Lifestyle Changes to Meet Your Weight Loss Needs

I am pleased to announce that Central Florida Mental Health Associates, LLC will be offering its next support group Lifestyle Changes to Meet Your Weight Loss Challenges beginning Wednesday July 7th from 7:00-8:30 pm. The group will focus on providing each member with support that will be specific to their needs. The group will have an ongoing format, which means that each member will be able to attend the group for as long as needed. This will allow the group to support each individual through all the unique challenges they face.

The group will support its participants through any interpersonal, intrapersonal, work, school, or family challenges that may be maintaining the underlying problems that are to contributing to their weight loss issues. The group will not require anyone to weigh in, unless they specifically request that of the group facilitator. In that case, the weigh in will be done in private with the facilitator. Furthermore, the dynamics of the group will be closely monitored by the facilitator and changes to the format will be made to accommodate the specific needs of the group and to improve the process.

The group will be offered on a bi-weekly basis. The group will be closed once it reaches 12 members. This will allow everyone to share and get the support they need during the hour and a half group. The group will cost $15.00 per person per group meeting. In order to make better use of our group time please complete and submit the registration form at the link provided prior to joining the group. Please note that even if you provide your insurance info we will not bill your carrier until we are an authorized provider for that carrier. You do not need to fill in client ID located on registration form. Please fill out the rest of the form to the best of your ability.

https://www.therasoftonline.com/tms/PreRegistration.aspx?companycode=CFMHA

If you have any questions or concerns please contact me by email at tmcbride@centralfloridamentalhealthassociates.com or by phone at 386.624.5501.

How Positive Thinking Can Defeat Anxiety: By Marilyn Roberts

How Positive Thinking Can Defeat Anxiety

By: Marilyn Roberts

There is a drug-free way to treat anxiety that will build your self esteem at the same time. Positive thinking can be the answer to this problem afflicting millions of people. Although positive thinking may not alleviate all stress and anxiety from your life, it can be worthwhile to try if it will even help some in overcoming the problems associated with a poor self esteem and your mental attitude.

Anxiety and Self Esteem

Anxiety can be directly related to low self esteem. If you are convinced that you cannot do something or are not good enough or worthy enough, then your self esteem suffers and therefore usually anxiety will follow closely behind. You can change your outlook about yourself with positive thinking and proving to yourself that you are good enough and you are worthy enough. You need to constantly reinforce your own self worth and you will see many of your anxiety issues slowly fade away.

There are many different positive thinking techniques that you can use to start building your self esteem every day. One of the ways is to surround yourself with other positive thinking people. Chemistry can be developed between like-minded individuals, so why develop low self esteem with negative thinking people when you can just as easily build good self esteem with positive thinking people? When you are feeling bad about yourself just make a list of your positive characteristics and keep them on hand for low self esteem and anxiety moments. Work on adding to your list of positive feelings about yourself and you will start attempting new things as your confidence in yourself builds.

Anxiety and Stress

Stress is the biggest contributor to anxiety but stress is self-induced and can be controlled. If you allow positive thinking to take control of your stress, then you are less likely to experience anxiety. You need to learn to combat stress with positive thinking, refer to your list of positive thoughts about yourself often, and you will find yourself becoming less anxious and will find your problems easier to deal with.

Breaking down your problems into easy to deal with stages will help you handle them in a better, more positive way. Your positive thinking encourages you to complete one step at a time instead of attempting to solve a whole problem all at once. Each step that you conquer will build your self confidence and alleviate some of the stress and anxiety that has been built up. Do not allow yourself to get stressed over something which you have no control of. This will only create unnecessary stress and anxiety. Use your time wisely and conserve your energy to use in a positive way to concentrate on the problems that are within your control.

Determining the causes of your anxiety will allow you to develop different positive thinking techniques and strategies to overcome these problems. It is up to you to take control of your life, including your stress and anxiety issues. Counteract anxiety in your life with positive thoughts and you will start seeing a difference in your outlook on life and many aspects of your life will improve.

Article taken from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/265336/how_positive_thinking_can_defeat_anxiety.html

Can counseling augment your weight loss program?

I and many of my client’s have struggled to lose weight. Many of us have lost large amounts of weight several times during the course of our lives only to gain it back. Every time this happens we ask ourselves, “why did you let this happen again?” We experience having feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, guilt, anxiety and really just feel awful about ourselves. We get mad, our moods begin to shift frequently and we lose interest in things we used to enjoy. Then we just relinquish ourselves to the “old patterns of being” which may include binge eating, isolating ourselves, and consumption of different mood altering substances. As these old patterns reemerge into our daily routine, we gain weight more rapidly, and our despair worsens. How can a counselor help with this?

Counselors our trained to spot these problematic patterns and to use specific helping skills to assist client’s in developing new more healthy ways of being. Once the maladaptive patterns are identified, your counselor will guide you, helping you identify and implement new more adaptive ways to cope. Your counselor will collaborate with you to come up with new ways to deal with your cravings and urges to eat. Your counselor may also identify and restructure any problematic thinking patterns that are common among people dealing with weight loss issues. Moreover, your counselor will provide you with encouragement, emotional support, and will help you change the behaviors that are making you gain weight.

In closing, augmenting your weight loss program with psychotherapy/counseling may be what you need to get over that hump and finally win the “battle of the bulge”. Counseling will encourage you to work on all the areas that are contributing to you weight gain. I think this is vital because we often just focus on losing the weight and forget to deal with the factors that contribute to us gaining the weight in the first place.

Are You Burnt Out?

Most if not all of us have experienced lengthy periods of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion because of our work and familial responsibilities. As a result, our productivity at work suffers which only adds to the pressure. We may bring this pressure home and project it onto other members of the family or we may isolate ourselves leaving others to make assumptions about what could be wrong with us. We may begin to handle our anger inappropriately at home and/or work which will also add to the stress and pressure. At this point, we probably are having trouble falling and staying asleep because of being all consumed by the negativity ruminating in our mind. What I am referring to ladies and gentlemen is burnout.

Other signs of burnout include:

· Every day is a bad day
· Your experiencing feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
· Your spending most of the day on tasks that seem remedial or boring
· Your “spacing out” regularly
· Your feeling unappreciated or like that anything you do isn’t making a difference daily
· Your feeling sick a lot
· Your experiencing frequent feelings of failure and self doubt
· Your using food, drugs or alcohol to cope

How can we combat burnout? This is the easiest part in my opinion. But getting to the point where we are looking at our situation objectively and identifying the need to do so is the hard part. Once we have identified the need to make some adjustments there are several options to deal with burnout. Some simple ways to deal with burnout include:

· Exercising – some may find this counterintuitive because of the energy required to exercise; however, when we exercise we release what I call the “feel good” chemicals in our bodies naturally
· 10 minute deep relaxation breaks throughout the day that should include slow controlled breathing, relaxing music or maybe guided meditation tapes.
· Identify what’s really in your control and focus on those things
· **Take time off or delegate duties that don’t necessarily need to be done by you
· Replace alcohol or drugs with more adaptive ways of coping like reading, playing your favorite musical instrument
· Hire a therapist

In closing, it is important to our emotional health that we become adept at recognizing when we are getting burnt out so we can make the necessary adjustments in our behaviors and thought processes. Developing this ability will help us maintain a healthy and balanced lifestyle.