Therapy That Works...

Cowardice and Self Control - By Chris Gearing

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Watch Dr Sylvia Gearing on CBS 11 discuss how cowardice and survival may be related to self control - click here.

Why would someone in a position of responsibility abandon the people that he was supposed to protect?

There is a big difference between what people say they will do and what they actually do, especially when high emotion are in play. None of us want to think that we would act like this ship’s captain. We all want to think that our duty would keep us on track irrespective of our own welfare.

However, science tells us something different. In real life, when there is a potential life threatening situation and when strangers surround us, many of us would run. Our moral compass fails completely. We may surrender the responsibility for rescue to others—what psychologists call diffusion of responsibility. As in this case, we might choose to escape and call it something else (I was going for help!), but really we consider nothing but our own survival.

Do you have any idea of what went on in the captains’ mind when he jumped ship?

He was probably in the moment and totally overwhelmed by events he could barely decipher. The bottom line is that there was a total lack of self-control. In fact, it is a well-known axiom in psychology that most major problems that we create for ourselves boil down to a simple failure of self-control. We say something we shouldn’t say, we spend money we shouldn’t spend, or we take that drink we shouldn’t have. No consequences are important when emotion overrides reason.

Self Control Lapses Share These Characteristics:

Impulsive Behavior—We act before we think

Emotionally Driven Decision Making--When the events are happening quickly and unexpectedly, the emotional brain can hijack our analytical brain.

Consequences are Irrelevant

The Only Goal Is To Escape the Immediate Problem

What does a courageous person look like?

Courage Under Fire: Courageous people may look ordinary but their actions are extraordinary. Under fire, they choose to perform the extraordinary, heroic act even if their personal welfare is jeopardized. For instance, Captain Sullenberger was an unknown pilot until that fateful day on the Hudson when he heroically landed his plane.

Cognitive Self Control: Heroic people remain focused and block out distractions while they solve the problem in front of them. They remain proactive, not reactive.

Emotional Self Control: Every person has the ability to do extraordinary things, but true heroes are able to show tremendous emotional self-control in bad situations. Most of us would be overwhelmed but their emotional control allows them to move through adversity and solve the problem.

What can we do to make sure that we are stronger when adversity strikes?

Conserve Your Energy: Depleted people make poor decisions under fire. Live a deliberate life and don’t procrastinate. The mind tends to grow more negative when we chronically fail to follow through on goals.

Build Self Control Before the Crisis: People who rank high in self-control report the least amounts of stress. They practice leading orderly, disciplined lives. When adversity strikes, they are ready to make the tough decisions and to solve the issue.

Play Offense with Your Stress: Very stressed people make the worst decisions when bad things happen. Use your self-control today to not just get through a crisis but to avoid them as much as you can.

Comments (342) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

Suicide and Teens - By Chris Gearing

Monday, January 16, 2012

With the shocking news this weekend that a Texas teenage committed suicide by jumping off the 18th floor of the Dallas Hyatt hotel, many Americans are worried about their own teens and the risk of suicide.

So, why would a teenager choose to end his life?

Feeling Hopeless: Suicide becomes an option for a young person when all hope is lost. In fact, hopelessness is the attitude most highly correlated with those who attempt to end their lives. Suicide has become the third leading cause of death for kids between the ages of 10 and 24.

Motivations for Suicide are Complex: The motivations for either attempting or completing suicide are complex but the main motivations include a desire to escape depression and loss, debilitating anxiety or a situation they regard as being unsolvable such as being bullied or abused. The older the child is, the more likely it is that the suicide is connected to their own interpersonal conflicts.

Are our children more depressed or are we just better at detecting depression?

Both statements are true since this generation's children are more depressed but we also have more safeguards in place to detect the depression. That being said, depressed kids are vastly underserved in our society with very few being seen by a psychologist. We know that depression has increased tenfold over the last century and strikes a full decade earlier than it did fifty years ago. Severe depression reoccurs most of the time—about 50% of the time. In fact, The Center for Disease Control now reports that anti-depressants are the most prescribed drugs in America. We are much more likely to battle depression and other mental illness for our entire lives.

What about those teens who are depressed and make attempts to hurt themselves but are never brought to the attention of medical professionals?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 150, 000 kids between the ages of 10 and 24 receive medical attention at the emergency room because of self-inflicted injuries. But that is when the denial kicks in. Very few of them actually follow up with psychological treatment or counseling. They tend to downplay what happened. They feel that they just need to get their child home and figure this out. No matter what recommendations are made by doctors or other healthcare professionals, families tend to blow it off. Kids can be very depressed and hide it well.

However, the numbers do change after the second attempt. Families do seek treatment after a second suicide attempt as they begin to realize that this is more of a chronic issue and is not a fleeting crisis.

