Historically, the focus of all psychotherapies has been on curing assorted forms of thinking disturbances, together with maladaptive behavior, cognitive distortions, personality disorders, chemical imbalances, genetic predisposition, and so on. For the most part, the assorted psychotherapeutic approaches focus on ameliorating discomfort, re-structuring the personality or re-educating an individual, and changing maladaptive idea processes or behavior, in order that an personel might live a happier and more fulfilling life. ordinarily speaking, this coming follows what might be called a disease or prognosis model. Similar to most of Western medicine, it focuses on what's wrong with an individual, seeking to remedy a disease or problem.
Interpretation Teeth
However, rehabilitation is undergoing a transformation in which the focus is more on disease arresting and health maintenance than only curing disease when it occurs. Researchers are investigating the value of vitamin supplements, acupuncture, nutrients, herbal medicine, fiber, exercise, meditation, and spirituality, to name but a few approaches to disease prevention. Homeopathic remedies are being viewed in a new light for the first time since the discovery of penicillin. As our life expectancy increases, we want to live healthier lives not just longer lives.
A similar transformation is taking place in the field of thinking health. Sigmund Freud was reputed to have said, "The role of psychoanalysis is to ameliorate people's neurosis and leave them with the general unhappiness of life." Now, I don't know how true this attribution is, but I do know that for generations of thinking health professionals the focus has been on psychopathology. With the irregularity of a group of psychologists during the late 1960's and early 70's, led by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and other proponents of what was referred to as the human potentials movement, most practitioners focused what was wrong with people's lives. all from substance abuse, to compulsive masturbation, to over-eating, has been viewed as a disease or illness.
An American Psychological connection president, Dr. Martin Seligman, called upon psychologists to focus on a safe bet psychology that can improve people's lives. He challenged us to use psychology to improve the potential of lives straight through health-strengthening the immune system to ward off disease. It is time to look for ways to prevent disease, as well as psychological disturbances. We should be examining strengths and seeing ways to improve these strengths, rather than focusing exclusively on weakness.
One of the problems inherent in this model, however, is that assurance companies, more often than not, pay when you are sick, not for prevention. This model military practitioners to look for "what's wrong" with the personel in order to come up with a reimbursable diagnosis. Most assurance companies, for example, do not reimburse for marriage counseling. Yet we know that unhappiness in marriage can manifest itself in corporal illness, depression, loss of work, inability to focus, and so. We know that with psychological intervention habitancy will lose less time from work, spend fewer days in the hospital, have fewer commercial accidents, make fewer visits to their physician; and, In short, there will be an increase in productivity, and in the long-run costs to individuals and businesses will be reduced.
Psychology and Your potential of Life
Let us take a look at a few of the ways psychology can improve the potential of our lives.
Physical health
We can do anything is necessary to build up and reinforce our immune system so that it will resist disease. We can thought about watch our diet, get adequate exercise, learn about vitamin supplements, nutraceuticals, health supplements, etc.; normally check our blood-chemistry, vital signs, and other physiological processes straight through at least yearly physicals; and even learn how to monitor ourselves before illness strikes.
If illness should befall us, we can still focus on improving the natural medical properties inherent to our bodies. psychology has taught us that visualizations, meditation, spirituality, and auto-hypnosis can improve our immune system and help us become more unyielding to disease. habitancy with a safe bet outlook on life, a safe bet self-image, and high self-esteem have fewer illnesses and recover more fast from them than do those who are de-pressed, negative, and have low self-esteem. It has been demonstrated that a brief hypnotic session with a psychologist can even decrease the distance of post-surgery hospital stays.
Personal Growth
Psychologists have found that many psychological problems of daily life are largely a function of inappropriate trust systems and maladaptive behavioral patterns. The world as it is per-ceived and interpreted by a child is very distinct than the world perceived and experienced by an adult. Yet, many adult beliefs are formed by the perceptions and interpretations developed in childhood. Many maladaptive behaviors were designed to help the personel deal with a world that was painful, confusing, and frightening. The behaviors mitigated some of the pain, leaving the personel feeling more in control, less frightened, and less pained. But as the years passed, these behaviors became less and less constructive. They stopped serving their primary purpose, leaving the personel stuck with the effects. Over-eating, for example, may have been the child's way of coping with the anxi-ety of living in a dysfunctional family or feeling insecure living in a world that s/he could not control. Food soothes that feeling. The world that was fantastic to a child may not be so fantastic to an adult. However, once the child learns that food can assuage feeling of discomfort, it becomes the formula of choice for dealing all sorts of anxiety.
