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Articles from June 2009

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Incorporating Mindfulness into Motherhood

by new Huffington Post blogger Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D.

Mindful Motherhood, simply put, is being present in your body, and connected with your baby even when the going gets rough. It's being aware of your experience from moment to moment, as it is happening, without pushing it away, trying to make it stay, or judging it as bad or good. It is meeting each situation as it is, and over time, more and more often, approaching whatever is happening with curiosity and compassion.

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Friday, June 26, 2009

New Harbinger authors just added to Psychology Today blogs

A number of New Harbinger authors have been added to Psychology Today's blog. The most recent additions include: Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D. Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D. Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D. Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Friday, June 26, 2009

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Six Habits that Build Trust in Yourself and With Others

by guest blogger Cynthia Wall, LCSWYou can only rely on others to the degree you truly trust yourself. This formula seems simple, but simple is seldom easy. To expect honesty in a relationship, you must commit to being truthful. Genuine compassion and forgiveness of others’ mistakes grows from the reflection of the kindness you show for your own failures.The key to building deep and lasting relationships is to strengthen your own trustworthiness. When you practice trust-building habits, you increase your confidence in coping with the uncertainties of life. These habits will help to heal the small cracks in trust and intimacy in worthwhile relationships, especially with yourself. When a relationship lacks mutual respect despite your best efforts, you will have increased faith in your ability to move on and handle separation and loss with grace.Consider the following list of behaviors and concepts with these two questions in mind: How would your life change if you committed to these habi...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Friday, June 19, 2009

The C Word

Change, like death and taxes, is unavoidable and scary. The essence of change is giving up something old and familiar in favor of something new and unfamiliar. Even if you retire willingly from a job you hate, with enough money and good health and a loving spouse, the change can be stressful. The stress can become overwhelming if you are forced to retire from a job you like, with little money or bad health or a relationship on the rocks. It’s like being dumped from a warm bed into icy, sharkinfested water .Too much C word can make you cycle from fear, to anger, to depression, to fear, to anger, to depression, and so on—like a hamster on a wheel going flat-out and getting nowhere. At those times, I’ve found that the best thing to do is to pause and literally take a breath. Lie down, close your eyes, and take long, slow breaths. Tell yourself:It’s just change.These feelings will pass,and I will remaina good little hamster—I mean person.Strange as it seems, when you’re in hamster mode, at...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Friday, June 19, 2009

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Let's Dispel Some Sleep Myths

Now that you’ve learned some of the basics about sleep, let’s take a look at some common myths about sleep that may be contributing to your sleep problems. MYTH 1: Spending more time in bed at night will give me a better chance of falling asleep. Actually, the opposite is true. The longer you spend in bed without sleeping, the more your mind and body will associate your wakeful state with your bed, thus making it harder for you to fall asleep. So instead of feeling more relaxed and sleepy when you get into bed each night, you’re actually conditioning yourself to think of the bed as a place where you don’t get good sleep. This simply leads to more frustration. MYTH 2: I need at least eight hours of sleep each night to be healthy. This is not necessarily true, but it’s easy to see why you may believe this. The media often misinterprets research data, or reports on only one finding of a study. Many different factors affect your health, and blaming lack of sleep as t...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Monday, June 15, 2009

There's Such a Thing as Healthy Narcissism

Narcissism sounds like a disaster, doesn’t it? But is narcissism always bad? Actually, it’s not. Healthy narcissism contains the seeds of assertiveness and self-respect. While “healthy narcissism” sounds like an oxymoron, in reality narcissism occurs along a spectrum within the human condition. Embodied in human nature itself is a tendency for narcissistic expression. And that isn’t all bad. Healthy Childhood Narcissism When you delve into the literature on childhood development, you are reminded that nearly every child comes into the world with the capacity to be impulsive, angry, and demanding (as well as joyful, playful, and curious). These qualities are simply elements of the broad spectrum of emotions linked to a child’s natural vulnerability and innate temperament. Narcissism has robust value for children. It helps them express their physical and emotional discomfort, especially in the preverbal years. The child becomes angry, cries, and demands attention in order to obta...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Monday, June 15, 2009

Friday, June 12, 2009

The Many Faces of the Distancer

The Many Faces of the Distancer “Distancing” is a big category. Distancers come in many shapes and sizes. They can be single or in long-term couple relationships, gay or straight, women or men, young or old. Here are a few brief glimpses of typical distancers: Distancer Categories There are three broad and encompassing distancer categories: the Disappearing Distancer, the Defended Distancer, and the Distracted Distancer. Within each of these categories, there are predictable variations. The Disappearing Distancer Disappearing distancers are the easiest category of distancers to identify. You may recognize yourself as the disappearing distancer who completely avoids getting into relationships. Or you may be the type of disappearing distancer who occasionally approaches courtship but is too afraid of being trapped or smothered to stick around for long. The Defended Distancer The second category is crowded, so if you are a defended dista...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Friday, June 12, 2009

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Healing Depression: Break Out of Your Comfort Zone

by guest blogger Dr. Lara Honos-Webb Depression is nature’s way of pushing you out of your comfort zone Every time you are faced with a fear, realize that each time you act small because of fear - you are moving toward depression. Each time you act big in spite of fear - you are moving into a new stratosphere. Think of all the people who are stopped by fear. When you push through fear you have separated yourself from them. You will become a new creature, a different creature, a better creature, a more highly skilled creature, a more resilient creature. If you take small risks you are like the pioneers, forging new ground - expanding the world as it is currently known. If you take large risks or consistently take small risks you are like an astronaut, going where few have ever gone before, where almost every aspect of your experience, you will be discovering for the first time. If you want to heal your depression begin taking a few small risks. A small risk is one wher...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

"But It's Not Sex!" What is an Emotional Affair?

