Category Archives: Information

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Valentines Day Depression

For most people Valentine’s Day is a very special day when they both receive and show love. But for others, it is a day of pain, renewed grief, loneliness and sadness.  February 14th can trigger feelings of loss, inadequacy, low self-esteem, disconnection, emptiness, rejection and questions about one’s place in the world. This special day can be the time when some people need to focus on their emotional health.

According to Dr. Laura Slap Sheldon, “It is hard to keep ones heart open when it has been hurt and traumatized by a loss.” Valentine’s Day can also be difficult for those who are single, separated or divorced. Not only can it be difficult, it may be cruel when you see your colleagues in the office receiving roses, hear them talking about the gifts that they are purchasing for loved ones, or when you notice TV ads for roses and fine jewelry.

According to Psychology Today, humans need connection to others in order to thrive and be happy. So when Valentine’s Day comes around and triggers feeling of loneliness and disconnection, it can signal the need for the individual to focus on emotional healing. Research shows that people with a stronger social support network are happier, recover more quickly from surgery and disease, and are at lower risk for depression.

Thus feelings of sadness, loneliness, loss or inadequacy around Valentine’s Day (or on any day of the year) are signs that you need to find ways to heal your hurt, heal your emotions and heal your heart! When Cupid’s Valentine arrows miss the heart – it is time for emotional healing to start!

Here are some tips from Dr. Laura S. Brown, professor of psychology at Argosy University/Seattle on how to handle depression and other emotional health issues during the week leading up to Valentine’s Day:

1. Do not define yourself by your relationship status. Your relationship status is not your identity.

2. If you are single because of a recent loss, allow this to be a day of grieving. Do not pretend that it’s not a hard day. Get support and sympathy.

3. Realize that Valentine’s Day is a commercial holiday. It is not about love and relationships; it is about selling flowers, candy, and diamond jewelry. Think of all the money you are saving.

4. Plan well in advance to do something that will not place you in the path of billing and cooing couples. Even if you usually like dining out alone, do something else on Valentine’s Day.

5. Get together with people who do love you — friends, family members, the people who already have relationships with you.

6. If you are single and you don’t want to be, start now to think about what is in the way of you creating the relationship you want. Find ways to work on becoming the person your dream partner would fall in love with. Start therapy. Take up yoga. Begin to volunteer. Create art. Make meaning. Act to change the world. It is into the fullest lives that love is most likely to fall.

7. If you are single and you like it, now is the time to affirm your choice. People who never marry or partner have close, loving, emotionally intimate relationships and lives worth living. Do not let a couple-driven culture define your choice as something wrong.

Here are some other resources you might find helpful: Click on the images for more information!
A Big Kiss For You! Plush Puppy Care Package Gift Box – Valentine’s Day

Click here for more information.

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Bibliotherapy

 

The Reading Cure!


As a Clinical Psychologist, I am always looking for low cost yet very effective ways in which my clients can help themselves. Most clients meet with a mental health clinician a couple of times per month. Between those sessions clients ought to be busy working on healing themselves by practicing the strategies and techniques and making facilitating changes in their behavioral, cognitive and emotive processes. Most successful mental health outcomes are generated when people are focused on helping themselves.

One very useful method of self-help for emotional pain such as grief and depression is reading books. Reading books? Absolutely! Reading therapy!

The idea that reading can make us emotionally and physically stronger goes back to Plato. Plato said that the poets gave us the arts was “not for mindless pleasure” but “as an aid to bringing our soul-circuit, when it has got out of tune, into order and harmony with itself”. The Greeks had it right! Additionally, I don’t think that it was a coincidence that the Greek God Apollo was the god of both poetry and healing!

These days “reading therapy” is officially called bibliotherapy! Bibliotherapy is defined as an expressive therapy that uses an individual’s relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy. In some studies, bibliotherapy has been shown to be effective in the treatment of depression and the results have been shown to be long lasting. Bibliotherapy is also an old concept in library science. The ancient Greeks put great faith in the power of literature, posting a sign above some of  their library doors describing the library as a “healing place for the soul”.

The idea of bibliotherapy or reading therapy seems to have grown naturally from the human inclination to identify with others through their expressions in literature and art. For instance, a grieving child who reads (or is read to) a story about another child who has lost a parent will naturally feel less alone in the world. Bibliotherapy is often used very effectively with children

Among adults, reading groups (book clubs) seem to serve many purposes. They serve as social gatherings for like minded people to discuss issues, ideas and topics relevant to their collective interests. Reading groups however also help to bring people together so that they feel less isolated and so that they can build their self-esteem. Reading groups also seem to be an experiment in individual and collective healing.

