Successful Stress Management

Coping with stress is vital to self-improvement. In this article I will take a look at stress and give you a few tips on how to cope with it. Stress management is a huge subject so in the space I have available I can only give you a few tips from the many that are to be found in books and courses. First of all what is stress? We feel stressed when the pressure in our lives exceeds our ability to cope with it. A certain amount of pressure...

Hypnosis: is a mental state or set of attitudes and beliefs usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a series of preliminary instructions and suggestions.

Prior to the 15th century a crude form of hypnosis was practiced.  A ‘suggestion' was implanted in to the patient's conscious and subconscious mind, that they would "accept" healing and invoking the patients ‘power of belief'.  Patients believing...

One of the ways in which the government attracts our attention is by having a series of steps to move from "no reason to panic" to "run for your life!" The classic example of this is the Homeland Security's "Advisory System". This moves from a Low Green, through a Guarded Blue, an Elevated Yellow, a High Orange to a Severe Red. For those of you who have lost interest, we are currently at yellow when we walk around the streets of our cities, but orange the...

For those of you who understand and support the idea of evolution, worry has probably been one of the key survival characteristics. Imagine what life must have been like as a hunter gatherer, living on the plains, surrounded by large animals that would prefer you not to eat them for lunch. In such circumstances, the fight or flight instinct is to the fore. More importantly, the early humans probably worried about where the next meal was coming from and all the different ways in which...

There's always quite a big slice of the population that's down. For them, the world revolves through shades of grey into black and back again, and there's nothing worse than meeting happy people to make them feel really bad. Somehow all the bitterness and resentment comes to the surface. It's a Scrooge, "Bah, humbug!" day everyday, including Christmas, if the crowd around them is bouncing around being all joyful. Perhaps it's a fear the happiness might somehow be infectious....

In 1964, the then leader of China, Mao Zedong, published a book of quotations. It appeared in the West as the Little Red Book and, in all its forms, it became the most widely distributed book of the twentieth century. Think of it as the equivalent of the Bible for anyone interested in the Chinese version of communism. Every group writes a set of rules for itself when it gets into a position of power. Membership of the group depends on accepting the rules. The power of the group lies in...

We sometimes experience nervousness. It is a common feeling. Being human gives us a whole spectrum of emotions to keep up with. These feelings and emotions either are good for us or bad. We can pretend to not notice those but they become a part of your life if we try to leave them behind as they are. This is not a way to be. Panic attacks and sever anxiety can be treated. They are not to be ignored simply because you don't think people would notice you having them. So the clear step for...

"It all began many years ago when I was graduating from my university. I was preparing myself for an important quiz and it just appeared out of nowhere". That is how Steve Madison's email to our website begins. "I could not believe or understand why it as happening to me. Almost unrealistic it was as I felt like dying. It was so cruel and violent. It totally seemed like a curse to me. I was sitting there innocently before it started …" He went on:" I was...

There is a wide selection of anti-anxiety medications that are prescribed to patients with different anxiety disorders and clinical depression. Most people experience anxiety on a regular basis and it's hard to find a person who hasn't. The feeling of stress, worry and fear before an important event or in a situation of uncertainty – anxiety is an evolutionary mechanism that helps us respond to uncertainty and potential danger to our being. But anxiety is of course not of the...

Well, it's that time of the decade again and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is going through it ritual of revising the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Let's be clear why this is important. For better of worse, the DSM is like a bible, containing words of wisdom on which clusters of symptoms represent which disorders. The idea is to do away with the zip code lottery of diagnosis. In one US state you might be diagnosed as a bit eccentric. With the same behavior in a...