Regression therapy is a therapeutic process that uses one’s earlier life experiences as source material to resolve current problems. This concept is similar to psychodynamic therapy. However, regression therapy is more solution-focused, whereas psychodynamic therapy is more interested in the process and the experience. Past life therapy encompasses all the same techniques and theories as regression therapy, however, the boundaries are lifted from the conscious mind, enabling the client to explore a past-life.

Regressing someone back to his childhood or a past-life is by no means a phenomenon. If you listen carefully, people regress all the time, whether it’s at a casual party or standing in line at a grocery store. In a therapeutic setting, a therapist will help a client regress and to make the unconscious conscious. By using different therapeutic techniques such as hypnotherapy, guided imagery, relaxation exercises or just talk-therapy, a client can be regressed into a past memory that may be influencing his present life in a negative way.

Unlike many traditional talk-therapy modalities, hypnotic techniques help bypass the client’s analytical mind, thus enabling the therapist to elicit forgotten memories, including suppressed and repressed issues. The more unconscious identification there is, the less our ego is able to assert and defend itself against the inner compulsions and beliefs. Many forgotten memories, especially traumatic ones, are instilled in the unconscious mind. We all have defense mechanisms that shut down our innate ability to tap into our emotions due to our inability to cope with stress, fear, or pain. Compartmentalizing or trying to forget painful experiences is usually our natural tendency. After years of repressing these issues, the actual facts of the event and the emotions that are associated with the event become fragmented – waiting to be unleashed and reconciled.

Studies show that generally a strong experience of catharsis is needed to alleviate one from unwanted beliefs, complexes, or destructive behaviors. Pioneer of psychology Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) learned hypnosis from Joseph Breuer (1842-1925), who had treated a young woman suffering from neurotic symptoms, which they diagnosed as hysteria in 1880. Breuer had the patient discuss past events in a state of deep hypnosis. She was able to recall traumatic events from her childhood, which she could not remember in her conscious state. She was able to integrate the experiences and connect them to her emotions. The end result was that her neurotic symptoms disappeared. Breuer and Freud’s earliest technical efforts were referred to as the “cathartic method” (Brueur and Freud, 1893-1895). Sources say that Freud was not good with hypnosis and found it to be confusing and embarrassing and his success rate with such hypnotic techniques was very poor. He finally abandoned hypnosis and worked mainly with free association for memory recall and to explore the unconscious. Freud’s condemnation of hypnosis combined with the growing reputation of psychoanalysis caused the medical profession to reject hypnosis. Milton Erickson (1901-1980) was trained as psychiatrist, but was most known for his innovative techniques in hypnotherapy, which helped revive hypnosis. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that hypnosis was again accepted as a valuable technique in therapy and for medical and clinical applications.

The framework in facilitating a proper regression is to encourage a client to reenact or experience a traumatic event to as if it were happening and being experienced again. The client is guided to stay focused on all the sensations and feelings that come with the experience on a physical and emotional level. The objective is to get the client passed the point of his conflict, confusion or fear. What makes the experience different and healing for the client is he is able to got honor his true emotions and perceptions of the event without being judged or criticized. The therapist provides a safe space for the client to reconnect and integrate his emotions with the event. When the client moves through his discomfort, this creates the turning point where the client releases or gains better understanding with whatever issues have been constricting him.

Today, there are still mixed opinions about the efficacy of regression therapy. There are non-believers who feel that regression therapy is unnecessary and that the therapist is planting information in the client’s mind. Some feel that it is like brainwashing. These are just myths caused by misinformation and inept therapists. Whether a client is under hypnosis or in a trance, he is fully conscious and in control at all times during the session. He can reject whatever is being said to him. In a properly facilitated session, a therapist will elicit or evoke information that only comes from the client. Every experience is subjective. The only way to truly judge whether or not regression therapy is effective is by one’s own experience. The most important ingredient of any type of therapy is the interpersonal relationship. The technique is secondary.

Ray Doktor is a clinical hypnotherapist, past-life therapist, spiritual counselor, and life coach. He has a B.A. in human behavior and a M.A. in counseling psychology. Currently, he is a pre-doctorate candidate in clinical psychology and working on his licensure.

While under supervised training, Ray’s education included training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Gestalt therapy, and Milton Erickson’s techniques. He also had the opportunity to have been personally mentored by world-renowned therapist, Dr. Morris Netherton. This training included assisting Dr. Morris Netherton in conducting workshops and lectures around the world. Ray has lectured and provided demonstrations at workshops on stress management, sexual abuse recovery, trauma, addictions, health issues and surgeries, prenatal period and birth, past-lives, and spirituality.

Ray has been a practitioner for over 11 years, learning, teaching, and combining hypnosis with other energetic modalities. Visit his website at http://www.wholeminds.com

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Positive feeling experience is wonderful. It’s no surprise or sin that we want to spend as much time inside it as possible. Nothing else makes more sense. But that doesn’t mean to kill the baby with the bathwater. We all want to ease distress and unhappiness as efficiently as possible. But positive emotional energy doesn’t offer anything new; that’s what’s so good about it – no hassles. Learning always disturbs. That’s what makes it such a good carrier of new information.

The question is whether, in being happy, we avoid taking even a moment to pluck just one valuable piece of new information out of our unhappiness before abandoning it? That’s all it takes to learn, to build upon that one piece.

Actually learning requires a bit more than acknowledging and accepting the right of that negative feeling to exist right where it sits. But without surrender to its right to be negative, we’ll never pick up what it’s trying to point at that’s not right. To allow that prospect to filter into our conscious brain requires letting the negative feeling, and its attitude and perspective, point a finger of criticism at some part of us that it insists isn’t okay – in effect to challenge the status quo of our assumptions about what’s right and what’s wrong in our life at any given time.

Once having let that disquieting possibility unsettle the comfort of our day, we can move on to gain some relief, yet know that this uncomfortable new prospect will continue to haunt us off and on – that is until it starts to make some new sense of some miss-fitting part of our life that has always been that way, but that we’d constantly arranged not to pay any attention to.

The most frequent drug we take to prevent ourselves from paying the least bit of attention to this powerful learning source is to treat negative emotion as being caused entirely by some part of our external world. In other words, if we feel bad, somebody out there must have done something wrong. In this, our most common way of responding to feeling “bad”, we never allow negative emotion and us to get together. Employing this strategy causes a lot of other problems too, mostly of a violent kind since, as we all believe, bad people need bad consequences. Most movies attest to this false reality much of the time. The falseness is not that bad people don’t do bad things to us. It’s rather that this explanation is true only a small portion of the time that we feel negatively – the vast majority of which we never notice beyond seeking escape from it.

If the truth were to become better known, we’re actually afraid of bad feelings. For many of us they occur with great strength, causing us to have serious doubts as to whether we can handle them – even survive having them. Disappointment for many of us, for instance, is not just a feeling of great loss. It’s much more – a feeling of humiliation, of being tricked, made-a-fool-of, betrayed. If negative feeling occurs with such great intensity, then we can’t manage negative emotion alone, until it’s cut down to size. We need help from a very qualified professional, carefully chosen.