Psychologists can help individuals alter their trust systems and produce new, more efficient ways of coping with discomfort. Furthermore, these same approaches can help individuals modify their trust systems and produce new behaviors for improving their life, much as a sports coach might help your tennis or golf game. By pointing out what behaviors are interfering with your stroke, a coach can help you produce new behaviors to improve your game. In fact, many psychologists are consulting with individuals in the capacity of ""life coach"" rather than ""psychotherapist-pist.""
Emotional Health
People often sense life as a series of emergencies demand-ing immediate and intense reactions. This constant state of reactivity plays havoc with one's emotional world, not to mention the effects on one's body each time we call for mobilization. It is emotionally and physically exhausting. For these people, life is a series of calamities. Every event is met with 100% emotional response. They seldom become "somewhat annoyed," but rather they become "enraged." Every ding on their car becomes a major event. What these habitancy do is to exaggerate the magnitude of the event to fit the intensity of their emotional reaction when they should be reducing their emotional reaction to fit the event. In terms of intensity of reaction, for these individuals, receiving a traffic label is the same as being mugged.
Another common tendency is for habitancy to enduringly put in order for real or imagined danger. They are always in a state of "ready alert," perceiving and expecting danger in every interaction. They are always scanning their environment in a state of hyper-vigilance. At some point in their pasts, these individuals learned to realize the world broadly as an unsafe place, so to stop and "smell the roses" is anathema. They cannot dream letting down their guard lest they be harmed.
Psychologists can help individuals with such issues by examining the trust system upon which their behaviors are predicated. For instance, the individuals might learn to value the magnitude event in terms of its importance. By using a one-to-ten scale, where ten is reserved for life threatening diseases or accidents, each event is rated. If a someone is late for an appointment, for example, relative to studying a loved one has concluding brain cancer, the tardiness may receive a value of "1." Therefore, the magnitude of the reaction should be on the level of "1" as well. By studying to adjust their reactions to fit the event, rather than the other way around, they learn to get more operate over their emotional lives.
The psychologist might help the personel to understand the relative probability of an event occurring as well as the potential to deal with it. For the most part, this personel carries with him the trust that he would not be able to cope with most situations unless totally prepared. He might be operating in the world similar to a helpless child for whom life itself looms as an ever-present danger. By examining the basis for such a trust system, this personel can be helped to originate a more realistic estimation of danger.
Achieving Balance
A key element in having a more fulfilling life, with fewer psycho-logical concerns, is to accomplish balance. studying how to equilibrium the assorted aspects of your life - career, marriage, children, spouse, society involvement, spiritual life, collective life, recreation, corporal health - is not an easy task. Most habitancy reduce at least one aspect. Some habitancy drop any of these areas al-together. Others are franticly trying to juggle all of them, often not enjoying any.
So, how do we accomplish balance? The first step is to value your expectations. Then value your circumstances and abilities. It is important to realistically appraise your situation. value what we can and cannot do. value the level of involvement with which you are capable of participating in the assorted areas of our lives. While you may wish to be president of the parents connection while raising two pre-schoolers and retention down a full time job, it may be more approved to think being on a committee that meets once a month. You can still be involved, but the degree of involvement must be modified to fit out life situation. Rather than having no hobbies because of time constraints, we might think having a less demanding hobby - one that is relaxing as well as fulfilling.
Achieving equilibrium requires planning. Just as construction a house or developing a business requires a blueprint or a business plan, so does a balanced life. It requires that you do your homework, realistically designing how you are going to produce a balanced plan for living. Just as architects are able to produce approved housing plans for your home, many psychologists are quite adept at developing life plans with individuals. Most habitancy have tiny mystery obtaining architectural or business consultation, but they believe they should be experts when it comes to life plans.
