I bet your parents told you that cursing was inappropriate, ill-mannered, and forbidden. I bet they taught you that profanity was for punks. Guess what? They lied.

In a way, your parents did you a favor because they helped you learn that profanity was special—to be stored in a separate part of the brain. This gave profanity an extra punch—extraordinary meaning. Because people are taught that profanity is taboo, we associate it with something exceptional.

Think about it. When you stub your toe and yell, “Shit!” it hurts a little less. Research shows that using profanity when we feel physical pain actually reduces the pain. Shut the front door because it also works with emotional pain.

This is the premise behind Move on Motherf*cker, or MOMF (pronounced Mom-f). MOMF is the mashup of cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness techniques with positivity and profanity to induce laughter and cathartic relief of emotional pain.

In brief, here is how MOMF works:

When something bad happens, you pay attention to your self-talk and all the negative things you say to yourself based on you distorted core beliefs. You notice how you are choosing to play the motherf*cker in the situation, creating your own suffering, and you call it out. You can use the word motherf*cker or any other profanity that suits your tastes. The point is to argue back with your self-talk using an extra punch. It is being mindful of how you are choosing to play the victim or choosing to wallow, and holding yourself accountable to change any time you wish.

MOMF is not being self-abusive or judgmental. It is talking to yourself like a really good friend would talk to you. It is being encouraging about choice. It is empowering to recognize that you can improve your painful situation whenever you are ready. MOMF is about finding a way to call yourself out so that you feel able to move on, but the calling out involves humor. Humor is acknowledging the ridiculousness of the situation and/or what we are doing. When are able to laugh at ourselves, we get another wave of emotional release. Profanity and humor are effective ways to jolt yourself back to the reality of what you can and cannot control.

You can also use MOMF to encourage yourself with affirmations or positive, proactive self-talk about not taking the bait in unproductive conversations or interactions. You can learn to pump yourself up with profanity. It is being your own best friend by telling it like it is.

MOMF is not for everyone. It is not for folks who will use it to self-abuse. It is not for grief or abuse situations. MOMF is ideal for:

• Increasing self-awareness in tough situations
• Catching and letting go of habitual, negative self-talk
• Changing patterns of self-defeating behavior
• Managing daily stress
• Dealing with difficult people and relationships
• Building healthier relationships (and letting go of the unfixable ones)
• Managing disappointment
• Managing work stress
• Setting boundaries
• Managing excessive worry
• Overcoming regret
• Managing negative emotions
• Reaching goals and potential

Jodie Eckleberry-Hunt, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified health psychologist who has been in professional practice for more than nineteen years. She lives in Michigan with her family, including the family treasure, Bacon—the dog prince.

The post How Do We Move on, Motherf*cker? appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

I put on my winter coat for the first time this year and I found a receipt for hand sanitizer in the pocket. As I looked at it, I realized the last time I had worn this coat was at the start of the pandemic, and I couldn’t quite believe it had been a spring, summer, and fall of the virus. As an adult, I felt overwhelmed. As a child therapist, I feel sick for the kids I work with. The emotional and developmental cost to kids has been high.

Kids have basic developmental needs, and these vary by age, but there are some fundamentals that exist across childhood: meaningful connection with family, friends, and community; learning and new experiences; exercise, outdoor time, and play. Our kids are not getting access to all that they need right now.

So, how do we help them? How do we coach, support, and teach them through this time? I’ve been thinking a lot about this of late, and the work of Martin Seligman (founder of the Positive Psychology movement and professor at University of Pennsylvania) feels more relevant than ever. Dr. Seligman’s early research was on learned helplessness—and this experience of seeing how we give up and lose hope—led him to study how to gain hope and learn how to thrive. 

Seligman—whose hero was Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine—set about trying to create a “vaccine” for kids who were at risk of depression. This vaccine was about changing thoughts, specifically those that led to depression, and changing them at a young age. He envisioned working with kids preventively, before the onset of depression, to change mindsets and reduce the risk of depression at later ages.                                    

In the simplest form, we can look at changing thoughts that involve the “3 Ps.” Personal, Permanent and Pervasive.