In one study, there was an indication that involvement in reading groups helped some members to deal with depression, loneliness and grief. Some book clubs specifically help members who are going through the loss of a spouse through death, while it helps others deal with those experiencing the pain of separation and divorce. Reading specific books as biblio therapy is also a feature of meny self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

Books seem to help everyone… whether as individuals or in groups. No matter how ill you are, there is a world inside books which you can enter and explore, and where you focus on something other than your own problems.

The benefits of bibliotherapy or reading therapy as a ‘reading cure’ are threefold: Identification, Catharsis and Insight. Simply stated, when reading the appropriate book, a individual has the opportunity to:

  • relate to the main character and his predicament
  • become so emotionally connected to the story that their own feelings are revealed
  • realize that his/her problem is solvable or, at the very least, that he/she is not alone
  • process possible solutions to his/her problems
  • develop hope based on the positive outcomes from the lives of the characters in the book
  • bring an added positive dimension to the self-talk that goes on inside

As a result of reading certain books, people are uplifted, positively influenced motivated and inspired to heal themselves from the inside out.

The key to making all of this work is making sure you have a great book. With so many out there, how do you know which one to choose? In this Blog – Heal Your Hurt – we provide you with lots of suggestions – all of which can be seen through the lenses of reading therapy (biblio therapy). All of the books recommended in this blog can help with emotional pain, depression, sadness, grief or other devastating emotions that people can experience.

Here is another great book suggestion: The Help!  Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

In The Help, author Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town. And it forever changes the way women – mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends – view one another. This is a deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope.  The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

I found The Help to be therapeutic. My clients all rave about the many benefits that reading it provides them. You too will find it beneficial when you read it.

 

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Emotional Health

Our negative emotional patterns of suffering will continue to make us sick throughout our lives until we heal ourselves from our core and gain emotional health and wellbeing.

Did you know that our cells hold memories of our emotional patterns of suffering? These deeply embedded cellular memories continue to feed anger, jealousy, fear, helplessness and general disenchantment with life. They contribute to emotional drama in our lives; they are linked to unsatisfying relationships; and they power a downward trend in our emotional health.

Good emotional health is aligned with high levels of emotional well-being. Recent research by such people like biologist Bruce Lipton shows that our emotional health directly affects our physical health. For instance, depression can correlate to heart attacks, anxiety can create digestive issues, and anger over stresses our heart.

Western medicine tends to ignore the impact of such negative emotions on our physical health. Many of us are in denial of the impact of these negative factors on our emotional health.

Improving our emotional health is crucially important if we are to feel more empowered, have better relationships, and achieve high states of personal wellness.

In Michael David Lawrience’s book “Emotional Health – The Secret for Freedom from Drama, Trauma and Pain” readers learn how to break the cycle of suffering, heal emotional pain,  overcome sabotage of your happiness, removing things which sabotage success, and awaken their excitement and joy. Emotional Health is really an owner’s manual which describes practical methods to release physical and emotional chronic pain, suffering, and stress.

When you get “Emotional Health”, you will read stories of people who healed their emotional suffering to gain greater freedom, including a former CEO of a major company, a therapist for teenagers, a minister, a medicine woman, an author and spiritual coach, a horse whisperer, a quadriplegic, a life consultant coach, a core energetic healer, a psychotherapist, a former nurse, a transpersonal therapist, and the founder of spiritual organization. Now just from reading this book and following the steps laid out be the author, you, like these people, will find, learn and apply the solutions you have been looking for and get the benefits you deserve.

Now if you want to read more about how you can find your way from emotional hurt, pain, suffering, trauma and drama to full emotional health and wellness, then I suggest you get “Emotional Health – The Secret for Freedom from Drama, Trauma and Pain” here now.

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Surviving Infidelity

 

From presidents or people who want to be president to ordinary people from every area of life, infidelity seem to be one characteristic that plagues marriages. And as we have seen, infidelity leads to hurting hearts that are hard to heal.

According to Psychology Today, “Infidelity is breaking a promise to remain faithful to a sexual partner. That promise can take many forms, from marriage vows sanctified by the state to privately uttered verbal agreements between lovers.”

The list of infidelity stores is long and the exclamatory comments by those betrayed are indicative of people who are deeply wounded, deeply hurt emotionally, – people whose hurt might be potentially hard to heal.

Psychology Today contends that as unthinkable as the notion of breaking such bonds may be, infidelity is common—and when it does happen, it raises thorny and emotionally painful questions. Should you stay? Can trust be rebuilt? Can you and should you forgive and move on? Can you survive infidelity? Can you heal your hurt?

Nothing your marriage has sustained in the past compares to the pain of discovering that your spouse has been unfaithful. The betrayal, rage, sadness, and jealousy is unlike anything you’ve experienced before. And yet it is possible to move forward, decide what to do in your marriage, decide on surviving infidelity, and most important, decide to heal your hurt!

