Tag: depression

Emotional Help for College Stress

Sue Siebens

With High School complete, the next life step for many graduates is college which includes new responsibilities, financial pressures and scholastic expectations. Many college students are not emotionally equipped for the challenges they will face.

Freshmen, in particular, must adjust to the interruption of old school relationships, inciting a sense of loss, grief and loneliness. New friendships take time to develop and it’s easy to make poor choices in the desire to connect socially. This can be complicated by any existing difficulties in connecting and bonding with others. Being in an ocean of new students all looking for connection doesn’t overcome those emotional intelligence deficits. [1]

On top of social pressures of finding a new tribe, students find that they must shift up to a new level of performance. They need to compete for grades with classmates who were also at the top in their own high school class. High costs of secondary education can bring financial pressures requiring an extra job, cutting back on housing and food expenses, resulting in a tougher life and sleep schedule, which also affect performance in class.

It’s a high stakes gamble that all the money and hard work will pay off in an increasingly competitive post-graduation job market — no pressure!

” A 2013 survey of over 123,000 students across 153 campuses confirmed that over half of students feel overwhelming anxiety, and about a third experience intense depression, sometime during the year.  Almost a third report that their stress has been high enough at some point to interfere with their academics—lowering their grades on exams or courses or projects—and 44% say that academic or career issues have been traumatic or difficult to handle. The majority of college students don’t get enough sleep, and half say that they’ve felt overwhelmed and exhausted, lonely or sad sometime during the year. “[1]

“According to mental health research conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI):

  • One in four students have a diagnosable illness
  • 40% do not seek help
  • 80% feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities
  • 50% have become so anxious that they struggled in school [2]

The five most prevalent mental health issues are: depression, anxiety, suicide, eating disorders, and addictions(drugs and alcohol)

How can we help them? How can we ease the pressure in our universities and colleges?

Arm Them with Emotional Resolution Skills!

Emotional Resolution, EmRes for short, is a simple technique that can be performed on the Self in the moment of the emotion (EmRes-Self) or in a session with a trained EmRes Professional (EmRes Session). EmRes uses the body’s own innate capacity to resolve negative and dysfunctional emotions.

Many studies have shown that times of very high stress and/or disruptive trauma, emotions are literally embedded into the body, where even vague similarities to the original event can trigger the trapped emotion to come rushing back, flooding the senses and disturbing any chance of a “normal” response or behavior. Results can range from anxiety and depression to rage and PTSD.

EmRes starts with the triggered situation and works back thru the limbic (emotional) center of the brain to access the body memories-the physical sensations that represent the emotion. Once accessed, the body does the work to eliminate the embedded emotion and it’s situational triggers. And voila! it’s gone forever!

EmRes Sessions are quick: 15-30 minutes. EmRes-Self is quicker, 8 sec to 30 secs is normal. Usually people use a combination of both in the early stages of the work.

Added Bonuses: no reliving or triggering; don’t need to know or understand the original trauma causing the problem; fully conscious, aware and in control at all times; don’t have to tell story or personal details.

Best thing: EmRes Sessions can be done in-person or over the phone. EmRes-Self can be taught in-person or over the phone.

If you or someone you love is in university or any other high-pressure situation where performance, social and financial pressures all collide with any emotional issues, you or they would do well to work with and learn Emotional Resolution.

Are you ready to let Emotional Resolution work for you?

Book an EmRes Session or EmRes-Self class

References
1. Why college freshmen need to take Emotions 101
2. The Top Mental Health Challenges Facing Students

Childbirth Trauma

Sue Siebens

Pregnancy sets up many expectations. Its an time of expecting that’s full of hopes and dreams for the baby: what kind of childhood and life is in store, how can the parent support her on her path to a bright future?

As part of the plan, some new mothers anticipate a relatively, calm, natural and fulfilling labor. Childbirth is the gateway to Motherhood. It is common for moms to use the birthing experience as a base for their sense of motherhood and it can shape their relationship with the baby.

