Category: International

10 Signs of Sjogren’s Syndrome – a very complex autoimmune disease

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7zgsJecDO0
10 signs of Sjogren’s Syndrome Sjogren’s Syndrome is one of the most common  diseases in my practice, Rheumatologist Oncall.   So, today I decided to give you  all the information you need   to understand this disease better. In this video, we will discuss the most common 10   manifestations of Sjogren’s Syndrome. Let’s begin! Hi, I’m Dr. Diana Girnita, a board-certified  rheumatologist and the Founder of Rheumatologist   OnCall. If you are new here, welcome to  my Youtube channel, where I educate people   about rheumatoid arthritis, and autoimmune  diseases, like Sjogren’s Syndrome. So,   don’t forget to subscribe and never miss  one of my videos. If you’ve been following   this channel for a while, I am excited to have  you back and share more information with you! Sjogren syndrome is a rare disorder affecting  about 1.0% of the population. Between   400,000 and 3.1 million adults have Sjögren’s  Syndrome. Females are more affected than males,   and many patients with rheumatoid arthritis  can also have symptoms of Sjogren.   Dryness. The most common   symptom of patients suffering from SS is  dryness of the eyes and mouth. Patients   mostly describe dryness of the eyes as itching,  irritation, grittiness, a foreign body sensation,   and blurry/change in vision. The lacrimal  glands’ secretion from your eyes will decrease   over the years, and you will start feeling  these changes that can become very upsetting.  Suppose you go to see an eye doctor. In  that case, they can quantify your lacrimal   gland secretion using a test called Schiermer  test, where they put a special type of paper   in your eyes that will tell your doctor  how much lacrimal secretion you have.
00:02:21
Dryness of the mouth is also common in patients  with Sjogren. Your saliva keeps your mouth healthy   and prevents the onset of cavities.  When your saliva secretion decreases,   you may experience frequent tooth  decay, and multiple cavities.  You may also experience difficulty  eating and swallowing dry food,   such as crackers, without drinking liquids. You may need to drink frequent sips of water   to be able to talk. You may have changes  in your taste due to a lack of saliva.  Some patients can have frequent  episodes of parotiditis.  Dryness can affect your skin  and can cause itchiness. Rarely,   the skin can develop a more complicated  disease called small vessel vasculitis. Some females will describe  vaginal dryness, irritations,   pain with sexual intercourse, and itchiness,  which can dramatically affect their sex life.   Joint and muscle pain.  Patients with Sjogren frequently complain of joint  and muscle pain. The joints can hurt without being   swollen. Usually, the pain is symmetric, and it  may come and go. Unlike Rheumatoid arthritis,   Sjogren’s arthritis is not deforming the joints. The hands, wrists, and knees are usually affected.  About 40% of patients can have a  rheumatoid factor test positive,   especially in patients with joint pain. More rarely, patients could have positive anti-CCP   antibodies, these are antibodies frequently  seen in patients with Rheumatoid arthritis,   and these patients could have more aggressive  disease and even develop erosions in their joints.
00:04:35
As I mentioned, muscle pain is also frequently  seen and could cause weakness in the arms or legs.   It is essential to fully evaluate the weakness as  this could also indicate inflammatory myositis, an   autoimmune disease of the muscles. Lung Disease  About 20% of patients with Sjogren disease can  have their lungs affected. Patients can develop   upper respiratory infections, like sinusitis  or present with a dry, irritating cough.   The cough could be due to severe dryness of the  airways, mucus plugs or reflux from the stomach.   Sometimes, the patients can see  changes in their voices and hoarseness.  In some cases, along with dry cough,  patients will present to the doctor   due to severe shortness of breath that we call  dyspnea. The shortness of breath can initially   affect you after walking a short distance,  going up a flair of stairs, or even resting.  Pulmonary function tests and a high-resolution  CT scan are indicated in these cases.  The CT can identify if you have lung fibrosis  or interstitial lung disease. Some patients   will present with shortness of breath and cough,  before developing dryness of the eyes and mouth.  In these cases, the pulmonologist that  found the lung fibrosis might decide to   test you for autoimmune diseases like Sjogren or  Rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few possibilities. Neurologic manifestations Many neurologic manifestations may   occur in Sjogren patients, including peripheral  and central nervous system abnormalities.  From frequent headaches, paresthesias or tingling  in the hands and feet, even tingling in the   face or other parts of the body, to complicated  neurological diseases like transverse myelitis   and optic neuritis, or  inflammation of the optic nerve.  Some patients can even present with  symptoms that look like multiple sclerosis.  Rarely patients with Sjogren can present with  brain inflammation that we call encephalitis. Heart disease Yes, Sjogren can affect your heart.   Chronic ongoing inflammation can  increase your cardiovascular risk.   What does it mean? Heart attacks, fluid around  your heart, arrhythmias like heart blocks,   strokes, hypertension, and thrombosis  can be seen in patients with Sjogren. Gastrointestinal tract Patients with Sjogren can   have difficulties swallowing due to  decreased saliva and develop nausea,   abdominal pain, and gastritis. Liver  function changes, and sometimes PBC   or autoimmune hepatitis can sometimes happen. Celiac disease is seen in patients with Sjogren.  KIDNEY Bladder dysfunction,   interstitial nephritis and kidney dysfunction,  leading to acidosis, are seen in patients   suffering from Sjogren. Patients develop  an increased frequency of urinating, or   they will have to urinate at  night, affecting their sleep.  These symptoms can be confusing as patients  often think they have a urinary infection.   Still, their urinary tests do not show that. I had a patient that initially developed   kidney problems about five years before  developing dryness of the eyes and mouth. Depression, fatigue and Fibromyalgia  Fatigue is a debilitating symptom and  can lead to depression as patients can’t   understand why they can’t complete their daily  activities and can’t participate in the normal   activities of their families. Depression is most  likely a response to the stress of the disease,   and some researchers believe this is a consequence  of the inflammation affecting the brain.  Hematologic manifestations Patients with Sjogren can develop anemia,   low white blood cells, elevated Gammaglobulins,  cryoglobulinemia, and increased lymphoma risk. Anemia is most likely induced by chronic  inflammation. Still, it may have other causes,   so it is crucial to have a complete  evaluation done by your rheumatologist.  The white blood cell counts can be low,   but most times does not increase  your risk of developing infections.  Elevated levels of IGG immunoglobulins are seen  in up to 60% of patients. In these patients, we   also see positive rheumatoid factors and positive  SSA and SSB antibodies. We will talk in another   lecture about the lab test we follow in Sjogren  patients. In patients with monoclonal gammopathy,   meaning that certain abnormal proteins are in the  blood, we need to carefully evaluate them as they   can be at increased risk of multiple myeloma and  lymphoma. These are two types of blood cancers.
00:11:15
Lymphoma -Patients with Sjogren Syndrome have an  increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma compared   with the general population; the prevalence  of lymphoma increases with time: For example,   following diagnosis was 4 percent during the  first five years, 10 percent at 15 years,   and 18 percent at 20 years. So, if you notice changes   in your skin, enlarged lymph nodes, or salivary  gland enlargement, call your doctor immediately.  As a rheumatologist, I educate  my patients extensively about   these changes and follow their labs regularly. If you want to learn more about Sjogren and other   autoimmune diseases, please watch my channel, as  I will continue to share my knowledge with you.  Remember, these videos are just for educational  purposes and are not supposed to offer you a   diagnosis or medical evaluation. If you like  the educational content of these videos,   don’t forget to like, share, subscribe  and press the notification button.  Please leave your comments and questions  below, as I would be happy to help you!  Thank you and I will see you soon with  another educational lecture!
Source : Youtube

How to Stop Waking Up in the Middle of the Night- 6 Ways to Beat Insomnia Without Medication

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFVKPcdortE
Terminal insomnia, also known as sleep  maintenance insomnia, aka early morning waking,   aka “I wake up at 3 a.m and I can’t get back to  sleep and it’s driving me crazy!” This is a pretty   common experience for many people. Now, first  off, it is called terminal insomnia not because   it causes you to die but because it happens at the  end of your night. So many people experience this.   Maybe your mind starts racing; maybe you worry  about everything you need to do, or not; or maybe   you just can’t fall back to sleep – at least not  until it’s almost time to get up, and then you’re   tired and cranky and you don’t function as well  as you’d like. But then the real problem with   this terminal insomnia is that the next night when  it starts happening over and over and over again,   and then you’re just so tired, and then you start  to get stressed out and angry about your inability   to sleep, and that makes things worse because  when you wake up and you see that it’s 3am,   you get mad, and that makes it even harder to  sleep. As the researchers say, this is common but   aggravating. Dude, it is the worst. So if you’re  here, you’re probably desperate for sleep,   you haven’t slept well for a long time,  you’re cranky, irritable, depressed.   I feel you. I have struggled with insomnia off  and on. And I come by it honestly: my dad is   almost always up from 2-4 am, and so is one of  my babies. There is a genetic aspect to this.   And this early morning waking is also closely  linked to depression, both as a cause of   depression and as a symptom of depression.  But don’t worry your little head; there’s   also a lot you can do about it. In this video I’m  going to share with you my bag of tricks – six   non-medication strategies you can use to get  better at sleeping through the night. And at   the end of the video I’ll tell you about a great  YouTube video that helps me fall back asleep.
00:02:02
Hey everyone, don’t forget, we’re doing a  giveaway of three therapy lamps from Carex. Now,   each of these is worth about $150. And research  shows that light therapy is very effective   at treating seasonal affective disorder and  regular non-seasonal depression. So check out   my Instagram page to learn more. Oh, by the way, I  do have an Instagram page. Right. I put up quotes,   polls, video summaries, and the occasional dancing  baby. So go follow me there too. Okay. Back to   the video. Okay. Let’s talk about six causes of  maintenance insomnia and what you can do about   it. But first, let’s do a quick overview of the  sleep cycle. The average adult needs between seven   and nine hours of sleep, and your sleep rotates  through a couple of different cycles: light sleep,   deep sleep, and REM sleep (when you dream).  Now, most of your deep sleep happens early in   the night, and your lighter sleep and REM sleep  happens closer to morning. So this means that   little things will be more likely to wake you up  and keep you up. So the first thing that can cause   early morning insomnia is biological factors. So  these include genes, gender, aging, and hormones.   So genetically some people are lighter sleepers,  and genetically some people are more likely to   wake up early. I got both of these genes. I  already knew this about myself, but my 23andme   report verified it. Some people are night owls  and sleep much better towards the morning. This   is called your chronotype. And while you can’t  change your genes, learning about your chronotype   can help you accept it. I think it’s helpful to  imagine our ancestors living in a small village,   and let’s imagine the village needed some people  to be on watch all night. So some people would be   on watch at 9 pm, some at midnight, and I’d be the  4am crew, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – but no   way would I fall asleep on watch. I am literally  no fun after 9pm, and I can do just about anything   at 5am. It’s a blessing and a curse. So I go  to bed early, and that’s just how I work. Now,   the second factor of biology is age. As you  age, it’s more difficult to sleep as well.   You get tired earlier in the evening, and you  sleep more lightly than when you were young.   Some things that help are staying active during  the day, getting exercise, and delaying going to   bed can all help with terminal insomnia. Now,  sleep maintenance insomnia is much more common   for women than for men, especially women nearing  midlife. Hormones impact your ability to sleep   as you age. Even when you’re pre-menopausal, you  have a slow decline in estrogen and progesterone   as you age. Hot flashes, periods, night sweats,  peeing a lot – yeah, it’s fun. You can work with   your doctor if you want to try and manage that.  Also, your body doesn’t use melatonin as well   as you age. You can use a prolonged-release  melatonin supplement to help with that. And   melatonin really is more of a time regulator than  a sleep regulator. It helps to reset your body   clock to know when you should be asleep. Now, when  I was writing the How to Process Emotions course,   I was really struggling with stress and sleep,  so I worked on both. But I did start to use   some slow-release melatonin, and it worked for  me. I used it about seven times over two weeks,   and I was doing a lot better. But there’s a lot  of factors, right? So this improvement in my   insomnia could also have been in part because of  a decrease in stress, but this all could have been   in part because of the change in seasons too. But  more on that later. Okay. The second big factor   with insomnia is conditioning. So conditioning  means that because sleep is something that your   brain associates with a routine or an environment,  we can accidentally train our brain to sleep   poorly by having bad habits. The antidote to this  is sleep hygiene. I made a full video about this,   but basically you go to sleep at the same  time each night, you don’t use your bed for   anything other than sleep and sex, don’t watch  screens in bed, you know, read a book instead.   Basically, your goal is to associate sleepy time  with your bed and not wakey time with your bed.   Now, when it’s hard to stay asleep, it’s important  that you do not associate early morning time with   wakey time. So if you’re awake too early, don’t do  anything too exciting or stressful or stimulating   because that’s going to send the message to your  brain that it’s supposed to be awake at that time   of night. Now, I’ve set some rules for myself on  this. If I’m up before five, I can read a book,   I can write on paper, I can do scripture study,  but I can’t work on anything too stimulating   before 5 am because that basically just trains  my brain to be more awake the next night at that   time. So basically you want to train your brain  that the bed is for sleeping and early mornings   are for sleeping too. Make your bedroom a calming  place. Don’t work in your bed or your bedroom. And   all of these things can help condition your brain  to sleep better. Okay. Number three. Let’s talk   about behaviors that mess up your sleep. So as you  age, you get less active during the day, and that   includes social and physical activity. But a lot  of us young folks are lazy Netflix watchers too,   so it’s important to try to get in more  physical activity, especially in the morning,   and then to do other active things throughout  the day. And CBTI is a treatment for insomnia   that research shows to be as effective or more  effective than medications, but it takes some   work. The basic idea is to use good sleep  hygiene and don’t go to bed quite as early,   but then here’s the important part: you don’t stay  in bed awake for more than 10 minutes. So if you   can’t fall asleep, get out of bed and do something  boring like reading a book for 10 minutes,   and then try 10 minutes back in bed. And you  just kind of repeat that cycle until you’re able   to fall asleep. Don’t try too hard to go to sleep,  but in the long run, you can retrain your brain to   know when sleepy time is. And this also prevents  you from accidentally training your brain to think   that the bed is the place where you lay there and  get angry about not being able to go to sleep.   Also, some medications like antidepressants,  beta blockers, corticosteroids, and allergy   medicines like pseudofendrine, and also drugs  like caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, these all   interfere with the ability to sleep. Also,  eating late at night can interfere with sleep.   Okay, number four: stress. Now, I’m not going  to spend too much time on this one, but you’ll   improve your sleep when you decrease your overall  stress. Exercise helps with this, as does writing   down all your worries at bedtime. You can check  out my video about anxiety and insomnia. Exercise   and gratitude are helpful too. And it can be  really helpful to set better work boundaries. When   I first started working from home, my sleep got  all messed up. But I’ve learned to better separate   work and home life. So take your work email off  your phone, turn on the “do not disturb” mode,   don’t read the comments on your YouTube channel  before you go to bed unless you want to debate an   obscure concept of therapy with a random stranger  in your head all night. Now, I work from home,   so I set the rule for myself that I can’t work  after 7pm or before 5am. Okay, number five:   your environment can impact your sleep. Your brain  is queued to sleep when it’s dark outside, when it   cools off, and when your core temperature drops.  So let’s start with temperature. Set your room to   68 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. You can also use a  cooling pillow or a cooling mat to help cool off.   But also, taking a warm bath opens your  capillaries, and then it triggers your   core temperature to drop when you get out, so that  can also help you get sleepy. Okay. Now let’s talk   about light. The light that enters your eyes tells  your brains whether to be sleepy or energetic.   Daylight freaking savings and working in  artificially lit environments can really mess with   that. So start by making your room a dim or a dark  environment. Limit how much light you are exposed   to in the evening. When I’m trying to get my kids  to bed, I always start turning off the lights in   my house, and that can help kind of remind  them that it’s getting close to sleepy time.   It’s also helpful to get a lot of early morning  light exposure, so try to get outside in the   morning and see the sun. Another thing you can  try is doing light therapy 12 hours opposite to   when you can’t sleep. So if you can’t sleep at 3  am, try light therapy at 3 pm. Okay. And lastly,   sleep oxygen can be an issue, so try not  to sleep on your back. And if you’re really   worried about it, you could get, you know, a sleep  evaluation at a sleep clinic. Okay. Number six:   if your brain is running wild, you can try all  types of sleep meditations. There’s a good one   out there called A Robot Shutting Down. And  when all else fails, my go-to is to listen to an   archaeology lecture. It’s barely interesting, but  still quite boring. Or Baumgartner Restoration. So   I’ll link those below. These are some channels  I watch when I’m really just trying to get   myself bored enough to sleep. If you’re  still having trouble sleeping, check with   your doctor. There are other health conditions  that can cause sleep problems, like sleep apnea,   hypothyroid, enlarged prostate, gastric reflux,  arthritis, restless leg syndrome, neuropathy,   and depression. So as you work to treat those,  you might be able to help improve your sleep.   Okay. I hope this bag of tricks is helpful. And if  not, if you’re up in the middle of the night and   you’re angry about it, know that at least you’re  not alone – I’m probably right there with you.
Source : Youtube