When kids (or anyone) think everything is personal—that it’s is all about them and all because of them—it leads to more negativity. “I can’t do math; I just can’t get it!” or “They don’t invite me for bike rides because they just don’t like me.” Do you see the personal interpretation here? “I am uniquely bad at math and unable to learn it,” or “I am personally unlikeable and they are deliberately excluding me because of this unlikability.”  When kids personalize experiences in this way, they tend to see failures as because of their character, personality, or flaws.

Permanent thoughts are especially challenging right now, and I think we all, not just kids, are struggling with them. “It will always be this way!” or “I will never get to play normally again!” Permanent thoughts cement beliefs. They create a reality that doesn’t have room for hope, and if we start to believe that things will never get better, we often start to act in ways that support that belief. “Why am I going to keep in touch with school friends? I’ll probably never be in class with them again. There’s no point.” 

Finally, pervasive thoughts are thoughts that let a negative experience impact our whole life. Pervasive thoughts touch every part of your life, and they generalize one bad experience to other aspects. Pervasive thoughts for kids look like: “If I can’t do math, then I definitely won’t be able to do science. I just am not good at school.”

Before we begin changing these thoughts, it’s crucial for kids to know that everyone has these types of thoughts. They are normal and human, and they are more common right now. For better or worse, this is a time when kids are required to show more grit and perseverance than ever before. It’s easy for moods to slide, but if kids (and grown-ups) can start to notice and catch these thoughts, then they can pull themselves out of the slide of low mood.

The antidote to these three types of thoughts is catching them and replacing them with thoughts that are temporary, because of other people or other circumstances, and contained. The first step is catching these thoughts. I recommend making a sign for the refrigerator that lists Permanent, Pervasive, and Personal with the definitions and examples. We have to tune our attention to these thoughts to catch them, and, if you’re like me, this takes reminders. Once we get in the habit of helping kids catch these thoughts, we work on changing the thoughts to more helpful thoughts.

A key point here is to make sure you aren’t helping kids make the thoughts too happy. 

If a child thinks, “I have no friends, and I never will,” and the parent responds by asking them to change it to “I have so many friends! Everyone I meet wants to be my friend!”—it won’t work. Kids are smart, and they need thoughts that are realistic. In this case, a better change would be, “I have a few good friends who I care about and who care about me. I matter to them.”

This time will end. We will get back to normal, and our kids will resume school and activities as they used to. In the meantime, the 3 Ps provide valuable tools to help you and the children in your life stay afloat in a challenging time.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2018). Learned optimism.

Seligman, M. E. P., Reivich, K., Jaycox, L., & Gillham, J. (2018). The optimistic child: A proven program to safeguard children against depression and build lifelong resilience.

Elisa Nebolsine, LCSW, is owner and clinician at CBT for Kids, a private practice in Falls Church, VA. She is also adjunct faculty at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, adjunct faculty at Catholic University, and diplomate of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. She has presented locally and nationally on the topic of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and children, and is a consultant for schools, agencies, and other organizations on the implementation and use of CBT with children.

The post Helping Kids Grow during a Pandemic appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Perhaps the buzz phrase in all my therapy sessions with clients surrounds the notion of “the new normal.” With much of my caseload being comprised of teens for whom social interaction is a key facet of their identity, social distancing and quarantine have been particularly challenging for this group. Fears of a “second wave” have only exacerbated the anxiety and discomfort for teens and their families. 

A small but impactful intervention has involved the idea of one novel, active “excursion” or treat per day, which also has the added bonus of getting them off their screens and devices. For example, with many restaurants moving to curbside pickup, a way of both supporting small local businesses and giving teens something to do can involve a weekly trip to pick up a pizza for the family dinner, or picking up baked goods from a local bakery for a weekend breakfast.  

Here’s a sample schedule I have been sharing with teens: 

Monday: Walk the dog! 

Tuesday: Yoga or exercise day! Reward: Coffee or tea from favorite local spot. 

Wednesday: Social distancing walk with a friend. 

Thursday: Walk the dog! 

Friday: Pizza and movie night with family. (Go pick up the pizza!) 

Saturday: Social distancing time in a park or backyard with neighbors or friends. 

Sunday: Spiritual Day! Go for a hike in nature, attend church online, do yoga and meditation. Consider grabbing cinnamon rolls or muffins at a local bakery for a “rejuvenation” day. 

