Doesn’t happen That’s so important. Now, if you’re listening to me, you may say, but the bad thing is the anxiety I get And for some people, it’s, not that the anxiety signals a danger because, for most of the community, it’s. Well, I’m terrified to panic, because when I panic, I think I’m going to die or think I’m gon na go insane Or I’m going to pass out or I’m going to have a psychotic break For other people. It’s just No. I don’t think that I’m just afraid of the panic itself, Because the panic itself tells me that I’m failing, I’m weak. I’m broken. I’m less than I can’t. Do this, this shouldn’t be happening, But even if that’s the way, you fear it and you don’t fear, death or passing out or a heart attack. In the end, the panic came and left, And again nothing bad happened. That does not show that you are broken or weak or less than at all. So you’re going to have to begin to accept that lesson that, like oh look, I did that again. I tolerated it again Instead of saying it was wrong for happening knowing I did a great job getting through it, So it’s so important to be open to the lesson that the experience teaches you other than just recounting the experience as a nightmare and something That you never want to happen again. That is so important And it’s why we say all the time we do. Don’t care how it felt we only care about what happened. We only care what happened So that kind of gives you. You know. 25 minutes on the difference between habituation and inhibitory learning and a rough idea of how that fits into exposure work, And I hope near the end here is how you can start to gear. Your exposure and recovery work to take advantage of the inhibitory learning model and not just try to get used to anxiety or make it go away. The key takeaway here is: am I doing these hard things to try to make it go away, Or am I doing these hard things to learn that I can do hard things and it doesn’t matter? If I get anxious that’s, really where you want to be That’s, where I want you to be, I want you there. I know that you’re trying to make it go away. We all want it to go away, But I say all the time go away is a happy secondary effect. It’s a secondary outcome. It’s a happy secondary outcome of learning that you’re. Okay, even if you do panic So please, if you take anything out of this episode, take that you should not be approaching recovery as a way to feel better and make it stop. You should be approaching recovery as a way to learn that it’s. Okay, even if you do get anxious and panic because when you get there and know that you can handle it, no matter where you are or what the situation is, then it starts to go away And it goes away more durably. It goes away across context. You don’t have to worry about like well. I can go to restaurants, but I haven’t gone to the movies yet So I got to do six months where the movie exposure to be able to go. No, you know that I’m okay if I panic in a restaurant, so I’m okay if I panic in the movies It’s, there’s magic in there. There is So that is my 2627 minutes on habituation and inhibitory learning and the mechanics of exposure. Hopefully, it has been helpful. I’ve been looking forward to doing this episode to be completely honest with you, And it was going to be super geeky at first. But I’m pretty proud of the fact that I didn’t get too deep into the technical woods here And I hope that I’ve been able to present it in a way that’s understandable and relatable. More than anything else. More than anything else, So that’s it We are done. This is episode 226 In the book. You know it’s over because of the music, that is Afterglow by Ben Drake. That is a song you hear at the beginning and end of every one of these podcast episodes. If you’d like to hear the whole song or know more about Ben and his music, you can visit his website at Ben Drake, music com. If you’re listening to this podcast on Spotify or iTunes, or some platform that lets you rate and review, the podcast leaves a five-star rating and maybe writes a quick review. If you dig it because it helps other people find the podcast. If you’re watching on YouTube subscribe to my channel, like the video leave a comment, I circle back every few days to interact on YouTube. So if you want to ask the question, I promise I’m gon na see it And I think that’s it Thanks for coming by. I appreciate your support. To find all of my other resources and goodies at the anxious truth com. I will be back again next week with another podcast episode. I don’t know what I’m going to talk about, but I will be here and remember until then. This is the way Unknown. Yeah, you’re doing fine story begins. You got a feeling that you go As found on YouTubeHUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…

Study with me 24h before my FINAL EXAM (med school vlog)