Automatic Negative Thoughts – Break the Anxiety Cycle 11/30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLZ-3TSoe9E
Let me tell you a story about the invisible thing  that fuels anxiety and depression, and then I’m   going to teach you some skills to stop letting  it control you and how you feel. So one day when   I was super pregnant, super tired, exhausted,  overwhelmed with parenting three little kids and  
00:00:17
growing a human inside of me, I had to go to Home  Depot to fix something in the house. And I pulled   into the closest parking spot I could find, but  then I realized that the truck in front of me in   the stall in front of me was sticking out into my  stall a little bit so I couldn’t pull all the way  
00:00:33
in. And twisting around to like back out find a  new spot just sounded like painful and exhausting   with my huge stomach. So I just checked to make  sure that my van was in the lines, and then I went   into the store. I got what I needed, came back  out, and when I got to my van I found that someone  
00:00:50
had left a business card on my window. But it  wasn’t a regular business card. It said, “You suck   at parking.” It said, “F you. Learn to drive, you  idiot.” And he gave me the finger. Now, normally   I would have laughed this off, but not today. Not  at 8 months pregnant. “Why are people so cruel?” I  
00:01:12
thought. “Poor me. I’m having a bad day, and this  mean person needed to come make it worse.” Right?   “What’s their stupid problem?” I thought. “They  took the time to print out you-suck-at-parking   business cards.” Okay. I definitely cried a little  bit on the way home, and I’m going to blame that  
00:01:32
on the pregnancy hormones. So why was I so upset?  It would be easy to say that I was upset because   someone put a mean card on my window, but that  is not true. Our emotions do not come from the   situation; they come from how we think about the  situation. I wasn’t upset because of the piece  
00:01:50
of paper; I was upset because I interpreted that  card to mean that people were attacking me, that   I was surrounded by a mean and dangerous world,  that they were out to get me. And this triggered   the stress response, the fear response. Without  even realizing it, I interpreted that situation  
00:02:09
as threatening. And this was thanks to automatic  negative thoughts. We are all deluded when we   think that the situation, the trigger is what  makes us feel a certain way. You see, there are   hundreds of possible ways I could have interpreted  that situation. If I had just thought, “Meh,  
00:02:27
they’re probably just an unhappy human being with  nothing better to do. Meh. Whatever,” I probably   wouldn’t have cared much. Maybe I would have  felt a little calloused. If I had thought “Hm,   maybe they’re working on their anger management.  They put a card on my window instead of slashing  
00:02:42
my tires,” then I would have felt relieved. And  if I’d thought, “Maybe they’re actually a chronic   people pleaser who is doing therapy homework to  be more assertive and this is the way they’re   learning and practicing,” I would have left  feeling like really happy for them, proud of their  
00:02:59
accomplishments. How we think about a situation  directly impacts how we feel. Automatic negative   thoughts are involuntary, habitual thoughts. They  focus on the negative. They exaggerate problems,   or they predict disaster. the impact of automatic  negative thoughts is profound. they can distort  
00:03:18
your perspective, trigger strong emotions, and  influence your behavior in harmful ways. So for   example, you might not go to a social activity  because your automatic negative thought says   you’ll have a terrible time, and that can lead  to missed opportunities, which leads to isolation  
00:03:33
and a cycle of feeling worse and worse. in this  video you’ll learn about the automatic negative   thoughts that fuel the anxiety cycle and lead  to feeling overwhelmed or hopeless. you probably   aren’t even aware of the types of thoughts  that take you there, so we’ll explore them,  
00:03:49
and then we’ll talk about both a CBT and  ACT approach to dealing with them. [Music] Most people don’t know that when you have  depression, some physical structures in   your brain actually shrink. But most people also  don’t know that when you change the way you think,  
00:04:12
you can actually change the physical structure of  your brain. Modern imaging has given us a window   into the brain to show us that the brain has  plasticity, meaning it changes depending on how   you think and how you act. Now, most people have  never been taught these simple ways to improve  
00:04:28
mental health, so that’s why I made the course  Change Your Brain: 10 Essential Skills to Combat   Anxiety and Depression. In this course you’ll  learn a bunch of ways that your mind and body are   connected. You’ll learn what to eat to combat  depression and anxiety and how light therapy  
00:04:43
actually changes the serotonin levels in your  brain and research shows that it’s more effective   than anti-depressants for mild to moderate  depression. You’ll learn that when you improve   your sleep, 87% of people see their depression  symptoms decrease. These skills are all all backed  
00:04:59
by research, and many of them only take a few  minutes each day. So if you’d like to learn more,   check out the link below. The course is backed  by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, so if you’re   just curious about what the research says about  how to change your brain or if you’re ready to  
00:05:15
improve your depression or anxiety, check it out.  Your life can get so much better. I saw this meme   the other day. My top three assumptions when the  doorbell rings: number one, murderer. Number two,   police telling me that everyone is dead. Number  three, that book I ordered on positive thinking.  
00:05:33
Isn’t this how anxiety works? But usually it’s  on a much quieter, like chronic scale. We are   swimming in automatic thoughts that we don’t even  know are there. People have between 6 and 60,000   thoughts a day. I don’t know many people who only  have six. We are constantly making assumptions  
00:05:50
about what others think about us, about some  imagined future that we’re worrying about,   about the catastrophic outcomes that are sure to  occur. Now, you’re most likely not anxious simply   because of your genes; you’re anxious because  you perceive the world to be a dangerous place.  
00:06:07
And you perceive the world as a dangerous place  because you’re buying into automatic negative   thoughts. When we look at the anxiety cycle,  there’s some kind of stimulus that we interpret   as being dangerous, and that’s what triggers the  fight/flight/freeze response – the interpretation.  
00:06:23
So the vast majority of the time it’s the  interpretation that makes us believe we’re   in danger. But most of the time we don’t realize  that. We think that it’s the stimulus that made us   feel a certain way. Victor Frankl said, “Between  the stimulus and response there is a space, and  
00:06:41
in that space lies our freedom and power to choose  our responses. In our response lies our growth and   our freedom.” And he would know – he survived  the Nazi concentration camps when his family   didn’t. He survived the horrors of World War  II as a Jew, and he managed to find purpose and  
00:06:59
meaning and goodness in life. When we feel fear  and anxiety, we usually don’t realize that we are   looking through the lens of our automatic negative  thoughts. And these thoughts are often fearful.   These thoughts are like we’re walking down the  street in Las Vegas, and there’s people selling  
00:07:16
stuff. Right? “Hey, you need a new phone.” “You  probably need an all-you-can-eat steak dinner.”   “You definitely need to see this show.” “Hey,  buy a hot dog.” “Hey, want some porn?” Right?   It’s a normal experience to run across people  selling stuff, and it’s a normal experience to  
00:07:31
have random thoughts pop into your head. But most  of us don’t realize that we’re buying into these   thoughts. It’s like we don’t have any skills to  brush them off, and instead we feel the need to   talk with each salesperson, listen to what they  say, and buy what they’re selling. This is what’s  
00:07:47
called buying your thoughts. It’s when you believe  them and invest in them without even questioning   if you want what they’re selling. And you don’t  even realize it. We don’t even realize that the   reason we’re feeling the way we are is because of  how we’re thinking thinking because the thoughts  
00:08:00
are just like the air we breathe. Let me share  some examples with you. I asked my audience what   their automatic negative thoughts are, and here’s  some of their responses: “It’s my fault for 100%   of everything going wrong, and then I shame  myself.” “I’m such a failure.” “I’m all alone.  
00:08:19
I’m not lovable. I’m broken.” “I won’t be able to  sleep again at night, and I won’t be able to sleep   at all in my life.” “It’s too much. I can’t handle  it, and it will break me down.” “This depressive   episode is never going to go away.” “Something  good has just happened, so something devastating  
00:08:37
is about to happen next.” “Why am I like this? Why  am I like a terrified Chihuahua when other people   around me are relaxed and don’t seem to anticipate  doom at any moment?” “They’re just saying that to   sound nice” (about any praise or compliments).  “I always mess things up.” “No one really cares  
00:08:54
about me.” “I’m never going to be good enough.”  “Everyone is judging me right now.” Notice how you   feel in your body after hearing those. Honestly,  when I read through the comments I felt a little   heavy, a little discouraged, a little anxious.  So what do we do about your automatic negative  
00:09:12
thoughts? Step one is getting super clear on  what these thoughts are. In the next segments   in this um section of the course, we’re going to  talk about some Kung Fu with your thoughts. But   for now we just have to take these thoughts from  being invisible little whispers to being concrete  
00:09:29
thingies. Right? You’ve got to catch yourself  thinking your worst thoughts. So go back to the   section in your workbook where you wrote down  the situations where you tend to feel anxiety.   Now we’ve got to explore the thoughts that are in  between the situation and the anxiety. I’m going  
00:09:46
to give you some examples. Okay. So my sister once  told me this um awesome story about this time she   was hanging out with a brand-new friend. And they  went to the beach and they hung out together with   all their kids. And then she gets home. And this  friend was kind of a like very clean and tidy,  
00:10:01
afraid-of-germs type person. They get home, and  my daughter finds a nit, like one baby lice in   her daughter’s hair after playing with the clean  family. So she started having these thoughts,   “Oh my gosh, she’s going to hate me. She’s going  to tell others how gross I am. She’s never going  
00:10:17
to hang out with me again. No one will.” And then,  you know, that creates the anxiety response. Why   would our body have an anxiety response around  rejection? Well we used to as, you know,   a species completely depend on our community for  our survival. So our brain is like, “Oh my gosh,  
00:10:35
if I get rejected I’ll die of starvation.  I’ll be kicked out of my village, and I’ll,   and I’ll die.” So when we notice these thought, we  can challenge them, or we can separate ourselves   from them and realize, you know what, we’re  probably not going to die. She might not even  
00:10:50
reject me. She might not even be mad. She might  not hate me.” You know, things like that. We can   challenge those thoughts. We separate ourselves  from them, defuse them. Okay, let’s take another   one. You’re laying in bed, got a big day ahead  of you, and you can’t fall asleep. You might  
00:11:06
start having thoughts like, “I’m never going to  get enough rest. I’m going to be tired all day   tomorrow. I’m going to snap at my kids all day or  I won’t be able to work very well. it’s going to   be awful to get back to sleep.” Um and that leads  to really big fears, catastrophizing, right? “Oh,  
00:11:24
I’ll ruin my relationship with my kids, and  they’ll cut me off when I’m older.” And again,   that’s that rejection fear, like now I’ll die  starvation or I’ll be alone forever. I’ll feel   pain. I’m afraid of pain.” These are the core  fears, right? Um rejection, um humiliation, pain,  
00:11:42
death, failure, loss of identity. These are the  four fears we worry about. Okay. Here’s another   one: your boss gives you some negative feedback  at work. Your thoughts around this: “I’m such a   failure. I never do anything right. He’s such a  jerk. I’m never good enough.” Um that could lead  
00:11:59
to “I’m going to get fired.” Yeah. That’s that’s  a survival threat to your brain, so it’s going   to kick off the anxiety response. “My husband is  going to be disappointed in me.” Rejection. “We’re   going to run out of money and die of starvation”  Right? Again, there’s that survival response. Now,  
00:12:12
what would happen if instead of those thoughts we  could challenge those thoughts and be like “Well,   this is an opportunity to learn. I can learn  new things.” Or “Oh, my boss must care about my   development if he’s willing to give me feedback.”  I mean, there’s different ways to think about this  
00:12:25
situation, right? Or you could just say, “Oh, I’m  going to notice those thoughts. Hello, failure   story. Man, you sure come up a lot. I don’t really  have to believe you.” Okay, we’ll get back to that   later though. Okay. Uh here’s another example:  I feel anxious or depressed. You might think,  
00:12:40
“This anxiety is never going to go away.” “This  depression is never going to go away.” And then   that thought leads to the belief, “I will feel  miserable forever, and my life is ruined.” Okay.   So how are these automatic negative thoughts  impacting your life? How do they impact how you  
00:12:58
feel? Okay. Step two: thoughts aren’t facts. Your  brain makes stuff up all the time. Okay. So you   spend your day with these thoughts swirling around  your head, and they trigger the anxiety cycle. And   the crazy thing is, you don’t even realize it.  So how are we going to take another step toward  
00:13:14
stopping the anxiety cycle? The second step is  realizing that your brain is a word machine. It   literally just makes a ton of thoughts all the  time. Its job is to crank out random thoughts.   So your job is to create a little space between  you and the thoughts. There are two approaches to  
00:13:35
managing automatic negative thoughts: CBT and ACT.  Now, I think they both have merit, so let me teach   them to you. The classic approach to negative  thoughts is from CBT, cognitive behavioral   therapy. With CBT it’s like mental Judo. You learn  to spot these thoughts, challenge them, and swap  
00:13:54
them out with thoughts that are more balanced and  realistic. You’re basically engage, engaging with   the thought in order to choose something more  helpful. So if we take the thought, “My boss   gave me negative feedback at work,” the classic  CBT approach is to say, “Are these thoughts  
00:14:09
accurate?” and then replace them with thoughts  like, “Sometimes I succeed. I often do things   right. Last week I did a great job with that  problem we had with widgets,” and then you bring   to mind these alternate facts. Right? Say like,  “Oh, I messed up, but mistakes happen.” Or “I’m  
00:14:27
going to learn new skills to solve this. I can get  through this. I always do.” Right? It, this can be   a really simple but a powerful way to stop buying  these negative thoughts and then replace them with   something more accurate and helpful. And there’s  a worksheet in the workbook to help you go through  
00:14:42
this process. And just as a reminder, during this  course I’m going to teach you a ton of skills. And   it’s not like you can just do them one time and  then it’s all better. Like these are exercises   that you’re going to want to practice over and  over for a while until they become easier and  
00:14:59
easier for you to do throughout your day. Okay.  So let’s talk about the second approach, what   ACT calls cognitive defusion. With acceptance and  commitment therapy you don’t fight the automatic   negative thoughts. Instead, you learn to sit  with them, notice them, but not let them boss you  
00:15:14
around. Um you’re also encouraged to take actions  that line up with your personal values. This can   give your life a sense of meaning and purpose,  which makes the ants less powerful. So if anxiety   is believing the salesman, you know, um believing  those negative thoughts that say everything is  
00:15:32
awful, freedom isn’t arguing with the salesman;  it’s not debating with them. Sometimes when we   argue with our thoughts or we spend a lot of  time ruminating on them or analyzing them,   we just end up overthinking and feeling more  confused and miserable than ever. This is called  
00:15:48
cognitive fusion, right, where we might buy the  thoughts or we’re so engaged with our thoughts,   arguing with them and debating them, that we don’t  really have space to be present, to live our life.   We just keep going in circles. Like, it’s like  you’re in a debate with the salesperson. So even  
00:16:06
if we aren’t buying what they’re selling, if we’re  arguing with the salesperson or debating facts   with them we aren’t going where we were going. We  aren’t walking down the sidewalk in the direction   we’re going. We’re just stuck there arguing with  our thoughts. And this is a typical overthinking  
00:16:19
pattern with anxiety and depression. Freedom  is knowing where we’re going when we’re walking   down the street, knowing what we do and we don’t  want, and it also means choosing to engage with a   salesman only if it helps us. Right? So to do this  we need a little bit of space from the salesman,  
00:16:35
and this is called cognitive defusion. So instead  of debating our thoughts, we need to learn to   notice these thoughts, separate ourselves from the  thoughts, and then choose what thoughts are going   to be helpful for us to live the life we dream of.  Maybe I want to buy that churro, but I definitely  
00:16:50
don’t want to see that show in Las Vegas. Right?  We need to get better at distancing ourselves   from the salesman so that we can evaluate what’s  going to be helpful for us. This is a skill you   can learn and you can practice a lot, but you  can also just simply switch from saying like,  
00:17:06
“I’m such a loser” to saying “I’m having the  thought that I’m a loser.” Instead of saying,   “I hate feeling anxious” you could say “I’m having  the thought that I hate feeling anxious.” All   you’re doing is creating a degree of separation  from your true self and your word machine. So  
00:17:23
there are some really practical ways to learn to  do this. So this this video is already getting   too long, so we’re we’re going to practice more  cognitive defusion skills in the next segment.   I just wanted to give you an overview. So from  my perspective both CBT and ACT approaches can  
00:17:38
be quite helpful. I’ll often try the CBT first,  so like to a salesman, “No thanks, I don’t need a   vacuum cleaner.” Um or to your negative thoughts,  “No thanks, I’m I’m not a complete loser.” And   then if that thought is super persistent I’ll just  let it be there and I’ll redirect my attention,  
00:17:55
essentially ignoring the salesman and walking  on. “Dear mind, thank you for that thought,   but it’s not super helpful. Okay. Now, back to  what I was doing.” Just allowing that thought   to be there and redirecting your attention back  to your value, direction, or the present moment.  
00:18:12
So just to summarize: automatic negative thoughts  are the habitual, involuntary thoughts that our   word machine of a brain pops out all the time.  They’re often false, unhelpful, and they directly   contribute to anxiety because that perception  of danger, that interpretation that a situation  
00:18:28
is dangerous or threatening triggers the fear  response. You can learn to notice these thoughts   for what they are – just thoughts – challenge  them, and replace them with something more   helpful to you, whether that’s a more realistic  thought or a shift in attention to what really  
00:18:44
matters to you. Automatic negative thoughts don’t  have to control your life. Okay. Your challenge   for the next week: sit down with your workbook  and explore what kind of interpretations lead   you to feeling anxious. See if you can explore  the automatic negative thoughts that make you  
00:18:58
feel feel like you’re in danger. Do this at least  once per day for one week. And it’s probably best   to just schedule in a time to do this instead  of waiting until you’re anxious to do it. Um   and you can print extra copies of the worksheet  from the paid course. Okay. Thank you for being  
Source : Youtube