Birth Trauma puts a serious wrinkle in those expectations, to say the least. It’s a very real issue and very common. 1 in 4 first time mothers sustain significant injuries. And only about 25 percent of women have a non-traumatic normal vaginal delivery that has not done serious damage to their pelvic floor or their anal sphincter.[1]

Trauma can be the result from labor and childbirth and can also be a consequence of how the mother is left feeling about these experiences. She might have experienced pain or physical distress while giving birth. Or her labor or childbirth may have required medical intervention (actions taken by the attending medical professionals if the health of mother or baby is considered to be at risk) that she wasn’t prepared for. [2]

It is common for women to describe their labor as ‘normal’, even if they are left with confusing, on-going symptoms such as anxiety – including for the health of the baby – or low mood. A mother’s fear for the well-being of her baby or herself following interventions or a life threatening situation can be very traumatic. These fears and anxieties can interrupt the mother’s ability to be available to and bond with her baby. [2]

some of the factors that make birth trauma more likely are:

  • Lengthy labor or short and very painful labor
  • Induction
  • Poor pain relief
  • Feelings of loss of control
  • High levels of medical intervention
  • Forceps births
  • Emergency Cesarean section
  • Impersonal treatment or problems with staff attitudes
  • Not being listened to
  • Lack of information or explanation
  • Lack of privacy and dignity
  • Fear for baby’s safety
  • Stillbirth
  • Birth of a baby with a disability resulting from a traumatic birth
  • Baby’s stay in the special care baby unit or neonatal intensive care unit
  • Poor postnatal care
  • Previous trauma (for example, in childhood, with a previous birth or domestic violence)[3]

There are four main symptoms of Birth Trauma- PTSD:

  • Re-experiencing the traumatic event through flashbacks, nightmares or intrusive memories. These make her feel distressed and panicky.
  • Avoiding anything that reminds her of the trauma. This can mean refusing to walk past the hospital where she gave birth, or avoiding meeting other women with new babies.
  • Feeling hyper-vigilant: this means that mom are constantly alert, irritable and jumpy. She worries that something terrible is going to happen to her baby.
  • Feeling low and unhappy (“negative cognition” in the medical jargon). She may feel guilty and blame herself for the traumatic birthing. She may have difficulty remembering parts of the birth experience.[3]

Not everyone who has had a traumatic experience suffers from PTSD, but many do. It’s a completely normal response, and not a sign of weakness. It’s also involuntary: brain scans show a difference between the brains of people with PTSD and those without. PTSD is not something that can be cured by “pulling yourself together” or “focusing on the positive,” despite what other people tell you. [3]

This mis-understanding of what is going on with the new mom is isolating, leading to loneliness, feeling weak and depression. To be clear Birth Trauma PTSD is not the same as Postnatal Depression (PND), although they can overlap.

What can a Mother do?

Emotional Resolution, or EmRes, can be key to helping mothers with Birth Trauma PTSD to release the emotions that were trapped before, during and after their birthing experience. It works with PND as well.

Using both EmRes one-on-one sessions and learning EmRes-Self to use on their own, the traumatized mother can turn the corner on the emotions that are fogging their maternal time and lead to better self-care for herself and more wholesome relationship with her new family member.

Book EmRes one-on-one sessions

EmRes-Self class description and schedule

References
1. Birth trauma impacts go beyond women
2. Childbirth trauma
3. What is birth trauma?

Does Emotional Resolution replace Therapy?

Sue Siebens

The short-answer is No.

Therapy or Psychotherapy is a process where a trained professional uses verbal and psychological techniques to help their client tackle specific or general problems such as a particular mental illness or a source of life stress by exploring their cause and effect on the client’s life and behavior[1]. There are many facets and techniques employed by therapists, but generally it requires a great deal of commitment from the client and there is a significant relationship between the therapeutic alliance and therapy outcome[2]. Psychotherapy is an cognitive and mental exploration of the reasons behind the issue and applies further cognitive and mental techniques to work the problem.

The Emotional Resolution or EmRes session is a process conducted by a trained professional that calls on emotional memories in the body and discharges them. Subconscious and unresolved emotions are in play when we experience highly charged situations and interactions with ourselves and other people. Somatic sensations are sparked when we recall those situations, giving us direct access to them for resolution. Emotional Resolution sessions resolve the root(s) of these emotions immediately, without having to know their origin or history.

Therapy and Emotional Resolution are highly compatible and complimentary. In all work to better our lives and behaviors by unraveling emotions, we pass through a series of steps:

  • Becoming aware of a pattern that we don’t want in our life
  • Recognizing that the pattern can be changed–it is not integral to who we are
  • Taking responsibility for what is, now… with the understanding that we may not be at fault for the trauma or whatever “stuck” the emotion in us, but we have to take ownership of our own pain and emotions as it is now and find ways to resolve it
  • Be willing to let go of the pain, emotions and past story associated with them.

A therapist or counselor can help sort out confusing and complex history, behavior and wounds. They can help bring perspective and awareness to our murky past. But once responsibilities and emotions become clear, and the emotions themselves need to be cleared away to relieve the suffering, then Emotional Resolution is the most efficient way through.