Emotional affairs are amazingly complex relationships that come in many varieties, which means that no single definition can hope to completely describe them all. Nevertheless, it’s possible to define emotional affairs based upon their most general characteristics. Here is our definition: an emotional affair is an intense, primarily emotional, nonsexual relationship that diminishes at least one person’s emotional connection with his or her committed partner. Now let’s pull this definition apart to look at its major components. The Intensity of the Emotional Affair One way emotional affairs differ from mere friendships is that the people involved in them become “positively charged.” By that, we mean that people like May and Brad are strongly attracted toward each other. They look forward with great anticipation to their meetings. And when they do get together, whether face to face, by phone, or even by e-mail, they become engrossed with each other. Time flies so fast that ...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Monday, June 08, 2009

Rescuing Yourself from Your Need to Rescue Others

In legends and folklore, the white knight rescues the damsel in distress, falls in love, and saves the day. Real-life white knights are men and women who enter into romantic relationships with damaged and vulnerable partners, hoping that love will transform their partner's behavior or lives; a relationship pattern that seldom leads to a storybook ending. White knights can be any age, race, sexual orientation, culture, or socioeconomic status, but all have the inclination and the need to rescue. Although white knights can exist in a wide range of relationships, such as in a business or a friendship, we will limit our focus to the white knight in intimate relationships. Take a few moments to consider the various relationships you know about or those in which you've been involved. It's likely you know of relationships that include people who have found partners in need of rescuing-the rescue could have been from anything-unhappiness, financial chaos, substance abuse, depression, an abu...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Monday, June 08, 2009

Friday, June 05, 2009

Seeds of Service

In 1983, I [author Dr. Stewart] visited India for the first time. There I had the privilege of working at the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, an institution that is the result of the pioneering work of Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. From that time forward, my life as both a surgeon and a human being was permanently transformed. After his retirement in 1976 as the chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the nearby medical school, Dr. V, as he was lovingly called, was moved by a desire to serve his community with a higher standard of ophthalmic care, regardless of caste or capacity to pay. He opened a small eye hospital in a converted house with two operating rooms and twelve beds. From this humble beginning, and with the help of Dr. V’s dedicated family, the organization has become the world’s largest eye care system. Presently more than 1.5 million patients are cared for and more than 250,000 surgeries are performed annually at five hospitals. What makes this even more remarka...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Friday, June 05, 2009

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Pregnancy and Postpartum... Anxiety??

Why Don’t More People Talk About Anxiety During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Phase? In the public eye, postpartum depression and its risks have overshadowed anxiety during pregnancy and the postpartum phase, but we hope that this is beginning to change. Those who suffer from anxiety know just how devastating its effects can be. However, at present, only about 20 percent of obstetrician-gynecologists (OB-GYNs) say that they routinely screen for anxiety during pregnancy and only about one-quarter of anxiety cases are recognized by their obstetricians. As researchers continue to bring this important issue to the forefront, things will change. Until then, the message is clear: If you are a pregnant or new mom and you are struggling with anxiety, tell your obstetrician! Don’t wait for someone to ask— too many women suffer in silence. Take an important first step on the road to recovery and let your doctor know that you are anxious. Adapted from The Pregnancy & Postpartum A...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Capturing Moments of Happiness

Many depressed people can’t conceive of feeling “happy.” The purpose of this section is to show you that you do experience at least momentary happiness on occasion. Most people, even those who aren’t depressed, don’t feel elation—a state of intense happiness—on a regular basis. However, they do experience the many shades of happiness that are also available to you: Pleasure (watching a kitten play) Enjoyment (reveling in a hot bath or shower) Satisfaction (finishing a task) A sense of mastery (completing a difficult project) Relief (finishing a task you’d dreaded) Gratitude (when someone, even a stranger, unexpectedly does something nice for you in some small way, such as opening the door for you, picking up something you’ve dropped, or catching up to you to return something you inadvertently left behind in a cafe or on the subway) The purpose of noticing these approximations of happiness is this: first, to show you tha...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Monday, June 01, 2009

Using Music to De-Stress

While this book is directed toward students, the following piece, as well as the entire book, can be applicable to anyone. MUSICAL RELEASES Music is recognized for its therapeutic value everywhere from the operating room to the counselor’s office. According to the American Music Therapy Association (2006), music helps alleviate pain and promote wellness, expression of feelings, and memory. Whether it’s punk rock on your mp3 player, singing in the shower or playing classical guitar in the dorm room, consider all of the ways that music can help you release stress. Learn a new instrument. Why not? Take a piano or guitar class. Maybe you took piano lessons as a kid and gave them up. Wouldn’t you love to pound away on something from Coldplay or Ben Folds? What about the guitar? It is never too late to form your own band. Join a musical group, or form one. Once you’ve learned an instrument, or found friends who share your passion for sound, take it up ...

Posted By newharb / 12:00 AM / Monday, June 01, 2009