Are there gender differences in completed suicides?

Eighty four percent of completed suicides are committed by boys, even though girls are much more likely to attempt. Suicide remains a health threat for men throughout adulthood with four times as many males dying by suicide as females. The reason for this large gap is that boys and men use much more violent and lethal means of committing suicide with guns, cars, or in this case - jumping off of a building. Girls and women choose much quieter means of suicide such as poison or overdosing.

This country has a double standard of masculinity. We want our boys to be strong and courageous and virile and yet have access to their emotions. Too many boys are confused about how to express their feelings. Anger is the only emotion some boys feel that they can express. When depression strikes, they are more reluctant to admit that they are vulnerable and that they are struggling. Depression is a progressive illness and can lead to suicide if it becomes too severe and too intense, but it can also be treated and success rates rise exponentially depending on how early in the depression the child begins treatment.

Here are some warning signs if you are worried about your teen:

  • History of previous suicide attempts
  • Family history of suicide
  • History of Depression or other mental illness
  • Alcohol or drug use
  • Stressful life event or loss like a relationship breakup
  • Easy access to lethal means
  • Exposure to the suicidal behavior of others
  • Increased withdrawal from others
  • More angry outbursts
  • Increased Need for Sleep, Low Appetite
  • Dramatic Mood Swings
Comments (462) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

How To Not Overeat When You're Dieting - By Chris Gearing

Monday, January 16, 2012

Watch Dr Sylvia on YouTube explain how to stay on course with your diet - click here.

Worried about wreaking your diet? Here are a few tips to help you stay on course:

Smaller Plate, Smaller Portion: When fixing your plate, try using a smaller sized plate. Researchers find that Americans compulsively clean their plates, so a smaller plate means there’s less to eat!

One Too Many: I recommend to my patients that they only make themselves one plate of food at every meal. Go ahead and make the most of it, but with repeated trips to the buffet or the kitchen, you are more likely to overeat.

Cut Out The Snacking!: We usually aren’t counting as we eat our third, fourth, or fifth cookie, but we just keep snacking away! Try to keep the snacks as far away as you can! As the saying goes – “out of sight, out of mind.”

Know Your Enemy: Try to eat foods that are not only better for you, but will also fill you up faster. Turkey or chicken are always the best choices for a high protein, low calorie solution. A good rule of thumb is that the simpler a dish is to make, there are usually less calories in it.

SOURCE:

MensHealth.com

Comments (288) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

Friday the 13th - Fact or Fiction? - By Chris Gearing

Friday, January 13, 2012

Watch Dr Sylvia Gearing on CBS 11 talk about Friday the 13th and superstitions in general - click here.

Why does Friday the 13th have such power over us?

Life is really uncertain and superstitions give us a way to be sure about something in our lives. The day Friday has been picked on for hundreds of years and has been considered unlucky since the 1400s in Europe, although no one knows why. In addition, the number 13 is also considered unlucky around the world so when you combine the two of them, it is a pretty powerful effect for a lot of us.

The truth is that most of us have our own superstitions even though most people won’t admit to them. Superstitions usually start in family traditions that are passed down generation to generation. Most of these stories are meant to prove a point and they are in every family and in every culture, even dating back to the ancient Mayans!

Are any of us fighting back against being superstitious?

A new trend though is to embrace the superstition and make it your own. You don’t allow the superstition to control you. You control the superstition. As a result, some people go out of their way to do something that involves risk such as finally asking that special girl out or skydiving or even getting married on this date. It makes a lot of people feel empowered to not give into the fear but to push directly against that fear.

Why do we want to believe in superstition so much?

Cause and Effect: Human beings fundamentally like to explain events to ourselves. We insist on making sense of something even if it is random. Sometimes things just happen but we like to wrap events up in theories and that is when superstitions get going. Think of this way, somewhere, sometime, long ago, someone had a really bad day on Friday the 13th. Other people heard about it, everyone abandoned reality, and the superstition was invented.

Self Protection: Superstitions give us all a lot of false security. Nobody likes it when bad things happen to them. We want to think that we have done everything to protect ourselves, even if it involves superstition. As a result, we will do whatever is required if we can avoid bad luck. So, if we are told that we need to avoid walking under ladders and not break any mirrors, most of us view it as a small price to pay for a little more comfort and confidence.

Proximity to Trauma: If you have ever experienced a traumatic situation, you may be more anxious in general and you may turn to superstitions to help mitigate the fear. Knowing that you have a lock on what date or object to avoid gives reassurance that you can avoid more trauma.

When does being superstitious go too far?

