…ikely to alarm both young children. What they will learn in that moment is fear, not to be better behaved. In fact, at those times, what we are actually modeling for them is out of control and aggressive behavior. Being mindful allows us to step back from the situation, observe our emotional reaction, take a breath and act in a calmer, more rational manner. In this same scenario, the parent could acknowledge the children’s frustration by first loo…
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…ly, friends and society. I found my parents in the friends that offered me feedback or input about various parts of my life. I would react with fear and panic and dramatically push back on the information, or become upset and angry. An adult, in a room full of peers, hears information, processes it, and it’s not a threat. Because in the end, an adults can choose their path. They are not children being told what to do, or how to live, or being reje…
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…erapy can include the person seeking treatment making a list of his or her fears, then rating them from least frightening to most frightening. For example, an action that would cause a small amount of anxiety might be failing to check the lights after leaving the house. A larger worry might arise over touching something one perceives as dirty. By exposing people to their fears, starting with the items on their list that are less stress-inducing an…
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…ness were a product for purchase, that once we own, will make us better. I fear that the word itself, in its overuse, leads to the rolling of eyes, “oh no, not that again!”, or an over consumption of its superficial application. It takes a lot of courage to be mindful, not easy this seemingly simple awareness of right now, as it is difficult for us to set down our reflexive judgments that push away what we don’t want, or pull toward us what is kno…
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…to opportunities. Tough as they can be, outbursts, arguments, and bouts of fear can all offer prime chances to integrate a child’s brain. Here are a few effective tips to help get your child develop a well-integrated mind. To learn more, join us for the upcoming free and CE Webinars with Dr. Bryson. Use the logic of left brain to make sense out of feelings in the right – Simply telling our children to “calm down” or “stop crying” is not an effecti…
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…to opportunities. Tough as they can be, outbursts, arguments, and bouts of fear can all offer prime chances to integrate a child’s brain. Here are a few effective tips to help get your child develop a well-integrated mind. To learn more, join us for the upcoming free and CE Webinars with Dr. Bryson. Use the logic of left brain to make sense out of feelings in the right – Simply telling our children to “calm down” or “stop crying” is not an effecti…
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…average of 160,000 children in the United States stay home from school for fear of being bullied. Last year, bullying made national headlines when physical and emotional violence towards LGBT teenagers led to a series of painful suicides. The immediate response to this was impressive. Dan Savage created the “It Get Better Project” and inspired thousands of people, from Adam Lambert to President Obama, to send in videos about their own experiences…
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…e almond- shaped amygdala has been found to be especially important in the fear response. (Although some writers attribute all emotions to the amygdala, more recent research suggests that our general feelings actually originate from more broadly distributed areas of the limbic zone, the brainstem, and the body proper, and are woven into our cortical functioning as well.) The amygdala can prompt an instantaneous survival response. Once, when my son…
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…f feelings is necessary to healthy sleep. Feelings often get buried out of fear that they will take over and we will lose our strong hold on control. The opposite is true. The more we acknowledge and allow the natural movement of emotions, the more freedom we have to make choices about our next action. The alternative is getting backlogged in unexpressed emotions, that solidify, and later come to life when we try to sleep. (movement is healing, st…
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…nts may not seem as dramatic, but they impacted us by causing us distress, fear, or pain and, therefore, changed the way we saw ourselves, other people, and the world around us. In many cases, we’ll discover that these traumas are not fully resolved. An example of this occurred in a course I taught on coherent narrative. A woman wrote down a story, which she shared with the class. She started by shamefully stating that as a kid, she killed a horse…
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