It’s only very recently that we’ve decided to pay much attention to the emotional life of our children. So perhaps most of us grew up without any help with what we felt, leaving it to us to manage what’s too big to handle for a kid; leaving emotion in its sometimes hugely enlarged forms drift into our adult experience to dominate our life, making perhaps most of us suffer from Post Traumatic Stress.

And then of course there are times in human history when negative emotion is actually considered a sin – like present-day American culture. That’s when learning ceases almost entirely. And then it’s not until middle age, when we have achieved a relatively high level of general wisdom, that we finally realize the missed opportunities of our earlier years… if we’d only paid attention to the warning signs that we needed to do something different to get where we’d hoped we could manage – to be a writer or a singer or a parent. But by then there’s only time left to dabble in what we’d hoped we could make a career of.

It would help us to know along the way that negative emotion contains the early warning signs that, if thoughtfully attended, could get us back on the track of our destiny.

My additional works can be seen at this website: http://donfenn.com

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Each school varies on it’s curriculum and will also vary in the types of massage therapy it specializes in it’s training courses and program. There are over 80 different types of massage therapies from reflexology to Swedish massage to shiatsu massage and beyond. These training schools will specialize in one of many of these areas.

A training school may offer massage courses in one or more of these types of massage therapies as well as massage courses in anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, as well as in business marketing and ethics. Once the massage therapy training and massage courses are completed, many training schools also offer job placement opportunities for the massage therapist graduates.

State Requirements for Massage Therapy Training

There are differing state requirements for accreditation of training schools, so make sure the massage therapy training school you are considering is up to speed on all it’s license requirements. In order to get paid as a professional massage therapist, you must not only complete massage therapy training courses, but you must also fulfill all the legal requirements in your state. Without this, you cannot and should not practice, especially for money. Training courses are not difficult to find. There are many great training courses around, probably in your area. Many training schools are reasonably priced.

It is very likely that you will be able to find a training school or training courses near where you live. Although most massage therapy training courses and schools are located in metropolitan areas, you might be able to find one in a smaller, but growing city as well. In terms of job placement and employment opportunities once you have completed your training courses, metropolitan areas like Philadelphia, New York City and Los Angeles will be the best places to find massage therapist jobs.

Because of the rapidly rising interest in holistic and alternative healing and medicines, as well as natural therapies replacing traditionally medical treatments, massage therapy is going to be a rapidly growing industry that will require massage therapists to go through training courses. Also with the growing demand, training schools should begin to grow as well and choice of schools as well as training courses will become abundant. Training courses should also be looked at critically, making sure they have the techniques you are looking for and have the types of training courses you want.

Continuing Education for Massage Therapy Training

Many graduates of training programs take the National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCETMB). Many states require massage therapists to pass this exam in order to get a license to practice. When a massage therapist passes the National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCETMB), they are nationally recognized and need to renew their status every 4 years. Just like in most health related professions, massage therapists are required to do 200 hours of massage therapy work in addition to fulfilling continuing education massage courses.

Beyond this nationally recognized designation, each state has it’s own regulations and laws, and anyone interested in becoming a massage therapist or attending a training program or desiring to take courses, should look into his or her own state regulations regarding practicing as a massage therapist.

Massage Therapy Business

Massage therapy is a business indeed and it’s a way to make money for many people. Some work for hospitals, clinics and sports facilities, but most are self-employed and owners of their own business. This requires business skills that most businesses have to deal with like marketing, sales, billing and accounting, on top of doing the work. Training is just the beginning step to a rewarding career or business in this field.

David is a Business Development Consultant who assists businesses craft marketing and sales strategies which include developing marketing materials, developing a sales model and recruiting and managing a sales force. David also helps people start home based businesses and those looking to work from home. He’s been there, and he’s there now himself. In addition to his consulting work, David also does contracting for various humanitarian organizations and has multiple streams of income from projects on the Internet.

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Much has been written and debated about what determines the behaviour of a person, genes or environment? Are our genes responsible for what we do in our day to day life? Or does environment play a dominant role in shaping our behaviour? This “nature – nurture” theory is a perennial topic of discussion.

The basic unit of heredity in an organism is its gene. Genes are responsible for passing genetic traits to the next generation. The coding sequence of genes decides what the gene does for construction and maintenance of an organism’s cells while the non- coding sequence decides when the gene is active.

The Nature Theory

Scientists of Nature Theory think that people behave as they do because of their genetic predisposition. Physical qualities like eye, hair, or skin color, body structure, diseases and characteristics like interest, personality, temperament and sexual habits are also encoded in the genes. Human behavior is less controlled by the environment of free will but more by the genes they carry. Whatever incidents occur and traits that are practiced generation after generation get imprinted on the genes and are passed on to some extent to the next generation.

The Nurture Theory

Some scientists conclude that genetic tendencies do exist, but they ultimately don’t matter because the environmental factors and their upbringing that determine people’s behaviour. A gene may increase the inclination towards a particular behaviour but it does not make people do things unless a favourable environment is provided. If an environment resisting of their genetic tendencies is provided to people, they are most likely to behave according to their upbringing.

Nature or Nurture?

Issues like criminal behavior, infidelity, sexual preferences have been ascribed by Nature theorists to genes.

“We are survival machines,” Richard Dawkins writes in The Selfish Gene, “robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” And “… genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs..”

If we believe this, and people are no longer held accountable for their actions, how will society be possible? On the other hand can we justify criminal behavior by simply saying that increasing summer heat or solar flare leads to increasing levels of assaults and rapes, as some psychologists claim?

It is believed that as we go higher orders in species like mammals that there is a smaller role of instincts and better environmental and behavioural adaptability in the constant process of survival. Human beings have the least instincts. We have instead a great influence of our surroundings and environment substantially determines our behavior.

A study at the University of Minnesota of behaviours of identical twins reared in different homes claims that approximately seventy percent of the variation in IQ is due to genes. Others believe that isolation of twins could never be complete as they would have some social or cultural commonality and communication in their environment in this world fast becoming socially and culturally uniform.

There is increasing evidence of the interactions between nature and nurture. Genes by themselves do not ensure that a particular trait will prevail. Genes are said to be switched on or off by environmental interaction with our brain which is why yoga and meditation are said to be able to control diseases and even control or reverse some physical processes in the body.

We cannot, with the present evidence before us, conclude one way or the other on the nature vs. nurture debate. We have to try to understand the interactions between the two. There are complex relationships among genes, proteins, hormones, food, and our experiences and only further research in future will reveal the truth.

In the context of the human search for development and success, we cannot rest our future on the thesis that genes have a major role to play and our efforts will contribute little. Life coaches and business coaches who are more in favor of the nurture theory believe that the events that the individual passes through in his life time shape his perceptions, lifestyle, personality and habits. Their stand is that if freewill and strong determination is exercised, people are sure to control their genes and nurture their personality to happiness, self confidence and success.

All the best,

Natalie Dee

London Life Coach and Business Coach

Natalie Dee is a specialist in life coaching and business coaching with clients throughout the UK and worldwide. To find out more, visit http://www.natalie-dee.com

Coaching promotes confidence, fulfillment and success in peoples’ lives. Life coaching and business coaching creates change in communication skills and self confidence.

