Tag Archives: Anxiety

Wrinkles and Floppy Bits: How to Thrive in Old Age

Body falling apart. Pain from head to toe. Wrinkles and floppy bits. Hair not growing where it’s meant to. Memory fading. Energy depleting. Losing life partners, siblings and friends. Loneliness. Financial worries….

It is true that aging can be depressing and stressful at times. However, contrary to what many people think, it is not true that chronic and debilitating anxiety and depression are an inevitable part of old age. While aspects of aging can be distressing, it’s never too late to improve your psychological health and quality of life so that you can get the most out of this precious final [or not so final] chapter of your life.

How to Enjoy Your Old Age

Here are a few simple things you can do to help you find your spark again. [Actually, these strategies work for almost any age group.]

Enjoy the moment. People get depressed and anxious when they ruminate about the past or worry about the future. Try to turn off the trash TV in your head; or at least turn the volume down and position it in a far corner of your mind, so it can waffle on in the background without dominating your life. Then notice or think about things that give you pleasure, even if just in a small way. It might be the taste of your daily tea or coffee; the sound of bird song; the feel of your favourite slippers; or the smell of flowers. nbmbnb

Meditate. It’s taken a while, but mainstream western psychology and medicine have finally acknowledged the benefits of aware relaxation that our eastern cousins have been professing for millennium; that regular mediation tends to positively affect mind and body. Every day find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably, take your shoes off if it’s warm enough, shut your eyes, relax your body, and watch the ebb and flow of your breath, without controlling it. It’s that simple. Of course, most of us find it quite difficult to notice our breath without our mind wandering, but whenever that happens, as soon as you become aware of it, simply bring your attention gently back to relaxing with your breath. It can help your focus to repeat a relaxing or nonsense word or phrase, or count your out-breath to ten, then repeat. Some people find that visualising an image or colour helps too. Guided meditations on CDs or YouTube can be really useful, especially when you are starting out.

Ground yourself. Every day take your shoes off and stand or sit on the ground. Research indicates that grounding our bodies with the earth allows us to balance the energy in our negative ion starved bodies. This is shown to positively affect our physical and mental health. Grass, sand, dirt, concrete, and even tiles on a concrete floor are all good conductors, so they ground well. Wood and ashphalt don’t conduct as well, so are not as effective. Alternatively you could go for a swim, or have a bath or shower. Getting your hands dirty in the garden is another way.

Take action. If you are physically well enough, get out of the house and do something. Lack of action can increase depression and lead to physical unfitness. If you feel too flat and tired to do anything, that is a good sign that you need to do something. As long as it’s not going to harm you physically, light exercise can help you feel great… once you have motivated yourself to start. Make sure you check with your doctor, then, once you get the all clear, join a light exercise class or walking group. Sunshine is also a good mood lifter and is known to be important for physical health.

Move out of your comfort zone. Avoiding doing things that are scary tends to make them even more scary. This can lead to more avoidance and an increasingly restricted life. Break free from the traps that anxiety and fear of embarrassment might have created. Do something a little bit wild and adventurous, and tick a few items off your bucket list. How about going somewhere new, lunching with an old friend, joining a club, learning an instrument, doing a course, or going on a cruise?

Get help. If you are depressed or anxious or both, a good quality therapist can really help. Talk to your doctor about a referral to a free or affordable professional. Community organisations and telephone counselling services can be helpful too.

Exercise your brain. Studies have shown that older people who exercise their brains can think and remember better than their brain lazy counterparts. Damaged brain cells can’t regrow, but they can grow extra connections with use. New connections can enable us to create new thinking pathways. A study of elderly people who were taught computer skills showed that their brains actually increased in size as new connections grew and their brain cells pumped up. So make sure you do some crosswords, sukudo, or puzzles regularly. Start a scrabble or bridge club. Do a maths, writing, computer, photography or other course for fun. Read books. Update your computer skills and surf the net for knowledge. Use it or lose it.

Get creative. The other thing about brains is that it is important to exercise the non-logical side as well as the logical side. This is usually the right half of the brain in right handed people, and it is connected to the left hand side of the body. This side of the brain is where most of our creative thinking resides. Practicing creative activities, such as drawing, painting, pottery, woodcarving, or craft stimulate this side of the brain, again creating new pathways. Try not to be critical, just let go and enjoy the experience. If you really really want to give your left brain a workout, try drawing with your non-dominant hand. Creative pursuits are also known to improve mood and reduce anxiety. Basically, creativity is good for brains.