 Hello Kermamedic friends here, and welcome to a new potion… Finally, here it is! In a previous video of my Oski exam in the Faculty of Medicine, I announced a major event in the future. Today is tomorrow!! Let me show you something. That’s what the last two weeks have been about. And tomorrow is Oski’s day. This is Oski’s final week in medical school. The biggest, hardest, most notorious, anxiety-inducing test. … is tomorrow… And I want to tell you that I have lost the will to live as well as the desire to study for this exam. I am okay You’re done, boy. You’re done. So well, honestly, those last two days have been a solid, rigorous study and I got through it and that’s why I don’t plan on doing that much studying today at all. I have a list of a few things that I still need to reconfirm and after I’m done I have to go through this list I just want to go over the 4 main exams, abdominal scan, cardiovascular, respiratory, cranial nerves, and motor exams of the upper and lower extremities because they are very likely to Come on the exam so I’m going to do it one last time to be in the best shape I can and well and that’s pretty much it after that I’m going to the gym for gym and then I’m going to play video games with my sister and I’m going to rest and relax because I’m over it and I’m almost done I want to…. ah ah Scream, this is what we’re going to do. We’re not going to think, we’re just going to stop thinking I’m going to study another day and I’m going to start studying today and I’ve got some delicious strawberries and I’m about to get some coffee, and let’s do this. Well, let’s do this, put the phone on silent. And we throw him on the bed again, like the last time I was preparing for OSCEs in the fourth year, and if you haven’t seen his fluke I advise you to see it I like it very much and I will put it for you here and I use this book and it is my main and it is completely falling off let me show you as you can see All the pages are falling off and I’ve used and benefited from this book very well so the first thing on my list and I’m going to learn about it are decisions and directions that you can make in advance about your treatment in case of future aphasia and not being able to make those kinds of decisions on your own so I’m going to read this and then Moving on… { …………. ……………… } Today is Mother’s Day in the Arab world so we sent my mom some flowers and the card she had just received… and I’d run back to her..and say, “Have a nice day.” Anyway, we’re back at work. So I spent about an hour studying. It’s all over for that first little sticky note here. I’m just going to get rid of it and throw it away and now I have this second sticky note with things on it that I didn’t know would make it into the exam until my good friend Georgina told me about it yesterday. This is what we will study now. One of those things is a C spine imaging or C spine X-ray. I’m going to see a random YouTube video about that if you’re wondering what this thing is right here on the side screen on the iPad here. This is a video game that I’ve been running in the background doing something very weird, not necessarily fundamental so I can stay sane here and make my time at this desk more enjoyable. It’s kind of like an incentive for me to sit here and study and every 10 minutes or so I click here a little bit, play a little bit of this game and that’s what’s kept me up for the last day. It is what it is. Anyway, without further ado let’s watch this video and take some notes Honestly, I can’t stress this enough. If there’s something you don’t understand or something you’re learning for the first time, I find watching YouTube videos to be the best way to do it. These are the people who have already learned the thing you are trying to learn and are now trying to explain it in an easy-to-understand way with all kinds of beautiful pictures, maps, locations..etc. This is often much easier than your 50-minute lecture I’m sure many 50-minute lectures cover cervical spine X-rays but you know a lot of detail is going to come out and a lot of research and history coming to where we are now I want to know how to interpret C spine X-ray and spine X-ray. So this is what I need… Well, I’m going to present this as if today is the exam I’m looking at the spine C and the x-ray of patient John Smith a large man of fifty-five years old who was coming to the hospital OK the patient history record and communication is two parts of the Oski exam. We also have things like exams, procedural skills, and assessment stations. So it all involves doing hands-on things with our hands talking to patients and examining them with things like a stethoscope and a tendon hammer also and please avoid everything you see here the exam is tomorrow I don’t want to clean my room right now. If you recall, inside some of my previous vlogs was We Have Sonic the Hedgehog, this big damn game that I can check out and it was useful but I just threw it in the trash. So that’s why it’s gone but instead, what we have is Mr. Chair, oops let me get a patch I found ok Mr. Chair so Mr. Chair is 24 years old and he presented to the emergency department with severe shortness of breath. So I’ll check it out and mark the screen and hope I don’t miss anything. Practice exam skills. What’s funny about this, my friends is that: when we first started preparing for the OSCII exam in year 2, in fact, you probably already knew this if you were watching my videos at the time, I used to complain a lot about the six-minute timer we have to complete these exams is too short and how can we do All we need to do in the six minutes they give us and now when we practice for these exams as final year medical students we only pass it in one minute and sometimes even a minute and a half depending on the exam it’s terrible when you think back on it but I think it’s a testament to show That practice makes perfect. Keep working on something..you’ll get better at it, etc..so let’s get started, and study for the exam Hello good morning, my name is Nasir and I’m a final year medical student in the emergency department I’m going to confirm your name and age please my name is Mr. Chair, I’m 24 years old Hello Mr. Chair, nice to meet you today. I’m going to check your lungs. This would include looking, listening, and examining your hands, your face, and your chest. Is that OK? Yes, sure, well, thank you very much, just to explain a few things to the examiner with me first, if that’s possible. