Wellness Wednesday

For centuries, slow deep breathing has been practiced as a part of certain forms of meditation and as part of developing focused concentration and calmness. 

Multiple scientific studies have shown its benefits for people with hypertension, heart disease, lung disease, anxiety, and excessive stress. 

You can learn how to properly utilize slow deep breathing in Qigong classes, in many yoga meditation classes, and from select psychotherapists who specialize in breathwork.

Tranquil Tuesday

When you’re under a lot of stress, it’s easy to lose perspective and think that “Nothing is worse than what’s happening to me,” but I found a simple experiment helped me regain my perspective:

I asked myself which situation could I handle for a longer time period, bearing my stressful problem or holding my breath. I quickly found the lack of oxygen infinitely more difficult to handle. I couldn’t hold my breath for more than a minute, but I had been bearing with my stressful problems for days. This little experiment, as silly as it sounds, caused a shift in my thinking that made it easier to with my personal life stressors.

Motivational Monday

Feelings of gratitude have been found to increase feelings of happiness in scientific studies (Emmons and McCullough 2003).

Friendly Friday

It’s Friday, you’ve made it through the week! Do you feel successful? 

Well, when you examine the facts you’ll see that you deserve to feel that way. Just remember that millions and millions of micro-cellular events had to occur successfully in order for you to be born! The truth is, you were already successful when you were born! So reassure yourself over and over. Use the power of your mind and remember - Repetition works….. Repetition works… Repetition works….Repetition works…..  Repetition works…..Repetition works……

Thoughtful Thursday

Does your mind know where you are? Behind on a deadline? Beside yourself? Over a barrel?  Unemployed? Underemployed? 

Is your mind asking questions like “What am I learning to make my life easier (or at least more bearable)? Is it coming up with answers or at least making a date with you for later that day to look for answers on the web, in libraries, and from people with more experience? 

Answers are out there. From Hi Tech: A wristwatch (google ‘personal management wristwatches’) that will download your schedule from your personal computer, display it on your watch, and help you manage your time with alarms, to Low Tech: Advice on innovative strategies for finding jobs by asking priests, ministers, or Rabbis, etc. There are more out there than you could ever use, so set your mind out after them!

Wellness Wednesday!

It’s Wednesday. Is your mind stuck on the uphill side of hump day? Economic uncertainty weighs so heavily on the minds of people with the news of the past weeks. And feeling that burden makes it easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it’s going to be too hard to complete the important jobs on your list for the week. That’s an example of a cognitive distortion called “Negative Predictions” which can hurt your motivation.

If you’re having a hard time with hump day engage your mind in a hard look at your job list for anything you tell yourself that only  you can do because you believe nobody else will do it the right way. That’s an example of Emotional Reasoning (making judgments based on emotions while ignoring the facts).  In so many cases we overburden ourselves this way, making the hump of hump day way too steep. Flatten it out a little bit. Use your engaged mind to give yourself permission to delegate one or more jobs to another member of your team at work or a family member at home; or take a job off of your list for this week and move it to next week, even if only to give you one more day. I’ve seen this prevent many a meltdown.

What Does COPOW Mean?

"COPOW" is just a short way of saying Cognitive Power. In my practice as a psychiatrist, my patients who use COPOW/ Mental Self Defense (or Cognitive Therapy) feel better much faster, are more likely to stay healthy with less medication, fewer therapy sessions, and are more likely to stay out of the hospital. They're also more likely to stay free from clinical depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders. Those very few who have needed hospitalization, have shorter hospital stays than the predicted average. This translates to faster relief for my patients, and lower health care costs which is a central goal of healthcare reform.

Cognitive refers to your thoughts or your mind. Power has been defined as a thing having control or command, as well as speed in doing work.

Together, "COPOW" really stands for your mind's power to quickly control your health, both emotional and physical.
How much Power?

Think about this: Your mind can process 24-40 bits of information per second. What does that mean? Picture any busy place where peole or objects are moving around like downtown of a big city at rush hour or a popular beach on a sunny weekend. What did your mind just do?

Computer users know that when you create or store a picture of a moving image, it takes a tremendous amount of memory space. That's only a small fraction of what your mind can do. In one second, if you entered that scene you pictured, your mind would process and recognize all kinds of colors, shapes, textures, symbols, sounds, smells, and that's not even using all the senses we have, like feeling a breeze in the air. All that in just one second! So your mind is really incredibly powerful and fast. We just don't normally think of our minds as being powerful, but when we recognize that power we can use it to help us feel better, stronger, and happier. That's what cognitive therapy is all about and I feel lucky that I was taught how to use it when I was trained as a young psychiatrist.

Mental Self Defense is a system of techniques designed to allow all of us to tap into that cognitive or mind power.  The power is vastly magnified by repeating the technique of detecting, and identifying any thoughts and images in your own mind that are destructive or unhealthy, and using the systematic techniques to shift your focus of attention to more constructive, uplifting ways of seeing yourself and the world around you.

When you have COPOW under your belt, you can systemically focus on healthy, common sense ideas, and images to improve your emotional and physical health, and feel better.

Dale J. Anderson, M.D.