Emotional Resolution Protocol is a very specific and precise series of steps. It is literally the clearest and calmest way you will ever find to deal with emotions: no history, not triggering, no justification, no self-examination or judgement, no soul-crushing reliving, no emotional backlash from the retelling. Seriously, many times sessions are like giving a semi-animated description of what you had for lunch yesterday. It doesn’t change your history, but it does change how you feel about it and how you will feel about it in the future and, most importantly, how you will feel and act in a similar situation the future.

The body is doing all the work!

Our bodies have a natural capacity to resolve the emotions that are embedded in them, lodging there in times of high stress or trauma. And our bodies know how to access the subconscious emotion: by their physical sensation signature. The Emotional Resolution protocol capitalizes on this ability as we first recall the troubling situation, then directs us to the emotional memory as a prompt for the body to do it’s work. The body resolves the emotional imprint and we are set free from triggering cycle.

Understanding and accepting our emotional script and changing it are two different things.

  • Many people want to know why they feel and act the way they do. It’s valuable and useful to them and their processing. For this information gathering, therapy is irreplaceable.
  • Many people want to get rid of their triggers and troubling emotions. Emotional Resolution has no rivals in this area.
  • There is a matrix of people in one, the other or both of these groups.

If you are ready to change the emotional script that drives your life, then Emotional Resolution session will work for you.

Your Body is ready, Are You?

Book an Emotional Resolution Session

References
1. Therapy
2. The Benefits of Psychotherapy

Clearing the Tears

Sue Siebens

Why do we think something is wrong when we are crying? 

OH OH — Someone is experiencing an emotion, they have droplets of water coming out of their eyes……. that can’t be good? or can it?   

Typically when we see someone crying, we assume they are experiencing sadness or duress.  But we frequently cry during a heart-felt moments found in joyous births and weddings. 

Tears of other people remind us that we too have emotions. Without question, the vast majority of us would rather not deal with or be reminded that we have emotions. Since tears can go either way- happy or sad tears – they disturb us. And, compassion aside for a moment, we don’t want to deal with our own emotions or anyone else’s either. 

Emotions are messy, but necessary part of living.  Emotions tell us what is going on around us and how it’s affecting us.  Our bodies react with physical sensations (the emotion), that travel brain for interpretation and, if necessary,  to set a course of reaction (the response to emotion.) 

Some psychologies believe that tears part of a coping strategy that is self-soothing and can elicit support from those around us.  It restores “emotional equilibrium”, suggesting that sad tears lift blues and happy tears bring us back to neutral.

But tears don’t resolve the emotion that they spring from.  Tears are an instant remedy without a long-term benefit, emotionally speaking.

I’ve helped several of my clients with their tears. 

  1. Elsie (not her real name) had lost her most beloved husband 2 years prior to her work with me. She still had pictures of him all over the house, because she loved him and didn’t want to forget him or their time together. Whenever she would look at the pictures or talk about her husband with friends, Elsie would well-up with tears.  She said “I don’t mind the tears–I miss him.  But my friends think it’s wrong to cry after so many years.” I guided Elsie to resolve the emotion she felt when she looked at her husband’s picture.  At her next session, she came back all smiles! “I can look at his picture and NO TEARS–I just remember our happy times.  I still miss him, but the sadness is gone and the good stuff is left! Thank you!”
  2. Jane (again, an alias) cried at every happy event.  “It’s embarrassing”, she said. “If I’m at a wedding, baby shower, spiritual events or anywhere that I feel happy and blessed, I cry. People think I’m upset. Then I have to explain–its a mess”.  I helped Jane resolve the emotion she experiences in these moments of gladness that overwhelm her.  Jane reported back that now happy times are only happy. “I’ve found I can be joyous and compassionate without the tears.  I don’t feel the need to cry–it’s all smiles and ecstatic joy.  I love it!” 

I want to make a couple points that relate to Jane’s example.  First, when we are overwhelmed by emotion, happy, sad, or otherwise, we miss the essence/meaning of the moment before us. The buried, unresolved emotions flood in, to mix with the current emotional reaction and swamp the limbic system, which is responsible for “managing” these feelings. Many times it’s too much to grapple with. 

The emotion that prompted tears are drowning the ability to feel the joy of the moment. This works in the same way as engulfing anger might keep us from a reasonable response–we’re “too mad” and might produce tears of frustration. 

Second, Emotional Resolution (EmRes) works to remove the emotions that we didn’t naturally resolve when we felt them originally.  Sometimes, especially as children, the situation is so intense that the emotions produced don’t have the chance to get resolved by our bodies. They become imprinted in the body. As we move forward in time, these are literally the PTSD reactions we feel.

