Emotional Health Articles

Article / Updated 10-23-2023

Just as the aim of mindfulness isn’t to relax the body, though this sometimes happens, so the aim of mindfulness isn’t to calm the mind, though this sometimes happens too. Your mind is like the ocean – occasionally wild, and at other times calm. Sometimes your mind goes from thought to thought without stopping to rest. At other times, your thoughts come slower and have more of a space between them. Mindfulness isn’t so much about changing the rate of your thoughts, but about noticing the thoughts arising in the first place. Listen to your thoughts with mindfulness Everything man-made around you was originally a thought in someone’s head. Many people consider thought to be all-powerful. All your words, all your action and activities – everything is motivated by thought. So, being aware of the kind of thoughts going through your mind makes sense. The brain easily gets into habitual patterns, as your thoughts travel their paths within the brain. Each time you have a particular thought, or carry out a particular action, you slightly increase the chance of having the same thought again. Through repeated thinking or action, the connection between neurons strengthens. If you aren’t mindful of these thoughts or actions, you may have all sorts of negative, untrue, unhelpful thoughts or behaviors that influence your life without you even being aware of them or questioning the truth or validity of them. Mindfulness encourages you to watch your thoughts, emotions and actions; then you’re better able to notice unhelpful thoughts and question their truth. Use mindfulness to make better decisions Every moment of every day you make decisions, whether you’re aware of them or not. At some point, you’ll decide to stop and do something else. More significant decisions you have to make have a bigger impact, and a ‘good’ decision is highly desirable. All that you do and have at the moment is partly due to the decisions you made in the past. Awareness of your body can help you make better decisions – a gut feeling is a signal from your belly telling you what to do and has been found in some experiments to be faster and more accurate than logical thinking. Research shows a mass of nerves in the gut that’s like a second brain. This intuition is routinely used by top CEOs of corporations to make critical decisions. Come to your senses through mindfulness One of the key ways of becoming more mindful and of calming the mind is to connect with your senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. People’s use of the word ‘sense’ shows they appreciate and value being in touch with our organs of perception. You know innately the value of connecting to your senses if you want to make a sensible decision. What is the benefit of purposefully connecting with your senses? Well, if you aren’t paying attention to the stimulation coming through your five senses you’re only paying attention to your thoughts and emotions. You’re not aware of anything else. Your thoughts are mainly based on your experiences from the past, from memory. You may imagine something new, but on the whole, your mind reworks past experiences, or projects ideas into the future based on your past experiences. Emotions are also very much influenced by your thoughts. So, without paying attention to your senses, you’re stuck with your own thoughts and emotions based on the past instead of the present. By purposefully connecting with one of your senses, say, touch, you begin naturally to calm your mind a little. In mindfulness you can begin by focusing on your breathing. Focus on your belly stretching or your chest expanding or perhaps the movement of the air as it enters and leaves your body. By focusing on a particular sense, in this case the sense of touch, you’re focusing your attention. Rather than your mind wandering wherever it pleases, you’re gently training it to stay on one object, namely your breathing. By coming to your senses mindfully you are Training your attention to focus. Being kind to yourself when your mind wanders off. Realizing that you’ve a certain amount of choice about what you pay attention to. Understanding that you can deliberately choose to shift attention away from thinking and into the senses. Calming your mind. Create an attentive mind with mindfulness Attention is essential in achieving anything. If you can’t pay attention, you can’t get the job done, whatever the job is. Mindfulness trains your attention by sustaining your attention on one thing, or by switching the type of attention from time to time. There are several types of attention: Narrow attention is focused and sharp, like the beam of a laser. You may use this type of attention when chopping vegetables or writing a letter. Wide attention is more open and spacious, like a floodlight. When you’re driving, ideally your attention is open so you’d notice if a car moved closer to you from the side, or if children were playing up ahead. Outer attention is attention to the outer world through your senses. Inner attention is an awareness of your thoughts and feelings. Observer or witness awareness is your capacity to know what type of attention you’re using. For example, if you’re drawing a picture, you’re aware that your attention is narrow. If you’re walking through the countryside, you’re aware that your attention is wide.

