ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION DISASTER MENTAL HEALTH NEWSLETTER
Learning From The Past and Planning For The Future
MENTAL HEALTH MOMENT
June 8, 2001
"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. General
recognition of this is shown in the phrase, 'It is the busiest man who has
time to spare.'" - Northcole Parkinson, Historian
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July 29-31 Promoting Student Success: Clinical Assessment and
Management of Differences in Learning, Chapel Hill, NC
Co-sponsored by The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and
the All Kinds of Minds Institute, this conference focuses on understanding
key neurodevelopmental functions and forms of dysfunctions in school-age
children, developing assessment approaches based on a neurodevelopmental
framework and designing effective management strategies for children and
adolescents with attention, learning or behavior problems. Attendance is
limited to 200 participants. Deadline: July 9. Contact: Maureen House;
(919) 969-5688; email: mhouse@allkindsofminds.org
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SMALL TALK: INDOOR PLAYGROUND DANGERS
Play spaces in fast-food restaurants and malls can harbor real
dangers. What to watch for:
- Unsafe Slides: There should be five to six feet between a slide's
exit and the nearest wall to prevent a speeding child from slamming
into the wall;
- Dangerous Ball Pits: Everything from dirty diapers to hypodermic
needles to weapons has been found under those balls, so use with
caution;
- Uncovered Bridges: All above-ground apparatus should be fully enclosed;
- Ripped Netting: Kids can get trapped.
"Small Talk," a weekly column of safety and health information for
parents and other caregivers for children, is a community service of
the Penn State Children's Hospital at The Milton S. Hershey Medical
Center. Please direct any comments or questions to Patricia Millner,
director of nursing, at mailto:pmillner@psu.edu.
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SUMMER COURSE on DISASTER SERVICES AND CRISIS INTERVENTION IN DISASTERS
A one credit course offered through the Counselor Education Department
at the University of Wyoming for upper level and graduate credit. The
course will be offered on July 27-28, 2001. See the online flier for more
details at: https://www.angelfire.com/biz3/news/flier.html
Also, the information about the course and registration can be accessed
at: http://www.uwyo.edu/summer
The course is listed under Counselor Education.
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GENERAL RELAXATION
A more relaxed life can help reduce stress. Taking charge of your life can make
it better.
TAKING CHARGE
Limits
Let yourself know what is too much for you. You have a maximum number of
hours you can comfortably work in a week, in a day and without a break. Be
aware of your maximum and do not repeatedly exceed it. Establish a policy
for telephone calls, meetings and projects that lets you take good care of
yourself and also feel responsible, and enforce it. Decide under what conditions
you are willing to be contacted at home. Let yourself know how much frustration,
anger and criticism you can take from others without experiencing more than
mild stress: make your limits clear to others when necessary. Take control of
your work.
Breaks
Schedule breaks into each day, week, month, and year, and use them to be
good to yourself. Five to 10 minutes between meetings, conferences or
appointments can be used to stretch, get a drink, read a few pages, enter
into your peaceful scene, listen to music, or just do nothing. Longer breaks
between meetings or appointments provide time for lunch with a friend, tennis,
exercise, phone calls, classes, reading, writing, or whatever else makes you
feel good and provides a change of activities. Everyone should have at least
one entire day, preferably two, each week that is completely free of work-related
issues. Vacations are essential. If finding time for yourself is problematic, you
may want to explore why those reasons for such time might seem threatening.
Time With Peers
Time with co-workers is important. It can give you perspective, sympathy and
understanding, new ideas, a better sense of yourself as a person, and a chance
to keep your sense of humor.
Intellectual Stimulation
Studying something totally separate from your profession can provide an exciting
change and add another interest to your life. Learning more about a topic can
make your work more interesting and exciting.
Exercise
Exercise reduces stress and brings both physical and emotional benefits. Stretching
in the morning and between meetings or appointments relieves physical tension.
Aerobics, workouts, jogging, running, walking, race walking, or biking should be
scheduled on a regular basis rather than sporadically. Find time and places to play
the sports you like and to learn the ones you want to try.
Clothes
Wear comfortable clothes. Create a look for yourself that you like. Choose colors
and textures that look good on you and make you feel good. If you enjoy the
latest styles, wear them.
Office
Make your office a place you want to be. Get yourself a good chair. Use colors
you like that will be restful for you. Add a refrigerator and some kind of cooking
facility to help you eat well. Make your office an expression of yourself - paintings
and photographs you like, plants if you want them, and some of your favorite
things.
Positive Reinforcement
Remember and repeat to yourself the rewarding aspects of your work: the things
you've done well, the changes you've made, the positive feedback you have
received. You can choose to focus on and reinforce the positive elements rather
than to rerun negative tapes.