By adding small amounts of structure and simple joys to look forward to every day, teens and their families can thrive in these uncertain times. 

 Goali Saedi Bocci, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice, published author, millennial expert, TEDx speaker, and media personality. She earned a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Notre Dame; and completed her internship at the University of California, Berkeley; followed by a fellowship at Stanford University. Bocci has been a columnist for Psychology Today, writing the Millennial Media blog for nearly a decade, and garnering over two million hits worldwide. She is also a highly sought-after expert for top media outlets, including TIME, Newsweek, ABCNews, Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, Elle, and Glamour; and has served as a recurring guest on the morning television show AM Northwest. You can find more information about her www.drgoali.com.

The post Finding the “New Normal” for Teens in a COVID-19 World appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Part three of a four-part series on anger

The secret to helping clients develop better reactions to unpleasant, unwanted, and even risky life situations is to develop safe, in-office practice opportunities for exposure to real-life triggers. Having clients overcome anxiety, shyness, and other problems often involves them facing the very situations that trigger their strong emotions. When it comes to anger, the approach is similar. One potential key to success is to provide practice opportunities for clients to counter destructive thoughts, increase adaptive thinking, and reduce automatic-like behavioral reactions.

We routinely expose clients to some of the nasty verbalizations they experience in their daily lives. We have found this technique to be among the most efficient for developing and practicing new, adaptive reactions. Sometimes such practice is preceded by training in calming techniques such as relaxation and deep breathing. When carried out well, exposure often leads to laughter, and is memorable for clients.

Consider the following case example with Jaden, a thirty-two-year-old married man on probation. He has had seven previous sessions, and the overall therapeutic relationship is positive.

Practitioner: Today we are going to do a little acting. I’m going to be a voice that is disrespecting you. I’m going to say the kinds of things you’ve said really trigger your anger. I want you to be a thought inside your head that deals with it. Use the thoughts we have discussed that are likely to make you less reactive, even calm. We will start slow. Ready?

Jaden: Okay.

Practitioner: You ain’t shit in the streets. Everyone talks about you behind your back.

Jaden: Leave it alone. Don’t do it. Just let it go.

Practitioner: Good job. That was great. Now, do you think we can kick it up a notch?

Jaden: Yeah.

Practitioner: You’re a punk bitch. I can kick your ass any time.

Jaden: He’s trying to get to me. He wants me to fight. But, I’m on probation and I don’t want to go back to jail. Don’t react. It is only unpleasant and doesn’t mean anything. Take a deep breath, walk away.

Practitioner: Good. You handled it again.

Jaden: [Laughing] . . . Why did you call me a punk bitch?

Practitioner: Because your main risk factor is your anger and tendency to become aggressive. You’re too emotionally reactive. You’re not out there selling drugs or guns. My concern is that there are a lot of nasty people in this world. If someone says something demeaning or condescending to you, it would be good if we develop your ability to deal with the belief ‘I can’t let anybody disrespect me.’ If that belief comes to you when things go wrong, you might react with anger or aggression, and that will cause negative consequences. I don’t want that for you.

Jaden: Okay, I understand. That sounds good.

Practitioner: And you are a punk bitch, right?

Jaden and Practitioner: [Both laugh]

We understand this technique may seem odd or unusual to some readers. Consider, however, the following questions. What is at stake for Jaden? Loss of freedom? Physical injury? Loss of a job? Death? When appropriate, and the therapeutic relationship is strong, why not practice real-world skills with clients that might actually save their relationships and lives, and reduce negative, anger-related outcomes?

Consider exposure practice to help clients replace their automatic-like anger reactions with new and better kinds of thinking and behaving that are likely to produce more positive results. Once automatic-like responses are better managed, you can introduce additional interventions to address social and interpersonal problems.

Catching up on the series? Read parts one, two, or four now.

