So many of my clients (not to mention friends and family) suffer from anxiety. But even when they recognize that it’s rooted in hurtful past situations, they can’t figure out how to hold onto the memories without the powerful, negative emotions that emanate from them and ruin their lives. Neuroscience Says this Is How you Can Turn a Bad Memory Into a Good (and Useful) Memory has some useful ideas on managing these memories. “Neuroscientists call the process of linking feelings with a memory valence assignment. Once we experience something, our brains associate it with a positive or negative feeling, or valence, which helps us know whether to seek it or avoid it in the future.” However, we’re only beginning to understand how valence assignment occurs, that is, exactly how one memory gets a negative assignment and another gets a positive one.  Studies show that removing a gene called neurotensin from...

Most of us understand the concept of retraining our bodies: you’re out of shape and therefore do exercises to get fitter. According to Mental Fitness: Train Your Mind Like You Train Your Body, we can use the same concept for our minds.  The article defines mental fitness as “the ability to maintain a healthy, resilient and adaptable mindset that helps you navigate challenges, manage stress and perform at your best in everyday life. At its core, mental fitness is about strengthening the brain’s ability to focus, stay positive, regulate emotions and recover from setbacks.” Consider your aptitude in each of these mental fitness categories and you’ll know which ones require attention. Let’s start with your ability to focus. If you have Attention Deficit Disorder, staying focused may be especially difficult. That’s just the way your brain works, and it has strengths those without ADD may not have. Don’t get stuck on...

While listening to a client describe her fear of sharing untoward things about her family with outsiders due to potential repercussions or retaliation, the term brainwashed popped into my head. Isn’t that what families do to us when we don’t even realize it? Most families don’t think of their actions as brainwashing (except for those who intentionally try to control and manipulate), but it happens, nevertheless.  Cambridge Dictionary defines brainwashing as “making someone believe something by repeatedly telling them that it is true and preventing other information from reaching them.” I’ll take the liberty of broadening this narrow definition a bit. Sometimes parents don’t come right out and tell you if something is right or wrong about you but imply it through words and actions via role modeling. When they say, “Oh, don’t share so much with your friends. I don’t want them to think badly of us,” isn’t that an...

Clients sometimes say things that cast them in a mentally unhealthy light and are surprised when I flag them as such. Here are phrases it’s best to avoid: Saying I’m sorry as if something’s your fault when it isn’t. Habitual apology is a sign someone feels they are or have done something wrong and it’s rooted in adaptation from childhood when family members, especially parents, “are never wrong” and must point the finger at others to avoid feeling shame.  However, saying “I’m sorry” automatically when something isn’t your fault or to prevent people who’re in the wrong from feeling badly, makes you look weak and like a pushover. Healthy people apologize easily when it’s appropriate and expect others to do the same. They don’t want or presume that others will take the blame for them. Saying I’m not perfect is a tip off to people who know no one’s perfect, giving...

Think all of your memories function the same way? Think again because some memories are explicit and some are implicit. “Explicit memory refers to the conscious retrieval of past information or experiences, whereas implicit memory refers to an unintentional or nonconscious form of retrieval.” Okay, you might be saying to yourself, I get there’s a difference, but so what? World renowned psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel explains in Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder that there’s a critical divide between these two types of memories and distinguishing between them leads to greater emotional regulation. He tells us that, “When we retrieve an implicit memory, we don’t know it’s from our past. It comes in the form of perceptions, emotions, beliefs, and sensations. The awareness of the memory is very much in conscious awareness, but that it is from the past is not.”  That is, when implicit or unrecognized memories drive our reactions, we’re out...

It’s obviously important to think before we act, but thinking too much before (and after) taking action cannot only prevent us from making wise decisions, but it can drive up anxiety, indecision, second-guessing and self-doubt. If you stress yourself out overthinking, read on to learn how to break this pattern. The first time Christos came into my office, he spent most of the session explaining how he wasn’t sure if he needed therapy or not. He’d even brought a list of pros and cons for meeting with me. When I tried to steer him away from obsessing about his decision, he ignored my questions and simply returned to his internal debate. When I mentioned that all the work he was doing trying decide about therapy seemed to be stressing him out, he agreed but added that he wanted to be careful and make the right decision. After deciding he’d give therapy...

Which would you rather feel, fear or courage? It’s an easy question to answer in the abstract, but how many times do you stick with fear rather than face challenges and opt for embracing courage? Fear is meant for one thing only: to prevent us from making decisions that inhibit us from surviving and thriving. Each time we feel it, we need to determine if fearful memories are still of predictive value. If not, they’re useless—or worse, because they prevent us from doing what’s best for us in the present. There are myriad reasons to feel fear aside from actual life-threatening events: rejection and abandonment, being judged, failure, etc. But remember, though these situations might be devastating for a child, they’re generally not for an adult. Make a list of your fears, then pause and generate some more. When you’re done, think about whether you still need to have those fears...

Because we’re not all-seeing and all-knowing beings, it makes sense we’d occasionally miss some relational red flags, especially if they’re not obviously unhealthy. We might not recognize them as dysfunctional attitudes or behaviors or may feel certain we can eradicate them through love or persuasion. Here are some subtle red flags—call them pink flags if you will—I’ve noticed. Pay attention when someone: Is unable or unwilling to share or talk about feelings. People who were brought up in families that avoided talk of emotions may lack skills to identify what they’re feeling, be fearful of experiencing or expressing emotions, or assume you may have no interest in learning what’s going on inside them. They’ll gladly tell you what they’re thinking or doing, but dodge questions involving emotions or believe they’re telling you what they feel when they’re instead saying what they think. That is, you may ask how someone’s feeling about their...

I could swear I wrote a blog about overexplaining, but since I can’t find it, here’s my take on the subject. I have quite a few clients who engage in providing far more explanation on almost any topic than they need to and have been exploring with them why that is, how they feel about the behavior, and how to tighten up verbal interactions. People who overexplain believe they have to work hard to be heard and understood, a pattern which developed in childhood for several reasons. They may have had a hard time convincing their parents of their needs and believed the more details they provided, the more valid their concerns would seem. This happens when parents don’t make their children feel heard or valued and fail to validate them sufficiently. My client Yvette likes to feel certain people understand and accept her, even with the most obvious issues. She’ll...

The biggest problem some clients have with exercise is starting a regimen with great enthusiasm, then losing interest and sticking with their program only intermittently, until they finally give it up. As one of the major incentives for exercises has been weight loss, what if exercise doesn’t actually help you lose the weight you want? What then?  According to Want to lose weight? Here’s why exercise probably won’t help, our expectations of exercise related to the scale are too high. “Large studies show that exercise alone usually produces modest weight loss, often just a few pounds over six months. That’s because your body will ‘correct’ for the extra activity by increasing your appetite or by lowering the calories burned for other bodily functions.” Additionally, aging causes muscle loss, so “we have to exercise for longer or more intensely—to the point that it may become unrealistic—to achieve a calorie deficit substantial enough...