Daily Habits to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EX1Xnvvk5c
I don’t know about you but for me 2020  has been a bit of a stressful year   so i thought i’d share with you some of the things  that i do every day to manage stress and anxiety   but in this video i’m also going to explain a way  of thinking about stress that can transform stress  
00:00:18
from something that is you know just something bad  that happens to you into something that you can   channel to be more productive and also help you  feel calmer so in this video you’re going to learn   10 daily habits to reduce stress and anxiety and  don’t worry i’m not going to tell you to meditate  
00:00:45
this video is sponsored by better help where  you can get a professional licensed counselor   who can personally coach you through anxiety and  stress for around 65 dollars a week so check out   the link in the description for 10 off your  first month so i’ve been reading the little  
00:01:02
house on the prairie books to my daughter and in  book three we’re reading a story about almanzo   and his farming family in the 1800s  and they survived off of what they grew   and in one of the stories right before the fourth  of july they’ve got their corn starting to sprout  
00:01:16
in this in the fields and the weather starts  to get weird so it seems like it’s going to   freeze so before they go to bed the parents  start to worry a little bit about the crops   and they they don’t go to sleep they stay up and  they watch the temperature and sure enough it does  
00:01:33
start to freeze so they get all the kids out of  bed in the middle of the night and the only way to   save the corn is to pour water on each of these  tiny little stocks before the sun comes up and   if they don’t their corn is going to freeze and  they’ll have no harvest that year so every member  
00:01:46
of the family anxiously runs through the night  hand watering each little corn sprout in their   acres and acres of fields and by the time the sun  rose they’d managed to save most of their crop   they were exhausted but they were also content  and after they did the rest of their morning  
00:02:03
chores they were able to sit back and relax  and appreciate the hard work that they’ve done   so the stress response is your body’s activating  response when you sense a threat in almanzo’s case   this was their livelihood about to be destroyed  your body turns on this sympathetic response it  
00:02:21
sends out some adrenaline to spur you into action  it heightens your breathing and your heart rate   to prep you for performance and almanzo and his  family they use their stress response to spur   them on the worry helps them to be vigilant to not  sleep to take this you know impressive physical  
00:02:40
action and this stress response potentially saved  them from complete crop failure so anxiety isn’t   just something bad that happens to you it serves a  function but our modern language confuses anxiety   with anxiety disorder and it’s given this  negative connotation to the word anxiety  
00:02:58
but anxiety isn’t out to get you it’s your body  and mind’s performance mode so the stress or   the anxiety response can help you have more energy  and get more done and then it’ll naturally resolve   if you know how to channel it so i’m going  to teach you some daily habits you can use to  
00:03:14
naturally resolve your anxiety when you think of  anxiety as a motivating energy to resolve problems   anxiety can become a powerful tool instead of just  something bad that happens to you that you want to   avoid and even if you do have an anxiety disorder  these tools will help you reduce your stress  
00:03:31
levels and get healthier so let’s talk about a  modern problem that we all have one of the reasons   that so many people struggle with stress and  anxiety is that we face a few modern problems that   make it a lot harder for us to deal with stress  than almanzo and his family back in the 1800s  
00:03:49
because our anciently evolved brain isn’t so good  at dealing with modern stressors we all need to   take an intentional approach to managing anxiety  so the first problem that many of us face is that   so many of our modern stressors are connected  to problems that we can’t solve physically  
00:04:09
so in almanzo’s case when they were worried  they got that jolt of adrenaline and cortisol   and they were able to use that physical energy to  solve a physical problem they didn’t feel stressed   afterwards because they burned off the adrenaline  and cortisol when they were running around solving  
00:04:24
the problem so for many of us our modern stressors  are things like deadlines and assignments   traffic noise and our crops are sitting  at a computer instead of planning corn   so if i’m stressed about a problem at work i may  not sleep and i might even solve that problem  
00:04:41
but the adrenaline and the cortisol stay in my  system until i physically burn them off so this   is where exercise becomes clutch daily exercise  is an essential part of reducing pent-up anxiety   five minutes of exercise has been shown  to reduce cortisol and adrenaline levels  
00:04:59
exercise can decrease overall levels of  tension it can elevate your mood it can   improve your sleep and it can improve your  self-esteem so aerobic exercise you know where   you’re breathing really hard that tends to be  the most effective type of exercise at reducing  
00:05:14
stress but really any kind of movement is helpful  so going for a walk or a bike ride or even just   doing like wall sits or stretching for a minute  in your office those can all be helpful so the   first thing i’m going to encourage you to do is  just find a way to add some movement to your day  
00:05:33
now let’s talk about your morning routine how  you start your day is going to set the tone for   your entire day so if you’re like many people the  first thing you do makes your anxiety worse so um   this is what it looks like for a lot of  people you’re tired because you went to  
00:05:48
bed a little bit late and the first thing you do  is start scrolling through your phone you look   at social media or the news and then you drink  some caffeine now caffeine is the most widely   used psychoactive drug in the world it crosses  the blood-brain barrier in seconds and it makes  
00:06:02
you feel more alert by reducing adenosine but  adenosine is a relaxation chemical in your brain   caffeine can also increase adrenaline and it can  make you feel more irritable more anxious and   more agitated now you can develop a tolerance  to the alerting effects of caffeine meaning  
00:06:19
you’re going to need more coffee the next time to  feel alert but you don’t develop a tolerance to   the anxiety effects of caffeine so caffeine  use can impact your sleep and your anxiety   for up to 48 hours and caffeine has been shown  to contribute to anxiety and depressive disorders  
00:06:36
so if you’re serious about decreasing your anxiety  try getting caffeine out of your system for at   least three days and see how how that impacts  you i personally don’t use caffeine because   of the impact it has on on my anxiety levels  if you feel tired one thing you could try is  
00:06:53
getting more sleep sleep helps your brain  function better which makes it so you can   better solve problems and resolve situations  that bring you anxiety so if the idea of   making these changes seems overwhelming um i’m  just going to encourage you to start slowly just  
00:07:08
make one little change every month there there is  no quick and easy fix for anxiety like if you’re   looking for some magical cure you’ll have to  check some other channel because that’s not what   i’m selling but you can drastically reduce your  anxiety by making small and sustainable changes  
00:07:27
okay so now let’s talk about your  media consumption so our ancient   evolved brain is much better adapted to the world  of little house on the prairie than it is to our   modern media almanzo and lara may have gotten a  newspaper once a week or heard the news from town  
00:07:41
occasionally but that news was often about  local events the news was brief and infrequent   and actionable so stress about the news could  be resolved by taking action so for example   if a couple in town got married they could make  them a present or if a barn burned down in town  
00:07:57
they could go help their neighbors build a new  one this is the opposite of what we have today   so these 24 7 streams of disaster around the  world these trigger our stress response as if   as if we’re in physical danger but they they  don’t give us any place to act to create safety  
00:08:15
so if you wake up in the morning and you just  start scrolling through your feeds or you start   watching the news you’re basically giving other  people the power over your adrenaline glands   i do not recommend starting the day off with the  news instead sit back for a second and think what  
00:08:30
do you want the tone of your day to be for me i  want it to be upbeat calm self-assured peaceful   and powerful now what kind of media does that for  you for me it’s prayer and scripture study first   thing in the morning for you it may be meditation  journaling uplifting music but the important thing  
00:08:51
is that the first thing you do is something you  choose so i don’t i don’t just bury my head in   the sand when it comes to the news i choose to to  check a couple of of straightforward news stations   um once or twice a day but i don’t do it first  thing in the morning i also i also choose to focus  
00:09:10
more of my time on areas that i can take action  on instead of on areas that are out of my control   the stress response is supposed to help you  it’s about performance and taking action but   it’s also supposed to be the short-term reaction  so it’s healthy for bursts of speed but it becomes  
00:09:26
unhealthy when it’s chronic and when that stress  remains unresolved so if you take the little house   of the prairie story they worried they didn’t  sleep they took action they did what they could   to save the corn and some plants lived and some  plants died but then they relaxed our body has a  
00:09:42
natural balancing reaction to the stress response  this is called the parasympathetic response but   most of us don’t know how to turn it on so you can  choose to turn on this parasympathetic response   through grounding exercises or breathing exercises  which i’m going to talk about later but the most  
00:10:02
natural way to resolve the stress response is  to simply complete a task so if you feel worried   about an assignment and then you turn it in ah you  feel that stress go away and this is one of the   reasons why coping skills can only go so far in  helping anxiety because anxiety is best resolved  
00:10:21
by doing one of two things either taking  action to resolve the problem or threat or   whatever it is or practicing active acceptance  so letting go of things that you can’t change   but in our virtual world even when we do complete  a task or we resolve a problem it can be hard to  
00:10:39
see the results so my next tip is that you find  a way to acknowledge when you can set down a task   you you make it concrete so for me i really like  checklists um i’ll even like if i complete a task   and it wasn’t on my checklist i’ll write it on  my checklist and then i’ll check it off so that  
00:10:57
i can um feel that sense of completion now there  are lots of ways to do this but find some way to   mark off or to acknowledge when you’ve completed  a task mike boyd just made a really interesting   machine that does this or simone yertz gertz i  wish i know how to say her name right um they also  
00:11:14
have some interesting ways to kind of mark off  when they’ve completed something so i encourage   you to find some way to give yourself some  physical tangible way to celebrate your success   now this can be really hard to do with  long-running stress or long-term projects  
00:11:31
but you can learn skills and practice them to  turn off the stress one skill that i learned from   michael barrett who was the director of the center  for change this is an eating disorder treatment   program is to every day when i leave work to make  a conscious practice of setting that work aside  
00:11:48
so for me i just say a little prayer about my  clients i say lord i’ve done the best i can   i’m leaving them in your hands now there is a  lot of different ways to do this but the basic   idea is choosing when to carry something mentally  heavy and when to set it down so this could be as  
00:12:03
simple as turning off notifications on your phone  or setting boundaries at work about when they can   and when they can’t contact you when your job  is mostly mental or mostly emotional or virtual   i also really find it helpful to choose something  manual to complete it can be really nice and  
00:12:21
relieving to see physical progress on a task so  this could look like cleaning something mowing   the lawn fixing something physical there’s just  something about physical tasks and completion   that seem to click that like ah switch in the  brain it triggers that parasympathetic response in  
00:12:39
our brain that says okay you’re all right you’re  safe now and it turns off that stress response   now managing anxiety is about being intentional  and in control instead of reactionary so i have   this picture in my head of me as a little kid  coming home from playing at a friend’s house um  
00:12:57
you know it’s evening it’s starting to get dark  and i i grew up in a super safe town but when it   started to get dark and i was walking home um you  know how it feels like there’s like that tingle   in the back of your neck and maybe you wonder  if there’s something behind you in the dark  
00:13:13
um now of course in every single situation there  was nothing back there but if you start running   then you get more scared and you get you  get more and more scared the faster you run   and then you get through the door and you slam the  door whatever you look out the window and there  
00:13:27
was nothing behind you now that is how i visualize  daily low level stress and anxiety it’s like you   start to feel that tingle in the back of your neck  and your impulse is to run so if you’re at work   and you start to feel a little bit stressed you  try to work harder you try to work faster and you  
00:13:43
try to get more things done but that doesn’t  make you more effective i have the tendency   to try to fill every waking moment with busyness  you know checking your email or just keeping busy   all the time by always staring at your phone so  just like me as a little kid we perpetuate anxiety  
00:14:00
when we run from it when we run from ghosts  so instead of running like stop slow down   turn around and look around you and  you’ll see that there’s nothing there   so what does this look like in my day-to-day  routine this looks like taking the time to breathe  
00:14:18
taking the time to slow down to do something  calming or to do something grounding   this is this is how you regulate your nervous  system throughout the day you may feel like you’re   getting more done by just going faster but you’ll  be a lot more effective and less stressed out  
00:14:36
if you take a minute every hour or so to  just clarify and to breathe and to slow down   our brain is not very good at multitasking that  can trigger that sympathetic that fight flight   freeze response so another way to help strengthen  your parasympathetic response is to monetise so  
00:14:56
our brain gets super overwhelmed by multitasking  basically interprets too much stimulation as   being unresolved threats so close those tabs do  one thing at a time and then just you know one   of the things that i do throughout the day that  helps me calm down is to just notice where you are  
00:15:14
so just notice right now that you are watching  this video now i promised that i wouldn’t tell   you to meditate but mindfulness is different it’s  just slowing down and noticing the present moment   noticing that you are doing what you are doing and  then you can move on and get back to you know your  
00:15:28
work or whatever so another essential skill to  manage anxiety for your daily routine is to do   what i call big picture small picture so stress  is not the problem chronic unresolved stress is   the problem this is the problem of the brain not  knowing how to sort and manage all the stimulation  
00:15:48
and all the triggers and all the threats that come  at it and when we feel too many things coming at   us our brain interprets that as if we’re being  attacked as if we’re in danger if if you’ve got   so many things that feel urgent but you can’t  do them all your brain can go into shutdown mode  
00:16:06
so what do we do with this right no one no one has  the time to do everything they want or need to do   so so how do i manage this i personally take  the time to intentionally sort out and choose   what i’m going to work on what are my priorities  and and what i can let go of and this i really  
00:16:23
believe can help clear up that chronic unresolved  stress so for me i don’t know whether it’s anxiety   or whether it’s add but i am i constantly  feel like my brain is overflowing with ideas   and tasks and to-do lists and then on top of  that there’s the screaming children so the way  
00:16:38
that i i manage this is i’m constantly throughout  the day writing down my to-do lists so i’ll write   down a list of everything on my mind and then  i’ll just choose one or two things clarify   what is most important what are my priorities  and then i just get to work on a couple of them  
00:16:55
and that helps me manage my stress and anxiety so  for some people clarifying looks like journaling   and this can really help with anxiety because it  helps your brain sort through the confusing mess   and and to get clarity and then to get going  again um another thing you can do like i do is  
00:17:11
these priority or to-do lists but then just make  sure to highlight only the few that you’re going   to work on or journal the journaling skill of  a brain dump or journaling about your locus of   control each of these things can help you you know  clarify and manage your stress throughout the day  
00:17:29
now i’m going to jump ahead here to sleep you  know you think going to sleep would be my last   daily routine but sleep is really  important so to be able to sort through   all these tasks you really need the executive  functioning part of your brain to be working  
00:17:43
and for that part of your brain to  work well you need to get enough sleep   so when your mind is rested it can  better manage all that excess stimulation   and it can resolve anxiety when it comes up but i  know it can be hard to sleep when you’re anxious  
00:17:57
i have a hard time sleeping sometimes so if  you’re not getting enough sleep or you’re having   a hard time sleeping i would say just choose  one small step you can take to sleep better   now in order to manage anxiety another skill  that i’ve had to learn was to get a little bit  
00:18:13
better at saying no so resolving anxiety is about  regaining self-control so if you want to resolve   anxiety you may have to say no to the occasional  party so that you get enough sleep so that you   don’t need coffee in the morning so that you’re  not stressed out and anxious throughout the day  
00:18:28
choosing a sustainable path instead of a frantic  one requires like a careful sorting of priorities   in your life so when we consciously choose  to not overload our brain it can handle these   tasks with more composure so this is something  i have to work on all the time is just saying  
00:18:45
no to a lot of things that i want to do but  i know are not going to be helpful for me   now next one i want to talk about is getting time  in nature i’m not going to spend a lot of time on   this but there is a bunch of research that nature  is really good for anxiety and i personally love  
00:19:00
it so i’m going to encourage you to try to get  some nature into your day-to-day life i am blessed   to live in an area where i can get out in nature  every day but you can get a dose of nature even if   you’re trapped in the city so go for a walk look  at the sky water a plant keep a fish visit a park  
00:19:18
or even just watching a documentary or looking  at pictures of nature can be really soothing   for your brain so i’m gonna encourage you to make  nature a part of your daily routine the last part   of my daily habits that i use to reduce stress and  anxiety is i make sure that my day is not too full  
00:19:36
i make sure that i turn off at some point during  the day so take time to wind down in the evening   so that you have time to get ready to go  to sleep and and get a good night’s rest   and and wake up ready to take care of yourself so  for me my wind down routine looks like turning off  
00:19:54
my phone taking a hot bath reading some random  book and even though i’m super busy with three   little kids and a job and a business i make it a  priority to get a few minutes of peace most nights   so comment below what are you going to do for  your wind down routine what helps you manage your  
00:20:11
day-to-day stress levels when you take the time to  resolve problems and to work with your brilliant   ancient brain you really can learn to reduce  anxiety and to get a lot of things done okay   that’s it i hope you find this helpful  thank you for watching and take care
Source : Youtube