Howard Kassinove, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist, former chairperson of the psychology department at Hofstra University, and past director of their PhD program in clinical and school psychology. Kassinove is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Albert Ellis Institute, and the Behavior Therapy and Research Society. Editor of Anger Disorders, he has published more than sixty papers, and has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Raymond Chip Tafrate, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, and professor in the criminology and criminal justice department at Central Connecticut State University. He is a fellow and supervisor at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City, NY; and a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. He frequently consults with criminal justice agencies and programs regarding difficult-to-change problems such as anger dysregulation and criminal behavior. He has coauthored numerous books, and has presented his research throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is coauthor, with Howard Kassinove, of the popular self-help classic, Anger Management for Everyone.

The post ANGER: Manage it with EXPOSURE appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Part two of a four-part series on anger 

When dealing with angry clients, practitioners may understandably use interventions that were part of their original training, or perhaps turn to techniques that are currently in vogue. Your go-to ideas might be cognitive or behavioral in nature. They might include social skills or assertiveness training, relaxation and mindfulness procedures, cognitive restructuring, acceptance, values clarification, or even a token economy. These are all fine.

Expand your menu of treatment ideas. You may not have considered some additional adjunctive tools at your disposal. One of us was recently part of an angry dispute between a group of homeowners and their board of directors in his homeowner’s association—a situation that ultimately required legal mediation. The mediation session began at 9:30 am, and by 11:30 am, the parties remained at an impasse. As accusations and blame intensified, the tone of the meeting deteriorated. All of a sudden, the mediator said, “Well, I ordered an early lunch for us. In my experience, not much gets resolved when people are hungry.” Voilà. That’s the idea behind the concept of hanger—hunger-induced anger.

Certain lifestyle changes, nutritional and otherwise, can be useful in anger management. Here is our brief list:

1) Food intake, or hanger. When blood glucose gets low, irritability and rigidity increase. Clients who are well-nourished have better reactions to perceived adversity. A proper level of vitamins and amino acids, and a steady level of glucose in the body, has been shown to reduce general aggression and marital discord. So, ask your clients about nutrition and their eating schedules. Inform them that the best times to face difficult life circumstances are when they are well nourished, so they will have greater self-control and less angry reactivity.

2) Alcohol. Drinking affects people differently. Some folks who drink to excess become withdrawn and lethargic whereas others become angry, argumentative, and explosive. People who experience chronic anger often turn to alcohol and other drugs to reduce their internal agitation. Alcohol, however, also lowers inhibitions and increases confidence and overall expressiveness. A reciprocal relationship may be noticed in some cases: Drinking can lead to more anger, and anger can lead to more drinking. It is wise to consider the potential role alcohol plays in episodes of anger and aggression in any particular client.

3) Sleep patterns, or slanger. Lack of sleep and poor quality of sleep are associated with general irritability, poor decision-making, and a tendency to respond with anger when things go wrong. This sleep-deprivation-induced anger has been termed Slanger. Although adults generally need six to eight hours of good sleep to function optimally, many of us get less than six hours per night. Ask clients about their sleep patterns and, if relevant, help them improve the length and quality of their sleep by providing tips for good sleep hygiene.

4) Temperature. Human anger and conflict rise as the ambient temperature rises. You are more likely to honk at a driver who cuts you off in traffic on a very hot day than a cool day. Life is likely to be best when temperatures are around 72°F. Consider the temperatures in which your clients work and live. Sometimes, the purchase of a small fan or air conditioner, or even opening a window, can do lots of good in a dysfunctional family environment.

5) Music. Music can influence emotions and behaviors. Some laboratory studies have shown that high-intensity music with negative vocal themes leads to increases in hostility and aggression, while calming and soft music decreases arousability. Clients in chaotic jobs and households might consider integrating soft background music into their environments.

6) Light, colors, and smells. Most of us prefer to live and work in an environment with abundant natural light, that is colorful rather than drab, and that smells good. Ask about your clients’ surroundings and, when possible, help them make positive changes that will improve their quality of living in locations where they spend the most time.

To integrate these suggestions into clinical practice, you do not have to become a registered dietitian, HVAC professional, or a licensed environmental engineer. Rather, we simply suggest that you expand your arsenal of tools to include addressing uncomfortable and disruptive lifestyle conditions that make anger more likely to emerge.

Catching up on the series? Read parts one, three, or four now.