Goals
Set realistic positive goals and re-examine them periodically. Know where you
are heading and see the progress you are making. Remember why you chose
your work and the disadvantages of the choices you did not make.
FORMS OF RELAXATION
Some forms of relaxation can actually cause positive changes in breathing,
heart rate, and blood pressure and dramatically reduce the effects of stress.
In order to achieve the maximum effect, they should be undertaken with the
assistance of someone well trained in the method chosen. Because a positive
attitude increases your chances of success, you should choose a method you
can believe in.
SELF-HYPNOSIS
Misconceptions
Many people who are inexperienced with hypnosis have an image of weak-
willed, fairly stupid "subjects" totally under the control of the hypnotist. In
reality, the subjects use the suggestions given to hypnotize themselves and
will do nothing against their will. The ability to use the suggestions to enter
a hypnotic state requires intelligence, imagination, and concentration. A
hypnotized person is not asleep and has not given up control. The hypnotic
state can be described as focused attention. You hypnotize yourself many
times a day: when you are reading and you do not hear someone calling
you, when you are driving and thinking about something and realize you do
not remember the last four traffic lights, when you are daydreaming. Learning
to choose consciously to enter and leave and use this state of concentration
gives you more control, not less. When your surface chatter is stilled, the
messages you give yourself affect you more deeply.
Method
The suggestions you use to put yourself in a hypnotic state can come from a
hypnotist, an induction tape, a book, a tape of your own voice, or, eventually,
your own inner voice. Starting with the help of a hypnotist will offer you the
opportunity to ask questions, deal with problems, and experience different
inductions and levels of trance. Then you can use a tape of the hypnotist's
voice or any of the other methods.
Relaxing the body progressively, one part after another, is a good way to begin.
Then, many people imagine themselves going "down" into the hypnotic state.
Others are more successful if they "float" or rise. When you are almost asleep,
you probably experience yourself as either sinking into the bed or floating. If
you sink, you will probably do better going down. If you float, try going up. You
can select your own mode of travel. The usual image takes you down in an
escalator or elevator. You can also go down the stairs, a hill, a slide, or a
rabbit hole or down in a bathysphere or up in a balloon or any other image
that pleases you and feels safe. You may choose to use another form of
induction. Eventually you can give yourself one signal or cue and a key phrase
and hypnotize yourself quickly, unless you enjoy the slow induction. Adapt
whatever methods you are taught or you read about to suit yourself. You are
in charge. Practice going in and out of a hypnotic state for at least a week
before you use it for anything specific.
Uses
You can use self-hypnosis to give yourself specific suggestions about stressful
situations to relax physically stressed parts of the body or body functions, and
to enter an overall state of relaxation so deep that you may be able to control
pain. Suggestions must be stated in positive terms and must be formulated
very carefully because the "unconscious" part of you can take them literally.
For example, a man who told himself, "I will choose not to eat," found himself
chewing ("chews") food and spitting it out. Suggestions for physical changes
should be checked out medically. Blocking of pain should be discontinued
periodically and should not be used in situations where pain is a sign of
further damage. Working with a well-trained and experienced hypnotherapist
in the beginning and whenever you want to make major changes is wiser and
more productive than relying on a book, a tape, or untrained help.
Advantages
Self-hypnosis is easy to learn and can bring rapid results. Because it is partly
verbal and results in greater control, it fits in well with the Western mind and
belief system. It can be used for habit change, learning, sleep, and regression
as well as for stress reduction.
MEDITATION
Misconceptions
Meditation is not contemplation, thinking about a concept, or prolonged
lethargy. It involves attention. You can focus your attention on an object, a
sound (mantra), or a physiological process such as breathing. Or you can open
up your attention into a state of undistracted perception of stimuli, both
internal and external. Meditation, like hypnosis, involves a mastery of attention.
Method
In all forms of meditation, you learn to fix your attention on your chosen task
for longer and longer periods of time. The surface chatter is stilled, as with
self-hypnosis, but you, instead of giving yourself suggestions, work toward
experiencing the part of you that comes before thought and attention. This
state is called transcendental awareness or satori. A good instructor or guide
is important.
The method most easily researched and most widely available in the Western
world is transcendental meditation (TM). This technique involves no particular
religious philosophy. Your instructor gives you your specially chosen mantra,
based on your particular needs and rhythms, and you repeat it for 15 to 20
minutes one or more times daily while sitting in a comfortable position with
your spine upright and your eyes closed. Many people feel they can choose
their own mantra. It must be short and soft and have no associative significance.