In her business capacity, Natalie offers a range of coaching services including one-to-one coaching and professional workshops.

Natalie Dee is also the co-author of an ebook on self confidence, for more details visit her website (as above).

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Massage therapy is recognized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as a growing career, and one with benefits beyond the immediately obvious. The massage therapy education trains students to have a comprehensive understanding of human anatomy and physiology, which is essential for effective massage treatment. The scientific background of the massage therapy certification program allows students of massage to understand how different body parts and systems work together – and how, if one system is out of whack, a massage client can feel ill or out-of-sorts all over.

Schools such as the Certified Careers Institute, with campus locations in Clearfield and Salt Lake City, Utah, offer massage therapy education that prepares students to sit for a massage therapy certification. This education is popular with the younger generation, because it leads to a career with worker-defined office conditions. Young workers can choose what type of massage therapy they will specialize in, decorate their offices however they choose, and determine what kinds of massage oils, wraps, and techniques they will use on their clients. This generation of young adults, who grew up with technology, views “cool” careers like massage therapy in a positive light.

It’s a good thing, too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that as Gen Y’s parents – the Baby Boomer generation – age, there will be an increased need for professional massage therapists to administer their services as supplementary medical therapies. Generations X and Y enjoy massage therapy at work or after-hours. Today’s jobs can demand long hours, and some people must work two jobs to be able to meet their bills; so, massage therapy is a helpful accessory to a demanding career. It can also become a great career for a Gen Y student. This generation, more so than older counterparts, places emphasis on work-life balance, and many enjoy more flexible working arrangements, including flex time and telecommuting. Some massage therapists can set their own hours and delineate their own working conditions, making massage therapy certification an appealing career choice for the under-30 set.

This kind of treatment can also be beneficial to individuals who suffer from depression, isolation, or Seasonal Affective Disorder (side effects, after all, of our highly interactive -but ultimately, human-contact deprived – wired society). Many people eschew drug therapies for mental health issues – after all, modern antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs have gotten negative press because of certain deleterious side effects. Massage therapy enables total body relaxation, which can effectively boost a person’s mood. In fact, certified massage therapists themselves can benefit from the health-conscious outlook their career field demands. Individuals who sell health services can market their services more credibly if they are actually healthy individuals, themselves – meaning, for example, that they eat a healthy diet, follow an exercise regimen, and refrain from using drugs or alcohol.

Millennials’ Boomer parents can benefit from massage therapy. Adult-onset (Type II) diabetes and heart disease are two major killers of older Americans – and the Boomer generation is aging and quickly closing in on their retirement years. The massage therapy education, such as that provided by the Certified Careers Institute’s Clearfield and Salt Lake City, Utah schools, teaches students massage techniques that can be beneficial in treating conditions affecting older adults: diabetes, arthritis, gout, and even cancer. Boomers, too, face career stress – after all, their generation was strongly affected by corporate mergers and downsizing. Massage therapy can help them shed the health-negative stresses of the modern workplace.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – massage therapy education and certification addresses some of the commonest woes of 21st century higher learning and job market conditions. College tuition has soared over the past decade, necessitating that some Millennials take out substantial private loans to pay for their educations, and that others forgo college altogether. And, the modern job market is a volatile entity, with technological advances, outsourcing, and downsizing threatening every industry from computer sciences to journalism. Students today must make difficult choices when deciding upon careers – and, many of those choices come with sacrifices.

The massage therapy education, by contrast, is a relatively simple process – programs like Certified Careers Institute’s can take just weeks – and has fewer course requirements than a traditional four-year degree does. Therefore, acquiring a massage therapy certification is cheaper than getting a college degree. And, this particular career is expected to grow as it is increasingly recognized in the allied health field – making it a smart choice for people who want job security.

It’s no wonder, with all of these positives – cool job description, health-positive benefits, job stability, and a low-cost education – that Generation Y is turning massage therapy into a career of the future.

Certified Careers Institute’s locations in Clearfield and Salt Lake City, Utah provide massage therapy education [http://www.cciutah.edu/massage-therapy-certification.htm] that trains students for the massage therapy certification [http://www.cciutah.edu/massage-therapy-clearfield.htm]. To find out more, visit the school’s Web site at www.cciutah.edu [http://www.cciutah.edu]

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The purpose of this article is to show how bullying and other antisocial behaviors at school are preventable by looking at school culture and climate.

There are quite a variety of classroom and school-wide “stop bullying” programs and materials. These programs are useful for raising awareness and providing new skills for students, yet many ignore deeper, necessary improvements to actually prevent antisocial behaviors at school.

The goal of this article is to go a little deeper and look at some fine tuning of school climate and culture as a means to lasting change.

What is School Culture?

School culture is a model or a mindset by which actions are taken in the district, building or classroom. This model of action is based on the past experiences within the district. Thus, new employees or new students become indoctrinated into the culture, learning “how we do things around here.” This is the nature of any culture and explains why it is so pervasive, yet hard to see. It just seems like the right way to do things.

Any school’s culture can be observed in at least three contexts 1) the design and maintenance of physical spaces, 2) the values expressed (either intentionally or unintentionally) by the adults at school and 3) the beliefs that are taken for granted about human nature.

It is difficult to say any part of the school’s culture is good or bad but some elements can contribute to or reinforce antisocial behavior. For example, cramped physical spaces with too many students are ideally designed for bullying behavior. The target can’t escape and the bullier can go unnoticed.

Teachers who turn their back on antisocial behavior or simply stay in their rooms while trouble is outside the door express – probably unintentionally – a value about how students should be treated in this school.

What is School Climate?

Although there is not a consensus on the meaning of school climate many definitions focus on the “feel” of school and the human/social atmosphere. There are four components commonly discussed in regard to climate: 1) physical environment, 2) social environment, 3) affective environment and 4) academic environment.

Like culture, climate can influence or may actually be the root cause of antisocial behavior, like bullying. Each of the four components below can either hinder or help. Problems that can foster bullying are…

• A physical environment that is overcrowded, certain places hidden from view and congregating areas poorly supervised.

• A social environment where interaction is limited, students self-segregate, harassment and other forms of dominance are ignored.

• An affective environment where students are subject to favoritism, most feedback is negative or punitive, and families are excluded from the school community.

• An academic environment where expectations are low, learning styles are not taken into consideration and a sense of community is not part of the learning process.

These components of climate are interconnected. Social interactions are either enhanced or inhibited by environment. The affective environment helps the academic environment because students and families feel more a part of the school.

Prevention

The concepts of culture and climate are critical to the prevention of antisocial behavior at school. Student-centered activities like posters, slogans and assemblies are useful but won’t override the power of school culture and climate. These are forces that will swamp most programs, even those that work on social skills or language.

If bullying is a problem at your school and if you mean to put a stop to it, some changes to school climate or culture must occur. And the tricky part is that it’s the adults, not the just kids that need to make some changes.

Changes to Prevent Bullying

Many of the solutions needed to change school climate are known to us. Nevertheless, they seem too big, too expensive or simply hard to believe these types of changes will make much difference (after all our belief system is a major ingredient in school culture).