Howard Kassinove, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist, former chairperson of the psychology department at Hofstra University, and past director of their PhD program in clinical and school psychology. Kassinove is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Albert Ellis Institute, and the Behavior Therapy and Research Society. Editor of Anger Disorders, he has published more than sixty papers, and has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Raymond Chip Tafrate, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, and professor in the criminology and criminal justice department at Central Connecticut State University. He is a fellow and supervisor at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City, NY; and a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. He frequently consults with criminal justice agencies and programs regarding difficult-to-change problems such as anger dysregulation and criminal behavior. He has coauthored numerous books, and has presented his research throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is coauthor, with Howard Kassinove, of the popular self-help classic, Anger Management for Everyone.

The post ANGER: Manage it with LIFESTYLE CHANGES appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Part one of a four-part series on anger 

Let’s be honest. All of us get angry now and then. Anger is built into our biology. It’s completely normal to experience some degree of anger when we think we have been wrongly blamed, rejected, misunderstood, or ignored. In fact, anger often emerges automatically. For example, our brains are hardwired to become highly alert and impulsively agitated if our children or loved ones are threatened, hurt, or mistreated. These reactions were helpful in our evolutionary past when threats were directed to our food sources, territory, or life itself. Today, in contrast, most threats are verbal or social in nature as when we discover others think we are not intelligent or attractive or trustworthy, or when we discover they are gossiping about us behind our backs. These modern-day triggers do not call for a strong anger or aggressive reaction. Unfortunately, the importance and power of such insults is frequently blown way out of proportion.

Milder anger. Some mild and moderate anger can be positive, operating like an internal GPS system – signaling that something isn’t right and energizing us to face a problem that is being avoided, to stick up for ourselves, or to make an important life change. Anger can also lead to zest, excitement, and passion. Anger, at this milder end of the spectrum, is life-enhancing.

Stronger anger. In contrast, sometimes anger gets out of hand. The most regrettable and cringe-worthy things you or your clients have done were probably fueled by anger. If asked what caused anger in those moments, most of us automatically blame other people or particular circumstances. We hear it all the time from friends and family members, as well as clients and colleagues. They exclaim such things as, “My?boyfriend pissed me off”, “My children made me so angry”, “My boss infuriates me”, “It’s the traffic that makes me want to explode”, “Those &%@* neighbors shouldn’t leave their trash out all day long! They really tick me off”! The problem with such statements is that they sneakily reinforce the idea that moderate to strong anger is an automatic and uncontrollable reaction to unwanted and aversive situations that is fully caused by others or by circumstances. If your clients, or you, see the causes of anger as wholly external, it will always be someone else’s fault. This attitude will undermine the self-reflection and motivation necessary to reduce anger reactions in the future.

When anger is strong, occurs too frequently, or lasts too long, it contributes to significant loss and suffering. Such negative outcomes are all around us. Think about how many family, relationship, or occupational conflicts you have witnessed that resulted from anger. Or, think about the marital and family violence that has followed angry, verbal arguments. We have all witnessed the dysfunctional results of feeling angry, or of being the recipient of someone else’s anger. These include a wide range of negative outcomes such as ruined relationships, derailed careers, impulsive and destructive decisions, road rage, severe cardiovascular medical problems, and violence, just to name a few.

Three tips. Given this background, here are some take away treatment tips:

1) Help clients recognize that holding on to anger and bitterness, and staying stuck in a cycle of self-justification, is more likely to be harmful than helpful. This can be accomplished by exploring the outcomes of specific anger episodes (e.g., “What good came out of your anger in this situation?”; “What was not so good about your anger in this situation?”). Angry clients typically do not appreciate that their anger is more destructive for them than for the target of their anger.

2) Think about how your clients describe their reactions to unwanted situations. Beyond being alert to their tendency to blame others or external factors for their reactions, be on the lookout for language that suggests a pessimistic belief that change is not possible because they have “always been this way” or because “anger runs in the family.” Instead, foster an optimistic outlook. Help them understand that with effort and practice, managing anger is possible and you are there to help them in the process.

3) Ask clients to consider their role, no matter how small, in the events that led to strong anger episodes. Use non-blaming statements, such as, “Although I recognize how bad [the other person’s] actions were, I wonder if there was anything you could have done that might have led to a better outcome?”

