Dr G's Wellness Tips
The Common Cold of Mental Health
Anxiety and low mood are often described (in a metaphorical sense) as the common cold of mental health due to the fact all of us at sometime in our life will experience nervousness that may lead to an anxiety disorder and low mood that for some may become languishing or even depression. Central to our experiences with low mood and anxiety is how the nervous system plays a role in the development, expression, intensity, duration and the restoration of our health when we are challenged with sadness and anxiousness. We now better understand that when our mental health is challenged, stress becomes elevated that may cause an over-activated nervous system (restless, sleepless, highly wired), or for some, an over shut-down nervous system (numb, hopeless, sluggish). Hence, I have seen how teaching my clients and patients stress management along with their counselling for anxiety and or low mood improves emotional regulation, cognitive performance, better sleep, a reduction in the fight or flight state, reduces rumination and looping, and many other direct benefits to our overall wellness.
Anxiety can drain your daily energy - low mood can steal your hope. Both are the common cold of mental health and our wellness requires attention to how stress impacts both.
Dr Mark
There is a growing concern that today's world for many feels harder and more uncertain to live in. In our work worlds, technology has allowed work to follow us home at night and on the weekends, and coupled with work-from-home scenarios, the stressors may not be traumatic but the stressors are having a cumulative effect on our physical and mental health. From a neuroscience perspective, this cumulative effect keeps our nervous system in a hyper-senstivie state that increases the risk of anxiety and low mood. Our nervous system is a well-developed brain-mind-body regulation system to keep us surviving in situations to often arise in life, but when the nervous system is always switched on due to chronic sad and or anxious events, our physical and psychological restoration processes become diminished. This can eventually lead to even more anxious and low mood states. Hence, life will present sad and anxious events that we must process and cannot avoid, but what we can do is change how we respond to our anxiety and low mood states. In short, we are not powerless in these testing times.
Sadness and anxious moments are all part of our personal and working life, and these feelings are not always a sign of a decline in mental health. The increasing presence of social media, workplace stress, parenting, relationship challenges, geo-politics, unhealthy lifestyle behaviours and financial strain impact us all. Concurrent with these challenges is the growing concern with information overload and chronic over-stimulation from device use, especially late at night before sleep. As one can imagine, this in turn impacts our sleep quality, and poor sleep comingled with chronic stress can lead to more serious levels of low mood and anxiety. We see how these intertwined issues can cause a sense of helpless and hopeless mindsets that then impacts our stress levels and our mood and behaviours. Hence, when seeking counselling for these matters, our approach takes a wholistic view of the client's medical history, genetic risk factors, lifestyle choices, and signature strengths (and other factors) to determine a realistic and positive way forward to restore wellness. In short, it is never one thing that we can do to imporve our mood and anxiety levels, but my 40 years of healthcare experience has shown that calming down the nervous system is an evidence-based, clinically proven model to improve our health.
Embedded in our counselling model at Centre for Stress Management, we have developed an 360 degree assessment model to clearly understand the triggers of anxiety, low mood, and stress so we can assess the current states as either mild, moderate or severe as well as acute or chronic. In other words, there are some types of acute and or chronic low mood and anxiety that are "mild and normal" that require one type of counselling whereas acute and or chronic anxiety-low mood states that is moderate or severe usually requires a more advanced counselling program. This evidence-based, comprehensive wellness model allows us to have a more precise client-centric assessment and counselling program that addresses the causes of the low mood, anxiety and stress as well as the consequences or symptoms of these matters in an understandable, believable, and actionable presentation so our clients' better understand their issues at hand. In short, the more our clients understand their well-being, the less foggy and uncertainty each person has that enhances the resources for learning, change, and healing.
The Triggers of Unhealthy Sad and Fear
We provide a psycho-educational type of counselling setting to empower our clients to better understand the five basic feelings of the brain we cannot remove as they play a critical role for survival: happy, sad, fear, anger, and shame. Happy to activate various positive chemicals for brain-mind-body homeostasis, fear to enhance attention and focus to prevent or prepare for harm, sad to activate seeking compassion from the self and others, anger to develop constructive behaviours in response to a transgression, and shame to make amends to our self and others from our actions that caused hurt. I have seen over 40 years of my healthcare experience when clients better understand that these five feelings are normal and not a sign of weakness, the stress reaction to these unhappy feelings is greatly reduced. In short, our mantra of name it to tame it once again validates that a key reason for unhealthy sad and fear to arise is the lack of knowledge of what these feelings are and how they actually increase our surviving and thriving goals in life. In short, when you know and understand the what, the how to deal with the what becomes less stressful to select and activate.
Another set of triggers for unhealthy sad and fear arises from repeated patterns of loss, harm, insecure relationships, and the over-stimulation and misinformation social media experiences (there are many others). These repeated patterns of the unhappy can cause an emotional and cognitive overload of a person that directly impacts our nervous, immune, cardiac, and digestive systems more than many realize. This chronic overload after a period of time can trigger a sense of helpless ("I can't do this") and hopeless ("nothing seems to work") that further increases production of our stress hormones, making our healing journey more challenging. Hence, stress can either be a cause of our unhealthy sad and fear, or, stress can deepen those unpleasant emotional states. Thus, I have seen that when a client-centric stress management program is integrated with counselling sad and fear health issues actually calms the brain-mind-body down so there are more resources to overcome the emotional states that prevent us from being our best version of our self..