If we look at a culture and climate as key mechanisms in prevention then there are some clear opportunities for improvement:

• Leadership from administrators and site based management teams. Culture and climate changes are the work of the collective body of adults in school. Change is most likely to occur when there is a coordinated effort aimed at particular improvements.

• Regain control of student-run areas of school. Schools buses, playgrounds, lunch lines, lunch tables and hallways are just a few spots where kids set the rules. Who goes first, who sits at this table, who gets to play and so on. This is the breeding ground for hierarchy and control. Improvement requires more training and supervision by adults, less standing around and waiting by students and a better appreciation of kid’s time and personal space.

• Support student feedback and reporting. Subtle elements in the school culture discourage reporting. Concepts like tattling teach youth that grown-ups don’t want to be bothered. Repeated surveys of students show that most kids believe adults won’t help with bullying. And over 65% of bullying happens when adults can’t see it. Reporting is critical.

• Work to build a community. A community of people is united pulling toward common goals. Too often schools are cliques and subgroups – both adults and kids – vying to move up a hierarchical ladder. People need to see and experience the commonality of the school community. We see this coming together at times around tragedy or sports teams but it needs a more uniform presence.

A Complex Society

School districts and buildings are really complex societies where bullying is one in a set of potential antisocial behaviors. Bullying is about hierarchy and when kids (or adults) assemble hierarchies form. Sometimes these hierarchies are benign or occasionally positive. Unfortunately, too often, the hierarchies within groups of students are negative and damaging to some.

To effect change in these societies we need to operate at a deeper level, at the level of culture and climate. Understanding how bullying operates with concepts like victim, bullying and bystander or helping students be more assertive in the face of this aggression is important but not sufficient. These strategies place the burden of change on the children, when really it is only the adults that have the power to make significant improvements.

Since the Columbine tragedy in 1999 there has been more attention paid to bullying. This attention has heightened awareness but sadly has not reduced the incidence of bullying in schools nor relieved the pain for many US school children.

What can be done?

What can be frustrating about school climate or school culture for any one teacher or parent is they seem too big to influence. Nevertheless, change can happen with your best efforts. Here are some suggestions:
• Do some research, asking students, where bullying usually occurs. The results are always compelling and clearly show that “place” is the key ingredient. Make these places safer.

• Organize other concerned adults to speak with either the principal, site based management team or the school board. Help them understand the role of the climate and culture.

• Make a practice of listening but not necessarily reacting, to all student complaints or concerns. School staff unintentionally creates buffers around themselves because they are often too busy to attend to students’ issues. Instead of pushing them away, develop a repertoire of simple responses to minor issues so that the major issues reach your ears.

• Avoid creating dominance hierarchies. This includes public embarrassment, clearly identifying people’s skill or intelligence (or lack of) relative to others or simply using belittling language.

References

Astor, R.A., Meyer, H., & Behre, W.J. (Unowned places and times: Maps and interviews about violence in high schools. American Educational Research Journal (1999) 36: 3-42.
Espelage, D. L. & Swearer, S. M. Bullying in American Schools. New Jersey: Lawrence, Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2004.Gibbs, Jeanne. Tribes: A New Way of Learning and Being Together. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, LLC, 2001.
Gonder, P.O., & Hymes, D. (1994). Improving school climate and culture (AASA Critical Issues Report No. 27). Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators.
Reinke, W. M. & Herman, K.C. Creating School Environments that Deter Antisocial Behaviors in Youth. Psychology in the Schools, (2002) 39: 549-559.

About the Author: Contact Brian at http://www.k12associates.com

Brian Koenig, M.S., is the President of K12 Associates. He has been a trainer, speaker, and consultant since 1983 and has worked with more than 100 districts to prevent antisocial behaviors at school. Starting in 1998, Brian developed and implemented The Keep It Safe Project, a five-year pilot program to prevent bullying and other antisocial behaviors in three Wisconsin school districts, funded by the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault (WCASA). Through this project he discovered that in order to significantly reduce bullying, school districts needed to improve the overall climate of their schools. School districts that over-emphasized bully, victim, bystander programs without looking at the broader climate saw little or no decrease in bullying behavior. In 2003 he followed up The Keep It Safe Project with a new pilot called A Climate of Respect. This work was also funded by WCASA with additional funding from The Centers for Disease Control. From this grant Brian wrote the guidebook called Creating a Climate of Respect, and then a follow-up ebook.

In collaboration with Melissa A. Keyes, Ph.D. and Dorothy Espelage, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, he developed a set of popular school climate surveys currently used by more than 75,000 students, in 50 school districts nationwide. Brian is a graduate instructor through Viterbo University of La Crosse Wisconsin. He has been a presenter at the Wisconsin School Counselors Conference, Association of Wisconsin School Administrators Conference, the Standards of the Heart Conference, and various other state and regional conferences. He has co-authored a variety of articles published in a variety of academic journals, primarily in collaboration with Dr. Espelage at the University

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Cognitive behavioral therapy is a combination of traditional behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy. They are combined into a treatment that is focused on symptom removal. The effectiveness of the treatment can clearly be judged based on its results. The more it is used, the more it has become recommended. It is now used as the number one treatment technique for post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and bulimia.

Cognitive behavioral therapy first began to be used between 1960 and 1970. It was a gradual process of merging behavioral therapy techniques and cognitive therapy techniques. Behavioral therapy had been around since the 1920’s, but cognitive therapy was not introduced until the 1960’s. Almost immediately the benefits of combining it with behavioral therapy techniques were realized. Ivan Pavlov, with his dogs who salivated at the ringing of the dinner bell, was among the most famous of the behavioral research pioneers. Other leaders in the field included John Watson and Clark Hull.

Instead of focusing on analyzing the problem like Freud and the psychoanalysts, cognitive behavioral therapy focused on eliminating the symptoms. The idea being that if you eliminate the symptoms, you have eliminated the problem. This more direct approach was seen as more effective at getting to the problem at hand and helping patients to make progress more quickly.

As a more radical aggressive treatment, behavioral techniques dealt better with more radical problems. The more obvious and clear cut the symptoms were, the easier it was to target them and devise treatments to eliminate them. Behavioral therapy was not as successful initially with more ambiguous problems such as depression. This realm was better served with cognitive therapy techniques.

In many academic settings, the two therapy techniques were used side by side to compare and contrast the results. It was not long before the advantages of combining the two techniques became clear as a way of taking advantage of the strengths of each. David Barlow’s work on panic disorder treatments provided the first concrete example of the success of the combined strategies.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is difficult to define in a succinct definition because it covers such a broad range of topics and techniques. It is really an umbrella definition for individual treatments that are specifically tailored to the problems of a specific patient. So the problem dictates the specifics of the treatment, but there are some common themes and techniques. These include having the patient keep a diary of important events and record the feelings and behaviors they had in association with each event. This tool is then used as a basis to analyze and test the patient’s ability to evaluate the situation and develop an appropriate emotional response. Negative emotions and behaviors are identified as well as the evaluations and beliefs that lead to them. An effort is then made to counter these beliefs and evaluations to show that the resulting behaviors are wrong. Negative behaviors are eliminated and the patient is taught a better way to view and react to the situation.