One of the first steps towards anger reduction rests on learning to take personal responsibility for feeling angry and recognizing that strong and long-lasting anger is really a form of self-inflicted distress. The negative parts of the world will always exist, but all of us can learn skills to reduce excessive anger, negotiate better outcomes, and manage personal environments in order to live a happier life.

There are many useful anger management skills out there. We’ll touch on some and provide additional tips in this series.

Catching up on the series? Read parts two, three, or four now.

Howard Kassinove, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist, former chairperson of the psychology department at Hofstra University, and past director of their PhD program in clinical and school psychology. Kassinove is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Albert Ellis Institute, and the Behavior Therapy and Research Society. Editor of Anger Disorders, he has published more than sixty papers, and has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Raymond Chip Tafrate, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, and professor in the criminology and criminal justice department at Central Connecticut State University. He is a fellow and supervisor at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City, NY; and a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers. He frequently consults with criminal justice agencies and programs regarding difficult-to-change problems such as anger dysregulation and criminal behavior. He has coauthored numerous books, and has presented his research throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is coauthor, with Howard Kassinove, of the popular self-help classic, Anger Management for Everyone.

The post ANGER: Tips for Treating This Natural But Potentially Destructive Emotion appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

With the unique stressors that humanity is facing during this global pandemic, it’s important to have an arsenal of tools that can be accessed anytime, anywhere—including at home—to support our health. 

One of the most easily accessible, most powerful sources of health and healing is quite literally, the ground beneath our feet. Yet this source of healing support is almost always cut off from reaching our body, because we have rubber-soled shoes on or synthetic-fibered clothing covering our body, or we are traveling in cars that have rubber tires that separate us from the ground, or are inside insulated homes with no possibility of directly touching the earth outside.

The result of being cut off from the healing energy of the earth over the long term is an increase in inflammation throughout the body, an increase in the amount of stress and tension we carry, a decrease in sleep quality, and a dip in our mood. These are all things that can be readily reversed just by taking an intentional moment to connect with the earth outside—a healing practice known as grounding.

What energy does the earth provide?

While most people innately understand that the earth provides all the conditions that are essential to support a healthy lifestyle—like air, water, and food—many do not know that the earth itself is directly healing. The earth actually pulses with a measurable electromagnetic field, known as the Schumann resonance—referred to as the ‘heartbeat’ of the earth. This energy pulse acts as a giant recharging base for everything that lives on the planet, always available to rejuvenate our body if we will plug into this reservoir of healing.

What happens to our body when we get grounded to the earth’s energy?

Our entire body—and every cell in it (and even the fluid inside every cell)—is conductive. The very second that one single cell on your body touches the earth, your entire body becomes grounded to the earth, like flipping on a light switch. The result is a discharge of inflammation throughout the entire body, from head to toe. Stress and tension lift as your body becomes stabilized and neutralized by the earth. This often can feel like an immediate relief as your tissues, organs, blood, brain, bones—literally everything your body is composed of—becomes grounded. 

Sustaining a grounded state over time has been shown in medical studies to improve the health of the human body in many ways—from allowing blood to move more freely, increasing circulation, boosting vagal tone, protecting muscles and bones, boosting heart rate variability, supporting proper digestion, stabilizing hormones, increasing metabolism, lifting mood, and even deepening sleep. And, important to note while we face this global pandemic, it even boosts immune function.

A simple way to see for yourself

Grounding is something you can do anytime, anywhere. It’s immediately accessible and immediately supportive. And incredibly simple. All you need to do is touch your wonderful, conductive body directly to any part of the earth’s crust(dirt, sand, rocks, water) or anything living on the earth’s crust(trees, bushes, flowers, even a single blade of grass) to ground your entire body the moment you touch it. 

If you think about it, you already know the feeling of being grounded—can you remember a time when you were at the beach, walking on sand, or floating in the ocean, and how relaxing it was? Or if you like to garden, how centered and present you felt with your hands in the dirt? You can reach for this same boost of wellness anytime by intentionally making connecting to the earth outside a part of your daily healing plan. Try it today. Use a fingertip to touch a tree, or dip a toe into a river or lake. Even cement and concrete is conductive and grounded, so simply standing barefoot on the sidewalk will ground you instantly. Aim for ten minutes or more daily, and watch every aspect of your health improve over time.

