You are standing in line at Starbucks to get your morning coffee and a guy in a blue shirt comes up, cuts in front of you in line and then, for no reason, he stomps on your toe as hard as he can. All of a sudden your heart rate zooms up from 70 to 140 beats per minute as the Read More →
Stress management 2.0: Simple ways to stop stressing
Your body and brain were designed to handle short bursts of stress to help you get away from lions and tigers and bears. Once you are safe your stress response is supposed to go back down to its 0 baseline. When you are chronically stressed and especially when your stress response never Read More →
Vicious Cycles – Science Finally Proves That They Really Do Exist
Have you ever started to have what you thought was going to be a normal conversation with someone only to have it escalate into a red hot argument without even trying? Do you and your spouse (or teenager or boss or sibling) seem to hit each other's buttons so that arguments go from zero Read More →
The Secret Purpose of Flashbacks
A flashback is really just your brain's instant replay button. Flashbacks are memories that are so vivid that they seem like they happened yesterday even if they occurred years or decades ago. Simply recalling them causes you to reexperience most or all of the emotional reactions you had Read More →
If You Can Make It Worse You Can Make It Better.
The first law of emotional dynamics is: If you can make it worse you can make it better. So it's really good news if just remembering a panic attack makes you anxious, if thinking about an old hurt makes you depressed, if recalling a past insult gets your blood boiling. This is because, Read More →
The 3 Unsent Letters Technique – An easy way to handle difficult topics & relationships
When you have issues with a person in your past or present life it is often helpful to be able to express your ideas and feelings without having to worry about how that person is going to react. The unsent letters part of the program can help you do this in a structured way. You are Read More →
THE LIMITS OF TALK THERAPY
While traditional talk therapy can help many people with many types of problems, recent research suggests that it has a massive achilles heal that can cause it to fail you when you need it most. Researchers at NYU had student volunteers come in and watch a computer screen while Read More →
How Forgetting to Put Down a Toilet Seat Can Lead to a Divorce
Unconscious flashbacks - emotionally charged memories that can trigger strong emotional reactions and destructive urges and impulses without ever coming into your conscious mind can cause serious damage because they force you to MAKE UP reasons for your reactions. Women who have been Read More →
What Made Me React Like That? The Hidden Effect of Unconscious Flashbacks
Do you know anyone who has over-the-top reactions that don't make any sense in the present? They may have had an UNCONSCIOUS FLASHBACK. There are two kinds of flashbacks, conscious flashbacks and unconscious flashbacks. When a car backfire triggers a memory of mortar fire to pop into a Read More →
The Strangers Within You – Your Emotional and Body Brains
So how can you have emotional reactions that don’t make sense to you, that don’t seem to be under your control? To understand this you have to understand how your brain is wired. Your brain can be divided into 3 parts. Make a fist with your right hand, then cover your fist with your Read More →