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much. So, we have a minute and a half left on the timer. Assuming I haven’t missed anything major which is always possible. Let’s go to the marking chart and have a look, introduction – patient details, cones, screening of cervical lymph nodes aahhh check the lymph nodes in the back of the patient and feel for the supraclavicular nodes here…… then we go to the submandibular salivary gland in front of the ear note; Don’t forget to check the lymph gland ooh oh yeah Fremitus Vocal 99 99 99 When you are listening to the patient’s chest in all the different areas you are supposed to listen to him again and ask him to say 99 99 99 99 99 This is a test called Acoustic Fremitus. And if you have coherence or a lump in the chest, then the sound will travel better, so you’ll hear 99% louder over the areas where there is reinforcement versus those where there isn’t, so this test!! Well, I remembered almost everything pretty much I didn’t do a fremitos audio 99 99 and check the lymph nodes and in my humble opinion this would be easy with the station and then of course you have to summarize your findings and you have to report this to the specialists etc. And if you forget these two things. It’s okay, it’s not the end of the world. Well my friends, what’s the deal? With every check I do, it is expected that I will forget some things that are OK. But I have to reduce the number of things I forget. And that’s why we do the exercise. This puts in the big picture. Missing a few things on an exam is expected. It won’t be the end of the world. It certainly won’t let you down. But I want to forget as few things as possible. Hours later, we’re about to get to 1 pm. I have just written down in my diary all kinds of major steps and special tests that are done in all the musculoskeletal, shoulder, ankle, hands, and then also peripheral arterial and vein disease examinations and I feel ready. I feel good. Honestly, I don’t think I would do anything else. Study wise for the rest of the day I’m going to ask Kenji and Georgina if either of them is rehearsing history to rehearse for a day earlier and later, but other than that I think I’m done with a very nice sunny day today so I’d like to enjoy that at least a little bit. I want to go to the gym, and maybe also play some video games with my sister in the evening. Just relax, take a break, and calm down before the test date. So I’ll get some food, get some lunch, and yeah, we’ll get on with the day.  I try to relax and take a break, and tomorrow is tomorrow… When testing, we have to look our best and that means clean shaven and then some formal wear with a shirt. Then confirmation. I have to get all that fluff out and trim those lines a little bit. Let’s do it I don’t know why I would, if I would wear a mask all the time. It won’t make much difference but if you look good, you feel good and it generally gives you confidence. Therefore, I think it is worth it. I am surprised that this camera has not fallen so far, as it is a bit of a miracle. Well, we’re all done. Let’s get some food. Good. We’ll make ourselves lunch. And we’re going to watch the new episodes of Top Boy it’s awesome and as you all know, this is my favorite eating stand that just brings things together and makes everything so much more convenient. It makes me look like a grandfather. That’s the way it is. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. By the way, bye to the moderators, not to spoil the show. Hello my friend how are you? Good, and you? I feel like your laptop will fall off the table, not that it is fixed with a stand on the back. Hello, Massad Al-Khair, my name is Nasir Kharma and I am a doctor here. Can you say your name and age, please? My name is Paul and…………!! Well, on my way to the gym, look at the beautiful weather we had here last week. Alas, I have been confined at home studying and preparing for the exam but I kind of went to take advantage of this once the exams are over anyway let’s start with the exercise step the stress of sweating just to rest and rest my head and I’ll see you in peace oh well this is well first day one of my friends, I’m just waiting outside the site which is a very nice place I got myself a quick coffee and my general plan is to get in at the last possible second. To listen to my music as often as I can. That’s what I’m going to do for five minutes and then I’m going to the hall for the exam and I have to