For more than ten years, “Surviving Infidelity” has been offering sage advice and compassionate, non-judgmental analysis. Based on the private practices of licensed marriage and family therapist Rona B. Subotnik and clinical psychologist Gloria G. Harris, Ph.D, Surviving Infidelity, 3rd Edition brings you the new hope and the empathy you need in this difficult time. It is the hope that you can heal your hurt and heal the emotional pain in your heart.

Powerful Review by a customer who bought the book:
“I recently was informed by my spouse that she had a past 1 year affair. I remember being very numb and angry. It was recommended that I read Surviving Infidelity. What a true blessing this book provides. At a time when I felt my world was coming to an end this easy to read paperback has given me the strength to move forward and understand why people in general have affairs but more importantly than that the book affirmed the emotional feelings I am experiencing right now are NORMAL and though I share some responsibility for our relationship I am not at fault for my wife deciding to have the affair. I have decided as a result of this reading that my relationship with my wife is worth saving and this book has given me valuable tools to move in that direction.”

Here is another review by another customer:
“This is a great book. It offers solutions to problems such as deciding whether to remain married, how to treat your spouse, how to control your anger/sadness/self-esteem, etc. It never at any point blames either person (betrayed or betrayer).

 

[amazon_enhanced asin=”1580621376″ /]

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

5 Simple Steps to Emotional Healing

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Stress, anxiety, panic attacks, fears and phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sexual abuse, depression symptoms, compulsive spending, compulsive overeating, bulimia, relationship issues, negative beliefs, low self-esteem, grief, and test anxiety are all issues which can cause severe emotional pain! Additionally, these problems can likely result from past emotional hurt.

According to Gloria Arenson, psychological counseling is like detective work. She tries to help her clients find out as much as they can about what makes them to so that they can help themselves get to the heart of their problems. Emotional healing is the critical step that is needed to move people from emotional hurt to emotional health.

She used Energy Psychology techniques so that her clients can achieve an understanding that most of their bad habits, harmful behaviors and negative beliefs which might have been created as imperfect solutions to threatening situations that might have happened a long time ago.

As a result the clients’ problems are positively transformed and their behaviors change for the better!

After counseling thousands of people for over 25 years Arenson has learned that everything people do makes sense in the context of their lives. No one else in the world has the same fingerprints as yours. No one else has had your identical life either.  And as a result your problem might need a specific solution that fits only you.

To achieve this, Arenson teaches clients a specific type of Energy Psychology that is specifically tailored to help clients with their specific steps to emotional healing!

Arenson indicates that many of the people who come to her who have had years of talk (counseling) therapy and are still suffering emotionally. She contends that talk therapies often take a very long time to be effective and, even then, may not eliminate the person’s emotional hurt. She claims that therapy only goes as far as people can remember, while Energy Psychology methods can go the level beyond awareness to provide emotional healing for past hurts. She advises that Energy Psychology techniques are generally gentle and work rapidly and permanently without causing more pain and anguish.

Arenson wants to teach people who are hurting emotionally and who suffer from deep emotional pain how to use her specific type of Energy Psychology to help themselves and to provide emotional healing.  She wants to assist clients  in resolving their problems as quickly as possible.

Arenson has written a book where she teaches readers a variety of Energy Psychology methods that will help to eliminate or transform the fears, anxiety, traumas, compulsive behaviors, and the negative thinking that may be holding readers back from moving forward. Such personal interventions may help to create a happy and healthy life.

Need help in to heal your hurt or help with emotional pain, then examine Arenson’s book: Five Simple Steps To Emotional Healing Here!

According to Arenson, it is the
“The last book you will ever need!”

Information

Emotional Pain Causes Broken Hearts

The emotional pain of losing a loved one can take a toll on the heart, at least metaphorically. But can it trigger an actual heart attack?

In a large new study, scientists have confirmed what the medical world has long suspected: The so-called broken-heart syndrome is real. The study, published on Monday in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, found that a person’s heart attack risk is 21 times higher than normal the day after a loved one dies.

Over time the risk of an attack declines, but it remains elevated within that first month. In the first week after a loved one’s death, for example, the risk was six times higher than normal, said Elizabeth Mostofsky, the lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral research fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

“If a bereaved person is having symptoms like chest pain, they shouldn’t simply say, ‘Oh, I’m dealing with the stress right now’ and ignore it,” she said.

Other studies have uncovered greater heart and mortality risks in the weeks and months after the loss of a spouse, a child or another loved one, but the new study is the first systematic look at the immediate effect. The researchers interviewed nearly 2,000 people hospitalized for heart attacks over a five-year period and controlled for variables like health and history of disease.

Those with previous heart risk factors were more vulnerable, but the odds increased even for those with no coronary history. Dr. Mostofsky pointed out that bereavement could provoke depression, anger and anxiety, all of which can elevate the heart rate and blood pressure and increase blood clotting.

From onlinenigeria.com/