Article / Updated 10-23-2023

Feeling and expressing gratitude goes a long way toward alleviating your stress in daily life. Intuitively you know you should feel and express gratitude, but you may put it into practice less often than you think. You may look at exercise in the same way: You know you should do more of it, but you just don’t. Sometimes you need to be reminded and encouraged. Keeping a journal makes it more likely that you’ll be aware of the importance of gratitude and express gratitude more frequently. Here’s what to do: Find a time when you have a few moments to yourself and think about four or five things in your life right now for which you are thankful. This could be on the train on your way to work, on a coffee break at your desk, or at any quiet moment when you can step back and reflect. Here are some things you might be grateful for: Your health Your friends Your children Your relationship Your skills and talents Your home Your job Your life itself Add to this list and come up with additional aspects of your life for which you can feel grateful. For some people, carrying out this exercise daily may work best; for others, once a week may be enough. If you’re a good journal-keeper, you may want to jot down these objects of gratitude. Either way, try to make this exercise a regular part of your day or week. Acknowledging those parts of your life for which you should be grateful is important; expressing gratitude to others is the other part. Too often we feel gratitude but fail to express it. Our hearts are in the right place, but we don’t communicate our gratitude to the other person. This communication can take the form of a simple thank you or a more elaborate expression of gratitude. It can be in response to a specific behavior or a larger pattern of behavior on the other person’s part. It can be something that happened recently or something that goes way back. It can be someone you know personally or someone you only know of. It can be a close connection, such as a family member, or someone more remote, such as a mail carrier, an author, or your child’s teacher. These days, you have plenty of options for delivering your message. The vehicle for your gratitude could be a face-to-face meeting, a phone call, an e-mail, an instant message, a text message, or perhaps even a letter. Don’t wait for next Thanksgiving.

Step by Step / Updated 10-10-2023

Some types of jobs trigger more stress than others. What follows is a list of ten jobs or work settings that are judged to be some of the most stressful. These particular jobs were chosen because of the degree of dangers or hazards involved, the demands of the job, the amount of control the person has over what he or she does, the levels of responsibility required, and the number of hours worked. Your own job may not be on the list, but as you go through the list, try to determine which of the stressors these other jobs face can also be found in your job.

Article / Updated 10-10-2023

Believe it or not, your own thinking actively plays a role in creating your stress. At the heart of this distorted thinking are thinking errors, mistakes or distortions in your thinking that can result in excessive stress. See if you fall prey to any of the following thinking errors and find out what you can do to fix them. Blaming When you commit the error of blaming, you distortedly blame life conditions or other people as the source of your negative feelings or situation. You may think your life wouldn't be as bad as it is now if your parents had sent you to a better school or that it's your fault that your life is so unhappy. Now, while there may be some truth in these assertions, the blame is too global and doesn't recognize the influence of other factors. By blaming someone else or some external situation, you fail to take any responsibility for your role in contributing to a possible negative outcome. This error can be a major source of anger and resentment. To correct this error, ask yourself if there might be other factors that could be contributing to the problem and not just the situation or the other person. And even if someone or something else is at fault, focus on what you could do to change or fix the situation or problem. Regret orientation This error has you focusing on all the things you didn't do in the past. It's the "shoulda" error: You shoulda married Helen when you had the chance; or you shoulda bought IBM stock when it was 10 cents; or you shouldn't have said what you did! This isn't to say that most people don't harbor some regrets. They do. A healthy regret becomes a thinking error when you beat yourself up about it and hold onto that regret too tightly for too long. The antidote to a regret orientation is accepting what you've done and what has happened to you and then seeing if you can change the consequences. Inability to disconfirm This error prevents you from changing the way you think, despite new or additional information. For example, you feel that nobody really likes you. Someone points out that you do, in fact, have friends. You immediately reject that information for a variety of reasons: She only likes you because she grew up with you; or he likes you, but he doesn't know what you're really like. It's as if your mind is made up. Reactions like "You just don't understand" or "No, no. It's much more complicated than that!" may, at times, be reflective of this inability to disconfirm error. Ask yourself if perhaps your emotions are getting in the way and distorting your perceptions. Try to reframe the situation and see it in a more objective, realistic way. Discounting positives This error is a close cousin to the previous error. Here you minimize or trivialize any positive response to who you are or what you do. For example, when told that you look great, you believe and respond, "Oh, it's only the makeup!" Or, when you're doing a good job at work and being complimented, you respond, "It was luck," or "It wasn't hard at all. Anybody could have done it." Often this error reflects some aspects of low self-esteem, fearing that being seen positively isn't a reflection of who you really are, and that this positive recognition may create expectations of you in the future that you feel you may not be able to meet. To correct this error, step back and reframe your situation. Ask yourself if you are being too quick to minimize and discount your traits, abilities, and accomplishments.