take the electronics so I can get in afterward. And I’ll see you after that Peace… Oh my God Oh my God Well day one is done I’m not going to lie It was a lot more complex than I thought It wasn’t as straightforward as previous OSCE systems. I believe they deliberately tried to deceive us when going to the Respiratory Check Station, which later turned out to be the ATP Station. Well, then there were other stations where the wording was completely unclear. A lot of students complained about misunderstandings, what they wanted us to check, or what they wanted us to do, and they came and took feedback from all of us on how to change the wording moving forward. So you could have done a better job. But that’s okay, I wasn’t feeling great about two of the six stations we had today. Then there are six more stops tomorrow. But once I get the written feedback from the examiners, I guess it kind of puts me at ease. The comments there were much better than I thought I did I’ll be fine. Anyway, that’s it. The first exam is over and another one is tomorrow. We have to start at 8 am and we have to stay until 11 am and then we do the exam and we are quarantined again until 1 pm until other students are counted in other universities around London and so we stay in quarantine and so that the information is not shared outside I think that’s good I think it good. I think it’s good. This is the end of my walk after the exam… I’m going home, I’m going to do some prescribing practice for today only, it’s possible to take one exam like this and nothing more than that I’m going to sit with Nour, it was very fun yesterday Anyway, see you my friends, peace… … Hey my group (my friends) I’m home on the couch, just chill out and relax a bit. I’m going to call Kenji and Georgina just to debrief about the stations we had today and the exam, talk about it a bit and get it off the chest and then maybe do a little practice description. I think I’ll finish it there I’ll pick up the camera again When I start calling it hits me that this is almost over as if medical school university is finally almost over. Mad madness, well see you in a little while. well, to PDF H 32 or 32, Article 32 or Page 32? Article 32….! Well, let’s say guys, as I said before, more studying today won’t make any difference for today. And I think more study won’t make any difference at all for tomorrow. So we’ll end it here. It’s five in the evening, I’m going to rest and pack my bags. I’m ready to fly on Thursday early in the morning. So I can go out and celebrate tomorrow evening with everyone and I won’t have to pack for travel, and yeah, that’s what we’re doing for the day. almost done. See you guys in a little while, Hello, Alright, so I’m going snowboarding tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow with about 10 of my friends from high school to celebrate finishing medical school, hopefully finishing medical undergraduate and all is well Alright tomorrow (let’s grab the wood) But let’s get started Time is running… Well, I’m packing up. It’s pretty much there. I just need to put some last things in tomorrow. Now it’s time to sit down with Noor… and play an episode of Eldon for a few hours. To relax and enjoy the night and that’s it. I’ll see you, my friends, tomorrow morning. Good morning and welcome to the day of the second OSC exam… I will be in a different location today, I am on the train and they separate us in different locations as Kings College London students so that we can see different examiners with different groups and things like that. It’s very popular this video of me releasing it tomorrow I put it on Instagram now I’m simply trying to relax as much as I can for a bit, before the exam I come early and I have some time, … hello … oh still filming … we are back on the youth campus. I guess today didn’t work as well as yesterday. I think there were a couple of stations that I found challenging and I don’t think I got the intended diagnosis in the end. But I hope my communication skills and everything else in history taken away will make up for it. But anyway, I wouldn’t think about it. I just had a meal with Aaron and Georgina I’m going to put the picture here..now I’m going to go to a coffee shop there and meet some friends to rest and breathe it’s been almost a week since I last logged in I forgot to close the blog and I just realized I hadn’t done it yet during this time I went skiing In Austria I came back..and surgery started this morning, I get up at 5 am everything was so crowded, but that will be another day for Flock. I just want to thank you for taking the time to watch this video. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you enjoyed it….. please don’t forget to like it and subscribe to my channel for more content to come in the future. And I’ll catch you on the next one, …..Peace…….. I’m done…Peace…… Hello friends Next peace, What’s up guys You’re right.As found on YouTubeHUMAN SYNTHESYS STUDIO 👀🗯 Attention: Have Real Human Spokespeople In Your Videos Saying Exactly What You Want In MINUTES! REAL Humans, REAL Voices, With A NEW Technology That Gives STUNNING Results Choose Your Human + Voice Type What You Want Them To Say Render your “Humatar” What You Are About To See Is Unbelievable…