The Caring Catalyst

ANXIETY BUSTER

ChuckBehrens — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 11:00:27 +0000

I threw this out to a group that I was presenting to recently:
“HEY, HAVE ANY OF YOU WORRIED ABOUT WORRYING?
Everyone kind of laughed and began hushing to a few mufflecd chuckles as hands went up in the air. . .
WELL,
ARE YOU GUILTY?
I mean, it’s kind of hard to
BE THERE
for someone if you’re worrying about worrying
even you’re worrying about them. . .

If You’re Feeling Anxious,
Try This 2,000-Year-Old, Neuroscience-Backed Hack. . .

Julia Hotz from Time Magazine took a deep dive into our worrying. She reported that some 2,000 years ago, in the throes of a targeted chase to his death, a Roman philosopher named Seneca had a thought: “what’s the worst that can happen?”

Today, a growing body of research finds that a Seneca-inspired exercise—inviting the worried brain to literally envision its worst fears realized—is one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety. In scientific terms, that exercise is called imaginal exposure, or “facing the thing you’re most afraid of” by summoning it in your mind, says Dr. Regine Galanti, the founder of Long Island Behavioral Psychology, and a licensed clinical psychologist who regularly integrates imaginal exposure into her therapy.

As a subset of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), imaginal exposure relies on simple logic. Just as anxiety is created in your head, it can also be squashed in your head. And even though the most effective anxiety treatment is administered by a mental health professional over a long period of time, a growing brigade of psychologists are finding ways to help people do imaginal exposure in their own homes, on their own Two thousand years before imaginal exposure would be proven one of science’s strongest anxiety treatments, dozens of Greek and Roman philosophers had the same intuition about the theoretical value of putting worry in perspective.

In a letter to his friend Lucilius, around 64 A.D., Seneca wrote: “There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes, since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you.”

Dr. Marc Antoine Crocq, a psychiatrist at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in eastern France, says that worldview had to do with their religious beliefs.

“They believed in a god (Zeus or Jupiter) who was rather distant and not interested in the daily life of humans,” says Crocq, who has researched the topic. “So they tried to understand the world and human functioning with a more materialist scientific approach.”

The philosophers’ conclusion, Crocq says, was that “pathological anxiety is a mental representation”—and therefore, something that humans can address themselves.

Dr. Stefan Hofmann, a professor of psychology and director of the Psychotherapy & Emotion Research Laboratory at Boston University, has proven this empirically and, like Crocq, has studied the theory’s deep historical roots. He references the ancient Greek philosopher, Epictetus, who wrote: “Men are not moved by things, but the view they take of them.”

As Hofmann explains, “The idea [behind that quote] is that we are always engaging with our environment to make sense of it, and so it really matters how we perceive things. Anxiety itself is a healthy, adaptive response to an environmental threat, but sometimes, those perceptions are maladaptive, if they’re not actually putting you in danger.” He points to the way people commonly fear spiders or snakes, or even social situations. “Sometimes we respond with emotional distress in situations where it doesn’t make sense to feel emotional distress.”

Correcting those maladaptive perceptions, Hofmann says, is at the heart of CBT, a practice he describes as “toning down the intensity of the emotional states” that follow anxiety, in order to feel better. When Dr. Aaron Beck, who died last week, coined the approach in the 1960s, he was interested in helping people recognize how their thoughts were often separate from reality.

And though each therapist may differ in precisely how they administer CBT, the elements of imaginal exposure—confronting the source of anxiety-provoking thoughts, and developing healthier thought patterns around them—is a common entry point.

In the decades since, CBT has consistently been considered one of the most effective practices to manage anxiety in the long term. Hofmann conducted one of the most widely cited literature reviews on its efficacy. And imaginal exposure, the small Seneca-inspired slice of CBT, is associated with a wide spectrum of mental health gains, including reduced worry and negative emotion, improved symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorderand increased ability to engage in the once-feared activity

Still, not all people have access to professionally-administered cognitive therapy. One study of 2,300 psychotherapists in the U.S. found that only 69% use CBT when treating anxiety and depression. And then there’s the problem of access: one Census Bureau survey indicates that more than one-third of Americans live in areas lacking mental health professionals. The problem has worsened over the past year. Just as the pandemic triggered unprecedented rates of anxiety, it also led to a shortage of therapists available to treat it. But even without professional supervision, psychologist Dr. Regine Galanti says there are simple CBT-informed techniques anyone can integrate on their own.

Before encouraging people to actively confront their worry, Galanti starts with a simple question: why is it there in the first place?

“People don’t often stop and think about what it is that they’re afraid of, or even that they’re afraid at all,” she says, describing a patient who’s scared of dogs and, as a result, avoids them.

After identifying the cause of someone’s fear, Galanti focuses on validating the emotion—not diminishing it or reassuring the patient. “We think naturally when someone’s anxious to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s gonna be okay,’ but anxiety is not logical,” she says. “Often when we feel anxiety coming on, we do everything we can to get away from it, but we’re rarely successful, since we don’t follow it through to its logical conclusion. So these little worries just pile up, and you never actually give it the time and space to see what happens when it is there.”

Take, for example, the patient afraid of dogs. Galanti did something that perhaps seemed counterintuitive: inviting the woman to spend time with a dog, so she could face the fear head on. That worked well, Galanti says, but what about when people’s fears—like the death of a loved one—aren’t as plainly testable? “It’s about learning to handle uncertainty that we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says. “But how can we orient ourselves to the present to say it’s not happening now?”

That advice was particularly apt during the early days of the pandemic, when uncertainty skyrocketed. At the time, Galanti advised people to set aside 15 minutes of worry time for themselves.