Do some good deeds. Helping other people can shift us out of our negative headspace and help us to feel that life still has purpose. You could do random acts of kindness for strangers, help a neighbour or loved one, or volunteer for a charity organisation. Becoming a regular volunteer can provide structure to your week, which is an important component for psychological health in retirement.

Laugh and smile. Readers Digest had it right all those years ago: laughter really is the best medicine. Think about funny stories from your past and write them down in a ‘Fun Book’. You could also add amusing experiences from recent times, even a funny thing that happened at the hospital. Share funny stories with friends and family and ask them to share some of theirs. Avoid the news and instead watch one of the many comedy shows on TV. Let go the negative judgement and allow yourself to have a good giggle.

Appreciate your life. Think about how lucky you are to exist in this fantastic experience we call life at this exciting time in history, and how lucky you are to have had the opportunity to enjoy so many decades full of so many experiences. What an amazing perspective you have. What an amazing being you are.

How to Disentangle from Destructive Thoughts

Thoughts, images and feelings are all a normal part of our internal human world, and we wouldn’t want to be without them. They can fuel our creativity, they can drive and motivate us, they can keep us safe, and they can bring us passion, joy and contentment.

But sometimes they can be an absolute pain in the bum. They can haunt us, or annoy us, or demoralise us, or rile us into a frenzy of anger or guilt. They can scare us into a frozen state of avoidance, or bring us down into the depths of depression and apathy.

It’s Not That Easy to Switch Off Negative Thoughts

In the past we psychologists have told our clients that once they have identified the destructive thoughts and images in their heads, they can simply change them to positive ones. Although this idea has merit and works for some people, it is not as easy as it sounds for the majority of us. Failed attempts to block or throw away the negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts, have led to frustration and a heightened sense of failure and inadequacy in many of the people who have attempted this method. It is simply very hard to stop a thought, particularly one that you have been replaying for a long time, and if you do manage it, they can often sneak back with a vengeance.

Psychologists are now realising that, rather than trying to disperse unhelpful thoughts, it is fine to just allow them, as long as you don’t get caught up in them; as long as you don’t believe them to be the truth; and as long as you stay mindful of what they really are… just sounds, pictures and feelings.

‘But how do I do that?’ I hear you ask in an exasperated voice.

Eastern Wisdom

Western psychology has recently started to take notice of the ancient teachings of our eastern brothers who have long said that the best way to stop thoughts controlling us is to witness them as just thoughts, and one of the best ways to do that is to practice meditation.

Meditation is both simple and difficult, but you don’t have to be a master of it to begin to feel the benefits. Anyone can learn to meditate. You could learn by going to a meditation class, or by reading a book, or listening to an audio, or even by watching one of the many YouTube videos on the topic.

How to Meditate

All you do is sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed and notice your breath and the sensation in your body as your breath enters and leaves your body. I personally like to focus more on the out-breath, as this is the side of the breath that is most linked with relaxation, but the traditional way is to just notice the breath going in and out without judging or controlling it.

Now, of course, many thoughts and images, memories and plans, and all the accompanying emotional paraphernalia, will invade your mind while you are trying to focus on the simplicity of your breath. But the trick is that you allow them all to come and go, without getting caught up in them. And if, as is inevitable, you do get carried away with a thought about the process, or your work, or relationship, or what to have for dinner, become aware of this little side-trip as soon as you can, and gently bring your attention back to your breath and your body.

Freedom to Choose

The process of witnessing thoughts images and emotions, and allowing them to come and go by bringing ourselves back to our body and breath, allows us to disentangle from them. We are then able to realise that the thoughts are not the essence of who we are: they are just static noise and don’t need to be given attention and power.

That awareness frees us up to be able to make decisions and take actions that our unhelpful thoughts and feelings have stopped us undertaking in the past. We don’t have to stop and block our unhelpful thoughts to reduce their power over us, just recognise them for what they are, and chose whether or not to buy into them.

Lorri Craig

Can a Difficult Birth Create Psychological Problems Later?

It is well known that psychological trauma of any sort can have a lasting, damaging effect on human beings. The earlier the trauma, the more profound the effect, so the impact of a difficult birth on the infant as he develops into a child and adult can be especially significant.

The Birth Experience

Imagine being a fetus. Imagine floating comfortably in the warm, soft, dark, fluid space of your mother’s womb, drifting in and out of sleep, surrounded by muffled sounds and heartbeats.

