How to Sleep With Coronavirus Anxiety https://nyti.ms/2JdXp2m
Concrete and actionable recommendations, by Adam Popescu writing for the New Yorl Times (3.26.20). If you are among the many struggling with sleep these days, it's definitely worth a read.
How to Sleep With Coronavirus Anxiety https://nyti.ms/2JdXp2m
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GENIUS! Practical, doable advice on how you can take the edge off of those endless spiralling COVID-19 worries, from Yale psychologist Dr. Laurie Santos, UMich psychologist Ethan Kross and...Lebron James (whaat?) Plus, a (slightly) evil psychology experiment. Listen at happinesslab.fm or wherever you get podcasts to get evidence-based strategies you can use right now. Other coronavirus episodes so far address isolation, loneliness and rising to the (unasked for and un-sought) challenge.
Living successfully with ADD/ADHD involves doing lots of different things which fall, more or less, into 4 categories, like steps. You don't have to do everything, and certainly not all at the same time. It's a process, a kind of dance where you start with basic steps, repeating them and getting better with practice as time goes on.
Flawed + awesome = FLAWSOME
💛 Flawsome is embracing your flaws, owning them like a human being Flawsome is working with your flaws and mistakes, no shame required Flawsome is an antidote to perfectionism, imposter syndrome, self-criticism and comparing yourself negatively to other people Flawsome is empowering Flawsome is real 💪 It's how we wear them and work with them that makes us awesome - not being without flaws to begin with Since being human is to have flaws, what do you have to lose?! BE FLAWSOME!! A 2016 collaboration between music therapists and the UK soundscape band Marconi Union resulted in Weightless, a 8-minute composition that was demonstrated in a small research study to reduce blood pressure, heart rate, cortisol levels and for some participants, their anxiety rating by as much as 65%.
Weightless became so popular as a aid to relaxation and sleep that the 10-hour version has logged over 10 million views. Will you love it? There's only one way to find out.
Years ago, when my kids were little, I thought it might be cute to get a sticker for my minivan that read "MultiTasking Mommy", or better - a personalized license plate, but couldn't make it work with 7 characters. After further thought, I realized that announcing that I could be multitasking while driving with children in car was more terrifying than funny. But my tendency to try to multitask didn't go away. I'm not alone.
We live in Distractionlandia, with a thousand things clamoring for our attention - certainly from that device in your pocket if not from the back seat of your car. The pull to do 2, 3, 4+ things at once is ever-present, including for those of us who are supposed to know better. We multitask with and without awareness of doing so. Some people claim that they're more effective when multitasking. I used to be one of those people, but not any more. While I still find myself multitasking all too often, it does help to understand what's really going on in the brain. Notice, refocus on one thing at a time. Notice, refocus. Lather, rinse, repeat. Dr. Sanjay Jupta, a truly great explainer, on multitasking. Every find yourself reading about mindfulness, brain training, relaxation, guided imagery, stress management or meditation, and feel like there's just too much to choose from? Where should you start? What's the best approach? Do you have to sit and meditate for 20 minutes twice a day? What if you start and then forget to do it? . Ah, you got to love the mind...just never shuts up, does it? It's not that complicated or fancy. You breath, you relax your body, you notice when your mind wanders and bring it back, again&again&again&again. You hang in there with yourself, repeatedly interrupting the inevitable stream of self-criticism, self-judgement and negative yack, refocusing over and over for a few minutes. Daily practice is great, but don't sweat it if you forget - simply begin again. Here's a short list of audio recordings of the basic practices, plus a few suggestions for how to get started and keep going. Wondering how to survive & thrive with a 🐒 brain? 💡 STEP 1. Get A Good Map - Learn About ADHD Step 1.4: CONNECT with your community, your fellow travelers! Get with the national organizations devoted to ADHD: CHADD - Children & Adults with ADD at CHADD.org; ADDA - the Attention Deficit Disorder Association at add.org; online support communities, like the ones at AdditudeMag.com. Search 'adult adhd discussion' or 'adult adhd forum' - you may be pleasantly surprised at who all is out there. 💡 CHADD deserves special mention – CHADD chapters in many cities have in-person peer support groups (none here in beautiful Ventura County, tho 🙁). Plus, the annual CHADD conference is nothing short of AMAZING! Researchers, clinicians, educators, parents of kids with ADHD, people with ADHD (many of us fit multiple categories) – it’s a revelation to get to be with your tribe. I’ve had wonderful experiences. This year, the conference will be in St. Louis, November 8-11. How to work with a 🐒 brain? 💡