Part of the therapy also includes teaching the patient ways to distract themselves or change their focus from something that is upsetting or a situation that is generating negative behavior. They learn to focus on something else instead of the negative stimulus, thus eliminating the negative behavior that it would lead to. The problem is essentially nipped in the bud. For serious psychological disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, mood stabilizing medications are often prescribed to use in conjunction with these techniques. The medications give the patient enough of a calming effect to give them the opportunity to examine the situation and make the healthy choice whereas before they could not even pause for rational thought.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven effective for a variety of problems, but it is still a process, not a miracle cure. It takes time to teach patients to understand situations and identify the triggers of their negative behaviors. Once this step is mastered, it still takes a lot of effort to overcome their first instincts and instead stop and make the right choices. First they learn what they should do, and then they must practice until they can do it.

Bethany Jordan is an Information Technology professional and aspiring writer who was clinically diagnosed with SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder) in 2007.

She maintains a website dedicated to sharing information on natural antidepressants, herbal remedies for anxiety and depression, and anxiety disorders in general. Everyone is welcome and invited to visit http://www.naturalantidepressants.info …

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bethany_Jordin

Cognitive behavioral therapy is an approach used by psychotherapists to influence a patient’s behaviors and emotions. The key to the approach is in its procedure which must be systematic. It has been used successfully to treat a variety of disorders including eating disorders, substance abuse, anxiety and personality disorders. It can be used in individual or group therapy sessions and the approach can also be geared towards self help therapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a combination of traditional behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy. They are combined into a treatment that is focused on symptom removal. The effectiveness of the treatment can clearly be judged based on its results. The more it is used, the more it has become recommended. It is now used as the number one treatment technique for post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and bulimia.

Cognitive behavioral therapy first began to be used between 1960 and 1970. It was a gradual process of merging behavioral therapy techniques and cognitive therapy techniques. Behavioral therapy had been around since the 1920’s, but cognitive therapy was not introduced until the 1960’s. Almost immediately the benefits of combining it with behavioral therapy techniques were realized. Ivan Pavlov, with his dogs who salivated at the ringing of the dinner bell, was among the most famous of the behavioral research pioneers. Other leaders in the field included John Watson and Clark Hull.

Instead of focusing on analyzing the problem like Freud and the psychoanalysts, cognitive behavioral therapy focused on eliminating the symptoms. The idea being that if you eliminate the symptoms, you have eliminated the problem. This more direct approach was seen as more effective at getting to the problem at hand and helping patients to make progress more quickly.

As a more radical aggressive treatment, behavioral techniques dealt better with more radical problems. The more obvious and clear cut the symptoms were, the easier it was to target them and devise treatments to eliminate them. Behavioral therapy was not as successful initially with more ambiguous problems such as depression. This realm was better served with cognitive therapy techniques.

In many academic settings, the two therapy techniques were used side by side to compare and contrast the results. It was not long before the advantages of combining the two techniques became clear as a way of taking advantage of the strengths of each. David Barlow’s work on panic disorder treatments provided the first concrete example of the success of the combined strategies.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is difficult to define in a succinct definition because it covers such a broad range of topics and techniques. It is really an umbrella definition for individual treatments that are specifically tailored to the problems of a specific patient. So the problem dictates the specifics of the treatment, but there are some common themes and techniques. These include having the patient keep a diary of important events and record the feelings and behaviors they had in association with each event. This tool is then used as a basis to analyze and test the patient’s ability to evaluate the situation and develop an appropriate emotional response. Negative emotions and behaviors are identified as well as the evaluations and beliefs that lead to them. An effort is then made to counter these beliefs and evaluations to show that the resulting behaviors are wrong. Negative behaviors are eliminated and the patient is taught a better way to view and react to the situation.

Part of the therapy also includes teaching the patient ways to distract themselves or change their focus from something that is upsetting or a situation that is generating negative behavior. They learn to focus on something else instead of the negative stimulus, thus eliminating the negative behavior that it would lead to. The problem is essentially nipped in the bud. For serious psychological disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, mood stabilizing medications are often prescribed to use in conjunction with these techniques. The medications give the patient enough of a calming effect to give them the opportunity to examine the situation and make the healthy choice whereas before they could not even pause for rational thought.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven effective for a variety of problems, but it is still a process, not a miracle cure. It takes time to teach patients to understand situations and identify the triggers of their negative behaviors. Once this step is mastered, it still takes a lot of effort to overcome their first instincts and instead stop and make the right choices. First they learn what they should do, and then they must practice until they can do it.

Bethany Jordan is an Information Technology professional and aspiring writer who was clinically diagnosed with SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder) in 2007.

She maintains a website dedicated to sharing information on natural antidepressants, herbal remedies for anxiety and depression, and anxiety disorders in general. Everyone is welcome and invited to visit http://www.naturalantidepressants.info …

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bethany_Jordin

There is so much fuel for thought in this book, that you will have the opportunity to read several articles as my mental juices are stimulated.

As a Mind-Body Psychotherapist I work with the concept and the emotion of fear. From the lowest level of anxiety to full blown panic, this emotion can cause the heart to race and one to shudder in anticipation of the possible event that one’s life feels out of control.

Decisions made when in a state of fright are not, by their very nature, rational. It’s an emotion, not logic.

The amygdala in the limbic brain becomes activated when we are overwrought. The cortex, the rational part of the brain takes a back seat. The admonition to be reasonable has no effect other than to induce anger in someone in a state of severe agitation.

Let’s look at the word “epidemic.”

Do a “gut check” right now. Just reading the word, does your abdomen twist a little, perhaps even hurt? Do you want to act on emotion or are you calm enough to look beyond the hype to the facts and evaluate the pros and cons of your actions.

Think of your beliefs regarding this word bandied about by FOX, CNN and other national and local news sources. Looking in the thesaurus, one of the phrases is “widespread disease.” That’s what the “ordinary” person thinks of. The mind then runs to such things as the plague, AIDS, SARS, bio-warfare, H1N1 and so on.

People are in such panic they are ready to take any vaccine the pharmaceutical industry dishes out, even though it has not been tested, to avoid getting sick.

What does “epidemic” mean to epidemiologists. Alcabes, who is an associate professor of Urban Public Health at Hunter College of the City University of New York, as well as a visiting professor at Yale’s School of Nursing, describes it as a “disease” appearing more often than usual.

When flu season hits, the outbreak hits the news. When another teen dies in an automobile accident, unless he or she is prominent, the family grieves privately. The number of teens who loose their lives on the road while in a car is four or five times that from illness. Yet the tragedy of the lost future in our youth is not continually in public awareness.

The flu outbreak is unusual. The death from another car crash is tragic but not unusual.

How we handle the out of the ordinary depends upon our own beliefs as well as the attempt of public agencies to influence feelings and actions.

The question for you to examine is, “Are you able to gather information before following the hysteria driven sound bites, or do you allow yourself to be swept away in the artificially created tsunami of fear?”

Cathy Chapman, Ph.D., LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker assisting people achieve their dreams of health, wealth and abundance through Mind-Body Psychology. She works from a spiritual and energetic model employing BodyTalk and Psych-K to balance the body and change beliefs. Cathy offers free of charge a powerful spiritual healing tool anyone can use. Get your Soul Healing Prayer now at http://www.distancegrouphealing.com.