For most of us, it’s all fun and games and we like to laugh about our superstitions but some people may take this too seriously. They begin to experience overwhelming anxiety around superstitions. They lock their lives down to avoid the superstitious trigger. You know that things have gone too far when the following things are present:

Vulnerability to Anxiety: Some people's brains are built to generate anxiety. Obsessing and reviewing the trigger becomes rampant and they begin to map out the world according to what is dangerous and what is safe.

Overwhelmed with Stress Hormones: Remember that your brain does not differentiate between real events and fantasized events and will generate the constant warnings to keep you safe. That adrenaline and cortisol for fighting and fleeing will keep your system in a continuous alert state.

Loss of Critical Thinking: Failing to keep the situation in perspective and grounded in reality means that you are losing objectivity and are failing to maintain perspective about what you can do to protect yourself. You may be thinking in an illogical manner or overestimating your control over events.

Here's what you can do if you or someone you know is taking superstitions too seriously?

Get the Facts: Get some distance on your superstition by reading about where the superstition began and why. Most of them have great stories that are absolutely fascinating, but they have nothing to do with reality.

Healthy Habits: Make sure to keep living your life in a healthy way– get consistent sleep, eat healthy meals, and make sure to see friends and family often. Conversations with friends can foster a sense of normalcy and provide great outlets for sharing worries and releasing tension.

Maintain a Hopeful Outlook: Your mental health is one of the keys to staying healthy. Anxiety leads to state of alarm, which can be exhausting. Ironically, by stressing about the superstition, you make yourself more vulnerable to it. Distract yourself and break up the negative thinking.

Comments (199) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

Teens On Fad Diets Can End Up Gaining Weight! - By Chris Gearing

Friday, January 13, 2012

Dr Sylvia Gearing on CBS 11 describing why fad dieting may actually make American children GAIN weight - click here.

Why do our adolescent girls struggle so much with their weight?

Images of Perfection: Previous generations of girls have always struggled with body image but these issues are at an all time high. Our girls are inundated by images everywhere of physical perfection especially with our celebrity culture. The demands for excellence on girls have gotten worse over the past two decades leading to weight concerns in girls as young as six years old. But channeling energy into appearance and away from normal developmental tasks can disrupt, if not sabotage a young girl’s self esteem and ability to tolerate stress.

Helicopter Parents: The current generation of parents is full of parents who are well meaning but who are micro- managing their children's emotions and lives. Being "ordinary" or just “okay” has lost its allure for too many of today's parents who insist on their child not experiencing the ordinary problems of living. Frustration, rejection and even failure seem to be harder on the parents sometimes than it is on the kids. They project their own anxiety onto kids who just need to figure it out sometimes on their own. Over focusing by the parent makes the girl more anxious and the weight is one more report card she has to face.

Mothers with Eating Issues: Many mothers have struggled for years with their own weight so those issues are easily taught and inherited.

Epidemic Rates of Anxiety and Depression: Girls get depressed at twice the rates of boys when they enter puberty so eating problems flourish when mood disorders hit. Depression hits a full decade sooner than it did a generation ago and it re-occurs 50% of the time.

Why would girls get into this kind of fad dieting so early in life?

Trying To Compete with Other Girls: Many girls are influenced not only by the images in the movies and on TV of women, but also their peers. Many parents are paying for plastic surgery and liposuction for their children these days, and many young women can’t keep up. They instead turn to fad or extreme diets to drop the weight.

Get Slim Quick! Many young women find fad and extreme diets alluring. They just have to suffer for a short amount of time to be beautiful – they can tough it out for that kind of reward. But many girls don’t realize what kind of serious physical effects these diets can have on them and how on-again-off-again dieting is actually very unhealthy.

Why don’t fad diets work well?

Short Term Weight Loss: Many fad diets may actually work, but what girls fail to realize is that once they are off the diet – they will usually gain back the weight with a vengeance.

Lifestyle Change: Without a change of lifestyle and most importantly, without a fundamental change in attitude, any diet that works will only work while you are on it. The only way to truly lose weight and never find it again is to adopt a completely different, healthy lifestyle that combines food, rest, and exercise.

What can parents do to help their children?

Positive Example: Model what you want them to see and be. Mothers especially are incredibly influential for their daughters so be careful what behaviors you are modeling. What you say and how you handle yourself emotionally and with food will set the gold standard for your daughter.

Educate Your Daughters: Most kids don’t truly understand nutrition and positive eating habits. Make sure that they have all the information and understand how what they eat truly affects their bodies and their lives. Introduce healthy foods that are lower in calories but filling, and encourage him to drink a ton of water! Teach your children what is good to eat and how to stay away from foods that will pack on the weight.

Positive Eating Messages: Encourage positive attitudes toward your child's new self-image. Do not shame or embarrass him, but focus on the new body you can build together.