Article / Updated 10-10-2023

This three-pronged model of dealing with stress provides you with a useful tool to help you understand the many ways you can manage and control your stress. You have three major choices. 1. Manage your stressors The events that trigger your stress can range from the trivial to the dramatic. They can be very minor — a hassle such as a broken shoelace, a crowded subway, or the world’s slowest check-out line. They can be more important — losing your wallet, hearing sharp words from your boss, or getting a bad haircut a week before your wedding. The list of more serious stressors can be even more dramatic — a divorce, a serious illness, the loss of a job, or the loss of a loved one. The number of potential stressors is endless. Changing your “A” means altering, minimizing, or eliminating your potential stressors. Following are some examples of what this may look like: Potential Stressor Modified Stressor A crowded commute Leaving home earlier or later Constant lateness Learning time-management skills Conflict with relatives Spending less time with them Anger about your golf game Taking some golf lessons A cluttered home Becoming better organized Dissatisfaction with your job Looking for another job High credit-card bills Spending less Missed deadlines Starting projects sooner Angst about the subway Taking the bus You might be saying, “Give me a break! What planet does this guy live on? I can’t quit my job! I have to see my annoying relatives!” And in many cases you’re right. Often you can’t change the world or even what goes on in your own house. You want to change what other people think or do? Good luck! But you can sometimes minimize or even eliminate a potential stressor. This ability is strengthened if you have the relevant skills. Changing your world isn’t always possible, but when it is, it’s often the fastest route to stress relief. 2. Change your thoughts Even if you can’t significantly change the situations and events that are triggering your stress, you can change the way you perceive them. What happens at “B” — your beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, and interpretations — is critical in determining how much stress you feel. Whenever you perceive a situation or event as overwhelming or beyond your control, or whenever you think you can’t cope, you experience stress. You may find that much, if not most, of your stress is self-induced, and you can learn to see things differently. So, if you’re waiting in a long line, perhaps you’re thinking, “I just can’t stand this! I hate waiting! Why can’t they figure out a better way of doing this? I hate lines! I hate lines! I hate lines!” Chances are, you’re creating more than a little stress for yourself. On the other hand, if you’re thinking, “Perfect! Now I have time to read these fascinating articles on alien babies and celebrity cellulite in the National Tattler,” you’re feeling much less stress. Your thinking plays a larger role than you may believe in creating your stress. 3. Manage your stress responses Even if you can’t eliminate a potential stressor and can’t change the way you view that situation, you can still manage your stress by mastering other skills. You can change the way you respond to stress. You can learn how to relax your body and quiet your mind. You can learn how to reverse the stress response — how to turn off your stress and recover a sense of calm.

Video / Updated 10-10-2023

With practice, you can teach yourself to relax on command by exercising various breathing techniques, tensing and relaxing targeted muscles, and by using imagery and suggestion. Follow this guided relaxation, preferably in a quiet place, and you'll feel the stress leaving your body.

Article / Updated 10-10-2023

A worker in a high-stress job typically faces tough demands but has little control over how the work gets done. Workers in these jobs report significantly more fatigue and exhaustion, trouble getting up in the morning, depression, nervousness, anxiety, and insomnia or disturbed sleep than workers in lower-stress jobs. Jobs with low decision latitude tend to be relatively unskilled. Employees under these conditions don't have the authority to make decisions about their work or work environment (including input about job location, flexibility of work time, the ability to telecommute, and so on). They have little opportunity to learn new skills and problem-solve on the job. Jobs with high psychological demand typically have heavy workloads (too much to do) and not enough time to do the work, as well as the pressures, conflicts, and responsibilities of the job. Picture that "I Love Lucy" episode where Lucy and Ethel work at a conveyer belt trying (unsuccessfully) to pack chocolates into their boxes, even as the chocolates come down the belt at increasingly rapid rates. Bottom line: High demands + little control = stress. Not surprisingly, when workers who face high demands are given more control and/or reduced workloads, their stress is lower. For years now, Dr. Robert Karasek and his colleagues at UMass, Lowell, have been researching job stress from a scientific perspective, attempting to determine what causes it. They've found two major variables that strongly correlate with a job being stressful: Decision latitude, or how much control workers have over their jobs Psychological demand, or the pressures of the job

Article / Updated 10-10-2023

Stressed? Imagine that. You'll probably feel better if you can release that stress-producing thought and replace it with a relaxing, calm image. Here's how to put your mind at ease: Find a place where you won't be disturbed for a few minutes and get comfortable, either sitting in a favorite chair or lying down. Think of an image — a place, a scene, a memory — that relaxes you. Use all your senses to bring that imagined scene to life. Ask yourself: What can I see? What can I hear? What can I smell? What can I feel? What can I taste? Let yourself become completely immersed in your image, allowing it to relax you completely. Use your breathing as a tool to help you deepen your relaxation. Simply breathe more slowly and more deeply.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-08-2023

Depression is a serious medical illness that is quite common but also quite treatable. First, figure out whether you’re just down in the dumps or truly suffering from depression, which can have a lot more symptoms than just feeling blue. If you’re depressed, know where you can find help. And know what you should and should not do to make yourself feel better.