STEP 1. Get A Good Map - Learn About ADHD Step 1.3 Great videos on ADHD 📹📹📹 I swear, I could start a book/video/podcast club with my therapy clients – we share our favorites and sometimes watch clips in session. One time, a client who’d just broken up with her boyfriend and I put together an ‘empowerment playlist’ to help her hold her boundaries firm when her ex tried to wheedle his way back in. It had all the classics (mostly old pop & soul): “These Boots Were Made for Walking”, “I Will Survive” (of course), “Respect”, “Run the World”, “Proud Mary”, “Respect Yourself”, etc. It was lots of fun and she went from sobbing to smiling. But I digress…What was I going to talk about? Ummm, right…Videos! According to my clients, the best, most useful YouTube channels about adult ADHD, hands down, are: 1. Jessica McCabe’s “How To ADHD” @howtoadhd (IG acct doesn’t reflect depth of her YouTube Channel) 2. Rick Green & Co.’s “Totally ADD” @totallyADD. Both are funny, engaging, up to date and, most important - scientifically sound. . Other good, if serious, YouTube channels for adult ADHD Ed:
Annnd, that’s about enough for now. There’s lots more, but it’s time for me to go outside and mess about in the yard, maybe go for a walk. If you/someone you love has ADD/ADHD - Congratulations! Welcome to the club! 🤝 Now, how to deal with your wonderful 🐒🧠?
STEP 1. Get A Good Map - Learn About ADHD [note: this is an ongoing project] Step 1B: Learn by listening to PODCASTS 🎧 Who doesn’t love a good podcast? Okay, some people don’t get into them, but for many of us, it can actually be easier to get engaged by listening rather than reading. Plus, podcasts (and audiobooks) let you move - super-helpful for keeping those attentional circuits in the brain active. I like to listen while folding the laundry, weeding the yard, walking, making the bed, etc. etc. It’s one way to get through imbortant chores (important but boring). But there’s crazy lots to listen to out there – how do you choose where to start? Suggestion – do a John Wooden and go for the fundamentals: Dr. Ari Tuckman’s ‘More Attention, Less Deficit’ series on understanding adult ADHD and Executive Functioning and success strategies. Originally done as a companion to his excellent book (same title), Dr. Tuckman lays out abstract ideas in an easy-to-grasp manner, with each short (8-12 minutes) episode building on the previous info, so be sure to start at the beginning with the initial episodes. BTW, he’s a guy with a dry sense of humor, so hang in if he seems less than entertaining at first. More Attention, Less Deficit, on iTunes, at adultadhdbook.com or simply search from your podcast app. ****October is ADHD Awareness Month!*****
If you/someone you love has ADD/ADHD - Congratulations! Welcome to the club! Now what do you do? Well, there are 4 general steps to managing ADHD, each of which has a number of smaller steps within it. During October, I'll try to hit as many as I can. *BTW, notice the realistic expectation setting just then? I have to practice what I preach! 😉 STEP 1. Get A Good Map - Learn About ADHD (this will be an ongoing project) Today's Tip: Step 1A. Read the SOLID stuff, from experts - people who know what they're talking about and can explain things clearly. Learn about executive functioning and self-regulation, and how it applies to you. If the book you're reading has self-reflection questions or other workbook type of exercises, trying doing some! Writing out your answers is more effective than doing it in your head. 💡 Not sure who to read? Look for names like Tuckman, Barkley, Nadeau, Solden, Sakarsis, Orlov, Brown, Ramsey, Ratey, Hallowell, etc. Clinicians, researchers, educators and coaches - folks who have devoted the years of their lives to understanding and helping people with ADHD. 📚 Those books are part of my office library. Despite having a fancy degree from a fancy university, I knew very little about ADD/ADHD & even less about ADHD in adults when I started working with ADD college students in 2002. The folks above were my teachers, and I've had the pleasure of meeting some of them at conferences over the years since. Follow me on Instagram @drlauraforsyth for more! If you're a recently diagnosed ADHDer, or love one, or have been diagnosed for a while and are (still) wondering what to do to deal with it, I'll be posting guidelines and tips specific to adults with ADD/ADHD during the month of October. Follow me on Instagram @drlauraforsyth for more!