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Feminist Therapy
Feminist psychology grew from the influences of the women’s movement of the 1960’s. This movement was a grassroots one; therefore, no one particular theorist can be named the originator of feminist therapy. Feminists tried to keep elements of other psychological theories that worked but attempted to get rid of sexist aspects of the theories. They then tried to explain some of the common experiences and difficulties associated with the social roles that women endure that may be blocking their growth and development. The focus is mainly on helping women in areas such as assertiveness, communication, self-esteem, and relationships. Feminist therapy also focuses on empowering women by helping them see the impact of gender issues. The aim of therapy is change rather then adjustment. It is important to acknowledge sex roles, minority status and socialization in society as possible sources or causes of psychological difficulties. A core concept is equality; therefore, the therapist is seen as equal in the relationship with an outside perspective who provides guidance and new information but the client is seen as having the power to create his or her own desired outcome in themselves and their lives. Reclaiming personal power is a key concept. A task of the therapist is to help individuals explore and understand what is causing dysfunction and unhappiness and then to help develop strategies to overcome these difficulties…

Feminist therapy is not just suitable for women, men can benefit from this therapeutic process as well. Men also deal with social and gender role constraints such as the demands of strength, autonomy, and competition. In addition, they are limited by the notion that they should not express vulnerability, sensitivity, and empathy. Both men and women are exploited by a patriarchal society and limited culture and gender stereotypes. Men can benefit from therapy by working on these issues and by learning new skills to help them understand and explore issues involved with emotions, intimacy, and self-disclosure.

There are four main philosophies of feminists with differing goals in therapy including socialist, radical, cultural, and liberal. First, socialist feminists emphasize the need for change in institutional and social relationships. Next, radical feminists focus on the need for change in gender relations and societal institutions. In addition, they strive to increase women’s self awareness in regards to her sexuality and her desires and views for having children. Subsequently, cultural feminists emphasize the importance of the recognition that women are devalued in society and how detrimental this is. Finally, liberal feminists focus on the individual and the biases these people face in regards to self awareness, self-respect, esteem, and equality. Many ideas and views held by these philosophies overlap and are integrated with the main focus on equality.

There are four major approaches that are unique to feminist therapy which include consciousness-raising, social and gender role analysis, resocialization, and social activism.

Consciousness-raising is sometimes held in small groups in a leaderless manner involving the discussion of women’s individual and shared experiences. Women in these groups do not have to feel that they are alone and they could listen and support others. These individuals examine how oppression and socialization contributes to personal distress and dysfunction and they talk about ways in which solutions for creating individual and social changes can be made. Consciousness-raising helps women feel more powerful to take steps against oppression by participating in social action.

Social and gender role analysis involves the evaluation of the client’s psychological distress and methods of coping. First clients will learn about the impact and affects of social and cultural norms and expectations and how negatively these issues affect society. This helps the client become aware and identify his or her own experiences in regards to social and gender role norms. The therapist helps the individual become aware of both implicit and explicit sex roles that the client may have experienced over his or her lifetime. This helps the client explore possible origins of psychological distress. Together the therapist and the client come up with ways to implement change and gain self knowledge.

Resocialization follows social and gender role analysis and involves reorganizing the client’s belief system. They learn to view things differently and they develop new coping skills and strategies. Methods are taught that increase self esteem, assertiveness, and self views. A main goal of resocialization is an overall increase in well being.

Social activism is rather controversial and not practiced by all therapists. It is embedded in the notion that “personal is political”, which is one of the basic tenets of feminist therapy. This means that there are underlying roots of client’s problems that stem from society and politics. Feminist therapy should not only help the individual but it should help all individuals. Social activism may involve participation by both the therapist and the client. This can be accomplished by speaking out, organized protests, and letter writing campaigns. Feminists agree that social change is crucial and advantageous to the mental health of all individuals.

According to Gerald Corey, feminist therapy is based on five interrelated principles:
1.The personal is political which implements social change.
2.The counseling relationship is egalitarian which encourages equality between the therapist and the client. The client should be aware that she has the power to change and define herself and the therapist is only a tool with new insight and information.
3.Women’s experiences are honored and they should get in touch with their personal experiences and intuition.
4.Definitions of distress and mental illness are reformulated involving the internal as well as external factors of distress. Pain and resistance are viewed as a positive confirmation of the desire to live and overcome distress rather than being viewed as weak.
5.Feminist therapists use an integrated analysis of oppression which means that they understand that both men and women are subjected to oppression and stereotypes and that these oppressive experiences have a profound affect on beliefs and perceptions.

These core principles set the basis for feminist therapeutic practice and it is important to acknowledge that these principles contain overlap and interrelated common ground. Additionally, Lenore Walker indicates that there are six tenets of feminist therapy theory:

1.Egalitarian relationships: this equal relationship between client and therapist models for women personal responsibility and assertiveness in other relationships.
2.Power: women are taught to gain and use power in relationships and the possible consequences of their actions.
3.Enhancement of women’s strengths: so much of traditional therapy focused on a woman’s shortcomings and weaknesses that feminist therapists teach women to look for their own strengths and use them effectively.
4.Non-pathology oriented and non-victim blaming: the medical model is rejected and women’s problems are seen as coping mechanisms and viewed in their social context.
5.Education: women are taught to recognize their cognitions that are detrimental and encouraged to educate themselves for the benefit of all women.
6.Acceptance and validation of feelings: feminist therapists value self-disclosure and attempt to remove the we-they barrier of traditional therapeutic relationships.

Feminist therapy is beneficial and needed for several reasons. The main goal is change, not just change within the individual but change in society. Gender issues need to be addressed because they can cause psychological distress and shape unwanted behavior. Our lives are affected and influenced by the stigmas and stereotypes associated with these internal and environmental pressures which can affect one’s identity. Feminist therapy recognizes this and implements these concerns in practice. Furthermore, women live in a world dominated by males and masculine patterns of thought and behavior. Until recently, psychological studies of human behavior were almost always conducted by men and on men. The results of these studies were generalized to apply to women equally. The results are biased for several reasons including the fact that men and women are not the same. They have developed differently from early childhood and they tend to view the world in different ways. The media gives young children strong gender biased messages. Boys are supposed to be independent, self sufficient, dominant, aggressive, and successful. Girls are sweet, well behaved, passive, submissive, overemotional, and attractive. There is a conflicting problem here because the same traits that are considered appropriate for little girls are considered negative and inappropriate as mature adults. Males tend to view the world in terms of competition and power, while females look at aspects of the world through relationships and connections to others. Therefore, these studies and techniques may not represent women very well.

