Surviving holiday stress
‘Tis the season… To be stressed out! The sights and sounds of the holidays are everywhere. Christmas music fills your ears in every store, office and radio station. Holiday treats abound, and there are festive parties and gatherings on everyone’s calendar. All this merriment can give a person some serious stress.
There are lots of stressors this time of year. The late nights parties, less sleep, rich food, alcohol and sweets push your immune system into overdrive. Environmental stresses like traffic, crowded malls, finding the perfect gifts, overspending, and family push your body to its limit. It seems like everyone is in a rush. There’s barely enough time to get it all done. The festivities demand more of you and trigger a stress reaction in your body even if you’re enjoying the season. After all, you still have to tend to all the normal day to day tasks and obligations.
Not everyone is happy around the holidays.
The holidays can be hard for people who are already feeling lonely or missing meaningful connections. You know, if you’ve recently lost a loved one, that this time […]
Healing from the body level up/ mind body healing
HBLU is a revolutionary mind-body healing method that leads you to greater insight into your behavior, a deeper understanding of your prevailing worldview and ultimately profound acceptance of who you are. This is not a healing method that is done to you. It is one that you do for yourself with the help of your inner wisdom and guidance from a lovingly collected list of the most common interference patterns.
Experience change in a single session.
Because you will be self muscle-testing, you will be able to access wisdom from your body and unconscious mind and your intuition. I do not touch you so you will feel answers switch from “no” to “yes”. You will feel the direction of the session and although you may not consciously connect to the content, you will feel the results.
Change you can see.
Over several sessions, you will notice improved ability to do things that were once difficult. Whether your goals are food and body related, relationship-focused, or self-esteem based, you will see changes in your day to day life. I have never personally made it my goal to change my eating habits, yet over time I began to notice a lack […]
Beat holiday loneliness
The holidays carry expectations of happiness, joy, love, and togetherness, but that’s not the case for everyone. Being alone in a new city, coming out with a long-held secret to family, or a recent breakup or death, can all cause you to be or feel alone. Empty nesters and the elderly are often alone. Loneliness doesn’t have one single cause, nor is it the same for everyone.
Holiday movies and music are a constant reminder of the blissful happiness we are missing. It looks like love is all around us. Holiday parties and family gatherings are on everyone’s calendar, but yours. For many people, it’s a cruel illusion. Social media, with its staged selfies and filters, only add to your envy. Comparing yourself to other people will only increase your unhappiness and isolation. It looks like everyone is happy and celebrating, But the holiday season can be a time of extreme loneliness.
Loneliness can be acute and environmental. It can be linked to old history and pain carried from childhood. Unhealthy family patterns make the wounds feel worse. Loneliness can get the best of you, leading to stress, depression, memory problems, and even heart problems. It may begin as a vague longing […]
Beat depression naturally
Are you looking for a natural way to treat depression, anxiety, and other emotional problems?
People ask me why I switched from studying and practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapy to energy psychology and HBLU. The simplest answer is that I saw the improvements it makes in my life and the lives of people close to me. I love psychology. I love what I do and I love to help people. I love to see results that are fast, easy, replicable and permanent.
My Journey
In 2000 I saw Francine Shapiro give a keynote address about EMDR at the Renfrew Centers annual eating disorder conference. She presented 2 cases and showed a video of several sessions spaced a few weeks apart. I was energized by her excitement and I could see how valuable EMDR was to trauma treatment. I read a few of her books and found myself a local EMDR therapist.
I was no stranger to therapy. Therapy had become my career after years of therapy to treat my teenage depression. My own therapist had been a mentor of sorts and a surrogate parent. Mark, my EMDR therapist had a laid back spiritual aspect. He was deeply involved in EMDR as a trainer and […]
Alcohol Addiction
Alcohol abuse is prevalent in the U.S. – one in four Americans had at least one binge-drinking session in 2016 (four drinks for women, and five for men). According to the most recent study from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), at least 30,772 deaths (excluding accidents and homicides) in the U.S. were directly attributable to alcohol in the same year. The NCHS also counted nearly 20,000 alcohol-related liver disease deaths in 2014.
Those with an addiction to alcohol are clinically diagnosed with an “alcohol use disorder” (AUD). AUD is a chronic brain disease characterized by a lack of control over alcohol use despite negative social, occupational, and health consequences.
Some of the dangers of heavy drinking include liver, heart, and brain damage, lifelong harm to an unborn child, and depression and violent behaviors. Reduced productivity, far-above-average health care expenses, and other economic costs result in hundreds of billions of dollars lost annually in the U.S. from alcohol abuse.
Read on for a comprehensive look at statistics on alcohol use, the science of alcohol addiction, and the effects and dangers of alcohol usage.
The Definition of Moderate Alcohol Use:
The moderate use of alcohol is not generally considered dangerous and may have […]
Tapping your way to health. Using acupressure points to supercharge your therapy.