Then imagine the sudden shock of being awakened, and pushed and squeezed into the harsh, stark, and noisy outside world, amid your mother’s pained shrieks, racing heart, and adrenalin charged system.

Add to that the strain of an unusually long labour, painful forced delivery, or a life threatening situation, such as being strangled by the umbilical cord, and you have a major traumatic event. Then add the inevitable distress of the mother, to whom the baby is psychologically and energetically linked, and you have a super trauma.

And try to imagine, on top of all that, the added distress on the newborn infant of being removed from the mother for emergency treatment: the infant’s or hers.

What an incredibly cruel, loveless, unpredictable and scary place the world would seem to the distressed newborn.

That is the experience and sensation that is imprinted onto the traumatised neonate’s untainted mind. A newborn’s immature nervous system is purely unconscious mind, combined with life or death driven emotion, so it does not have the cognitive capacity to be able to sort experiences and make sense of the world in a logical, conscious way. Its mind is like a blank sheet on which is printed the first experiences. And this imprint becomes the blueprint on which the child’s life and future experiences are fashioned.

Long Term Psychological Effects

Children who have had traumatic births are more likely to be anxious or aggressive than their easy-birth counterparts. Of course genetics and many other factors come into the equation too, but, if all else was equal, the child who was traumatised at birth would be more vulnerable to psychological problems.

Separation from the mother at birth, as well as the mother’s own post-trauma stress response, can affect the early bonding between the mother and child, which is another major factor in the child’s psychological development.

As a clinician, whenever I am presented with a highly anxious, angry, or oppositional child, I always ask the parents about the child’s trauma history, including their birth experience. Actually I do this with my adult clients too. And very often the links are obvious.

Effective New Treatment

Modern psychological treatment can help to correct the psychological damage of a traumatic birth. Therapies such as EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing], EFT [Emotional Freedom Technique], and AIT [Advanced Integrative Therapy] are particularly powerful.

I mainly use AIT in my practice today, and find that it is incredibly effective for dealing with the effects of early trauma. AIT uses kinesiology, or muscle testing, to help the clinician and the client communicate with the client’s unconscious, to determine which early traumas might be affecting them in the present. I find that traumatic births are indicated quite often.

The really good news is that clearing the birth trauma with AIT is quite simple and straightforward, and once the early traumas and their links to presenting problems are cleared, and the blueprint is recreated with a clear, conscious mind, the client is able to let go of lifelong symptoms, such as excessive anxiety, fear of abandonment, anger and control issues. This is incredibly exciting stuff.

Lorri Craig practices AIT in her own private practice in Brighton and Hove, UK, and internationally by phone or Skype. To find out more about AIT go to the article on this site: WHAT IS ADVANCED INTEGRATED THERAPY?

Image thanks to arztsamui at freedigitalphotos.net

We Think and Feel What We Eat

Food is essential to human life, and it can feel good to eat, but how does what we consume affect our mental and emotional states once we have left the dinner table?

Some Stuff is Bad

Loads of studies have linked diet to mental health. Some studies look at the affect of toxic substances on our emotions. We know, for instance, that caffeine can increase anxiety, and too much sugar can play havoc with our blood sugar levels and that this can affect our mood and energy levels.

Alcohol helps most of us feel relaxed and happy in the moment, but the after effects can include low mood, irritability, and low energy [not to mention that headache]. Many studies have linked artificial food additives to behaviour disorders, such as hyperactivity and aggression, in some children.

Some Stuff is Good

On the other side, it is well known that a lack of certain nutrients can also negatively affect our mental state. A deficiency in some of the B vitamins can lead to restlessness, irritability and insomnia. Lack of folic acid can lead to low mood and low energy, which are the main symptoms of depression.

Low iron levels can also cause tiredness, and can affect our ability to think. Not enough vitamin C can affect the absorption of iron, and has been linked to depression, schizophrenia and dementia.

Many adults have reduced their anxiety levels, improved their mood, and improved their cognitive ability by taking omega 3 supplements, or foods rich in omega 3, such as oily fish and krill. I have known children diagnosed with ADHD who have benefited from omega 3 supplements to the point that they did not need to take prescription drugs.

Orthomol..er..Food Psychiatry

But why does one person benefit from a particular food or supplement, while another does not?