Laura Koniver, MD, is an artist, author, holistic physician, and internationally recognized grounding advocate. Koniver has been featured as an expert in four motion pictures about grounding, and has published her own children’s book, From the Ground Up.

The post Grounding During Times of Uncertainty appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

As the world as we’ve always known it falls apart around us and all we hold dear feels threatened, it’s no wonder so many of us are experiencing stress and anger, fear and depression, and a sense of powerlessness. Yet, feelings such as worry and disgust, anxiety and sorrow, and rage and loneliness are the very emotions most harmful to our immune system—a defense system capable of protecting us against the virus that is savaging so many around the world.

Healthy eating, exercise, meditation, and loving yourself and others help ensure your immune system is humming. Another powerful way to boost your immunity is through keeping your spirit high. The human spirit is the nonphysical, deepest part of you—your life force that is connected to the whole of everything. Energy and liveliness emanate from your spirit.

When tangled in emotions and bogged down in our daily mental and physical activities, we often forget our inner selves. An effective way to reconnect, celebrate, and nurture your spirit is through creativity.

Creativity allows you to experience your spirit through your six senses—sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste, and the extrasensory intuition and perception of knowing without knowing why. Creativity invites you every day to see the world anew. In the moments while creating, time expands in unexplainable ways.

While deep in the creative flow, we experience awe moments of absolutely no struggle, no thought; simply an attentive creator writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, gardening, making jewelry, cooking, baking—the list of creative outlets is endless.

Creativity reawakens childlike wonder and inner peace. Think back to your earliest and fondest memories that involve creating, making, constructing, inventing, or designing something new. When we’re young, as if by an invisible umbilical cord, we’re connected to the great beyond. As we grow and mature, it’s easy to become so caught in fear or trying to keep up that we disconnect from our lifeline to the miraculous; and miss the wildness, the joy, and the freedom in every breath.

Creativity offers you opportunities to step away from your everyday reality and develop your inner spiritual life. Create something out of nothing but your imagination, you gain a new sense of yourself. Creativity awakens us in the power of now and brings value and meaning to every aspect of our lives.

People create for all sorts of reasons—for money, for fame, as a hobby, as a form of activism, as a way of life, and as means of giving in to a vision, a whisper, a line of dialogue, a series of notes, or an imagined world. Use this time while you’re sheltering in-place to create for yourself, to lift your spirit, strengthen your immune system, and bring joy in this time of darkness.

There are more forms of creativity than there are seconds in a day, water in the sea, or stars in the sky. Make a list of the different forms of creativity you’re most drawn to try. And then, for a week, beginning today, try one spontaneous act of creativity.

Paint. Draw. Write. Sing. Dance. Right now. If you have family at home, invite them to join you. Finger paint. Draw with chalk, with crayons, with pen and ink. Collage masks and wear them acting out a play. Use your imagination. Together, add flair and beauty to something you do. Decorate rocks with inspiring words and place them throughout the house. Refresh something dated. See what is and try something different. Create a playlist with songs that feed your energy and uplift your spirit. Don’t prepare. Don’t think. Be spontaneous. Do! Create one new thing.

Each day for a week, record what you create. Include a bit about how what you created lifted your spirit (or not), energized you (or not), and made you feel. With a heightened sense of awareness through creativity, you shift into spiritual well-being and find yourself refreshed and filled with joy.

Martha Alderson, MA, has been exploring and writing about plot and creativity for more than thirty years. Author of The Plot Whisperer, Alderson works with best-selling authors, New York editors, Hollywood directors, artists, and performers from all over the world.

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This e-booklet covers:

• How to persist when things are uncertain
• How to deal with uncomfortable internal experience like uncertainty and fear
• How to care for ourselves and others in difficult moments

Helena Colodro, MSC, CPsychol, is a clinical psychologist working for the private sector in London, a psychology lecturer at a Spanish University, and one of the founders of Inspira Psychology, a psychotherapy center in Granada, Spain.

Joe Oliver, PhD, is a consultant clinical psychologist, originally from New Zealand, and has lived in London for the past 20 years. He is the director of Contextual Consulting, an acceptance and commitment therapy-based consultancy.

