Excerpt from Home Without Going Crazy

Shaming signals, quite naturally, bring us to the topic of guilt, which is the internal version of shame. Guilt lock explains one of life’s great mysteries: how you can feel so bad about a given event and still do nothing about it. Guilt lock is the emotional equivalent to gridlock, and it is just as paralyzing.

Excerpt from Going Home without Going Crazy: How to Get Along with Your Parents and Family (Even When They Push Your Buttons)

Flooding occurs when an adrenaline over load over whelms parts of the brain. Have you ever been so upset you can’t think, can’t speak, can barely cope? That’s flooding. You may already know some thing about flooding from the fight-or-flight syndrome, where the more primitive parts of the brain over ride the more advanced parts. The result is knee-jerk fear or aggression and a distinct lack of level headed reason.

You can expect flooding to affect you both physically and mentally. Physical symptoms act like an early warning system.

Your ultimate goal is to control flooding rather than allow it to control you.

by guest blogger Stephanie Silberman, author of The Insomnia Workbook

During the holiday season, many people find themselves sleep-deprived. The reasons for lack of sleep can be positive or negative. Although staying up late at parties, eating and drinking a lot, and having friends and family over at your house can be a significant source of fun and pleasure and something that you’ve looked forward to for quite some time, it can also lead you to deprive yourself of much needed sleep. On the other hand, if the holidays are causing you to feel stressed due to financial concerns, tension at family get-togethers, or other similar reasons, you may be lying in bed at night wishing the holidays were over already so that you could go back to sleeping better. Although it’s quite common to have trouble sleeping during stressful periods of your life, insomnia can easily turn from a short-term problem into a chronic one. Before letting poor sleep affect both your physical and mental well-being, try these simple tips to improve your sleep this holiday season.