Laughter heals. Laughter makes us feel better. Laughter lifts us up. Laughter empowers us in the face of worry and uncertainty. Laughter can help restore our emotional balance and our faith in humanity. Laughter helps us bear stress. Trully, it can. But what to do when your emotional-balance-and-faith-in-humanity could really use a tune-up, but there's nothing all that funny going on? Practice laughing. Make it happen on purpose. Doesn't matter whether you're feeling it at first, doesn't matter if it seems like faking it, doesn't matter if it takes a while. Our emotional brain is kind of naive - sorry, but it's true. The cortical processes underlying emotional reactions aren't rational and can be pushed around by what we're exposed to. You already know this, of course - that's why emotions are contagious. Use it as a force for good - practice laughing. How? Time-honored method - get with someone else who’s laughing. No one like that handy? No problem, there’s always YouTube! Suggestion - go for silly and popular. Silly is good, the emotional brain likes silly. Popularity means easy, and easy is awesome. Example below. Did it go viral? Heck yeah. There's a great line in the sci-fi novel "Babylon's Ashes", #6 in James S.A. Corey's kickass The Expanse series (season 2 of Syfy's very entertaining TV adaptation is soon to drop), where a ship's captain, trying to decide on a course of action under perilous circumstances while wrestling with self-doubt and guilt about her previous choices, is asked, "What's the magic word?"
Huh? Magic word? Turns out, the magic word is "Oops". As in, "Oops, I made a BIG mistake", "Oops, I didn't realize/look closely enough/think it through before I acted/know what I didn't know", "Oops, that didn't work out the way I really thought it would", "Oops, I dropped it and it broke into a million pieces.", etc. An overarching theme (ooh, big-time Lit class!) in Babylon's Ashes is that big decisions must always be made without enough information to be completely certain of the outcome. In fact, the character who is the most sure of himself makes choices with catastrophic consequences, then when things go to hell, justifies his own actions and blame everybody else. He's got responsibility, but no accountability and for sure, no compassion. Everybody suffers because of this jerk. You can use "Oops" as a key to unlock the door of taking responsibility without being crushed by blame or immobilized by uncertainty. "Oops" is not about trivializing mistakes. Rather, it's about allowing yourself to admit that you missed the call/blew it/dropped the ball/didn't realize/got too anxious to think/spaced out/was too preoccupied with ____/was an idiot/didn't know what you didn't know, etc., etc. etc. Then, allowing yourself to keep on keeping on, learning as you go. There's always going to be another decision to be made or action to be taken. Being mired in indecision and avoidance doesn't get you off the hook, it just makes you feel helpless. Forward we go - doing the best we can with what we've got at the time. Very handy, that "Oops". ![]() A February 2016 article, "MAP training: combining meditation and aerobic exercise reduces depression and rumination while enhancing synchronized brain activity", in the journal Translational Psychiatry describes what must surely be one the most simple and straightforward treatments for depression around. The program: one-hour sessions twice a week: 20 minutes of basic focused attention meditation, 10 minutes of very slow walking meditation, then 30 minutes of aerobic exercise on a treadmill with 5 minute warmup / 20 minutes at 'moderate intensity' and 5 minutes cool down. After eight weeks, participants reports an average 40% reduction in their depression symptoms. If an antidepressant medication could reliably reduce symptoms by 40% it would be hailed as a wonder drug! Hmmm...