Women’s natural gifts of being nurturing and caring do not hold much power and value in society according to our social norms. These views and norms prevent women from feeling a sense of strength and power. These characteristics should not be viewed as weaknesses yet society sees it this way. Women should be commended for all he roles that they play. It is hard to juggle a family with children and a career, then come home and do housework and errands. As society becomes more of a dual income earning community some of these issues may turn in a more positive direction. Men do not have it easy either. If a man were to stay home and raise the children and tend to the household needs, society may call him lazy or worthless. Feminist therapists recognize how these factors and they understand how much relationships, connections, and nurturance plays a huge role in individual’s lives. They consider sex bias in a male dominated society and they honor women’s experiences and instincts as being valid. Feminist therapists specifically address issues such as family and marriage relations, reproduction, career concerns, physical and sexual abuse, body image disorders, and self esteem. One of the most important concerns of a feminist therapist is the empowerment of women in today’s world. Bohan (1992) states six guidelines for feminist practitioners to follow:

1.Therapists are knowledgeable concerning gender role socialization and the impact these standards have on what it means to be a woman or a man.
2.Therapists are aware of the impact of the distribution of power within the family and power differentials between men and women in terms of decision making, child rearing, career options, and division of labor.
3.Therapists understand the sexist context of the social system and its impacts on both the individual and the family.
4.Therapists are committed to promoting roles for both women and men that are not limited by cultural or gender stereotypes.
5.Therapists acquire intervention skills that assist clients in their gender role journey.
6.Therapists are committed to work toward the elimination of gender role bias as a source of pathology in all societal institutions.
These principles are based on a gender fair ideology for counseling which may be applied to family therapists as well. These principles also apply to both individual and group therapy. The fact that many principles of feminist therapy can be incorporated into other therapies is a strength because it can broaden the theoretical base of other models and therapies. Feminist therapy aims at enriching and enlightening everyone’s lives by hopefully encouraging social activism in a positive direction.

There are some criticisms and limitations to feminist therapy. Some therapists may be too feminist and militant in their views there by persuading clients. No therapist should persuade nor tell someone the “right” way to look at things. The therapist’s task is to offer support and information to challenge the client to examine for herself which road to take. Another criticism is the biased stance that feminists take. They are not neutral. They are all for a definite change in society and they should take caution not to be too pushy with their views on clients. It is also important that clients take responsibility for actions and experiences and not just blame society. They can be aware of society’s impacts but they also need to fess up and not avoid taking personal responsibility. Another criticism is the fact that feminism originated and was developed by, middle class, white, heterosexual women. Other races and cultures were not involved. This has been brought to attention and feminists have become much more inclusive.

In summary, feminist therapy is beneficial and advantageous to today’s society. The human race will continue to evolve and new theories will also evolve to meet the needs of our unsustainable, plastic society. Feminist therapists will continue to break down the hierarchy of power by therapeutic approaches and interventions with the overall remaining goal as empowerment of the client and social positive change and transformation.

References
1.Walker, Lenore E.A. (1990). A Feminist Therapist Views the Case. In Dorthy W. Cantor (Ed.), Women as Therapists, (pp. 78-79). New York: Spring Publishing Company.
2.Hecklinger, Fred J. (2003). Training for Life: A Practical Guide to Career and Life Planning. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishers.
3.Bohan, Janis S. (1992). Replacing Women in Psychology: readings Toward a More Inclusive History, (pp. 88-99). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishers.
4.Swanson, Jane L. (1999). Career Theory and Practice: Learning Through Case Studies. Thousand oaks, CA: Sage Publications
5.Benjafield, John G., (1996). A History of Psychology, (pp.321), Needham Heights, Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon
6.Corey, Gerald (2001). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy 6TH Edition, (pp. 341-375), Wadsworth: Brooks Cole, Thompson Learning.

Elizabeth Mahaney, MA, MHC, is a Mental Health Counselor and a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Tampa, FL. Elizabeth can be contacted for questions or scheduling here: http://www.goodtherapy.org/m15_view_item.html?m15:item=elizabethmahaney%40msn.com and here: http://www.goodtherapy.org/Tampa-therapy.htm

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If we have 80 years to live instead of 40, well, then we have more time to get educated, we can wait to be married, we can pursue more than one career. Perhaps the most notable effect of our recent longevity has been the illusion that somehow life can (even should) go on indefinitely if we can only get a hold of that slippery little gene or remember to take that new antioxidant.

This dynamic – technology permuting culture – is pervasive throughout our collective experience. As our technology has changed, our lifestyles have changed. And as our lifestyles have changed our expectations, our strategies for living and our psychologies have changed. War has been no exception to the rule. The way we wage it and the battles we choose to fight have been similarly transformed. However, this time not only has the nature of war changed, but our very battlefields have been moved and we barely noticed.

New Terms of Engagement: Media-Driven Battle Grounds

For thousands of years, when one group wanted to conquer another (for whatever reason – land, power, revenge or pride) the protocol was for one group to ride, walk or run over to the desired territory and storm the castle or plunder a village. Whatever the strategies, whether the generals chose to fight with one standing army confronting another standing army or it was a surprise attack in the middle of the night, guerilla-style, it always resulted in hand-to-hand combat of some kind.

Even the Roman armies with their chariots, horses and war dogs (e.g., mastiffs) eventually met their enemies face to face. Killing was personal. Even if it didn’t start out that way, a soldier sooner or later had to use a spear, a knife, a fist or a club. The implement of death had to be wielded by hand and in almost all cases the person wielding it had to confront the grisly death of the other.

Then came gun powder and the laws of physics changed the rules of war. Now balls of lead could be hurled over or even through walls, traversing long distances to explode and expose the viscera of once impenetrable fortresses. War was still a bloody mess and a last resort for any society that valued its own, but it was now feasible to conduct one with substantially less personal involvement.

Not too long after that came the bomb. Not just the bomb, but all bombs that could be dropped from airplanes, fired from rocket launchers or detonated on delays. This once again changed war. Populations that had once been protected by flanks of soldiers who were prepared to give their lives to defend their women and children were now as vulnerable as our most primitive ancestors. We could be reached by air. There was nothing that could stop the invasion any longer.

Now, there is the danger of invasion by organism and bio-technology. We can’t see it, smell it, or fight it. But there it is, knocking on our collective unconscious, silently altering the psychological and eventually the genetic make-up of our entire culture.

The War of Words and Ideas

Which brings us to the state of war in which we currently find ourselves: the war of information in which the primary weapon used is viral fear. There are other weapons used in the information war that are no less serious, of course, such as identity theft, cyber-viruses, misinformation, EM pulses etc… But the war the average civilian is engaged in is tragically one of which he is wholly unconscious.

The war is fought in our living rooms, our bedrooms, subliminally in our movie theatres, on our phones, in our cars, on highway billboards and in shopping malls. We are utterly surrounded.

By What are we Surrounded? What’s the Enemy?

First and foremost the enemy is our own sedation. We are unconscious, made so and kept so by endless entertainment, comfort and complacency. From its inception, televised entertainment, which is intricately enmeshed with corporate and product advertising, has taken many if not most families from having dinner together at the table to dinner in shifts on the couch. We don’t face one another for after-dinner conversation or sit down for a game of chess over which we can proclaim our own world-politic. Instead we go each of us to the privacy of our own rooms, to the cyber-reality of our own headsets, to the seclusion of our own i-pods. We connect less to one another and more to electronics, conducting our lives in varying degrees of dissociative trance. We see the world (to some degree) but we are not fully there.