When I first learned about tapping or eft, I learn that it was the stimulation of the endpoints of meridians that moved the stuck energy in the body and rebalanced the system. This made sense to me because I had experienced acupuncture and sort of understood the way it worked. The eastern view of dis-ease and medicine is that when the body becomes unbalanced, a disease is a result. I use tapping and teach clients how to do it themselves because it’s an effective treatment to reduce symptoms of depression anxiety, and phobias, but can also be used in therapy to treat limiting beliefs and install positive affirmations.
Meridians correspond with organs and organs are govern emotions. In addition to unblocking the flow of energy, tapping helps your body release opioid peptides and endorphins that turn off the chemical reaction which happens during the fight or […]
The Science of Energy Psychology
Energy psychology is the blanket term for a group of therapeutic self-help methods, based on the idea that you can reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, activate stress-reducing genes, normalize aberrant brainwave patterns and increase serotonin, endorphins and other pleasure-oriented neurotransmitters. This has been researched in clinical populations including veterans, survivors of genocide, and survivors of natural disasters.
The energy refers to Meridians, Chakras
and the biofield of the body
Tapping works on the meridian system. It’s like acupuncture without needles. HBLU stands for healing from the body level up. A mind-body healing modality that finds unconscious interference patterns and allows you to release them with a list of interventions. TAT balances the subtle energy of the body, focusing on forgiveness and psychological reversals.
Like most therapy, energy psychology is done by calling to mind a psychological difficulty or desired state and while performing an intervention designed to reduce the body’s stress response. When the body is recalling something stressful, traumatic or painful, there is a physiological response. By focusing on the internal energy system, we can lower the physical response which in turn, lowers the emotional response.
1. recall an anxiety-provoking memory
2. rate it on a scale of 0-10 […]
Adult attachment and relationships
The quality of adult relationships hinges on a number of factors including adult attachment. Do you ever look at the couples around you and wonder how they stay together? I’m impressed by couples who seem to navigate life’s ups and downs with grace and commitment to their relationship.
A lot of couples aren’t so happy. Many have a difficult time because of outside circumstances or situations of their own making. Relationships are hard because we each bring our own unique perspective and psychology to them. We each believe our perspective is the correct one and we each feel like what we give is more significant than what we get in return. This is valid and true in a sense because what we give is often what is most important to us and most like what we would like in return.
Our perspective about relationships forms very early in our childhood. Infants have an innate attachment system which is a biological function that serves to keep them close to primary caregivers for the purpose of protection and safety. Depending on how attuned the mother is to the needs of her child, the child will attach in an organized, predictable […]
Avoidant attachment in relationships
Avoidant Attachment
People with an avoidant attachment style give the impression that relationships aren’t important to them. They see themselves as fiercely independent and tend to prefer many casual relationships to one serious one. They can be dismissive and drive people away with their avoidance of intimacy. They worry they will be trapped in a relationship or miss a better opportunity. They are relieved when their partner wants to keep things casual and may not even have much reaction to seeing their partner flirt with other people. Although they may seem callous, internally they are craving a stable loving relationship. They push people away to avoid the pain of being let down. This is in fact, their biggest fear. They use deactivating strategies in order to justify their feelings about relationships and diminish the importance of relationships they’re in.
Tips for relationships.
The dating pool is heavy on anxious and avoidant people because secure people tend to pair up together. People with Avoidant attachment tend to pair up with anxious attachment people but stir up each other’s issues. If you think you tend to be avoidant in relationships, don’t worry. You can still learn to […]
Anxious Attachment and Relationships
Anxious attachment
People with an anxious attachment style worry their love won’t be there when they need them. This fear drives their anxiety. They rely on constant contact and affirmation from their partner. They have keen instincts about relationships and a sixth sense about disappointment or waning interest. They tend to be preoccupied with their social media, checking voicemail, email and texts with great frequency. They may want to text you to stay connected through the day. They are prone to feelings of jealousy because they are insecure that they can rely on their partner to stay faithful. While it may appear on the surface that people with anxious attachment disorder crave closeness, they can also be surprisingly afraid of achieving the closeness they desire. They may send mixed messages that lead you to believe that they are interested, only to disappear or behave so badly, they send you running. People with anxious attachment disorder don’t trust that love is real or reliable, and so they often behave badly when things feel good. They are so hungry for love and so preoccupied with it that they may drive people away with their behaviors.
What do you do if […]
Attachment and Relationships
Intimate relationships are the foundation of life. Through them, we learn who we are, how to see the world, and how to interact with people. The ability to form and exist in relationship with other people determines the success of families, couples, careers, and society. From the time we are babies we are biologically driven to stay close to our caregivers. This closeness is necessary to ensure survival. At the biological level close proximity assures that food, safety, shelter, and comfort will all be delivered as quickly as possible when the infant cries out. The more attuned the mother is to the baby’s needs, the less discomfort the baby endures and the more trust they develop that their needs will be met. The baby develops the ability to predict how quickly and under what conditions the mother will be able to meet these needs. Over time the child forms a “mental representation” of what support and love and truest feel like and carries that into their exception of how the world will respond to similar needs. As the child grows, this mental representation strengthens into a belief system. The more successful this process is, the easier it is for the […]