“Anxious thoughts tend to take over your thinking, and it ends up being a game of whack-a-mole—when you knock one down, another pops up,” she says. “So this strategy focuses on not postponing your worries, [instead] setting up a time where you can worry all you want.”

Through this strategy, Galanti encourages people to jot down whatever is causing them anxiety, and then to pick a dedicated time—ideally not before bed—to revisit those concerns. “The reason why this works is that it sets boundaries, so when a worry comes up at 9 a.m., you can say, ‘Hey, not now, your time is coming.’”

She says people rarely use the full 15-minutes of allotted worry time, but it helps put anxiety into perspective. ”Sometimes when you hit your worry list, you might find that the thing that bugged you at 9 a.m. that you thought would be the end of the world is actually not bugging you anymore at all.”
SO. . .
are you worried about worrying. . . ?
WHAT’S THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN
Psssssssssssssssssssssssst:
SAYING IT WON’T HAPPEN
doesn’t make it so
. . .THINK ON IT
for a solid planned 15 minutes
not an out-of-control-anxiety-filled
24 hours
and then
RINSE & REPEAT

PEOPLE PLEASER

ChuckBehrens — Wed, 24 May 2023 11:00:35 +0000

It’s really sneaky, in fact for me, it starts out with this one simple thing: CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG? I mean we all share the same biology can’t we just get along and make sure that we live and let live and if at any give opportunity, give someone the benefit of the doubt? Maybe that’s what starts out for me, being a perpetually habitual lifelong people pleaser. . .and just when I think I am way past that and though it’s on my map, it’s in a place I use to be, but no longer am until I’m suddenly NOT. . .

That urge to BE ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE THAT I MAY SAVE SOME AND SERVE ALL still JACK-OUT-OF-THE-BOX jumps out of me; hence, I’m always interested in any information that identifies the PEOPLE PLEASER in me and more, hints at what to do about it

People-pleasers are at a higher risk

of burnout,

says Harvard-trained psychologist—

how to spot the signs. . .

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

The price of being a people-pleaser can be steep — especially for your mental health.

People-pleasers are especially prone to burnout at work, says Debbie Sorensen, a Harvard-trained clinical psychologist based in Denver.

″They tend to be very kind, thoughtful people, which makes it that much harder for them to set boundaries, not take on too much work or get emotionally invested in their jobs,” says Sorensen.

And being a constant yes-person is a double-edged sword: You might feel guilty telling others “no,” and resentment every time you say “yes.”

You don’t need to let go of your people-pleasing tendencies entirely to avoid burnout — past research has shown that being polite, friendly and supportive at work are all important traits that can help you be more productive and happier in your job.

The difference, Sorensen explains, is that people-pleasers tend to have difficulty setting boundaries, which can be “really exhausting” and lead to “chronic stress,” she warns.

3 signs people-pleasing is hurting your mental health and career

If you frequently take on more responsibility than you can comfortably manage because you’re afraid of disappointing someone, your people-pleasing tendencies could be pushing you to the brink of burnout.

While people-pleasing looks different for everyone at work, Sorensen says there are three common signs to watch out for:

Saying “yes” to every request for help, even if it interrupts your own work
Disregarding your feelings when something is done or said that upsets you because you fear potential conflict
Agreeing to unrealistic assignment deadlines

People-pleasing isn’t just dangerous for your career because it can lead to burnout — it can make you lose sight of your own needs and professional goals.

“When you are constantly putting other people’s needs before your own, it becomes that much harder to focus on your work and advance in your career,” says Sorenson.

How to stop being a people-pleaser at work and avoid burnout

The first step in alleviating overwhelm and burnout is learning how to set boundaries.

“It can be uncomfortable to set boundaries at work, but next time you’re tempted to pile more responsibilities on your plate, pause and ask yourself if you really want, or need, to take that on. And fight the knee-jerk reaction to say ‘yes’ to everything,” says Sorensen.

Curbing burnout and letting go of the habits that might be doing you more harm than good is an imperfect process that takes time, says Sorensen, so be consistent in your efforts, but try to avoid the pitfalls of self-criticism.

Don’t look at saying “no” as a reflection of your self-worth or capabilities. Instead, think of setting boundaries as you protecting your energy, goals and priorities so you can be a more effective employee, says Sorensen.

“You just have to keep tuning in and reminding yourself that time off from work, in any amount, is really, really important,” she adds, whether it’s resisting the urge to work after-hours or taking a longer lunch break. “We all deserve the time and space to recharge.”

BEING A CARING CATALYST doesn’t mean fulfilling every need, every time, it means taking the Light of your day and sharing as it has been shared; no need to ever make the SIMPLE, COMPLICATED–EVER

LIGHTING ANOTHER’S CANDLE IS THE SUREST WAY TO MAKE SURE THAT NEITHER OF YOU WILL EVER WALK IN DARKNESS. . .or suffer from BURNOUT

A LETTER TO YOUR HIGH SCHOOL SELF

ChuckBehrens — Mon, 22 May 2023 11:00:24 +0000

With Proms mostly over and High School Graduations very much on the the horizon, somehow this song, these words seem very appropriate. . .

Letter To My High School Self (Be Kind) By JJ Heller, David Heller, and Ginny Owens

I’m writing you this letter ‘Cause I’ve walked in your shoes I hope that you will read this When you’re feeling confused

The hardest part of high school Is living in between The person you’re becoming And the kid you used to be

Dizzy from highs and lows You can’t see which way to go I’ve been there too Here’s what you do

Be kind Be strong Believe You belong Love God Work hard Just be who you are

You want to feel important But don’t be fooled by fame ‘Cause everyone who loves you Already knows your name

And when you have a house someday There won’t be trophies on display There’s so much more Worth living for