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Finding Calm in a Chaotic World: 3 Daily Practices

 

In today's fast-paced world, it often feels like we've woken up on the wrong side of calm. Life's complexities, stressors, and chaos can make it challenging to maintain a sense of peace and tranquility. Fortunately, there are simple yet effective daily practices that can help us shift to the right side of calm. Here are three of them:

Breathe Mindfully:

1: Many of us are unintentionally shallow breathers, taking tiny, quick breaths throughout the day. This type of breathing is part of our evolutionary "fight or flight" response, designed to prepare us for immediate physical danger. However, our bodies often interpret everyday stressors, like bills or work deadlines, as threats, leading to constant shallow breathing.

2: One of the quickest ways to regain a sense of calm is to slow down your breathing consciously. Deep and deliberate breaths have a remarkable calming effect on both the mind and body. So, take a moment to inhale deeply through your nose, allowing your abdomen to...

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How Beliefs, Expectations, and Mindset Shape Self-Efficacy

Beliefs, expectations, and mindset play a pivotal role in shaping self-efficacy in anger management. The way individuals perceive their abilities to manage and control their anger directly impacts their self-efficacy in this domain. Here's how these factors influence self-efficacy in anger management and how cultivating a growth-oriented mindset can be achieved through anger management training:

  1. Beliefs: Beliefs about anger and its management greatly influence self-efficacy. If individuals believe that anger is uncontrollable or that they lack the skills to manage it effectively, their self-efficacy in anger management will be low. On the other hand, if they believe that anger can be regulated and that they have the ability to acquire the necessary skills, their self-efficacy will be higher. Anger management training aims to challenge and modify negative beliefs, replacing them with empowering beliefs that foster self-efficacy.

  2. Expectations: Expectations refer to the...

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Set Yourself Up For Success: The Importance of Goal Setting to Improve Self Esteem

 
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How Holiday Stress & Anxiety Can Present Itself

 

The Holidays can generate emotional stress and despair for many of us. Therefore, it is essential to recognize the ways anxiety may be presenting itself.

Anxiety can present itself in numerous ways. Here are ten signs and some tips for reducing holiday anxiety and stress.

1. Constant worries/dread. You feel anxious nearly all the time, although you may not know why.

2. Impaired thinking. You have difficulty forming thoughts, concentrating, remembering, or learning new things.

3. Fatigue. Anxiety increases the production of stress hormones, which can leave you feeling exhausted. Adequate nutrition, hydration, and sleep can boost energy.

4. Irritability/anger. Coping with stress and anxiety can be overwhelming, leading you to overreact to everyday situations.

5. Fear/Terror. You may be plagued with irrational fears—in such a simple everyday activity, for instance, as going to the mailbox. You may experience an impending sense of doom or believe that danger lurks around every...

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Dealing with Holiday Family Trauma

 

Let’s face it. Family gatherings are not always roses and cotton candy. For some families, they’re masked balls, with everyone straining to maintain a façade of harmony. For others, they’re Wild West shootouts. 

 

The holidays are often a difficult time for many people. On the one hand, there is a sense of joy in the air, while on the other hand, sorrow and grief because of either a loss or dysfunctional family dynamic.

 

The following are some ways you can deal with family trauma around the holidays. Try some of these tips.

 

 

Have an Escape Plan

 

It’s important not to isolate over the holidays. Being around loved ones who support and care for you can be a comfort. Having said that, you’ll also want to have a plan that will allow you to get away from crowds and holiday festivities when you feel yourself become triggered or emotional. This may mean you drive separately to an event so you can leave when YOU want and...

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Top 10 Fears Ruining Relationships in 2021

 

Loving someone can be risky business, so it’s natural that fear is present in relationships. But when fear operates in our lives in a way that hurts us or hurts others, it becomes a problem when it involves aggression or withdrawal. Recognizing these fears and how they may affect our lives can help us make the necessary changes to get the love we want.

  1. Fear of losing freedom. Tied down, trapped, cornered, stuck—this “claustrophobia” points to mistaken beliefs about what relationships are supposed to be. The ability to say No lovingly and respectfully and set clear and fair boundaries is an essential ingredient of a healthy relationship.
  2. Fear of conflict. Let’s face it—love can be messy. But it doesn’t have to be destructive. Constructive communication skills can be learned, and when handled with caring and respectful communication, conflicts can become vital building blocks of deeper trust and intimacy.
  3. Fear of change. Change means work,...
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How To Love Others Without Losing Ourselves

Modern culture prizes selflessness and abhors selfishness, in effect setting the two against each other. 

 

"The alternatives are either to love others, which is a virtue or to love oneself, which is a sin," wrote social scientist and philosopher Erich Fromm in his essay titled "Selfishness and Self-Love." 

 

How do we differentiate between valuing ourselves and egotistically indulging ourselves? While no one would argue with considering others, it could be worthwhile to re-examine our beliefs around being selfish. For example, do we genuinely aspire to be without concern for ourselves? Or is it important to value and love ourselves, think for ourselves, have a life of our own, and be able to love others without losing ourselves? 

 

The answers lie in self-knowledge. When we undertake an inner journey and come to understand ourselves truly—the sacred and profane dimensions of our lives—we develop the capacity to deal honestly, thoughtfully,...

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Hypnotherapy for Self-Improvement

 

Exploring the Strengths of Seeking Help

Long before there were hypnotherapists, there were family members. Aunt Helen listened or gave us advice, or sometimes  Granny Annie just told us to toughen up and move on. If our family couldn’t help, there were friends or a clergy member. However, most of us were likely warned not to broadcast our troubles, and this led to people feeling they had to suffer through their problems silently.

Times change, and so has society’s acceptance of seeking help. The old stigma of being seen as weak or incapable is primarily gone, helped by many well-known writers, actors and politicians being open about their struggles with, and treatments for, everything from depression to chronic shoplifting. Going to a hypnotherapist is now seen as a positive step in most people’s lives.

Hypnotherapy is a unique collaboration and what makes it valuable sets it apart from family associations, friendships, working partnerships, and even love...

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

 

*June is PTSD Awareness month*


Robert just returned from Afghanistan where he witnessed an improvised explosive device (IED) destroy a Humvee in his convoy, killing his best friend. Now that he’s back home, he’s no longer the easy-going guy he once was. He has angry outbursts at the slightest provocation and uses illegal drugs to repress his wartime memories.

When Liz was seven years old, her stepfather sexually abused her. Now in her thirties, she wants to put the past behind her but can’t. She’s unable to establish intimate relationships and has frequent nightmares about her abuse.

It may not appear that Robert’s wartime experience has much in common with Liz’s sexual abuse, but it does. As a result of the trauma they’ve each experienced, they both now suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

What Is PTSD?
PTSD is an anxiety disorder that affects individuals who’ve experienced firsthand (or witnessed) intensely traumatic...

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How Well Do You Part Ways? #Quiz

 

Whether there are children involved or not, ending a marriage or partnership challenges us in ways that not much else does. The term “emotional fitness” seems a contradiction in terms. And yet, there are things we can do, practices we can bring into our lives that will help us navigate the big waves and the roiling waters.

Take the Thriving quiz to see how well you part ways.

START HERE

 

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