trail mix
If you are looking for different ways to get started with improving your mental health right now, then check out this Trail Mix page.
Trail Mix offers a variety of videos and articles about current trends in mental health, coping skills you can start using immediately, and the most up to date research on how our brains work.
THINKING ERRORS
Thinking errors are used in everyday life. The idea behind thinking errors is that thoughts impact feelings, which impact behaviors. For example, if a teacher asks you to stay after class, your first thought might be “I’m in trouble” or “I did something wrong.” This thought then causes you to feel anxious, which in-turn causes you to lose focus on work and can create a defensive response. The goal is then to start catching these thinking errors and come up with a positive alternative to the negative thought. For example, the teacher just might want to check in with you to see how you are doing, ask your help for something, or give you some advice. You might not believe these new thoughts right away, but the more you catch these negative thoughts and come up with the positive alternative, the more they come true. It just takes practice, like learning any new skill.
Click on the button below to see the different types of thinking errors.
EMDR
This is how EMDRIA explains EMDR.
“EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a form of therapy that helps people heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences. EMDR therapy is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and used to resolve many issues and challenges. It is an empirically supported treatment for acute and chronic posttraumatic stress disorder. EMDR therapy has helped countless people of all ages to resolve psychological distress.”
One of the main ideas behind EMDR is that our senses pick up things from the environment (things we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste) and that information is passed to our frontal cortex (where our brains make meaning and process information) and then that information is passed to long term memory where it is stored. When we experience a major stressor, we go into fight/flight mode (anxiety, fear, stress), which causes our frontal cortex to shut down or not be as active and as a result that sensory information cannot pass through the frontal cortex so it is stored in the working memory. How this can be seen through an example in real life is, if you go out on a hike with some friends, it is a warm sunny day, you are walking through some tall grass and you get bit by a snake. Now, the next time any of those sensory pieces (warm sun, feeling tall grass, or seeing tall grass, some kind of smell)become activated it could cause you to go into fight/flight mode. The reason the mind works this way is because it wants to give you a “heads up” that something bad or difficult happened the last time one of these senses were triggered. EMDR then helps to allow that “stuck” sensory information pass through the front cortex so that your brain can process that information in a normal healthy way.
Check out this video below for a more detailed look at what EMDR is all about.
THINKING ABOUT STRESS IN A POSITIVE WAY
Stress often carries a negative connotation with it, but when we are in a stress response it is actually a good thing. During a stress response we get a shot of adrenaline helping us fight harder/run faster, our hearts are pumping faster sending blood to all of our organs so they are acting in their top performance, we are also breathing faster which helps us get more oxygen. This all helps to prepare us for a challenge. If we can view stress as preparing us for challenge instead of something that is debilitating it creates the biology of courage.
Check out this video below for more details on how we need to be viewing stress.
THE POWER OF POSITIVE THOUGHT
I often talk about this concept known as the pink elephant. If I say, “don’t think about a pink elephant,” what just popped into your mind? Was it a pink elephant? The answer is always yes. We need to stop telling ourselves what not to do and start telling ourselves what we do want to be doing. For example, instead of telling yourself, “don’t get stressed out,” try saying, “be calm and relaxed.” Thinking about things in a more positive way helps to create new connections in our minds, which makes us more positive. This happens because instead of our brains only noticing the negative they notice the positive.
Check out this video below for Shawn Achor’s talk.
HOW TRAUMA CAN LEAD TO ADDICTION
This video goes into details about how addiction is a habit that is created as a way to heal from trauma.
