When your time is at a premium but you still wish to relax, here is a great, abbreviated and progressive muscle relaxation technique to relax your body quickly. Begin this relaxation training session with a 10-minute Mindful Breathing exercise (time permitting). Shorten the session as desired. The same muscle groupsContinue Reading
Knowing the damaging effects of stress, one of the simplest ways of reducing and managing stress, requiring no expensive equipment or membership, is relaxation. More than sixty studies have found the relaxation procedures can help alleviate headaches, high blood pressure (hypertension), anxiety and insomnia (Stretter & Kupper, 2002). One suchContinue Reading
As much as parents try to protect their children from traumatic events, it is sometimes just impossible. Children experience tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and auto collisions just as adults do, resulting in millions of kids and teens having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and millions more having undiagnosed PTSD. PressuresContinue Reading
People who have personally witnessed or survived a disaster are most influenced by traumatic stress. Twenty percent of the people who lived near the Twin Towers in New York City suffered serious stress disorders. Even people who witnessed those events from a distance were traumatized. Over forty percent of theContinue Reading
During the next 40 years, you will eat about 20 tons of food. If you chose to increase your daily intake by just .01 of an ounce more than required for your energy needs, you would gain 24 pounds (Martin Et al., 1991). The Hypothalamus monitors levels of the body’sContinue Reading
A person begins to sneeze after seeing a flower on a restaurant table not realizing the flower is made of plastic. Experiences like this hint that stress is not the only psychological influence on a body’s ailments. Simple classical conditioning may also influence our body. If conditioning (seeing the flower)Continue Reading
Our bodies respond to stress with a two-prong system. The first system, the sympathetic nervous system, prompts the release of the stress hormones Epinephrine and Norepinephrine from nerve endings in the inner part of the Adrenal glands. The second system is the Cerebral Cortex, which works through the Hypothalamus andContinue Reading
Males like looking at pornography – a seemingly pleasurable experience. Naked women are interesting and arousing. When they see sexual images it stimulates sexual arousal. When there is a male performer in the scene the viewer can vicariously participate in the sexual act. If self-arousal is used while viewing pornographyContinue Reading
Avoidance of fearful stimuli is one of the hallmarks of almost all anxiety disorders. Anxiety is similar to fear in some ways. It is having a state of apprehension, dread, or uneasiness based on an unclear threat. Anxiety can be both a feeling and a cognitive function. A double whammyContinue Reading
We all feel anxiety from time to time, but anxiety that is out of proportion to a situation may reveal a serious problem. People who suffer with anxiety-related problems feel threatened and often can’t do anything constructive about it. They struggle just to try to control themselves. There are fiveContinue Reading