4 Ways to Deal with Anxiety | Sadhguru

 Sadhguru Our mind is a tremendous gift that remembers vividly every experience and every piece of information that comes our way. Well, this can be transformed into a phenomenal imagination, But if you lose control over your imagination, if you lose the discrimination as to what is imagination and what is reality, what is future, what is present and what is past, then Laughs. Your mind will become your greatest enemy. Most human beings are not suffering life, They are just suffering their memory and their imagination. What happened ten years ago, they still suffer. What may happen the day after tomorrow, they already suffer. This is not about life. This is about lack of control over two most fantastic faculties, that human beings have a vivid sense of memory and a fantastic sense of imagination Do not worry about your future. If you do your present well, the future will naturally blossom. We can only work with what’s on our hands right now Laughs. You cannot work with what’s on your mind, You can plan for what’s on your mind, but you cannot do anything about it. You can only act in the present moment. You can only handle what is there right now, Those of you who are too engrossed in your thoughts and emotions, constantly being on social media or something I think you must get rid of your phone and take a walk in the forest If it’s not possible every day, at least one or two days in a month, you must get lost somewhere, just be in nature. All by yourself walk, sit, observe. If you pay enough attention, you will see you will be so enchantingly enamored by every little thing. In existence, because the way a single ant is made is too much for you and your intelligence to grasp exactly how this is made. Those who have not peeled their eyes to the creation get too enamored with their mental creations, which is their thought. The juicy part is emotion When your thought and your emotion becomes more important than the creator.’s creation. That means you have become a perceptional tragedy. You have not realized the nature of life at all.  We know many things. We can do many things, But we do not know anything in its entirety, So this is the nature of existence. If you pay attention to it, naturally, your thoughts and emotions will sink into the background. You can still enjoy them, But you know how insignificant it is. So it’s very important that if you want to experience the multifarious dimensions of life, you have to be nonserious. You become serious only because you have taken your existence too seriously, though we exist here for a minuscule amount of time in this cosmos. This is a vast cosmos, The very planetary system, the solar system in which we exist is a speck On that planet. Earth is a micro speck In that micro speck, the place you live or the city you live is a super micro speck. In that, you have become a big man or woman, and that’s the reason why you’re so serious about life. It’s a brief amount of time that you have as life In this. If you take yourself too seriously, you are one big joke. The secret of life is to see everything with a nonserious eye but to be involved like a sport, So be a sport for life. If you want to be a sport for life, you have to be able to see that your existence is of consequence for the times in which we live, but not of eternal consequence. Unless you touch the eternal dimension of who you really, are It’s such a brief life, only in doing what you truly care for, will your life become worthwhile If genuine involvement has to come in your life. For you to give yourself absolutely, you must be doing something that truly truly matters to you. It’s, important that you find that When I say it’s important to find that you, don’t have to spend half your life. Looking for what is my passion, No, You just have to dig into this ability you making everything yours When everything is yours. This whole world is yours. This cosmos is yours, So when it is a part of you, if you involve yourself absolutely and constantly strive to create what matters to you, what you care for, then your existence itself will be worthwhile, not necessarily your actions, what you achieve and may not achieve, but your very existence will be truly worthwhile because just to breathe and be is a phenomenon Laughs, There are no greater phenomena than life If this is not worthwhile, what is.As found on YouTubeI thought my anxiety disorder was for life… $49.⁰⁰ But I Discovered How Hundreds Of Former Anxiety Sufferers Melted Away Their Anxiety And Now Live Relaxed, Happy Lives – With No Trace Of Anxiety Or Depression At All! http://flywait.anxiety4.hop.clickbank.net We’ve seen so many people go anxiety-free that we have no hesitation in guaranteeing this program. So… If at any time within 60 days of you purchasing ‘Overthrowing Anxiety’, your anxiety hasn’t completely evaporated then you can have all your money back. No questions asked! You can do this for yourself today. You can start making a difference in your life right now. Click on the button below and you’ll receive your copy of Overthrowing Anxiety in just a few minutes. It’ll be one of the best decisions you’ve ever made – guaranteed! http://flywait.anxiety4.hop.clickbank.netOIP-panic

