Food for Thought
Blog posts, Videos & Things I Love
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Food for Thought
Blog posts, Videos & Things I Love
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) stands out as a widely respected psychotherapy technique renowned for its effectiveness in addressing various mental health issues
Anxiety has become a prevalent concern in today's culture, where stresses and tensions are constant. While certain people display their anxiety in a conspicuous way, others may suffer from high-functioning anxiety in silence, which often goes undetected.
Ever feel that constant edge, like waiting for an impending storm? Or perhaps navigating daily tasks feels like a perpetual battle, leaving emotions drained? If you can relate to this, you might be among those individuals who are grappling with anxiety or depression. We often discuss and diagnose these mental health issues, but what about the often-hidden companion? Undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) quietly shadows those with anxiety and depression, and it's high time we shed light on it.
In a world that never sleeps, where success is often measured by external achievements, there exists a silent undercurrent that many of us grapple with – the subtle and often overlooked presence of high-functioning depression.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) isn't confined to war veterans; it's a mental health challenge that can affect anyone who has confronted a traumatic experience. In this blog post, we embark on a journey to explore the intricacies of PTSD, from its origins to recovery stages and a range of treatment options.
Amidst life's daily grind, we prioritize everything else over our mental well-being. However, there has been a welcome increase in attention to mental health in recent years
There are a few things that have been pivotal in my personal journey. Therapy is one. Mediation is another. 10% Happier wasn’t around when I first found meditation, but I wish it had been. Dan Harris’ funny, accessible and relatable account of his own personal journey with panic and meditation is something I would love to gift my younger self.
I often (semi) joke if you want to spend less time and money in therapy, have a meditation practice. It’s not a cure-all, I’m not claiming it’s a substitute for therapy, but the skills you develop through meditation are hugely helpful to therapy, healing and mental wellbeing.
Chapter I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
I have a conflicted relationship with this book. At times I read it and I wonder if it might contain the secret of life. Other times I read it and I roll my eyes. But I keep coming back to it. So there’s that.
Another one of my favourite books discussing how trauma and difficult experiences can, when left untreated, have life long impacts. Donna Jackson Nakazawa does a wonderful job of explaining how the things that we experience, particularly in childhood, can create physiological changes that stretch through time and continue to affect us even decades later.
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The Body Keeps the Score is one of my top book recommendations for understanding how trauma affects the brain, mind and body.
This book was a jumping off point for me into an area of experience that has now become very close to my heart.
Robert Wright offers a fantastic overview of naturalistic, secular Buddhism. Setting aside the mystical aspects of Buddhism as a religion, Wright focuses solely on Buddhism as a philosophy and it’s implications on psychology.
The first conversation I have with every single client. Why? Because trauma isn’t what a lot of people think it is. And that can lead to invisible traumas - traumas that are left unseen, unacknowledged and untreated.
Imagine our brain as a room with one giant filing cabinet in the centre of it. The filing cabinet is made up of many drawers (representing memory networks), which are filled with many files (representing brain cells). At birth, most of these files are strewn about the room haphazardly, with relatively few being stored in the filing cabinet. During the course of our life, the files in the room are gradually organized into drawers of the filing cabinet.
Our body has two basic operating systems; the “fight or flight” system and the “rest and digest” system. Both of these systems are vital and we need them both, but we need them in the right balance. And unfortunately, as a society, we are drastically out of balance. Our bodies were never meant to be exposed to a sustained stress response, which is why chronic stress is implicated in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease and countless others.
Implicit memory governs much of our behaviour. Such memories are like unconscious mental software packages - they quickly compare present events to past experiences, make assessments and predictions about the current situation, and initiate the appropriate reaction. And while for the most part, this is very adaptive, it comes at a cost.
What makes something traumatic for one person and mildly disturbing for another? Why does the idea of public speaking leave one person exhilarated and another paralyzed with panic? Our nervous system has an ideal climate; a Goldilocks zone in which it operates best. This zone is called the Window of Tolerance, and where we are in relation to it has tremendous impacts on our mood, emotional state, and mental capacity.
In the realm of mental health, the word “trauma” can invoke a lot of different ideas and associations. There tends to be a general consensus around what is sometime referred to as “Big T” trauma, while there is somewhat less agreement in the realm of “small t” trauma. The difficulty with categorization provides a clue as to how the premise of the question might be flawed.