![]() Making decisions - yes/no, stay/go, change/don't - is hard. It’s challenging to think things through objectively and all too easy to feel confused. You might get stuck thinking endlessly until your head fogs up, then just avoid the whole issue as long as possible until circumstances force you to respond, often with fewer or less desireable options that may have been available earlier. When you need to make a decision, particularly about a possible action or change, use the power of writing. Laying out the pros and cons of both sides in writing will help you clarify your concerns. Get it out of your head and onto the page to gain perspective. No matter how complicated things are, this method will aid you to make a more informed choice. Method: 1st – List the benefits & downsides of ‘Option A’ (usually keeping things the same) and ‘Option B’ (making the change) in the appropriate quadrant. Don’t settle for “nothing”. Ask yourself:
3rd - Are there things you don’t know? Tip: worries, a.k.a. "what ifs?" often can be turned into questions. Write those down - how can you find out? Finally - evaluate - Which side weights more, particularly in the long run? Remember - rarely is there a ‘perfect’ choice where everything is good and everyone is satisfied. Life is messy. Be brave! Aim to act like your best self. ![]()
From the esteemed Andrew Weil, MD, a breathing exercise that activates your parasympathetic nervous system, counterbalance to our usually-way-too-active sympathetic nervous system (producer of the famous fight/fight/freeze response). Dr. Weil prescribes four rounds of 4-7-8 breathing to shift out of tension into calm and even sleep. In the midst of what is surely the most bizarre election season in living memory, perhaps it would be helpful to review some old advice on how to maintain one's mental stability when it seems that the world really is in the handbasket, headed down to a very hot place. And by old, I mean old. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are presumed to be at least 1,600 years old, maybe more. Yet the advice in Sutra 1:33 about how to not get all freaked out by what other people do or say feels quite fresh and relevant. From Christopher Isherwood's translation: Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked. and T.K.V. Desikachar explains Sutra 1:33 like this: In daily life we see people around who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some may be doing praiseworthy things while others are causing problems. Whatever our usual attitude toward such people and their actions may be, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil. Notice the term "cultivate" in the first quote. That's a reminder that growth takes effort and attention over a period of time. It's worth it, though, since friendliness is the antidote to jealousy, compassion allows us to be supportive rather than judgmental, delight lifts us up when envy or comparing ourselves to others drags us down and indifference (not paying too much attention) frees us from getting worked up with worry or outrage. And if at first, you don't succeed, no worries - there will always be plenty of opportunities to practice! Photo:Jubair1985
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-- determined to save the only life you could save. ~ Mary Oliver ![]() Ever wonder if you should be taking some kind of vitamins? Trying to research this topic can be a fast train to Confusion Land, where hype, unsupported claims and contradictory information abound. Don't give up, though - supplementation can help, especially when you're just starting or are in the middle of improving your diet and lifestyle - going for less of the stuff that comes out of a sealed package or can and more of that stuff that actually grew in the ground. Interested in suggestions? "The word that allows yes, the word that makes no possible. The word that puts the free in freedom and takes the obligation out of love. The word that throws a window open after the final door is closed. The word upon which all adventure, all exhilaration, all meaning, all honor depends. The word that fires evolution's motor of mud. The word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar. The word that molecules recite before bonding. The word that separates that which is dead from that which is living. The word no mirror can turn around. In the beginning was the word and that word was CHOICE." Tom Robbins ~ Author, Still Life With Woodpecker Manage verb "to succeed in doing something, especially something difficult" (from the Cambridge Dictionary).
Managing ADHD is a process, not something done once, but every day. Naturally, some days go better than others. If you've just been diagnosed or even if you've known for a while but want a refresher, check out these basic guidelines for managing ADHD. Hokusai Says, by Roger Keyes ![]() Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. ![]() He says look forward to getting old. He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient every one of us has a body. He says every one of us is frightened. He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says everything is alive -- shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees, wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you. He says it doesn't matter if you draw, or write books. It doesn't matter if you saw wood, or catch fish. It doesn't matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your veranda or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden. It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you. Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. He says don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Love, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you. ![]() Most everybody knows Big Bird. But have you ever really listened to what the Bird says? One day, years ago when my kids were little, I was fixing lunch while they watched Sesame Street. Looking up from flipping the grilled cheese, I was just in time to hear Big Bird say, "Asking questions is a good way of finding things out." I about dropped the spatula. The Bird had nailed it. Ever heard radio journalist Ira Glass talk about what's involved in getting good at something, at being successful? Basically, it's all about persistence. More than talent, more than luck, more than money or privilege, even more than who you know - persistence. You can have talent, luck, money, privilege and connections, all are golden, all help immensely - but none of these qualities can substitute for plain dogged persistent, sustained effort long enough to do something enough to get really good at it. This does require hanging in through a fair-to-huge amount of frustration as we travel along the learning curve, but it's worth it. It helps to enjoy the journey. Check out artist David Shiyang Liu's very cool 'kinetic typography' presentation of Ira Glass giving his best advice for beginners. |
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