My Trigger Assessment Model arises from evidence-based psychology and lifestyle medicine that is presented with each client in an easy to understand, believable and actionable well-being program. The common areas we explore in counselling is how a person in their current and past life experiences reacted to: unexpected major life events, ageing and life changes, the environment (yes we look at how noise, space and air pollution impact our clients), workplace stressors, parenting stressors, sexuality stressors, social relationship stressors, digital - technology stressors, food and drink stressors, and a few others. Centre for Stress Management's Trigger Assessment Model also educates our clients on the continuum model of stress so they are more mindful which stress level has been activated, boredom stress and or performance stress, to apply the proper micro and macro-skills for responding to and mitigating with comfort and confidence the sad and fearful experiences of daily life. Sadness and fear is not mother nature trying to beat us up, instead, mother nature sends our way life's sad and fear events to build us up. Choose your up wisely: beat up or build up!
Sad: The Brain's Feeling with Low Mood, Languishing, and or Depression
Understanding that the feeling sad is the brain's way of signaling to a person there has been a loss and or disappointment with a life experience. Sadness is mother nature's way of activating a well-being program of compassion; self-compassion and compassion from others. Being sad is not a sign that there is a negative change in our health, instead, it merely reminds us that things in life that matter and are experienced with a loss and or a disappointment will cause a sense of sadness. Understanding that sadness is usually an acute emotional state with a clear understanding of what triggered that sadness, languishing and depression are different manifestations of sadness that we make sure our clients can differentiate from. Naming it empowers us to know what it is that we need to tame - in short - name it to tame it.
Sadness can sometimes lead to either languishing and or depression for many reasons, ranging from lifestyle choices, poor sleep, genetic risk factors, lack of healthcare resources, and poor stress management to name a few. Languishing is a sign our health may be in decline, requiring a different set of counselling skiils as the person may be experiencing dullness, persistent low mood, declining motivation, and even unclear why the sadness has shifted. Depression on the other hand is a mental health illness that requires a careful assessment to determine the type of depression a person is experiencing to ensure the therapy and medication programs are a proper fit first and foremost for the patient. In short, I ensure which each of my clients that the therapy is about the person first and foremost before it is about the diagnosis. Knowing the person helps us better understand what is the proper mood state and the optimal therapy program to commence, In short, know the who, then the what, and then activate the how.
Fear: The Brain's Feeling with Vigilance, Looping, and or Anxiety
Fear is often called the dominant feeling in the brain that. when understood and utilized properly, enhances our attentiveness (no distractions) and strengthens our focus (deeper insight) for survival. Fear is not meant to be seen as a sign of personal weakness, it's intention is for protection against a known and or an unknown harm. Driving a car in a snowstorm, commencing a school exam, learning to swim, going for a job interview can activate healthy fear - to be attentive and focused with the task at hand. This type of fear we call vigilance, the brain's automatic response to a possible threat and prepare the body for the classic fight (engage) or flight (disengage). In short, the fight or flight response can for many reduce the distress of the situation as the brain-mind-body reads the fight or flight as preparation for a behavioural strategy to survive and thrive.
Vigilant fear can for many shift into a looping fear where the person is ruminating about the past, worrying in the now, and or being anxious about tomorrow - all normal brain-mind-body states until they consume a person's attention with its constant looping. Whereas vigilant fear is not seen as a mental health issue, looping fear is now impacting our physical and mental health, and if not addressed properly, can lead to an anxiety disorder. We have found that when our clients can quickly distinguish between what type of looping fear they are experiencing, once again naming it to tame it arises and clients with the right therapy can return to vigilant fear. However, a growing concern worldwide is the rise of anxiety disorders due to a multitude of social, genetic, psychological, environmental and lifestyle factors. To further complicate the intervention with fear-based concerns is the comingling of depression with anxiety disorders that we ensure our clients are properly assessed and engaged with.
Relationship Stress
We provide counselling for dating, friendship, partnership, family, marriage and work relationship stress. We sadly spend more time and money learning how to drive a car versus how to go from being single to being in a lifetime partnership. Clients can be seen alone, in a couple or family setting.
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Work Stress
Our stress management programs are the most advanced for work related stress. We spend more of our waking hours at work than at home, yet little is invested in employee health to keep the employees productive and well. See how we can improve your work performance for a work - life harmony.
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Lifestyle Stress
We provide evidence-based, current, effective and realistic tools for sleep, food, substance use and exercise stress issues. Our wellness lifestyle programs come from some of the most evidence-based research world renowned universities and healthcare organizations. We do not teach fads, only real science.
Detail7 Minute Mindfulness Practice To Reduce Stress
Meditation and mindfulness have been around much longer than the recent celebrations psychology and mental health experts propose as a new way to deal with stress.
Harvard Research on Mindfulness and Reducing Depression
When our minds wander into the unknown about the future (anxiety provoking) or drift back into the past and play over and over an unpleasant event (ruminating), our mood states can go down causing anxiety and depression.