Category: Mind-Body Connection
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Helping Diabetes Management in Teens | Identifying the barriers to achieving desired A1C
Assisting people with improved diabetes management behaviors has been a specialty of mine in my psychotherapy practice since 2009. My Wife has a been a senior research coordinator at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes in Denver since 2006, She then Moved on to Stanford University where she works as a staff scientist….
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Addiction, Self-determination, Flow, Mindfulness, Culture, Emotional Intelligence, and Human Bonding
Addiction, Self-determination, Flow, Mindfulness, Culture, Emotional Intelligence, and Human Bonding What are the components of addiction? why is addiction less desirable? and what aptitudes help us to avoid addiction? “Let’s Turn the conversation towards Efficiency and Away from Morals” The Psychobiological and Relational causes of undesired, addictive, and compulsory behavior: Flow (peak experience) – Humans are…
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Reflection and Psychotherapy
Reflection is the ability to hold a stimulus in the present moment without reacting automatically. In a state of reflection, a person can notice or observe the presence of a thought or feeling that they are experiencing… noticing or observing can then lead to two different reflective actions; either the person can continue to observe…
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Why should I focus on my Breathing? – Worry reduction.
Quick summary –Normally breathing is something which is done automatically – you don’t think about breathing it just happens. When you intentionally focus on your breathing you give your mind something to do and this limits your minds ability to worry, which is often the source of your distress. Breathing is happening in the present…
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Euphoria and gratitude… a runners high at 9,000 feet
Quick summary: If you can teach yourself to feel gratitude for a greater diversity of things… then you can add a positive association to any experience that you want.
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Why some fail to lose Weight – Restraint theory
Quick Summary: Restraint theory suggests that restrictive diets lead to failure and in some cases actually increase weight gain. The theory was developed after research was showing that people on restrictive (don’t eat any of these ‘bad’ foods diets) had almost an 80% rate of failure and people were often gaining back more weight than…
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Placebo effect – an underrated healer
Quick summary: I am going to suggest that we might be able to use mindfulness to gain control over the ‘placebo effect’ thereby positively influencing recovery of physical and mental disturbances. In scientific investigation it is always important to rule out the placebo effect when studying the effects of an intervention. To do so, researchers…
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Problems sleeping? 10 Tips to help you sleep
Quick summary: I am giving you 10 tips that will lead you to create and maintain a healthy sleep cycle. Sleep is vital for optimal health… you owe it to yourself to dedicate yourself to a good night of sleep. If you can stay dedicated you should be able to create a stable sleep cycle…
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Overcoming addiction to substance – find a replacement behavior that offers a comparable result – hope involves you being both reasonable and honest with yourself
Quick summary: Overcoming a substance addiction can be truly difficult as the majority of substances that people become addicted to offer: significant results, consistent results, fast onset, and results with little to no effort. The reasonable way to overcome an addiction is to isolate what emotional state (happy, uninhibited, spiritual, relaxed, euphoric, carefree, distracted etc)…
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Creating Motivation for the Change Process – Why creating a mental image of the ‘new you’ works
Quick summary: I am going to explain a theory as to why visualizing the ‘changed’ or ‘new’ you can have a positive impact on your motivation and therefore a positive impact on your ability to meet your goals. Pop psychology and positive psychology have been telling the public to ‘think positive” and to “tell the…
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What is Love? How do I know if I am in love or have experienced love? Love is selflessness and felt security… love is also a physical and emotional feeling
Quick summary: The reason that love is so difficult to define has much to do with the fact that the word “love” means far too many things in the English language. I will define the three most common definitions of love. Love is a euphoric to terrifying rollercoaster ride of emotions, love is a label…
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Some stress is best left
Quick summary – I have written a lot of blogs about steps that a person could take to reduce their stress and anxiety by simply working on his or herself and his or her relationship with others. There are times in life where the best option might be to find a way to remove your…
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Mindfulness Interventions for Both the Therapist and the Client to Increase Therapeutic Effectiveness When Treating Trauma
Research has suggested that Mindfulness interventions can be extremely beneficial in the treatment and prevention of symptoms associated with trauma and vicarious trauma. The intention of this paper is to look into the possible positive effects of incorporating Mindfulness practices into therapist self care routines, and therapeutic interventions. To arrive at such an end this…
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Human Sexuality and Stress Management
Quick summary: Sex has a positive impact on stress and yet stress has a negative impact on sexual frequency and desire. I have two suggestions: one, intentionally engage in practices that reduce the distracting power of stress so that you and your partner are more able to focus on the potential of sexuality in the…
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Allowing and Believing
Quick summary: Lately I have noticed that not all obstacles are nearly as insurmountable as I had previously thought… I am not intending to suggest that environmental roadblocks do not exist… instead I am suggesting that perhaps the greatest wall keeping us from our ambitions, life paths, meaning, desires etc are related to an inability…
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Meditative Breath – focusing on the expansion and contraction of your chest and stomach.
Quick summary: I am going to explain an easy breathing exercise that will aid in the goals of stress/anxiety reduction, and mindfulness practice. Many have heard that to help facilitate a state of mindfulness (non-judgmentally existing in the present moment with an increased awareness of the moment) it is very helpful to focus on your…
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Combined Wellness intervention
Quick summary: this is a template for a psychotherapy/nutrition combined service which mainly looks at the psychotherapy intervention. A psychotherapist and a nutritionist offer a combined service to assist a client’s mind, body and spirit to work together in achieving optimal health.
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Is it ‘cheesy’ to be positive?
I have been noticing lately in both professional and personal settings that there seems to be a somewhat consistent belief in the US culture that being positive is cheesy, self-righteous, or otherwise a negative process (ironic). Whether you are a modernist or a postmodernist (or something else) most people agree that our thoughts and beliefs…
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Selfishness is also Selfless
Quick summary: If you allow yourself selfishness you can increase the effectiveness of your selfless intentions. There are many different types of people and people are impacted by the drives of selflessness and selfishness in differing ways and by differing degrees. The message here is most suited for the people who act with intended selflessness…
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Fear
“Fear is a choice… it tempts you to follow… what will you choose to do… to believe…to feel?” Quick summary: So I was contemplating feelings of discomfort that I was holding some time ago and I started to think about this article that I had just read concerning a scientific discussion about our universe and…