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Showing posts with the label #CopingStrategies

The Price of Perfection

#Perfection #CopingStrategies #Mindfulness #AllorNothingThinking #Catastrophizing, Broadly speaking, perfectionism is a personality style where people set exceptionally high standards for themselves in order to achieve perfection. However, the motive behind perfectionism is not the achievement of perfection, but rather, the avoidance of failure. More simply speaking, perfectionism is really a type of anxiety. Anxiety is adaptive and evolutionarily speaking, protects us from danger. In cavemen days, anxiety helped our ancestors flee from predators. However, in modern days, rarely do we need to flee from predators. Consequently, maladaptive anxiety is increasingly common and acts as a faulty alarm system- alerting us to danger as if there were a predator chasing us when actually we are not in real danger. In regards to perfectionism, those with this type of anxiety are so afraid to fail, they go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of failure. Underneath, an alarm system is g...

6 Ways To Unsnarl The Emotional Traffic Jam In Your Brain

#CopingStrategies #Stress #Anxiety #holidaystress #Mindfulness  Life is complicated. The daily pressures of meeting deadlines, paying bills and keeping house -- with or without a spouse or children -- can often times be daunting. Sometimes one can be exhausted before getting out of bed in the morning. Life on life's terms. Suiting up and showing up can be a great effort, and it's twice as difficult if your loved one is struggling with substance abuse issues. So, before your day gets going and when the morning is still in a quiet hum, here are some concepts that I have suggested to my clients and that I call upon before things might spin out of control: A Quick Gratitude Checklist We have all heard how important it is to acknowledge and be grateful for the things in our life. We've heard it so much that it's almost annoying, and becoming long in the tooth of its repetitive coolness. However, if it's not broken, don't fix it -- which is why good ideas wil...