Hello again.
Once more it's that time of year when we aspire to stay calm, sane and steady, in the face of demands piling on as the holidays draw nigh. I know you've probably seen most of these tips before, but just for a reminder, here's my list of how to reduce stress…

• Take Care of Your Body
  Try to do all those things you know are good for your physical well being: get regular exercise; take it easy on the caffeine, sugar and alcohol; get enough sleep; eat healthy food - you know this stuff. This is the baseline of stress reduction.


• Track Your Physical Comfort
  Take time to check in and see how your body is feeling. Once you notice, you can make small corrections to relieve discomfort before it takes over. Breathe into tight places; stretch and move when your back or neck feels stiff; look out the window when your eyes are straining at the computer screen; massage your neck and press the acupoints when a headache is lurking. But you have to notice what’s amiss first.

Hello, All.

Well, for days I was finding random Cheerios and Legos in my bed, ever since the Great Thanksgiving Squeezer Invasion of 2009.  They’re sweet reminders of my four rambunctious grandsons (and their parents too – don’t get me wrong!), ages five, five, three and two years old.  I miss them, but after a steady diet of Curious George and Word Girl (excellent content, but, frankly, just an excuse to snuggle), I confess to being eager for a little adult fiction and a smattering of world news.

Looking forward to presenting some new info in a keynote on new methods used by the military at NICABM this week – the great annual Hilton Head conference for cutting edge clinical applications.  This year, there will be a lot of info and expertise on the neuroplasticity of the brain and inflammation – two very hot topics these days, where a lot of exciting new data is pouring in.  So I’m guessing I’ll see many of you there.

Recently the Department of Defense (DoD) made a bold decision to introduce Positive Psychology to all active military in hopes of reducing the incidence of PTSD. I appreciate the boldness, but question the choice of method.

Positive Psychology provides an antidote to the more traditional, symptom-focused, disability-obsessed aspects of standard psychotherapy, and instead examines and promotes authenticity, productivity, the appreciation of beauty, creativity, forgiveness, altruism, gratitude and connection with community.

Indeed, building upon a person’s strengths is a key tenet of my profession - social work - and always has been.  I’m all for this fruitful legacy of the late, great Abe Maslow (the psychologist who put terms like “self-actualizing”, “peak experience” and “human potential movement” into common parlance).

I've no doubt positive psychology has been good for a host of people, most notably middle school kids and teenagers suffering from iffy self-esteem, adolescent angst and hormonal doldrums.  It’s also been shown to reduce depression in self-selected, online subjects.  But I just can’t see how it can make a dent on posttraumatic stress, especially the soul-killing kind that comes from the unique horrors of combat.

Well, folks, after getting much more information, I've changed my tune and my focus slightly.  I've switched my would-be, long distance (and therefore limited) diagnosis of the Fort Hood shooter.  And, having become alarmed at the way the media has made this event about how people with PTSD are dangerous powder kegs, spring-loaded to go murderously ballistic at the drop of a hat, I felt compelled to refute this notion on my Huffington Post blog,  here.

Please feel free to comment, argue, agree, rant or opine. The more posts the better.  You need to sign up for Huffpo first, but it's no big deal - just give yourself a username and password and you're in. I'm finding it to be a terrific place to impose my opinions upon the unsuspecting nation.  Thanks for your help with this.

For those of you who want to see how a flu virus gets into your system, becomes all fruitful and multiplies by the millions, and how your amazing immune system responds, there’s a terrific cartoon video on NPR’s website that shows how this occurs at the cellular level.  You can find it here. 

This piece also explains why, after an invading virus replicates by the millions within seconds, we don’t just keel over and drop dead in about a minute.  This is the explanation to focus on if you’re interested in creating your own guided imagery to counter this flu-catching process.

Well, as you might imagine, since the Fort Hood shootings, the phones have been ringing off the hook and emails have been pouring in.  People want to know why the Dept. of Defense and the V.A. aren’t using portable, digitized guided imagery in a more systematic way to combat PTSD in our troops, given the research results we’ve been seeing with it.

It’s hard to know where to begin, so I’ll just start with some random thoughts. Hopefully they’ll come across as sequential.

This week’s featured research is about the effectiveness of treating depression with short-term, web-based, clinician-assisted cognitive behavioral treatment.  It’s no surprise that this study is one of many that comes out of Australia, where there’s a special need for this sort of thing, because of a scarcity of trained therapists, long wait lists, reluctance to go to a therapist and significant distances from medical help in some parts of the country.  

One such CBT program, (also developed in Australia), is something called the Mood Gym. It’s a free, modular-based program developed by the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University.  It gets high marks and decent respect for being well designed and fairly effective for many with mild or moderate depression, although nobody claims it to be a substitute for medical treatment, or a panacea for severe depression.

Hello, again.
I remember from my 33 years of clinical practice that it’s right around now that the light starts to change and seasonal depression sets in.  Starting around Halloween, therapists become overbooked, their schedules bursting at the seams with new appointments and people coming back for a “tune-up”, not feeling so hot all of a sudden.

So, this might be a good time to run some tips by you for dealing with depression during this vulnerable time for so many.  And let me just say at the outset that I really do understand that depression, by definition, drains your energy, motivation and sense of hope and efficacy, so you’re not exactly in the mood to follow tips. I get that. Try to do a little of this and that anyway.  If you keep at it, the gains can become cumulative and effective over time.  Okay, here goes:

Well, on November 6-8 in Alexandria, VA, The ConferenceWorks! is offering one final weekend of my workshop for cancer survivors, their friends, family and professional caregivers, called  Gifts of the Imagination: Surviving and Thriving Beyond Cancer.

It’s for anyone touched by cancer: patients, survivors in remission, relatives, friends and colleagues; and there’s 9 continuing education credit hours for most categories of professional caregivers.  We get a lot of docs, nurses, social workers, pastors, counselors, psychologists, massage therapists, marriage & family therapists, PT, OT, Art therapists, yoga therapists, Reiki and Healing Touch practitioners, coaches… well, you get the idea. 

When in Chicago for our Surviving and Thriving beyond Cancer workshop (offered next in Alexandria, VA on Nov 6-8, by the way), who should be in the audience but the awesome Martha Howard MD, Medical Director of Wellness Associates of Chicago and an old friend who, long before it was the chic thing to do, was integrating Chinese medicine, acupuncture, guided imagery and herbal medicine into her Family Medicine practice. I met her at NICABM, where she taught Qigong. She speaks perfect Chinese, having gotten a degree in Chinese language at Harvard before she became a doc.  And she’s really, really nice – I’m not sure if that’s because of or in spite of her many accomplishments.

Hey, you Brits and UK’ers!  The Piatkus printing of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Reduce and Overcome the Symptoms of PTSD has just been released on your side of the Pond.  It’s actually Invisible Heroes – same exact thing on the inside – but for some reason, they didn’t like my title and changed it to what you see above.  Plus, I guess you guys spell posttraumatic stress differently. In any case, the Amazon link offers 3 sellers who carry this version, plus I imagine you can pick it up in your bookstores.

Well, last week we were delighted by the bonanza of INK Health Journeys got.  In Heart Healthy Magazine, Mehmet Oz says that he’s “fallen in love with guided imagery”, and he recommends people check out our site.  We actually made our Cardiac Rehab CD at his request, about a decade ago, for use with his open heart surgery patients at Columbia Presbyterian. I have some funny Mehmet stories about that collaboration (hint: young female interns drooling over Dr. O in staff meetings, and Dr. O not even noticing, because he’s so absorbed by his work… and more!), but I’ll save them for another time when I have more space. Suffice it to say, he’s a good guy and the real deal.