There are two common physical positions in Eastern forms of meditation. The
shavasana (corpse) pose, which involves lying on your back and making your
breath the object of meditation, can be used by anyone to reduce stress. The
zazen, or sitting, meditation is simple and straightforward, and you can sit in
a chair if you prefer. Whichever method you choose, find a teacher. Meditation
is much more effectively practiced with help, and you can reach deeper and
deeper levels if you choose.
Uses
Meditation can help you learn to maintain a relaxed state in stressful situations.
You may also find yourself responding intensely to a situation, but returning
very quickly to a relaxed state. Whichever response you learn, you can use it
to avoid the consequences of prolonged stress.
You may feel you do not have the time to meditate several times a day.
Committing yourself to the process and restructuring your schedule is a major
step in itself and can reduce stress by giving you the feeling of taking charge
of your life.
Meditation
Meditation breaks the pattern of prolonged stress. Your coping capability,
energy level and overall health will improve. Meditation is the most holistic
of the deep relaxation methods. It offers you a detachment that lets you see
your interactions with yourself, with others, and with the environment. It
brings awareness that can cause life changes. Deep meditation can open up
a deeper level of reality, with an awareness of the unity of all existence that
dissolves fear, including the fear of death. If you do not choose to carry your
meditation to this level, you can still dramatically reduce stress.
BIOFEEDBACK
Misconceptions
Biofeedback is not a purely technical process. as in meditation, you sit quietly,
working toward a state of relaxed inner awareness, developing harmony between
your mind and body. You are not permanently dependent on the biofeedback
machines. They are used only for the early stages of the training.
Method
Biofeedback uses biological functions that can be monitored by electronic
equipment and fed back through one of the five senses, to teach you to
regulate those functions. Just as a change in your emotional state changes
your physical state, a physiological change can produce an emotional change.
A meditative or self-hypnotic technique helps you enter a state of relaxation.
You will learn to achieve deep relaxation through whatever biofeedback channel
is most effective for you. Then, in that state, you can become aware of your inner
process (your fantasies, sensations, and imagery) and how it affects your
physiological functioning. The same positive attention focused on breathing in
meditation can be focused on any simple physiological process. The feedback
from the instrumentation gradually lets you know how to control the process. The
biofeedback therapist you choose must have good basic clinical skills. You must
be taught the skill and be given meaningful homework exercises so you can
generalize the skill you learn in the clinic with the instrumentation into your
daily activity. A technician who does not help you see your inner process or give
you individualized homework exercises will not be able to help you make real
changes.
Uses
You can learn to recognize and change minute symptoms before they lead to
more severe symptoms, and to stop a stress reaction while it is still small. You
will be very aware of your personal physical manifestations of tension, and you
can reverse them in the beginning stages, practicing your own preventative
medicine.
Advantages
With biofeedback you can discover and control your specific physiological stress
responses. Biofeedback tells you exactly how you are functioning. The
physiological function you want to change is monitored. You have instant
feedback on your progress. It can be used with other methods of self-exploration
such as psychotherapy, behavior modification, and meditation. Successful self-
healing with biofeedback involves a process of psychological development and
may elicit experiences of altered states of consciousness that can bring release
from old traumas, which further reduces stress and enhances life.
Summary
Too much stress causes emotional discomfort and physical disorders. Stressful
problems offer opportunities for self-discovery and growth. For these opportunities,
as well as for physical and emotional reasons, the stresses should be explored.
You can become aware of how you respond to stress and the situations that
stress you. These situations can be dealt with by learning information and skills,
restructuring to eliminate the need for the situation to occur, getting someone
else to handle it, desensitizing yourself, or taking the problem into personal
psychotherapy. An increased state of general relaxation can be obtained by
taking charge of your daily and weekly schedule, setting limits, developing
pleasant activities and surroundings, and setting and assessing positive goals.
Deep relaxation through self-hypnosis, meditation and biofeedback can produce
changes in the way the body responds to stress and can lead to higher states of
awareness.
Self-hypnosis, meditation and biofeedback can reduce stress and offer
opportunities for intense personal growth. The awareness of self-connectedness
and self-regulation that comes from these states can teach you to take charge
of your life.
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For further information on this topic, use the url below to search for and purchase
online books. Begin by trying the following descriptors: Meditation, relaxation,
stress reduction, stress and physical exercise, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, stress and
hypnosis, biofeedback, stress and biofeedback, transcendental meditation, etc.
https://www.angelfire.com/biz/odochartaigh/searchbooks.html
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Contact your local Mental Health Center or
check the yellow pages for counselors, psychologists,
therapists, and other Mental health Professionals in
your area for further information.
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George W. Doherty
O'Dochartaigh Associates
Box 786
Laramie, WY 82073-0786
MENTAL HEALTH MOMENT Online: https://www.angelfire.com/biz3/news