Article / Updated 08-03-2023

Verbal communication is speaking to communicate your thoughts. To some, verbal communication comes naturally, but others may not feel comfortable speaking in certain circumstances. Listen to the article:Download audio You might get nervous speaking in front of large groups of people, or maybe you would just rather listen and observe when you’re with your friends. This is perfectly normal, but for those situations when you have to talk, you need to be able to communicate what’s on your mind. Effective verbal communication The following are qualities of effective verbal communication. Holding your tongue until you have thought about what you want to say. Consider what points you have to share before opening your mouth. Steer clear of embarrassing yourself or hurting someone with your sharp tongue when you speak without thinking. Speaking clearly. When you have something to say, make sure you say it understandably. If you are in a habit of mumbling, try to pronounce each syllable carefully so others get what you are trying to say. Otherwise, people will tire of trying to decipher your words and will move on.Also, be respectful of the environment you are in. Do not talk too loudly when it is not warranted. Be mindful of the speed at which you are talking, as well. People will not be able to follow along if you are a speed talker and leave them in the dust! Exuding a positive vibe. Express yourself in a welcoming manner — warm and enthusiastic. You do not want to be the negative person who is always complaining or criticizing others. Other people can find that exhausting to be around. People want to hang out with you if you are positive when you talk. Knowing your audience. I am willing to bet the way you talk to your close friends is different from the way you talk to your boss. Keep this in mind when communicating with different people and remember to remain appropriate with each audience. Asking for feedback during conversations. The only way you are going to know if someone is following along with what you say is by asking occasionally if they understand your point. You might say, “Does that make sense?” Being aware of the give and take of a conversation. There is a delicate balance between talking and listening. If you begin to hog the conversation and talk too much, your listener might get bored and stop paying attention. Brushing up on conversation starters It can be a little scary to begin a face-to-face conversation, especially with someone you just met. Beginning a new conversation by asking a question is a great way to show someone you are interested in them and to get the conversation flowing. Making “small talk” could lead to a more in-depth conversation. Questions to initiate a conversation include: How is your day? What brings you here? Can you believe this weather? What type of music do you like? Seen any good shows lately? What is your favorite food? If you show genuine concern for and interest in another person and how they answer the questions, a great conversation could begin flowing because they will feel like they are heard and in turn listen to you! Believe it or not, everyone likes to talk about themselves. If you aren’t sure what to say in a conversation with someone you just met, get them talking about themselves by asking questions. Before you know it, you’ll have gotten to know that person on a deeper level, and they’ll feel edified in the conversation with you. Speaking without words You don’t need to talk to communicate; a smirk or a smile can say volumes! Communicating without words is called nonverbal communication. Body language is what your body is involuntarily or voluntarily doing to communicate. Facial expressions, body posture, arm gestures, and eye movement can show your true feelings about a topic. Here are some examples of things body language can communicate: Smiling with arms by your side means you are happy and ready to contribute. Crossing your arms gives off a vibe that you are not interested in a topic, disagree, and are closed off to what is being said. I cross my arms a lot when I’m cold. If you’re like me, it’s important to be aware of what your posture might be conveying to other people. Biting your nails or playing with your hair shows others that you are nervous or anxious. Resting your hand on your cheek shows you are eager for knowledge or you are evaluating your thoughts. Rubbing both hands together can mean that you have lost your patience or are nervous about what is to come. Avoiding eye contact shows you could be guilty, shy, or bored. Resting your head on your palms shows stress, sadness, or exasperation. Tilting your head to one side shows interest in the topic being presented or curiosity. Placing your hands on your hips shows confidence and authority. The direction your feet are facing communicates your feelings about the conversation you're having. If your feet are facing the person, it means you are interested; if they are facing away from the conversation, it means you are trying to get out of there! Leaning away or back could mean disinterest or even fear. When your words do not match your nonverbal cues, you could be giving off mixed messages. What you truly think and feel will always find a way to show. After all, actions speak louder than words. However, if a physical or mental impairment keeps you from mastering these body language expectations, just do the best that you can.