Benefits of Rosemary for Brain Function

 Benefits of Rosemary for Brain Function in Hamlet, Act, 4, Scene, 5, Ophelia notes that rosemary is for remembrance, an idea that goes back at least a few thousand years to the ancient Greeks who claimed that rosemary comforts. The brain sharpens understanding, restores lost memory and awakens the mind. After all, plants can be considered little chemical factories that manufacture all sorts of compounds that could have neuroprotective benefits. So let’s cut down on processed foods and eat lots of phytonutrient-rich whole plant foods, including perhaps a variety of herbs. Even the smell of certain herbs may affect how our brain works. Unfortunately, I’ve found much of the aromatherapy literature scientifically unsatisfying, like there’d, be studies like this, offering subjective impressions and so fine sure sniffing. An herbal sachet is indeed easy, inexpensive, and safe, but is it effective? They didn’t compare tests, scores, or anything Even when there was a control group where researchers had people do a battery of tests in a room that smelled like rosemary, lavender, or nothing, and even when they did compare test results. The lavender appeared to slow them down, and impair their performance, whereas the rosemary group seemed to do better, But maybe that’s just because of the mood effects. Maybe the rosemary group did better just because the aroma kind of pepped them up And not necessarily in a good way, maybe kind of overstimulating. In some circumstances, there have been studies that measured people’s brain waves and were able to correlate the EEG findings with the changes in mood and performance, along with objective changes in stress hormone levels. But is this all just because pleasant smells improve people? S moods Like if you created some synthetic rosemary fragrance with a bunch of chemicals that had nothing to do with the rosemary plant. Would it still have the same effect We didn’t know until now that aromatic herbs do have volatile compounds that theoretically could enter the bloodstream by way of the lining of the nose or lungs and then potentially cross into the brain and have direct effects? But this was the first study to put it to the test. They had. People do math in a cubicle infused with rosemary aroma, and so yes, they got that same boost in performance, but for the first time showed how much better they did correlate with the amount of a rosemary compound that made it into their bloodstream. Just from being in the room, and so not only did this show that it gets absorbed, but that such natural aromatic plant compounds may be playing a direct effect on changes in brain function.  If that’s just what smelling it can do? What about eating rosemary? We have studies on alertness and cognition and reduced stress hormone levels, by inhaling rosemary. However, there were no clinical studies on cognitive performance following ingestion of rosemary. Until now, Older adults, average age 75 were given two cups of tomato juice, with either nothing or a half. A teaspoon of powdered rosemary, which is what one might use in a typical recipe, or a full teaspoon, two teaspoons, or over a tablespoon of rosemary powder, and they even gave them some placebo pills to go with it to even further eliminate any placebo effects. Speed of memory is a potentially useful predictor of cognitive function during aging, and what they found is that the lowest dose had a beneficial effect, accelerating their processing speed, but the highest dose impaired their processing speed, maybe because the half-teaspoon dose improved alertness, while the 4 Teaspoon dose decreased alertness, So rosemary powder at the dose nearest to normal, culinary consumption demonstrated positive effects on speed of memory. The implicit take-home message being more isn’t necessarily better. Take high doses of herbal supplements extracts tinctures, just cooking with spices is sufficient. A conclusion, no doubt pleasing to the spice company that sponsored the study. No side effects were reported, but that doesn’t mean you can eat the whole bush.This poor guy swallowed a rosemary twig which punctured through the stomach into his liver, causing an abscess from which 2 cups of pus and a 2-inch twig were removed, so explore herbs and spices in your cooking Branch out. Just leave the branches out.As found on YouTubeNatural Synergy $47.⁰⁰ New Non-Invasive Alternative. To Electro-Acupuncture, Producing Astounding Results… Self-Application Is Easy, Rapid Response. You’re about to discover how both chronic and acute pain, skin conditions, migraines, and hundreds of ailments all stem from the same root cause ꆛ Yin Yang Ailments🗯 such as➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ Chronic pain⇝Low immunity⇝Chronic acid reflux⇝High blood pressure⇝Addictions⇝Fibromyalgia⇝Allergies⇝Osteoarthritis⇝Headaches⇝Low back⇝pain Asthma⇝Headaches⇝Depression and anxiety⇝Urinary problems… to name just a few…Natural-Synergy-770x645

9 Things Social Anxiety Makes Us Do

 Soft music Instructor, Hey Psych2goers, and welcome back to another video. Before we start, we would like to give you a big thanks for all the support that you’ve given us. Psych2Gos mission is to make psychology and mental health more accessible to everyone. Now let’s begin. Are you extremely afraid of being judged by others? Are you very self-conscious in everyday social situations? Do you avoid meeting new people? These are all trademark signs of social anxiety, which affects approximately 15 million people in the United States alone. Social anxiety disorder is classified as a significant amount of fear, embarrassment, or humiliation in social or performance-based situations. It goes far deeper than mere shyness, where shyness is more of a personality. Trait social anxiety disorder can cause significant disruption of your daily life. Before we begin, we would like to mention that this video is created for educational purposes only and is not intended to substitute a professional diagnosis. If you suspect you may have social anxiety, disorder, or any mental health condition, we highly advise you to seek help from a qualified mental health. Professional With that said here are nine things that social anxiety makes us do One repeatedly double checking the location and time. Do you find yourself repeatedly checking your phone to make sure you’re in the right place? It can be terrifying for those with social anxiety to arrive late or walk into the wrong room. So double or even triple-checking information is necessary. Even if you know you’ve got the details right. It can bring you peace of mind just to make sure it may be the difference between walking in with confidence or hesitation and two rehearsing conversations in your head ahead of time. While this may be a subconscious practice at first many people who face social anxiety rehearse things they’re going to say before they have the actual conversation. This often begins as imagining future conversations or running through a list of important points to discuss. Some people find it more helpful to physically practice having a conversation as well. That being said, not everyone who rehearses their conversations beforehand necessarily has social anxiety, Memorization and practice are both common tools to aid. You feel nervous whether you’re anxious about public speaking talking to a specific person or being social in general Number three avoiding phone calls, even though it’s become a bit of a joke among millennials and Gen Zer, who prefer to text avoid phone Calls is actually a fairly common behavior for people with social anxiety. Psychologist Lindsay Sharfstein told Headspace. Anxiety is typical for all of us. It’s a universal emotion that we can all relate to. For the most part. We know that individuals are not afraid of phones. They have phones in their office backpack purse. What they’re typically afraid of is the evaluation or judgment that may happen when they’re on a phone. This may be why some people prefer to text instead of talk on the phone. The more one can put between themselves and the other person the more comfortable they generally feel interacting Four faking phone calls Have you ever pretended to be in the middle of a call just to avoid talking to someone or worn headphones to discourage others from approaching you, Although it’s safe to assume that phone calls are not something that people with social anxiety look forward to faking, a call can come in handy.  It can be a lot easier to act busy rather than face the awkwardness of an unwanted conversation. So, this can become a habit of avoidance. If you have social anxiety, five constantly worrying about how everyone sees you. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, those with a social anxiety disorder are increasingly concerned about how they are perceived by others. The last thing they want is to come off as awkward, fumbling, or boring. You’ve likely felt this way at some point throughout your life, whether it’s the desire to fit in with friends or make a good impression on a potential employer with social anxiety. However, this pressure to perform feels constantly heavy and can lead to full-blown panic attacks when in social or performance-based situations Number six is feeling lonely. Even when you’re surrounded by people, People with social anxiety can share this feeling with those who battle, depression and other mental illnesses as well. So, unfortunately, a lot of people can relate to this isolating feeling When social anxiety keeps you from being your true self. It can be difficult to feel included at all. It’s frustrating to be close to others, but not be able to connect with them in a comfortable way. If you’re struggling to effectively communicate and are extremely hesitant to even start a conversation that adds to your feelings of loneliness, even when you’re, surrounded by others, Number seven clenching your teeth and other physical discomforts, you feel shaky or lightheaded when faced with A social situation: Does your heart rate speed up or do your hands tremble? The stress that comes with social anxiety can manifest through physical symptoms. Many of the symptoms are signs of nervousness such as sweating, flushing, and feeling shaky According to Mayo Clinic. You might also be dealing with muscle tension, feeling that your mind has gone blank, or having trouble catching your breath. Number eight obsessing over how you look When you’re, constantly worried about how others perceive you. You’re likely to be concerned with how you look as well. You might have a distorted body image and think that you’re less physically attractive. Your thoughts can flit from your hair to your clothes or flaws in your skin. Thinking that it’s just all wrong In an attempt to feel comfortable in your own skin, you might spend an inappropriate amount of time and money on fixing your appearance, such as shopping for better clothes, getting high-end beauty products, or going on diets. If you think you’re overweight and number nine, you feel more like yourself around the people. You’re comfortable with Yourself, think you’re picky about who you spend time with, and triumph over shyness by conquering social anxiety disorder, Dr. Marie B. Stein and John R. Walker discusses behavior in children called selective mutism. This is when a child speaks and acts normally around select individuals but is completely silent around everyone else or when placed in certain situations. This is a more extreme example, but it shows how those with social anxiety are more likely to relax and open up around people. They already know and trust, do you or anyone you know resonate with any of these points mentioned in this video? If you’re concerned about social anxiety disorder, we encourage you to speak with a mental health professional. They can help you overcome any fears or debilitating problems you might have If you enjoyed watching this video, give us a thumbs up and share it with someone who might find it helpful as well. The studies and references used in this video are listed in the description below Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button for more Psych2go videos and as always thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.As found on YouTubeNatural Synergy $47.⁰⁰ New Non-Invasive Alternative. To Electro-Acupuncture, Producing Astounding Results… Self-Application Is Easy, Rapid Response. You’re about to discover how both chronic and acute pain, skin conditions, migraines, and hundreds of ailments all stem from the same root cause ꆛ Yin Yang Ailments🗯 such as➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ Chronic pain⇝Low immunity⇝Chronic acid reflux⇝High blood pressure⇝Addictions⇝Fibromyalgia⇝Allergies⇝Osteoarthritis⇝Headaches⇝Low back⇝pain Asthma⇝Headaches⇝Depression and anxiety⇝Urinary problems… to name just a few…Natural-Synergy-770x645