The post A Guide to Self-Care for Practitioners | A Free e-Booklet appeared first on New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

As mental health clinicians, we want to provide fair and equitable care to everyone, across race, ethnicity, and culture. Nonetheless, race-based mental health disparities stubbornly persist, and at a much larger scale than most of us realize. As a field, clinicians are overwhelmingly White, well-educated, and advantaged. We also know, for example, that most White people in the United States vastly underestimate the continued extent and impact of racism on people of color. And research shows that despite our best intentions, we exhibit bias at the expense of our clients, even when we are trying not to.

Learning what to do about this is not easy. When I was a clinical psychology graduate student, there was little in the way of formal didactics to help us learn how to work with clients across these differences. There were no courses offered in my department to train us, and students were actively discouraged from taking courses in the school of education, the only place where one might find a graduate course focused on multicultural counseling. The clinical faculty thought they knew enough to adequately prepare us to become clinicians and researchers, but you can’t give what you never received. These faculty who were never trained in diversity issues could not give us the tools we needed to do this work effectively.

My early efforts at trying to teach multicultural psychology exemplify the problem. When I was asked by my chair to teach undergraduate multicultural psychology, I thought nothing of it. I would simply apply the framework I had used successfully to teach abnormal psychology: Work through the textbook, present interesting facts, and ask the students to write papers. But it didn’t work. The students became angry and disengaged. Several wrote abusive comments in their course evaluations. I wondered if I should stop teaching about race altogether, and go back to the comfort and familiarity of abnormal psychology.

I learned the hard way that this material cannot be simply taught with facts and figures. As we strive to facilitate growth and learning, we are also bumping up against unconscious biases, cultural traditions, stigmas, and lessons engrained from an early age. Further, what students need may change rapidly, rendering our previous learning out-of-date. Many professors attempting to teach these topics have ended up with classrooms that have spun out of control, with students angry, crying, or disengaged. We have learned that emotional engagement is important to this learning, but emotional dysregulation and its counterpoint, suppression, are toxic to the process.  

The good news is that it is possible to both effectively learn and teach this material. I have taken my many years of experience as a diversity educator—including my mistakes and pitfalls—and assembled this volume to help guide the way for emerging clinicians. This book is the book I wish I had earlier in my career, as I aspired to become a clinician, educator, and researcher. It reflects how we as a society have grappled with important questions around race that our field and our training have left us unprepared to answer. Published in 2019, this collection is situated in an important moment in time when the work is harder than it has been in many years.

The first problem addressed by this book is simply delineating the scope of the problem as it exists today, across multiple settings in which mental health practitioners work. The book is composed of three distinct sections. The first section is called Creating Context: Understanding Disparities, which delves into the state of racial disparities in mental health care and the science that allows us to understand these issues. The second section of the book is called Best Practices in Training and Psychotherapy, which offers hands-on, practical approaches for educators and clinicians. The third section of the book is called Structural Mental Health Disparities, which takes a broader look at problems across multiple domains, including academia and various mental health settings. 

And for those of you who are teaching this topic, this book is for you. We included PowerPoint slides for each chapter to help make life a bit easier for busy professors. The book even includes a chapter on how to teach about race and racism to clinicians—one of the most challenging topics there is.

Overall, this book represents the tremendous effort of our contributors, who range from the most senior and respected scholars in the field to new graduate students with fresh perspectives on diversity issues. The spate of excellent authors who have brought this book to life is truly humbling. In developing this volume, we pushed ourselves and our authors into new ground to ensure the work is both timely and timeless, fearless in its representation of the problems we as a society face, creative in its proposed solutions, anchored in evidence and theory, and pragmatic for immediate uptake and utility. I truly believe we have succeeded in creating the book we desired early in our careers, and I hope it will inspire current graduate students, clinicians, and researchers in their classrooms, organizations, clinics, and communities.

Monnica T. Williams, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa in the school of psychology, where she holds the Canadian Research Chair for Mental Health Disparities. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia, where she conducted research in the areas of major mental illness, tests and measurement, and ethnic differences. She has started clinics in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, and a refugee mental health clinic in Kentucky. Her clinical work and research focus on African American mental health, culture, trauma, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

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