New Self-Soothing Techniques: For many kids, food is an escape from anxiety and stress. Emotionally coach your child to deal with his negative emotions by talking them out. Remind him that setbacks are temporary and that he can cope with whatever he is facing. Overeating no longer has to be a coping mechanism when you are more emotionally resilient.

Distract From Hunger: Begin to spend time with your child to develop new coping skills that will distract him from his hunger. For example, before dinner, go out for a brisk 20- to 30-minute walk. It is a great appetite suppressant and will increase his endorphins.

Source:

The work of Dr Martin Seligman

"Generation Me" by Jean Twenge

Comments (254) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

Never Eat Alone - By Chris Gearing

Friday, January 13, 2012

Watch Dr Sylvia Gearing on YouTube explain why you should never eat alone - click here.

Loneliness is rampant in today’s society, and it has been found to increase rates of depression, anxiety, and even rates of suicide. However, there may be another reason to seek the company of others.

I recommend to my clients that they try to never eat alone. Not only will they benefit from having some good conversation, but this simple technique has also been found to help with weight loss. When we eat with another person, we are more accountable for our food choices. In addition, we tend to have a conversation that can create breaks in between bites and slows the pace of eating. When we eat slower, we feel full faster and we end up eating less food! And since you are trying to carry on a conversation, you’ll also drink more water, which helps with hydration and also fills up your stomach!

Source:

MensHealth.com

Comments (140) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

Three Quick Weight Loss Tips - By Chris Gearing

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Watch Dr Sylvia Gearing on YouTube describe three psychological and physical weight loss tips - click here.

Here are three quick tips to help turbo-charge your weight loss:

1.) Smaller Portions, Smaller Bites

Weight loss experts universally recommend that you use smaller plates and utensils when preparing, serving, and eating meals. Americans tend to eat everything on their plates and they usually feel full afterwards, no matter how much food they actually ate! So, if you have a smaller plate – you can trick your stomach into eating less. In addition, smaller utensils will make you take smaller bites, which can make you feel full faster.

2.) Keep Your Dishes Off The Table

It happens all the time at family dinners, mom puts the serving dishes on the table for easy access and second helpings. However, studies have found that keeping serving dishes in one room and eating in another helped with weight loss. Keeping extra food on the table increased portion sizes, lead to snacking, and could cause you to eat another helping of casserole, even if you already feel full.

3.) Spice Things Up

Recent research has found that making your food spicy, whether with hot sauce or peppers, sends neurological signals to your brain that make you feel full. It will also make you drink more water which will help you stay hydrated and fill up quicker.

Check back tomorrow to find out a great trick to eat less at every meal!

Source:

MensHealth.com

Comments (169) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

Your Stomach Says Relax! - By Chris Gearing

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Watch Dr. Sylvia Gearing on YouTube explain why your stomach wants you to relax before you eat - click here.

In our daily hustle, most of us grab meals on the go – usually from fast food restaurants or from the freezer aisle at the supermarket. However, eating when you’re in a hurry can cause you to overeat and accidentally choose higher calorie foods instead of making healthy choices.

Before you leave your house or office to go catch a meal, take five minutes and relax. Try relaxation techniques like remembering a wonderful vacation, watching a few minutes of television, or even some deep breathing exercises. Taking a few moments to calm down can restore your self-control and hopefully, you’ll eat slower and you’ll make better decisions when ordering!

Make sure to check back tomorrow for three of my best weight loss tips!

Source:

MensHealth.com

Comments (177) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share

How To Set Effective Weight Loss Goals - By Chris Gearing

Monday, January 09, 2012

Watch Dr. Sylvia Gearing teach you how to set effective weight loss goals on YouTube - click here.

Did you know that on average, Americans gain around 5 to 10 pounds around the holidays?

With stats like that, weight loss is regularly the number one resolution on New Year’s Eve, but most people don’t follow through. In fact, a condition called “Helplessness” can make them feel like there is no hope for change, so they never even try. But here’s a quick tip to help you stay on track with your weight loss goals and avoid feeling hopeless along the way.

Instead of setting a goal to lose a large amount of weight, make smaller goals that can easily be accomplished in small amounts of time. For instance, I recommend to my clients that they set a goal of losing one pound every week or every other week. It’s a small and easily attainable goal that can be accomplished with just a few small changes in their lifestyle. All you would need to do is skip dessert or make a couple trips to the gym. Instead of constantly worrying about the larger goal or feeling like they will never get there, they can focus on making a small change - right here, right now.

Check back tomorrow to find out which piece of electronics is causing you to overeat!

Source:

WeightWatchers.com

Comments (352) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Bookmark and Share