10 Signs of Hidden Anxiety

 According to the American Psychological Association People with anxiety have a future-oriented fear which leads them to avoid anything that could potentially trigger a stress response. In 2017, the National Institute of Mental Health reported that approximately forty million people worldwide suffer from anxiety disorders that are highly treatable but recent surveys show that only 36.9% of those suffering from it seek treatment This might be because most people with anxiety worry about the judgment of others and how the stigma against mental illness might negatively affect their lives. Does this sound familiar to you? Do you worry you might be suffering from anxiety and just don’t realize it? Here are ten tell-tale signs of hidden anxiety to look out for. 1. You don’t like talking to people face to face. You can easily keep a conversation going for hours when you’re texting or chatting online with a friend but talking to someone in person… No… That’s an entirely different story. Even if you already know them well or have talked to them online you still get tense and nervous talking to them in person You have trouble making eye contact or finding the words to respond and you want to end face-to-face conversations as soon as they begin to 2. You’re always self-conscious. Do you walk into a room and immediately feel like everyone is staring at you, listening to you, and judging your every move? Or perhaps you’re overly conscious of the way you walk, the way you eat, the way you sit, the sound of your voice when you talk and so on This could be a sign that you have hidden anxiety 3. You’re easily upset or irritated. Has anyone ever told you you’re too sensitive? Do you find your feelings getting hurt easily? Are you quick to get angry or upset with others over the littlest things? This kind of emotional volatility may be a sign that you have high-functioning anxiety. As anxiety can often make us easily overwhelmed and emotionally imbalanced, frequent mood swings, temper tantrums, and irritability can be expected when you’re overly anxious four. You’re panicky and easily startled. Anxiety makes you want to be as in control and vigilant as possible. An unexpected phone call, a random knock on the door, an email with no subject, or a forgotten task you can easily finish. Anything is enough to send you reeling with panic. You go into a tailspin whenever something catches you off-guard and you find it hard to relax even when the smallest things don’t go exactly as planned. 5. You’re indecisive. Do you have trouble making even the simplest of choices? Are you afraid of making up your mind about something because you’re so sure that whatever decision you make is going to be the wrong one? Oftentimes, anxiety can manifest as perfectionist tendencies, fear of failure, or distrust in oneself. If you can’t make your own choices without thinking about it for hours and hours first or consulting with all your friends and family, you might be harboring some hidden anxiety. 6. You overthink past conversations. You have a tendency to get hung up on past conversations no matter how much time has passed since then. You analyze the other person’s body language, facial expressions, choices of words, and even the tone of their voice. You can’t help but think about what you should have done or said instead, and it drives you crazy and keeps you on edge every time you remember it seven. You’re always making yourself busy It’s common for people with anxiety to have a strong need to keep themselves busy They’d like to occupy themselves with simple tasks and do as many things as possible in a day because sitting still and doing nothing for a long time can make them feel restless and on edge 8. You talk yourself down all the time.  Life isn’t always kind to us, and self-love and a balanced lifestyle don’t come easily. Living with anxiety, especially if it’s hidden or suppressed, can make it hard for us to feel good about ourselves and let ourselves feel happy. It makes us believe that we don’t deserve it and traps us in a vicious cycle of negative self-talk and constant pressure to be perfect. 9. You have a lot of negative thoughts. Are you a pessimist who is quick to find the downsides in every situation? Do you find yourself getting upset or stressed out over even the most minor inconveniences? Is every day a constant battle with yourself against the spiral of panicked and rational thoughts you have? In 1997, famed psychologist and cognitive therapist, Aaron Beck, termed this kind of thought pattern as catastrophic thinking, which he often observed in his patients who suffered from anxiety. And 10. You experience physical symptoms. Sometimes anxiety can be entirely physical because while your conscious mind may not always be aware of your anxiety it will definitely make itself known to your body. Things like erratic heartbeats, chest palpitations, muscle tension, a clenched jaw, shaky hands up sweating are all indicative of anxiety. Your body may be trying to let your mind know that you’re feeling anxious and stop it before it gets any worse. Do you relate to any of the problems listed here? Or do you do your best to seem ok? And hide your symptoms because you feel embarrassed about your anxiety? The truth is: you’re not alone and having mental health issues is nothing to be ashamed of. What do you plan to do next? Let us know in the comments below! Don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to Psych2Go for more psychology content. Thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon…As found on YouTubeNatural Synergy $47.⁰⁰ New Non-Invasive Alternative. To Electro-Acupuncture, Producing Astounding Results… Self-Application Is Easy, Rapid Response. You’re about to discover how both chronic and acute pain, skin conditions, migraines, and hundreds of ailments all stem from the same root cause ꆛ Yin Yang Ailments🗯 such as➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ Chronic pain⇝Low immunity⇝Chronic acid reflux⇝High blood pressure⇝Addictions⇝Fibromyalgia⇝Allergies⇝Osteoarthritis⇝Headaches⇝Low back⇝pain Asthma⇝Headaches⇝Depression and anxiety⇝Urinary problems… to name just a few…Natural-Synergy-770x645

Yoga Put to the Test for Headaches, Diabetes, Osteoarthritis, and the Elderly

 “Yoga Put to the Test for Headaches, Diabetes, Osteoarthritis, and the Elderly” Yoga is an ancient mind-body discipline which originated in India thousands of years ago, and that’s where most yoga studies are done to this day. This has raised concerns that national pride might incline Indian researchers to quietly shelve any negative results and just publish studies showing yoga works. This fear is not without precedent. For example, research conducted in China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were found to be uniformly favorable to acupuncture; all trials, without exception, were positive. Now, one possible explanation for this finding is that acupuncture is just more effective in countries where it is traditionally practiced, but it’s a little suspicious. So, are Indian yoga trials more likely to be positive than those from other countries? They looked at hundreds of Randomized controlled trials of yoga, both done in India and done in other countries, and trials on yoga conducted in India had about twenty-five times the odds of reaching positive conclusions as those conducted elsewhere. Again, yes, yoga might be more effective in India than elsewhere, but it is a little suspicious. So, for example, if you’re interested in whether yoga is helpful for treating headaches, and you read that yoga appears to be helpful For those suffering from tension-type headaches, but then you find out that nearly all such studies were conducted in India, what do you do with that information? Also, notably, none of the control groups had any sort of exercise component, though this may be less critical for tension headaches, since neither aerobic exercise training… Nor does strength training appear to help them. So, if we’re to believe the Indian study conclusions, yoga may indeed help with tension headaches, but even they found no effect for migraines. What may help migraines, though, are other types of exercise, specifically aerobic exercise, decreasing migraine pain intensity, frequency, and duration, at least in the short term. What about the benefits of yoga practice compared to physical exercise in the management of type 2 diabetes? A significant reduction in both short-term and longer-term blood sugar control was noted in the yoga groups compared to other exercise control groups. However, the findings may need to be interpreted with caution, since nearly half of the studies didn’t define and adhere to a well-planned exercise regimen in the control group. Furthermore, an exercise intervention comparable in intensity to yoga was followed only in three out of the eight studies included. And, for what it’s worth, The majority of the studies, six out of eight, were from India. When yoga was carefully compared to sham yoga, which consisted of chair exercises, standing exercises, and slow walking to match the yoga session, the relative yoga benefits evaporated. Both yoga and sham yoga had identical effects on blood sugar status. Hence, further well-controlled Randomized trials are required prior to drawing conclusions about the benefits of yoga in comparison to physical exercise in patients with diabetes. Similar tentative conclusions were reached for yoga for osteoarthritis. Put all the studies together and yoga may indeed be effective for improving pain, function, and stiffness in individuals with osteoarthritis of the knee, compared not only to doing nothing but compared to other kinds of exercise. They had some issues with the quality of some of the studies, and so only a weak recommendation for the use of yoga for osteoarthritis, but hey, if you like yoga or if yoga is the only kind of exercise you’re willing to do, then It’s probably better than nothing. Finally, in this video, Let’s look at the effects of yoga compared to active and inactive controls meaning like compared to other exercise regimens or just like doing nothing on physical function and health-related quality of life in adults aged 60 and older. Compared to doing nothing, They found clear evidence that yoga improves physical function and psychological well-being in older adults, so it definitely better than nothing. What about compared to other exercises? Yoga pulled ahead for lower limb strength and lower body flexibility, but for improving balance, mobility, and walking speed, yoga appeared comparable. Psychologically, yoga appeared to beat out other exercises for alleviating depression in older adults, but not anxiety or perceived mental health in general.As found on YouTubeNatural Synergy $47.⁰⁰ New Non-Invasive Alternative. To Electro-Acupuncture, Producing Astounding Results… Self-Application Is Easy, Rapid Response. You’re about to discover how both chronic and acute pain, skin conditions, migraines, and hundreds of ailments all stem from the same root cause ꆛ Yin Yang Ailments🗯 such as➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ Chronic pain⇝Low immunity⇝Chronic acid reflux⇝High blood pressure⇝Addictions⇝Fibromyalgia⇝Allergies⇝Osteoarthritis⇝Headaches⇝Low back⇝pain Asthma⇝Headaches⇝Depression and anxiety⇝Urinary problems… to name just a few…Natural-Synergy-770x645

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Skills and Counseling Techniques with Dr. Dawn-Elise “Doc” Snipes