Marriage Enhancement
Psychologist, Dr. Judith S. Wallerstein, co-author of The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts, carried out in-depth inter-views with 50 couples who have been married at least nine years, had children together, and independently and who independently regarded their marriage as happy. Dr. Wallerstein identified nine "psychological tasks" as the pillars on which any marital connection rests. The following are Dr. Wallerstein's nine tasks:
o detach emotionally from one's childhood so as to invest fully in the marriage and, at the same time, to redefine the lines of connection with both families of origin.
o Build togetherness based on mutual identification, shared intimacy and an wide conscience that includes both partners, while at the same time setting boundaries to pro-tect each partner's autonomy.
o produce a rich and pleasurable sexual connection and to safe it from the incursions of the workplace and family obligations; it is the second part of this task which must not be overlooked or taken for granted.
o (for couples with children) Embrace the daunting roles of parenthood and to suck in the impact of Her Majesty the Baby's dramatic entrance into the marriage. At the same time the consolidate must continue the work of protecting their own privacy.
o Confront and expert the safe bet crises of life and sound the power of the marital bond in the face of adversity and originate a safe haven within the marriage for the expression of difference, anger and conflict.
o Use humor and laughter to keep things in perspective and to avoid boredom and isolation.
o contribute nurturance and relax to each other, satisfying each partner's need for dependency and offer persisting encouragement and support.
o Keep alive the romantic, idealized images of falling in love, while facing the sober realities of the changes wrought by time.
Dr. Wallerstein's tasks are not easy. To accomplish them requires that each spouse be committed to improving their marriage and development it work. In addition, they wish that each spouse be equally committed to their own personal increase as well as the increase of their partner. The preservation and enhancement of the marriage partnership must be a top priority.
Stress management
Stress is the body's adaptive response to unusual circumstances and can come from internal and external sources. Prolonged, intense stress can and often does have deleterious effects on mind and body. It can sway the immune system development us vulnerable to high blood pressure, ulcers, and heart disease. It can sway our judgment, our perceptions, our interpersonal relation-ships, and our job performance. Some habitancy are more prone to sense stress than others. For example, habitancy who have mystery accepting turn or being out of operate have higher stress levels than those who are adaptive and accepting of the contingencies of life. Psychotherapy is often helpful in dealing with persisting stress reactions and post-traumatic stress disorders. Meditation, yoga, relaxation techniques, exercise, and hobbies can ameliorate temporary stress reactions and can be helpful in preventing stress reactions if practiced regularly.
There are any common activities that are beneficial in reducing or coping with transitory, situational stress. These techniques, when applied regularly, can significantly reduce or soften the brunt of the stress reaction to temporary events.
Relaxation techniques. There are many distinct forms of relaxation techniques together with auto-hypnosis, progressive muscle relaxation, and some forms of yoga. One that I have found helpful combines any aspects of these approaches:
Start by seating yourself in a comfortable position in a quiet area. Loosen your clothing so that you do not feel constricted in any way. Close your eyes and squeeze them shut as tight as you can. Progressively move from one muscle group to another, teeth and jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, fists, chest, back, thighs, buttocks, calves, and feet. Tighten each in turn until your whole body is tight. Then relax one group at time, feeling the discrepancy between the tight sense and the relaxed experience. notice the tingling or what ever sensation you have. Just notice it, don't do anything about it. And as you relax each area, focus on your breathing. Breathe gently and rhythmically until your whole body relaxes. Finally, dream yourself in a location that you find especially relaxing, safe, and comfortable. For some people, it might be a secluded beach, for others a mountain lake. Each of us has our own place. Once you have the image in mind, make it as clear as you can, roughly as though you are there. Let your thoughts go, don't try to capture them or block them; just let them go by like so many butterflies fluttering. Stay in your "place" for five or ten minutes and then gently remind yourself to come back to gift time or home. gently open your eyes and gently re-orient yourself. This coming takes about 15 to 20 minutes. You should feel refreshed when you are through.
Deep Breathing. Deep breathing has long been known to have relaxing properties. All forms of yoga, athletic exercises, and meditation have a breathing component. Oxygen itself tends to revitalize; it both energizes and relaxes as we cleanse our system. Breathing exercises are simple. Sitting quietly, breathe in as deeply as you can straight through your nose and exhale straight through your mouth expelling all of the air. Repeat this three times. Then, focusing your attention on your breathing, breathe in gently straight through your nose and exhale straight through your mouth. Breathe rhythmically. Repeat this ten times. You will notice the difference.
Physical exercise. Of all form of exercise, aerobic practice in particular, has relaxation qualities. Getting oxygen into your blood stream, releasing stored toxins in your body straight through sweat, and expanding the production and release of endorphins into your blood stream will have a calming effect on your whole system. That is one of the reasons so many habitancy are participating in these forms of practice over the nation.
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