When I work with adult children who suffered from childhood trauma, the single most difficult thing to believe is also the most difficult to help them shift. Read more
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If you have anxiety sensitivity, here are 10 factors that contribute to “Sticky Thoughts.” Sticky thoughts are the ones you just can’t shake loose. Sticky thoughts predispose your mind to anxiety and hyper-vigilance. They tend to keep you stuck in your own personal anxiety loop that is both unproductive and self-shaming. That is why learning to identify and talk back to them is critical to your good mental well being.
Feeling stuck?
The 10 Sticky Thoughts Factors
- Sleep deprivation/insomnia
- Drinking alcohol
- [Some] OTC medications
- Steroids of any type, asthma meds
- Your genetic inheritance is a factor
- Any illness, a cold, for example
- Caffeine or sugar intake—notice what affects your body
- A natural cycle upon wakening that many feel as a sort of dread of the day, which lessens over the course of the day
- Hormone fluctuations
- Hyper-vigilance, or monitoring of the content of the mind is the most prevalent factor of all.
BONUS ROUND!!! Social Media! Devices! They are the trigger for so many of our sticky thoughts.
Here’s a thought: You can be “blessed” and still be hurting. Don’t give in to polarized thinking, that if you’re fortunate then you’re wrong to feel bad about anything. I also think of it as binary thinking, or thinking in polarities. You’re finding yourself saying it’s either this or that, when in fact most things occur on a spectrum.
My mother died last June, and her name was June. This is my first Mother’s Day Grief without her in the world. The picture you see (scroll down if her head is chopped off; my lack of technical prowess is showing) shows her in her prime doing what she did best: organizing several hundred Pixy Pin-Up children’s photographers and their schedules all over the United States, BEFORE there was such a thing as spread sheets, google, or online flight reservations. She had this great big board in her office with constantly changing slips of paper and schedules representing each photographer. The schedules all changed weekly, too. I always thought my mom was born in the wrong era. She would have made an incredible chief of operations and logistics. She majored in home economics, because that was really about the only option there was when she attended college. On this Mother’s Day, consider what your relationship is or was with your mother, and plan your day accordingly.
Isn’t it interesting that some of life’s most paradoxical challenges have simple solutions that are tough to execute? The takeaway? You are far more resilient than you think.
Corona virus anxiety abounds. We can see it in the empty grocery store shelves. There is no hand sanitizer or masks to be found! It is a real trigger for those with health anxiety. In case you tend to get anxious around issues like corona virus, here are some quick tips for managing that anxiety. For starters, it’s completely normal to feel anxiety around a situation like the Corona Virus outbreak.
But when we get stuck in a loop of anxious thoughts it does not do us any good.
When you are stress and need some instant ways to connect to your immediate surroundings, test out a few of these 25 ways to get grounded fast. Grounding tips help you connect to the here-and-now when it feels like things are out of control.
We do love a quiz that will supposedly reveals ourselves to….well ourselves. Am I right? Want to take personality tests that are actually accurate? We desperately want to understand ourselves and our relationships with others. Unfortunately taking a well researched test eludes the vast majority of us. Why?
Consider this quote from Men’s Health magazine about male depression:
The bro culture that dictates limited ways of interacting: fist bumping, shoulder punching, sports banter, and shrinking from talk that gets too real is hurting men. Being too sensitive with other males invites talk of “manning up”, or worse, causes others to shrink away from you as if you have a raging contagious case of the flu.
Would you agree that your mental health is inseparable from your physical health? That your mind and body cannot be divided? If so, why are there so many men stigmatized if they even breathe a hint of trouble on the mental health front?
Here’s what micro self-care is not: Work out 4-5 times a week. Get a massage. Book a spa day. Take more vacations. Meditate. Garden. Take up a new hobby: paint, draw, crochet. Get out into nature. Get more sleep. Practice gratitude. Arrrrrggggghhhh! Yes, all of these are effective self-care ideas, but what can you do RIGHT NOW that does not take up big blocks of time, money, and that don’t require a substantial commitment from you? And that also help you to get through a stressful day at the office? Micro self-care, that’s what. So here’s a short post for some quick ideas.