 CEUs are available for this presentation at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU Hi everybody and welcome to today’s presentation on cognitive behavioral therapy skills. Like the other The presentation we did on assert not assertive community treatment acceptance and commitment therapy, which is also based on providing information about skills that can be used not providing an evidence-based practice We couldn’t cover that in a full hour or just an hour so over the next hour we’re going to define cognitive behavioral therapy and its basic principles a lot of us are familiar with this but it’s going to be a good review and it also may highlight some nuances that you didn’t know about will identify factors impacting people’s choice of behaviors explore causes and impact of thinking errors and identify common thinking errors and their relationships to cognitive distortions so why do we care well as therapists we want to help people figure out the best way to live a happy healthy meaningful goals-driven life for some people that’s going to mean using some cognitive behavioral interventions that can be in addition to mindfulness that can be in addition to a lot of other things but it’s important to help people understand that the way we believe things to be the way we interpret things is going to affect our reactions so for example think about a situation you know you’ve walked into and maybe you walked into it with a small child and it was a different situation it was a new situation but you know it was no big deal you walked in it was not a threatening situation to you because you were like hey I got this the little kid walks in and goes oh wow there are a lot of people walking around here, this is really scary same situation as two different perceptions you probably didn’t have much of a stress reaction going on whereas the little child probably had this fight-or-flight thing going on grabbing onto your hand like please don’t let go Atlanta Airport is a perfect example if you’ve ever taken a little kid through Atlanta Airport it gives you an idea about how People can perceive things differently and when you enact that fight-or-flight reaction you’re going to have all those stress hormones you’re going to have all either anxiety or anger or whatever that goes with it it may serve to exhaust the person and leave them feeling hopeless and helpless so what we want to do is help people see that but we also want to help them see that when They’re depressed when they’re tired when they’re sick things are going to seem a lot worse a lot of times because they don’t have the energy to perceive it differently I mean when you’re sick it’s overwhelming to think of going through Atlanta Airport so this is what we want to help people start understanding is it’s two sides of the same coin they interact if one is you know kind of going wonky is going to affect the other one the good thing is If one’s going really well the other one’s going to go well if you’re Having positive thoughts you’re probably going to feel pretty good there’s an activity and I think we’re going to talk about it later it’s called the coin flip activity and I asked client clients to flip a coin in the morning and in the morning if it turns heads then they have to be the most positive Pollyanna all day long look for the silver lining and everything smile walk with their head up hold those nonverbals up and see how they feel at the end of the day besides a little sore because there are muscles they’re using they haven’t been used in a while if it lands on tails they can just be their normal selves which generally if they’re seeing me means that they are depressed anxious stressed out angry about something in the negative realm then we Talk about how things seemed different on the days when you were feeling better when you were walking taller when you were smiling even our nonverbals it doesn’t even have to be sickness it can be our nonverbals that can make us feel or make our body feel heavy and tired and make it seem like it’s a whole lot harder to deal with life as a person who perceives the world generally good and believe they can deal with challenges as they arise that good old self-efficacy will be able to allow their stress response system to function normally so if they’re like you know what I can deal with whatever life throws at me I’ve got it and maybe I need help with it maybe I’ll need to ask for support but I’ve got it it’s not going to completely overwhelm me with people who see the world as hostile unsafe and unpredictable You know for a variety of reasons whatever happened to make their scheme as such that they don’t believe that people or the world is trustworthy are predictable They are always on guard they’re always kind of like a hamster in a cage that has Have you ever had a hamster hamsters doesn’t recognize you and goes Hey that’s my own Or human contact score hamsters go run under their little house And you just kind of open the cage and stick your hand in there and flip over their house and you’re like come here and give me cuddles and you’re like you know 200 times bigger than they are so the little hamster is like freaking out this is what it’s like for people and obviously, I’m exaggerating but this is what it’s like for people who have a negative perspective a negative view or a hostile view of the world so kind of keep that little hamster in your mind cognitive behavioral therapy we have core beliefs those things that are in our hearts when I talk with my clients about honesty step one and that’s what they’ve got to do to start recovery is get honest with themselves first and then other people we talk about head heart and gut honesty do you think it’s right does it seem like the right thing to do does it feel right in your heart you know does it make you happy it doesn’t make you feel good and then the Spidey senses is your gut saying and or Is your gut fine if one of those is saying this might not be the right choice and we need to think about what’s going on so we have those core beliefs and I put them in the heart just because that’s the middle of the head heart and gut but you have core beliefs about yourself whether you’re good with You’re bad whether you’re effective at certain things yadda You have core beliefs about other people same thing good bad effective predictable and you have core beliefs about the future and a lot of that goes with locus of control but also your past experiences if the world in the past is seemed unfriendly and uncontrollable and you’ve perceived it that way then you’re going to expect the future to be uncontrollable so what we want to do is help people look at their schemas and their core beliefs about themselves others in the future and figure out kind of what they want it to look like these schemas are going to affect your behavior your thoughts and your feelings and you know you can pick wherever you want to start it doesn’t matter because all three interfaces with one another so if you haven’t let’s Start with negative thoughts If you have negative thoughts then you might feel anxious angry stressed dysphoric which will affect the behavior you’re going to do different things than if you have positive thoughts about something you feel excited and energized you’re going to have different behavior the best thing example I can give you is if you’ve ever done public speaking or had to present something Some people detest public speaking it’s just terrifying for them to get up in front of a group of people so their thoughts are I’m going to trip up I’m going to forget what I’m going to say I’m going to make a fool of myself I’m going to you know it can go on forever that when you get on a roll you can get on a negative roll and go on forever or positive hopefully get on that roll with those thoughts you start holding onto Those thoughts remember as we talked about in a CT the other day when you hold those thoughts and you kind of mush them around in your mind and you come to believe them that you’re going to make a fool of yourself and it’s going to be awful you’re going to start feeling terrified which is going to likely affect your behavior if you go out on the stage and you’re terrified You’re going to probably stutter you’re probably going to get foggy-headed You’re going to have that fight-or-flight reaction so there’s an adrenaline rush and you start sweating and you can’t focus and you can’t concentrate you want to away as opposed to somebody like me who loves public speaking and I’m just like cool I get to go out there and try to engage however many people are in the audience it’s a game for me because when I can see your faces I enjoy trying to figure out and make eye contact with people and figure out what it is that they’re there for what is it that’s going to make them tick what resonates with them so my behavior as You can kind of see right now when I go out there I’m excited and I want to engage people and it’s a fun experience for me again just like the airport the same experience for two different people and two very different interpretations and reactions to it so what effects I don’t like the term rational but when We’re talking about CBT irrationally comes up a lot I like to replace it with helpful because every behavior in its weird sort of way is or probably was rational at one time that being said we’re going to get back to that stress affects our behavioral choices if we’re under stress we can have negative emotions negative emotions will affect our thoughts if we’re feeling sad we’re probably going to look at the dark side if we feel sad we’re going to look at the bottom falling out if we’re happy we’re probably going to look for that silver lining physical factors if you’re in pain sick sleep-deprived poorly nourished so your body can’t produce the neurotransmitters it needs to or heaven forbid intoxicated you’re probably not going to make the same decisions as you would if you were comfortable healthy well-rested nourished and not Intoxicated any of those things can impact how you perceive a situation or how you react in a situation, especially the intoxication whereas in your intoxicated State in your sober state, you may think that you want to do something but then you’ve got that filter that does not not a good idea in an intoxicated State or even in a manic state if you’re you know if you have somebody with bipolar that filter kind of goes away so the behaviors that someone may normally not do because they have a rational filter That goes you know punching this guy out is probably not the best idea right Now the filter goes away when you’re sleep-deprived you’re less generally People are less patient generally people don’t have as much of a filter thing about watching your children if you have children or your grandchildren or even yourself I know myself when I’m sleepy I am giddy as all get-out and things I wouldn’t normally say because they’re you know stupid I’ll just come out and say anyway and my kids just roll their eyes or the mom you’re overtired could go to bed, uh but that’s okay You know I’m okay with that In that situation now if I acted that way at work it would be a worse thing environmentally if you’re introduced to a new or unique situation and you perceive it as stressful because the unknown we know can be stressful then you may not make as rational of a choice or as helpful of a choice because you Maybe trying to escape the same thing as exposure to UNPROFOR bellowing for a word here but UNPROFOR ball is the best I could come up with we all prefer certain situations some people like I said would rather do just about anything then get up in front of a lecture hall of a hundred and fifty people and talk but if they have to do it then they’re going to be under stress which may affect how they do things so we want people to understand that their perception and their feelings are affected by a lot of other things not Just you know an emotion here or a particular memory there’s a lot that goes into it and social if peers your family convey irrational thoughts as necessary very standards for social acceptance people may tend to cling more to it to those unhelpful thoughts and unhelpful behaviors you know in CBT they say irrational because quote nobody wants to associate with those people you know who are those people and why can’t we associate with them there are a lot of things if you think back think high School you know high school is pretty rough if we’re going to talk about having irrational thoughts and cognitions if you have to be part of this particular group to be accepted you have to do this you have to do that but do you do you do those kinds of all-or-nothing statements are cognitive distortions and while they may have served a purpose in some way shape or form in the past we need to encourage our clients to take a look at them now and go are they still helpful ways of thinking is it still helpful for me to think that I am only successful if I live in a million-dollar house in a gated community and do this that and the other or can I be can I define success as a different way or do I define success differently and lack supportive peers to buffer stress so we had those peers who caused stress by talking about the half dues and categorizing and lots of attributions but then there’s Also not having somebody to go you know does this make any sense because sometimes we are our own worst enemies and if we go to a friend and we go you know this is what I’m thinking and I think I have to do this in order to be acceptable to be loved or you know whatever the case may be Most people are not going to use those exact phrases A good friend is probably going to listen and go yeah you’re right or no that’s way off so supportive peers are essential to reminding us to consciously regularly check in with our cognitions to make sure that they are hopeful and rational so a note about irrationality and this is mine this is not from CBT the origins of most beliefs for rational and helpful given the information the person had at the time and their cognitive development their ability to process that information so concepts schemas and core beliefs that people formed when they were five are probably going to be very egocentric you know the person is going to feel like everybody sees it my way because this is how I see it you know just like A five-year-old does A five-year-old doesn’t think Well you know let me take Johnny’s perspective is no he assumes that Johnny sees it the same way so it’s going to be egocentric It’s probably going to be focused on only one aspect of the situation because small children can’t focus on multiple aspects and it’s probably going to be dichotomous it’s all-or-nothing Mommy loves me mommy hates me and it could be personalized you know Everything a lot of kids think that everything has to do with them so if something happens something bad happens many times Children will take it personally or be afraid it’s going to happen to them Again you know if Hurricane Katrina hurricane Andrew those sorts of things you know we saw a lot of trauma in children and they developed very real fears about thunderstorms and hurricane season And if you’ve watched Florida hasn’t had a notable hurricane in years now but There’s a lot of stuff that goes into that but young people During some of those really bad hurricane seasons perceive those situations differently okay so we need to help people understand that if we especially if we use the term irrational those thoughts you form when you are knee-high to a grasshopper and they made perfect sense to you back then but now that you’re an adult you’ve got more experience and you’re able to take different perspectives your brain is more developed Let’s take a look at it and see if you can look at different perspectives and Come up with something a little more helpful maybe a different way of perceiving this situation the irrational irrationality or unhelpful Nosov Fox comes when those beliefs are perpetuated without examination so something a the belief that you formed when you’re five you’re still holding when you’re 35 and you’ve never questioned it you’ve never gone you know does this make sense is This is helpful to getting me toward where I want to be Most of us don’t know We form these attitudes and beliefs when we’re you know growing up when we’re in elementary school middle school high school from watching TV to being around our peers from being around our family in our community and we get all This input of the way things should be and a lot of times people don’t stop to question and go and go Well does this make me happy Is this really what I want and they can be irrational if they continue to be held despite causing harm to the person so the person continues to hold this belief even though it is causing them general emotional cognitive harm is making them miserable we need to look at what’s motivating them to hold on to that belief why is that belief so important and how can we make it so they can live a happy values-driven life with an emphasis on the harness and how can we make it less harmful sometimes it’s more productive for clients to think of these thoughts as unhelpful or helpful instead of irrational sometimes when I say irrational to clients and you know I’m the same way if somebody says you’re being irrational I’m like oh I’m not it elicits this instantaneous defensive reaction it’s like when you tell them they’re being resistant they’re like I am NOT resistant so helpful or unhelpful and then we talk about why it is unhelpful in getting them toward their goals basic principles of cognitive behavioral therapy we teach or help clients learn to distinguish between thoughts and feelings I can think something is scary I’ll probably feel it but if I have an automatic you know feeling I walk into Atlanta Airport and I see yeah I went to an airport in New York I can’t even remember which one it was because my plane was diverted and I got off and I walked out there and I have never seen so many people packed in his place like sardines before in my life I was just completely overwhelmed that was kind of an automatic feeling now that was a feeling based on you know who knows it was overwhelming to be surrounded by that many people so then I had to separate the thoughts and go Okay what am I thinking that’s making me feel so overwhelmed and at that point you know I didn’t know how to get to my gate and all that other sort of stuff with traveling I don’t travel well but encouraging clients to stop and go okay why am I feeling this way what are my What thoughts am I having that are contributing to these dysphoric feelings CBT helps people become aware of how thoughts can influence feelings in ways that are sometimes not helpful We have hecklers in our gallery the automatic tapes that we plaything memories that we have whatever you want to call them when you try something When you are just going through daily life you hear these voices in the back of your head and not real voices but that is saying you’re never going to make this or if you would have just blah blah blah then you’d be a better person helping clients become aware of those thoughts and how they’re Negatively influencing their feelings and keeping them kind of stuck is a huge part of CBT we help them learn about thoughts that seem to occur automatically without even realizing how they may affect emotions again those thoughts from the they’re saying you’re not good enough You’re not smart enough and nobody’s going to like you Where did that come from and do you believe it you know maybe it came from somebody When you were in high school so was that a valid was that a valid source Maybe it came from somebody yesterday on Facebook was that a valid source taking in those thoughts and then figuring out is something I’m going to hold because it makes me happy or is this something that I’ve got to deal with because I’m having a negative reaction constructively evaluate whether these automatic thoughts and assumptions are accurate or perhaps biased the other thing to remember is a lot of our clients not all of them but a lot of them hold themselves to a standard there’s like up here and they hold everybody else to a standard that’s down here so they are a failure if they don’t achieve this but Everybody else is successful as long as they achieve this so encouraging them to take a look at how accurate and biased or unbiased are the thoughts and like I said they may be their thoughts they may be telling themselves these things 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 not impotent important to the person road-rage you’re In the car you’re driving somebody cuts you off Okay natural reaction fight or flight reaction you’re just like slam on the brakes and do whatever you got to do aversive maneuvers you’re good so you could let it go at that point ago got Lucky on that one and keep driving most people not all but most found that 80% of drivers have reported incidences of road rage which is a high number but most people will start getting all fired up and irritated and grumpy and we and just rageful and so my question would be I hear that and I hear that it made you angry In retrospect did screaming at the person as you pass them at sixty miles An hour in your car with the windows rolled up does any good Did it Did any good at all what else could you have done with that energy if you wouldn’t have expended it all yesterday we had to wait for the vet to come by and my daughter just completely wore herself out worrying about when the vet was going to get there what he was going to say about her donkeys and was beside herself so by the time it got to evening and it was time for her to go to her martial arts class she didn’t have the energy to go she’s like um wiped out I just want to go to bed in retrospect we’re looking back and saying okay now Tell me what it was that you were so stressed out about and let’s talk about whether that was a realistic and helpful line of thought to perseverate on all day long and what could you have done differently because she didn’t bother to mention any of that to me yesterday and then developed the skills to notice interrupt and correct these biased thoughts independently causes of these thinking errors information processing shortcuts when we form schemas and we encounter a situation that reminds us of something in the past like when I go to my grandmother’s house I have a schema I have a belief system I have you know stuff that I know about my grandmother’s house so when I go to my grandmother’s house it’s kind of a shortcut to knowing what to expect when I walk in and how to behave how to do different things and it helps me plan and predict if you’re Using outdated or dichotomous all-or-nothing schemas may cause thinking errors because you may be now incorrectly processing current events mental noise some of us have it a lot of us have it Not everybody thinks about trying to focus and study for a final exam in the middle of a really busy sports bar okay this is a cause of thinking or you’re going to miss important things you’re not going to be able to focus you’re not going to necessarily attend to the correct things because there’s just so much else going on your attention is drawn in 17 different directions and or the brain’s limited information processing capacity due to age we talked about that before young kids think all or nothing they think dichotomously egocentric ly middle school-aged kids and older start developing the ability for abstract thinking, by the time we get older, you know as adults theoretically We’re able to you know think pretty well and think pretty clinically about different events but if we’re in crisis when someone is in crisis it could be like what we think of clinically as a crisis or it could be they’re just completely overwhelmed and burned out and have been burning the candle at both ends for three months they’re not going to process information quite as well They’re not going to take in all this stuff because they’re just like shell-shocked have you ever