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Looking ahead to the holidays fills us with excitement — or does it? On paper, this is the time we’re all supposed to put aside the daily stress and grind. Joy is the keyword. Traditional gatherings are where that joy is spread, right? Well, sometimes. For many folks, the holidays are when an anxiety disorder rears its ugly head.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and hypnosis (hypnotherapy) are modalities used by specially trained therapists. On the surface, they can appear similar. Hypnosis is deemed an alternative approach. It uses meditation, breathing, and guided imagery to create a mindset that is conducive to distinctly processing thoughts and emotions.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health conditions on the planet. It’s said that as many as 70 percent of visits to general practitioners are related to stress and anxiety. How many more folks are in this struggle but have not been diagnosed? This is possible because anxiety symptoms cover a lot of ground. They can be overlooked or blamed on other issues.
Everyone can relate to feeling scatterbrained in times of stress. When anxiety is present, you may misplace your keys or forget where you parked your car. If scenarios like this are uncommon and have an obvious cause, they’re rarely cause for concern. However, people dealing with an anxiety disorder can struggle with chronic memory issues.
As many as 9 out of 10 doctor’s visits are related to anxiety and stress. It comes as no surprise that anxiety disorders are the most common mental health condition in the world. The next time you’re in a crowd, take a good look around. The odds are that almost everyone around you is coping with anxiety. This reality has spurred a wide range of treatment options, including eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).
From pop culture to social media and beyond, conversations about trauma are happening more than ever before. One aspect, however, needs more attention. You see, traumatic events can cause a survivor to cultivate coping mechanisms that end up being counterproductive. A particularly insidious example of this is trauma bonding.
Anxiety feels bad at any time. It can be an all-consuming feeling of dread, worry, and fear. You may find yourself distracted from handling basic daily tasks and obligations. Your hands shake, your voice trembles, and your stomach feels like it’s been tied into a knot. As tricky as all this can be, nighttime anxiety can amplify stress in some frustrating ways.
There is no time of day that grief doesn’t hurt. It’s a tricky ride and an unpredictable process that uniquely impacts each person. That said, there are some universal trends. For example, grief often feels worse at night. This can be the case because, generally speaking, things tend to slow down in the evening. People are typically less busy, and their environment is quieter.
Medical trauma takes many forms. For example, the basic reality of suffering a serious injury or illness is potentially traumatic. The treatments and procedures are intense. On top of that, there are logistics involved in hospital stays and interventions. Healthcare workers are often stretched to their limits and, thus, subject to medical trauma. Then there’s the frightening fact that one of the primary causes of death in the U.S. is medical error.
People with disorders like anxiety, chronic pain, depression, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can tell you all about EMDR. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a potent therapeutic approach to improving one’s mental health. Unlike traditional talk therapy, EMDR utilizes eye movements by the client and hand movements by the therapist. This facilitates a state of mind in which the client can safely process trauma and other form of mental distress.
Codependency, on paper, may sound like you’ve found your soulmate. Meanwhile, it actually involves a marked decrease in independence as you gain more and more of your value from something external: your relationship. To keep this going, you must make unhealthy sacrifices and avoid analyzing your emotions.
Grief is a painful experience for everyone. It is shared regardless of age, gender, class, or race. Yet we allocate so little time to talking about it. This makes grief to be more than painful. It’s confusing, too. We’ve suffered a loss and, because the topic is somewhat taboo, the best we get from loved ones is platitudes. They mean well but only add to the puzzlement.
The concept of codependency was long associated with addiction but it covers a lot more ground than that. In fact, it is more often used today to explore the dynamics of dysfunctional, one-sided relationships. Such patterns usually involve boundary issues. A codependent couple is made up of two partners who seem to have lost track of the line that separates them.
A “toxic” relationship can exist between any two people. For this post, the focus is on a married couple. For that marriage to be toxic means, it contains insecurity, instability, controlling and abusive behaviors, and more. A toxic marriage brings out the worst in the partners; typically, one is victimized.
If we were to believe in pop culture, we’d trust that retirement is a stress-free paradise. In reality, like any of life’s major transitions, it is a mixed bag of obstacles and revelations. “Stress-free” is not a realistic appraisal of any period in our life. Someone who is about to retire may have genuine concerns about adjusting to “free time” and a loss of identity.
Everyone has had some negative experiences in the past. As a result, those painful memories can sometimes be triggered and cause fresh discomfort. For someone with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), however, such triggers can induce frighteningly extreme reactions. Put simply, they’ve endured a traumatic event and the trigger makes their brain react as if it is happening again.
For most people, conversations about inherited characteristics involve things like eye color or height. But there’s a deeper and darker discussion to be had on this topic. Generational trauma is a term used to describe how psychological and emotional tendencies can also be passed down in families. Trauma that occurred very long ago can create circumstances that end up impacting family members several generations later.