Linus Pauling, founder of Orthomolecular Medicine, believes that, due to variations in our genetic makeup and exposure to toxic substances, different people require different diets for optimum health. Pauling has successfully treated a range of mental disorders through Orthomolecular Psychiatry, including serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and clinical depression. He uses extensive testing to determine what his patients are lacking at a cellular level, then increases or decreases particular nutrients or substances as appropriate.

It would be difficult to test us all so thoroughly at this stage in our technical evolution, but another solution is to reduce the toxins and bad stuff in our diets, and increase our intake of healthy foods.

Super Foods

David (Avocado) Wolfe, health guru and star nutritionist, believes that certain foods, such as raw chocolate and goji berries, have extremely high levels of nutrients that are essential for optimum health and emotional well-being. Wolfe thinks that we should be eating more raw food, because the cooking process damages many nutrients in our food. He’s a great believer in blending raw fruits and superfoods into delicious smoothies. Not such a penance really.

H2O for the Soul

Finally, adequate clean water is essential for optimum mental health. Dehydration can make us feel tired and grumpy, and can affect our ability to think. Whenever I am working therapeutically with clients, I encourage them to drink a glass or two of water during and after treatment. Emotional clearing works the nerve cells and creates chemical debris. Water pumps up the nervous system and clears away debris and toxins, thus assisting the therapeutic process.

So, make sure you are drinking plenty of water, eating plenty of healthy food, including a few superfoods and more raw fruit and vegetables, and reduce your intake of damaging substances, such as alcohol, caffeine, sugar and artificial additives, and you will probably begin to feel and think a whole lot better.

Happy eating

Lorri

WHAT IS ADVANCED INTEGRATIVE THERAPY or AIT?

AIT: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

I’ve been a psychologist for a long time now, and I’ve trained in and used a huge number of therapeutic strategies. But I have never been so excited about any form of therapy as I am about AIT. Advanced Integrative Therapy [AIT] is an exciting and powerful new energy psychology that is particularly effective at removing the effects of emotional trauma. I have found AIT to be an incredibly efficient and effective, yet very gentle way of treating a range of issues with adults and children of all ages.

How AIT Works

AIT works on the holistic principle that our mind, body and energy fields are interconnected, and that traumatic memories are often trapped in our nervous system throughout our bodies. These trapped memories affect our interactions with the world, and can create traumatic patterns or dysfunctional beliefs about ourselves and our world. These can lead to phobias, relationship problems, challenging behaviours, anxiety, depression, anger, self-harm, low self-esteem, and somatic illnesses.

AIT is based on the premise that traumatic memories and their emotional charge are stored throughout the body, not just in the brain. To get a sense of this, if you reflect on a past upsetting experience of your own, you might feel some sort of a sensation or discomfort in your throat, stomach, heart, or another part of your body.

What Happens

The AIT therapist helps the client to identify the issues using their therapeutic and interactive counselling skills, and then uses muscle testing, or applied kinesiology, to confirm the treatment decisions. Muscle testing was developed originally by a chiropractor, and adopted enthusiastically by alternative health practitioners, such as naturopaths and allergy specialists. I have found that muscle testing to be a wonderful tool to use in psychological therapy. It involves gently feeling resistance, or lack thereof, in the client’s muscles in response to particular statements. The muscle goes weak when the statement is false and stays strong when it is true. It is a really good way of tuning into the client’s unconscious [or internal computer], and can be a fun way to engage children and adults, especially those who are unsure of the cause of their emotional difficulties, or who find language or talking about feelings difficult.

Once the cause of the problem has been determined, the AIT practitioner guides the client to hold certain points on their body, to stimulate the nervous system, while labelling the trauma in a simple way. The client stays mindful of their body, and relaxes with their breath through this process, while witnessing the memories, thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they come and go.

This gently and effectively clears the blocked trauma from the nervous system, so the client is soon able to remember the experience without feeling the uncomfortable emotions attached to it.

In a Nutshell

AIT is an incredibly powerful therapy, but doesn’t require the uncomfortable, long-winded catharsis of tears and talk of many other therapies. Change is quick and gentle, yet monumental. As I said, very very exciting stuff.

I practice AIT in person in Coulsdon and Brighton and Hove, UK, and via telephone or Skype to the rest of the world. Feel free to contact me if you would like to find out more. You can leave a comment here.

I really look forward to hearing from you.

Lorri Craig

PS To find out more about AIT and who might be practicing it near you, go to the AIT UK and Europe or the USA AIT Institute websites.

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