seen teachers in the hallway of like an elementary school Oh at the end of the second nine weeks they just kind of stand there with this blank look on their face they’re not processing as much as they were the first day of school and you know God loved them they have a lot to deal with but we need to help our clients understand that there are some times that they are going to have to really stop and focus write things down so they can remember or they can make decisions A little more my guess is most of us have times in our lives when we’ve been able to think through complex problems but then there are other times where you just can’t keep it all in your head and you’ve got to put it on a Whiteboard maybe that’s just me but we want clients to understand that they are not broken they’re not faulty they’re doing the best they can with the tools they have and the knowledge they have and our job is to help them see where some of this might have gone a little awry other causes of thinking errors and emotional motivations I feel bad therefore whatever I’m thinking must be bad if I’m scared that means whatever it’s coming on the other end of the phone is bad news moral motivations I did it because it was the right thing to do and that can be an excuse for doing wrong behaviors as well it can also be you know you can argue on The moral one social influence well everyone else is doing it so it must not be bad set that again a lot of times and this is where the frames approaching the Motivational interviewing is helpful It stands for feedback about the reality of what’s going on is everybody doing it let’s look at statistics you know not subjective information let’s look at objective information so the impact of these thinking errors makes people want to fight or flee when they get upset and we use upset as a kind of this all-encompassing garbage term emotionally they get depressed or anxious we don’t want to feel that way Anxiety and anger are flee or fight fight or flee it’s our body saying there’s a threat you got to do something depression is your body going I give up I just don’t I don’t even have the energy to do it anymore behaviorally some people withdraw because they Shut down We all know people get frustrated when they get overwhelmed When they start feeling hopeless or helpless they just kind of withdraw from Everything and everyone’s addictions numb that out so they don’t have to feel the dysphoria sleeping problem and changes when we start being on that constant fight-or-flight hyper-vigilant sort of thing going on in the body is always sort of turned on which means you’re not going to sleep as well then The circadian rhythms get messed up which starts causing exhaustion and lethargy and then everything seems harder because you’re sleep-deprived and then you start thinking more negatively and more hopelessly you see where this is going it’s a downward spiral and eating changes some people eat a lot more because they’re eating comfort foods some people eat a lot less because Their stomach is so torn up from the stress they can’t even think about holding anything down physical stress-related illnesses fibromyalgia gastrointestinal problems headaches neck aches backaches you know the whole the gamut of it when you start feeling bad when you start hurting generally it gets frustrating after a while and that frustration makes it kind of raises the bar brings you up a little bit so you’re That thatch closer to kind of just kind of being overwhelmed as you do You have as much of a cushion as you would if you were happy healthy well nourished not in pain and socially a lot of times we will get irritable or impatient with other people or withdrawal when we’re having these negative cognitions these thinking errors that are keeping us in a dysphoric state these effects of thinking errors contribute to fatigue a sense of hopelessness and helplessness which intensifies thinking errors This is an important concept that I want my clients to understand and I want to drive home in this presentation so thinking errors what are they emotional reasoning feelings are not facts and we want to help people learn to identify feelings and separate them from facts so if somebody says I’m terrified okay that is a feeling what are the facts supporting that feeling why are you are terrified what is the evidence that you are in some sort of danger Right now you know that danger may not be the right word for your client at that a particular point in time but what’s the evidence that there’s a threat in what ways is this similar to other situations maybe it’s triggering something from the past that was scary or you know you were too little to be able to handle it but you can handle it now and how if you dealt with similar situations Like in the past, we wanted people to just step back and get some distance between their feelings and their thoughts and try to figure out you know which thoughts are helpful and productive and even if a sought makes people anxious or angry it can be helpful it may be telling them hey dude you need to get your butt up and get out of there if it’s helpful it means it’s moving them toward where they want to be happy healthy safe and values-driven life so happy and helpful developed a stress tolerance skills when people use emotional reasoning they feel emotions which then they start attributing finding the facts to support those emotions instead of looking at all the facts we want to help them learn to tolerate their distress so they can kind of let that subside for a second they can accept their feeling they can name them They say I’m scared I’m stressed I’m angry and whatever but they don’t have to act on it right then they can tolerate the distress for a minute without having to try to make it go away and emotional regulation skills they can feel a feeling without having to make it go from zero to 120 You know if they feel sad they go I feel kind of sad instead of grabbing onto it and going I wonder what I feel sad about I must feel sad about all these sad things now I’m going to be sad and devastated so we want to help people learn how to regulate their emotions identify them accept them Whatever word you want to use tolerate them because feelings are there for a reason they’re there to tell you your brain thinks something’s going now thankfully we have that higher-order cognition stuff going on so We can contradict our brain and we can go you know maybe that’s not true in this situation cognitive bias negativity mental filter whatever you want to call it people who focus on the negative they walk in they get up in the morning and They look outside and it’s partly cloudy They get to work and they say instead of saying there was it was very light traffic they said there was a fair amount of traffic everything is always the flip side of what somebody who’s optimistic would say so asking them what’s the benefit to focusing on the negative in what ways is this helpful to you know some people say Well it keeps me from getting disappointed because I know It’s going to end up negative anyway so we can trap challenges that know that whatever it is they think they know and see if there have been exceptions when It hasn’t turned out that way What are the positives to this situation I give the example a lot of you know I wash my car or it rains and maybe I wanted to go out on a run that day but I can perceive it I can look at the positives you know the rain washed my car for me so I don’t have to do it now score it watered my garden all the better it knocked down some of the pollen out of there even better I can find and I can encourage people to find positives in a situation yes there are negatives there are negatives to every situation if you want to find them you’re going to find them but if you want to find the positives you can too which takes us down to what are all the facts there’s the positive and the negative and the neutral I told you Earlier about the coin toss activity having people toss a coin on the heads days they act like it is just the greatest day to be alive and see how Things are different when they do their journal because you know I have my clients do I’m sort of a mindfulness check-in in the morning and in the evening and preferably at lunchtime how are they feeling what’s their emotional state what’s their energy level on the happy days a lot of times it can be less and sometimes they need a little coaching throughout because some of those old patterns kick in but I want them to start challenging some of their automatic thoughts that we’re going to talk about in a minute disqualifying or minimizing the positive most of us can probably say we’ve had a bunch of clients that do this they are more than happy to tell you about all the things that they mess up but then when they do something right they minimize it encouraging people to hold themselves to the same standard they would hold everyone else to and I know I talked about that earlier ask them things like would it minimum would you minimize this.If it was your best friend’s experience your best friend came to you and said I just got into such-and-such college would you say awesome or would you say anybody can get in there how would that go ask them what is scary about accepting these positive things that you might have had an accomplishment for some people it means that it might mean other people expect more of them for other people they just don’t know how to accept the positive They don’t know how to accept compliments they don’t know how to be the center of attention and they don’t like it and then we want to look at why that is sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet someone else’s standards so as people might that be true here you know I know When I was growing up and going through college and going through school and everything got my doctorate but I will always not being not a real doctor because a Ph.D. is not an MD and I’m like really So is it somebody else’s standards or can I feel good about having a Ph.D. egocentrism My perspective is the only perspective I’ll being egocentric but it doesn’t work most of the time so encouraging people to take alternate perspectives Maybe you’re texting with someone and they say something that is not what you interpret as not the nicest thing and this happens in text messages a lot and they get upset now an egocentric thinking error would say that purse is just grumpy today Someone who’s taking other perspectives would stop and go back and read the text and go I wonder if maybe this could have been taken some other another you know obvious reaction is not what I intended So egocentrism if you hold on to that I don’t understand anybody else because You know I don’t see a problem with anything personalizing and mind-reading This is when you assume that everybody’s frowning because of something you did your boss walks down the hallway and looks at you and grimaces and continues to walk on oh I must have done something wrong No maybe he just got out of his senior management meeting that was five hours long and he’s got to go to the bathroom you know there could be a hundred different explanations for why that happened so encourage clients to ask themselves what some alternate explanations for this event that are doesn’t involve me you know why this might have happened if they hold on to that, I must have done something wrong but as soon as their boss calls them up and goes hey can you come to my office for a second you know where their thoughts are going to go I’m getting fired I’m going to get laid off I don’t know what it was that I did wrong but he walked by me two weeks ago in the hallway and grimaced and I’m just I’m the worst person in the whole world But where did that come from so encouraging people to not necessarily assume they know what’s going on in someone else’s mind and not automatically attributing every person’s negative behavior to something they did How often and then ask them how often has it been about you now think about the last 10 times you’ve taken something personally how many of Those 10 times has it been about something you did versus something with the other person then the availability heuristic remembering what’s most prominent in your mind so asking clients what the facts ah the most obvious One that we talk about is plane crashes You know it is very dangerous to fly on a plane because you hear about all those plane crashes well yeah you hear about the airlines crashes but don’t hear about the 20,000 every day that land safely so you remember it and it seems more dangerous because that’s what is in your mind that’s what is available to you that’s what you’ve based your thought processes on because maybe you didn’t know that 20,000 planes or more fly and land just perfectly every day this can also be true with people remembering what’s most prominent in your mind sometimes and this can be very very true in domestically violent relationships if somebody falls in love with someone and that person is just the greatest person since sliced bread for the first four months and then the cycle starts and there’s this little tiny a sliver of the honeymoon period after the battering cycle and the person’s like That’s the person I fell in love with that’s what I remember and they try to focus on that that’s most prominent in their mind and they ignore the rest of the stuff so we need to encourage people to look objectively at the facts magnifying high and low probability outcomes what are the chances that this is going to happen how Many clients have worked with have gone to the doctor and gotten into a physical or get a test run and then the doctor had to call them back and This could be true for you too and the doctor had to call them back two or Three days later when the tests came back from the lab and that whole three days they were just in a panic because they were afraid they were going to get some terminal diagnosis so thinking about high and low probability outcomes another instance or example of magnification is somebody that thinks this is the end of the world whatever it I think I’ve told you before my little story about um tripping when I was walking down the hall at work and falling and yeah it was embarrassing my folders went everywhere and yeah but in that big scheme of things will it matter That much from now you know are people going to think Oh she is such a clutch she must be a ditz too no I mean they may have thought that at that time I don’t know but you know in six months nobody’s going to remember and then ask them in the past when something like this has happened when you’ve had to get a test done and you’ve had to wait on results or if you’ve done something that was embarrassing and you didn’t think you thought everybody was going to remember it forever how did you tolerate it how did you learn to deal with it building on those strengths that they already have all-or-nothing thinking errors These are things like love versus hate I love them or I hate them it’s all or Nothing she does this all the time or she never does it if I’m going to do it I’m going to do it perfectly or I’m not going to do it at all thank you all good intentions or all bad intentions you know sometimes we do things with good intentions that have some bad repercussions so did we do it with all Bad intentions are all good intentions and the answer is neither most of the time life is kind of in that middle-ground gray area encouraging clients to Look and find examples where something hasn’t been one of the polls when have they done something that they’re proud of that wasn’t perfect or when again When has somebody else done something that they were proud of that wasn’t perfect remembering that with availability heuristic remembering how often something happens and how long it’s been since you’ve seen that behavior and remember that sometimes good times are amazing but how frequent are they compared with the bad times another thinking error is a belief in a just world or a fallacy of fairness I just asked clients to identify for good people you know who’ve had bad things happen and in in reality we all have bad things happen good people do bad people do in between people do attributional errors and this is a pet of mine you know labeling yourself is not a behavior so global versus specific and I am stupid versus I’m stupid at math I don’t have good math skills it’s not about me it’s about the skills I can change skills stable I am and I always will be versus it’s something I can change it’s something I can learn internally It’s about me as a person versus it’s about a skill deficit or something I could learn or change and there’s you know lots of information on attributions out there on the internet if you need a refresher on it but we find that a lot of people who have dysphoria have negative global stable internal attributions so questions for clients remember the beliefs equal thoughts and facts plus personal interpretation another way of saying it is reality is 10% perception is 10% reality and 90% interpretation so what are the facts for and against my belief is the belief based on facts or Feelings Does the belief focus on one aspect or the whole situation Does the belief seem to use any thinking errors what are alternate explanations what Would you tell your child or best friend if they had this belief how would you want someone to tell what would you want someone to tell you about this belief so If you’re telling somebody about this what are you hoping they’re going to say in return and finally, how is this belief moving you toward what and who is important to you or moving you away from what or who is important to you now they can do a worksheet and have all of these or you can pick one or two of these questions that are most salient for your clients but they can have kind of at their fingertips so as they’re going through the day and something happens They can ask themselves ok what’s an alternate explanation Or you know Whatever it is this salient for that client’s irrational thoughts how do these thoughts impact the client’s emotions health relationships and perceptions of the world you know this is what we want to ask them How is this thought impacting you globally how may this thought have been helpful in the past Where did it come from How does it make sense from when you formed it in the past when you’re dealing with it ask the person if the thought is bringing you closer to those that are important Are there any examples of this thought or belief not being true and how can the statement be made less global less all-encompassing so it’s about a specific incident a specific situation less stable which means you can change it and less internal which means it’s not about who you are as a person but maybe something that you do or a skill that you have so we’re going to go through some of these thoughts real Quickly here mistakes are never acceptable and if I make one it means that I’m incompetent well never is kind of stable and I am incompetent is kind of global, that’s also that extreme all-or-nothing thinking so you can see where these cognitive distortions end up leading to unhelpful beliefs When somebody disagrees with me it’s a personal attack Well there’s Personalization If I ever heard it before maybe it’s not about you may be They’re having a bad day and you just happen to be the unlucky target or maybe they’re disagreeing with you because they have a different point of view and It’s not a personal attack it’s just their point of view If someone criticizes or rejects me there must be something wrong with me personalization all-or-nothing thinking global stable and internal something wrong with me as a person to feel good about myself others must approve of me Now this is one we’ve talked about external validation before and we can’t control other people to feel good about yourself how can you do that Besides necessarily requiring other people to approve of you to be content in life I must be liked by all people Wow I’ve never met anybody who’s liked by all people I’ve never even met anybody who’s been hated by all people but it’s important to help clients see how this is dramatic to say all people and for them to be content everybody has to like them I mean I like to be liked but if everybody doesn’t like me you know That’s pretty understandable My true value as an individual depends on what others think of me I would challenge this one this is all you know Also very personally I would challenge people to look at and say it so your child’s value as an individual depends on what other people think of Most people would say no but the perspective thing nothing ever turns out the way you want it to okay all-or-nothing thinking and probably availability heuristic if something bad just happened then they may be focusing on that which causes them to focus on all the other bad things in the past that have happened not to focus on that is okay you know bad thing happen but look at all these good things I won’t try anything new unless I will be good at it this fear of failure fear of rejection It just really paralyzes a lot of people when they get stuck with that thinking the area that they have to be perfect I am in total control of anything bad that happens is my fault well that’s egocentric and personal if They think they’re in total control that’s their perception of how the world Do they think if they’ve got everybody on marionette strings anything bad in the world that happens is their fault how powerful are they I feel happy about uh if I feel happy about life something will go wrong It happens sometimes but let’s look at times when you’ve been happy that something hasn’t gone wrong you know let’s get rid of that all-or-nothing thinking it’s not my fault my life didn’t go the way I wanted could be true but it seems like that’s making you unhappy so what do we do about that if I’m not in an intimate relationship I’m alone No, again that’s pretty extreme I’m either in an intimate relationship or I am alone and a loner and you know it’s just me and my 17 cats which follows with there’s no gray area so encouraging people to look at what these beliefs are saying important thoughts impact behaviors and emotional and Physical reactions emotional and physical reactions impact thoughts and interpretations of events so if you do something and it’s pleasurable and you have a great physical reaction you know let’s take bungee jumping or Skydiving if you go out there and it’s scary but you do it and you’re just like Whoa what a rush Your interpretation of that is probably going to be good which means you’ll probably do it again if you go out there and it’s just the most horrible experience you’ve ever had you’re probably not going to do it again and your interpretation of it is going to be not good which is going to make it hard to understand why other people would do it irrational thinking patterns are often caused by cognitive distortions so let’s just look back at some of those because there are a lot fewer cognitive distortions or general ways of thinking about the world then there are thinking errors because There are lots and lots of thinking errors Cognitive distortions are often schemas which were formed based on faulty inaccurate or immature knowledge or understanding and by identifying the thoughts of the hecklers you know the automatic tapes that maintain our unhappiness the person can choose whether to accept those thoughts or change them.As found on YouTubeNatural Synergy $47.⁰⁰ New Non-Invasive Alternative. To Electro-Acupuncture, Producing Astounding Results… Self-Application Is Easy, Rapid Response. You’re about to discover how both chronic and acute pain, skin conditions, migraines, and hundreds of ailments all stem from the same root cause ꆛ Yin Yang Ailments🗯 such as➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ Chronic pain immunity⇝Chronic acid reflux⇝High blood pressure⇝Addictions⇝Fibromyalgia⇝Allergies⇝Osteoarthritis⇝Headaches⇝Low back⇝pain Asthma⇝Headaches⇝Depression and anxiety⇝Urinary problems… to name just a few…Natural-Synergy-770x645