Removing imprinted emotions does not eliminate feelings of love, happiness, joy, etc.  These positive emotions are never imprinted or need to be removed.  In fact, the imprinted emotions depress our expression and experience of love.  In the end, the happy day-to-day bliss of being in love, finding love and happiness is where we want to end up….without the tears.

Who doesn’t want that?

Following the trail of tears can lead us to emotions that need to be resolved. and resolving your tears can lead to great experiences in your life.

I offer Emotional Resolution sessions in-person in North Dallas, Tx or on-the-phone.  Here is a link to schedule and appointment with me.   http://regulatingsense.schedulista.com/

Don’t let your Emotions control you. Resolve them instead.

Sue Siebens

Seems like every day we have them. Emotions. We react emotionally to the personal interactions and circumstances that we move through each day.  Some emotions we like: joy, happiness, gratitude, hope, inspiration, pride, serenity, inspiration, and, of course, love. Want them. Want to keep them.  

But it seems that much of the time we are swamped by emotions that we don’t like: anger, disappointment, frustration, annoyance, apathy, sadness, discouragement, despair, jealousy, fear, anxiety and guilt.

We spend quite a bit of time and money trying to figure out why we have these unwanted feelings, discovering the reasons they have erupted in us and devising how we can “overcome” them.

I have recently come to a new understanding about emotions and how they work for us and how we can work with them in a more effective way.

Emotions are a set of physical sensations in our BODY. If we work with the sensations in our body is a precise way, the emotions will be resolved permanently.

That’s it. That’s all of it.

It is our MIND mind that labels the physical sensations as anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, fear, trust, or joy, for example. And it is our mind that works out what our action/reaction should be. It’s all downhill, or up-hill from there. In many ways, it’s a distraction from the real work, especially when the reaction is “over the top/beyond what is appropriate”.

It all starts with the physical sensations in our Body.

Our Body is innately equipped with the ability to resolve emotions. When have an we experience a set of physical sensations and if the emotion is not “blocked”, the “emotion” information is passed to the mind, followed by clear-minded, analysis of the situation and discerning action ensues. We won’t actually experience the emotion in this case.  

But, when the emotion is blocked for whatever reason, the Mind “creates” a heightened experience and labels the feelings as “xxx” (an emotion.) Because the Mind is now flooded with overwhelming and sometimes conflicting cues, it’s normal mental flows are sidetracked from “appropriate action”. We then find ourselves in difficulties and behaviors that are over the top and, most commonly, don’t address anything that needs to be taken care of.

For example, if we are not afraid of heights, we could walk up to a handrail in the middle of a tall bridge and calmly recognize that we are safe when we look over the handrail and down to the river view below. There is no “emotional” reaction to the approach of the handrail or the view.

If we are afraid of heights, we may not even get to the middle of the bridge, much less the handrail. Our Mind is probably screaming in a fear and terror that paralyzes the body and reason. I’m sure you’d agree that this is definitely and emotional difficulty.

So the first question is: Do we really need to know how the emotion was blocked?  do we care if the block came from a childhood trauma, a teenage wound or an extremely stressful event, such as wartime combat, a natural disaster, or sexual or physical abuse.

The answers to “where did they come from” may help us to be more compassionate with ourselves. But they don’t help us get rid of the emotion, the reaction to the triggering situation or our mismatched actions.

The second question: it is okay, and possible, to just get of the emotional response, without knowing where it originated, and get rid of it permanently?

Yes, it is absolutely possible to free ourselves from emotional difficulties whether we know where they came from or not.

Hallelujah!

Emotional Resolution (EmRes) is set of precise protocols developed by French researchers to resolve emotions and their triggers that clouds our understanding of what is happening now, and filters our abilities to function and respond effectively to the present.

By consciously experiencing physical sensations in the Body, letting them change or shift, until they are gone, a natural and permanent resolution of the emotion takes place. 

We can perform this action on ourselves in the moment the emotion is present in us (EmRes-Self), assist others to do this work in the moment (EmRes-Direct) or afterwards with the help of an Emotional Resolution Professional (EmRes Session).

There are other advantages to Emotional Resolution.  There is no re-triggering or re-living the trauma. We don’t have to know where it originated. There is no need to share personal details or difficult stories. We are completely safe, present and in control at all times during a session.

EmRes sessions rarely need to exceed 30 minutes to obtain a complete and permanent resolution.

I have so many clients that are delighted with the sessions and results of their Emotional Resolution. I am also gratified, personally with my own work and professionally with the work of my clients.I invite you to give it a try, in-person in North Dallas, Tx or on-the-phone.  Here is a link to schedule and appointment with me.  http://regulatingsense.schedulista.com/