This is a wholly non-partisan issue. Whether one is radically right, lopsidedly left or somewhere in between, real national security is at risk and our missions will never be realized if we do not become minimally aware. And where there are real threats, America has become a sitting duck.

Secondly we are surrounded by an innumerable quantity of messages both subtle and gross given to us by the media. “Media” as I am using it here includes everything that is transmitted via newsprint, air wave, film, radio wave and optic cable. All of it, without exception, is involved in promoting an agenda. Most often it is a corporate one, even if it is embedded or disguised. (Mind you, this is not any sort of blanket condemnation on self-promotion or vigorous sales efforts. It is a commentary on our state of thoughtful awareness, or lack thereof.) Whether it is corporate or not, whether it is intentional or not, it is almost invariably fear-based and promotes a pathology of inadequacy.

In this last season, how many advertisements did you see where happy families opened lavish and glamorous gifts, where meals were presented in soft candlelight as though Martha herself were in the kitchen? I couldn’t even begin to count the ones I’d seen, not to mention the ones I didn’t. If there were one single message coming through loud and clear it was that happy families are made happy by constant and creative consumption. The irony of the way these holidays are presented is that millions are left feeling lost and lonesome. And even those who have intact families and multitudes of friends with enough money to buy gifts the way they do on television, they never, ever reach the level of perfection they see in the media. Whether we have family or not, we can never measure up. Which is both the promised land for advertisers and the problem for us.

I would like to clarify something for those who think I have an issue with shopping besides personally not loving the process of walking from store to store, sifting through too much stuff and hauling bags for hours. Philosophically speaking there is absolutely nothing wrong with shopping. So long as we exist in a complex society, we will have producers, traders, and consumers. We will always have wants and needs. However, what I do worry about is how we are unconsciously using it as a way to fill in the empty spaces in our soul or because we have nothing else to do. When we give up thinking for shopping, we are in very real trouble as a culture. And as a country at war, it is an act of suicide. It is insane.

A while back my publisher said, “When I was growing up shopping used to have something to do with comparison, with finding the appropriate item at the right price. Now it’s an automatically assumed consumption.” What an extraordinary idea. Our shopping has gone from an activity that required some consideration and thought to an impulse run wild, a substitute for self-worth or a way to shut out the world and shut off our own thoughts.

If we have gone from a production economy to retail economy as many have claimed, then consumption is indeed a critical issue. How does the media perpetuate this purchasing frenzy? The media pushes fear and inculcates inadequacy in us because in order for the economy to grow we must always need more. We must crave more, not just want it. We must not only pursue happiness, we must be willing to buy it. And, naturally, we can never really buy it either. We can only lease it. The happiness lasts only as long as the fad. And then we must have the next thing and then the thing after that and the thing after that ad infinitum.

And the fear is everywhere. This last week had an amazing roster of shows on the History Channel to celebrate the holiday season with “Armageddon Week.” A sampling: Mega Disasters, Siberian Apocalypse, Global Warming, The Last Days on Earth, Nostradamus, Meteors, Asteroids, Tsunami, Comets, Antichrist, Aftershock. And what followed this week of doom? The History of Sex.

The media’s approach to the news is not much different. It is sensational, scandal driven, high-pitched and partisan. I grew up in a home where we watched the news every evening before dinner (at which point it was turned off) and I can’t ever remember seeing people on television yelling at one another in an interview or round table discussion. When Khrushchev slammed his shoe on the table and yelled at the U.N., it was shocking as it well should have been. Now, to get our attention everything has been kicked up a notch. And the danger is that while we’re running around afraid of catching a cold or not making the perfect Christmas dinner, we’re tuning out on the issues that will profoundly affect us all. Very little is presented in a rational way about what America is actually facing and what we might do about it, only what might one day happen.

What It Does and What We Can Do.

What does a brain do with all that?

I would imagine that it starts to grow scales. Whatever it ultimately will do, we can’t tell yet, but what we do know of this endless assault of disjointed, anxiety-inducing visual and auditory stimuli is that it is lighting up certain areas of the brain more than others. The parts of our brains that respond to aggression, fear and sexuality become ignited while the cortical areas, the frontal lobes and other more sophisticated, executive areas of the brain are dimmed. What the human being has struggled to become over the course of millions of years is being reversed.

Another way of understanding this is working one group of muscles more than another. Say I go to the gym four days a week and all I do is work my upper arm muscles. I don’t bother with forearm, back, chest, abdominals, or legs. What happens is fairly obvious – one day I’m going to look in the mirror and see big arms on a small, perhaps atrophied frame.

What should we do? How can we reverse the current downward trend on the evolutionary scale?

1. Start with awareness. If we wake up and see the media’s message for what it is, we can become less susceptible, less automatic in our responses and hopefully more thoughtful. When an ad comes on or you see a product being promoted on a show or in a movie, remind yourself who and what put it there and why they’re spending so much money to do that. Awareness limits the impact of the messages that bombard us. If a sentence in an advertisement starts with “could,” “would” or “should” we can safely assume there’s an incoming fear missile. “Could it happen here?” “Could there be a bomb on New Year’s Eve?” “Should you get the vaccine now?” “Would you know what to do if…” Grammar is an extension of intent. Listen to what’s being said critically.

We can then remind ourselves that the way products and services are presented (as image, as icon, as identity or extension of self) is illusory and speaks to our fears and inadequacies more than our good judgment. They will never satisfy us in the way we are told they will. Be conscious of the truth and you will recognize the lies.

2. Do the obvious. We can limit the amount of time we (and particularly our children) spend with television, i-pods, game-boys or cyber-tennis and make a conscious effort to spend more time with one another. I do not for a second imagine that Americans will all start taking up Buddhist meditation, but having a few minutes a day without having our senses assaulted might be a good idea. The other day I met a friend at a place called the Hyatt Tamaya. It is a resort of sublime beauty, filled with roaring fires in handmade kivas, Native American artwork, sensual flute music and captivating views from every angle. I had to wait for her a while and sat near one of the fires when a man and his wife sat across from me. Presumably they’d come to the hotel together, but she sat in one corner of the couch reading a book and he sat in a chair with earphones blasting percussive music I could hear from more than 10 feet away. Why bother spending $300 a night to tune out the place you’re paying a fortune to be in doing what you do at home?

3. Ask yourself: What drives you? And spend some time with that question before you answer it. Think about what motivates you to buy, what you buy and when you buy.

4. Spend time doing things that are diametrically opposite to what is promoted in the media, such as being still, being with your family without electronic accessories, pray, walk, think, read. Live slowly, breath deeply, linger.

5. Be present. Don’t pursue anything. Especially happiness. It’s a waste of time and will only serve to make you frustrated. The only place you can really have what you long for is where you are right now with exactly what you’ve got.

Judith Acosta, LISW, is a licensed psychotherapist, crisis counselor and homeopath in private practice in New Mexico. She is the co-author of The Worst Is Over: What To Say When Every Moment Counts, hailed as the “bible of crisis communications” and Verbal First Aid for Children (Penguin 2010). She lectures around the country on Verbal First Aid, trauma, stress, and intuition development. She may be reached at http://www.wordsaremedicine.com .

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