By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
We have all heard from someone — mother, father, pastor, coach, etc. — that we should be grateful for what we have and that gratitude is a powerful tool in life but ….what does gratitude really mean?
Gratitude is a positive emotion that involves being thankful and appreciative and is associated with many mental and physical health benefits.
When you experience gratitude, you feel grateful for something or someone in your life and respond with feelings and actions of kindness, warmth, and other forms of generosity.
Most people want to feel good about how their life is going and behave in such a way that they continue to feel that way. So why don’t they, what is the biggest obstacle for a person to utilize gratitude in their lives?
A sense of entitlement is perhaps the greatest obstacle to gratitude and being grateful for all one has. “Research has shown that people who are ungrateful tend to have a sense of excessive self-importance, arrogance, vanity, and a high need for repeated admiration and approval,” writes Dr. Robert Emmons in his book Gratitude Works! July 1, 2018.
So, if you want more for your life, be happier, have better relationships, be more productive, build resilience and much, much more —
The Secret is > > > An Attitude of Gratitude!
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
- Having Gratitude makes you happier
- Gratitude makes people like you
- Gratitude makes you healthier
- Gratitude boosts your career
- Gratitude strengthens your emotions
- Gratitude develops your personality
- Gratitude makes you less self-centered
- Gratitude can keep you away from the doctor
It’s common advice to create a gratitude journal and spend a few minutes each day reflecting on the things you are grateful for. Spending just a few minutes each day in this mindset will produce an overall happier and more satisfying mood. You’ll feel grateful more often and the intensity will be stronger and last longer. Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools in your emotional tool box. I believe being grateful in short spurts throughout the day is far more powerful and easier to do.
I also believe that being grateful is a mindset and a skill, and the more aware you are of things to be grateful for and express your gratitude in the moment, the faster you’ll become happier and more grateful.
Gratitude generates social capital: (the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively). In two recent studies with 243 total participants, those who were 10% more grateful than average had 17.5% more social capital! Research consistently shows important benefits related to social capital, such as individuals with higher levels of social capital being happier and finding better jobs. Research also shows that people report better health and increased levels of trust in a community as a result of their positive relationships. Having gratitude makes you nicer, more trusting, more social, and more appreciative. As a result, it can help you make more friends, deepen your existing relationships, and even improve your marriage.
Gratitude lowers cortisol, a stress hormone, in your body. Lowered cortisol levels help you avoid many physical and mental side effects of stress and improves overall physical health. Gratitude encourages pro-health behavior like exercising and paying attention to health risks. People who are grateful tend to sleep better and have fewer aches and pains. Expressing gratitude is associated with a host of mental and physical benefits. Studies have shown that feeling thankful can improve sleep, mood and immunity. Gratitude can also decrease depression, anxiety, difficulties with chronic pain and risk of disease. There is even reason to believe gratitude can extend your lifespan.
Gratitude makes you a more effective and positive leader or manager, helps you network, improves your decision making capabilities, increases your productivity, gain respect, and helps you attract accomplished mentors. As a result, gratitude helps you achieve your career goals, as well as making your workplace a more friendly and enjoyable place to be. Having a grateful mindset also changes biology. Positive acts benefit you by releasing oxytocin, a hormone that helps connect people. It is sometimes referred to as the love hormone. Those you connect with will also benefit from your kindness and appreciate the recognition of their efforts. Sharing kindness can make you healthier and happier.
Gratitude reduces feelings of envy, makes for happier memories, lets you experience good feelings, and helps you bounce back from stressful events. Gratitude is a way for you to appreciate what you have instead of always reaching for something new in the hopes it will make you happier or thinking you can’t feel satisfied until every physical and material need is met. Gratitude is the antidote for feeling inadequate and comparing your-self to others. Gratitude helps you focus on what you have instead of what you lack.
It really does, and in potentially life-changing ways. You automatically become more optimistic and less attracted to material things. Gratitude builds emotional resilience by helping you to see the positive things in life and replacing pessimistic thoughts with optimistic ones. The act of gratitude is the act of focusing on the good in life. If you perceive your current life to have more good, you will also believe your future life to have more good. Optimism is correlated with gratitude because those with an optimistic personality are biologically more likely to focus on the good than on the bad and rise above personal disappointment, stress and anxiety, etc. Gratitude greatly increases self-esteem. Research shows that people who are more grateful also tend to have higher self-esteem. When you are aware of how others treat you and the good things they do for you, you develop a stronger sense of your own value.
Gratitude is about acknowledging others and their acts of kindness, resulting in reduced self-focus. It’s most likely why grateful people are admired and respected so much—rather than being occupied with themselves all the time; they show care and interest toward others. Gratitude and humility go hand in hand; they are mutually reinforcing. Expressing gratitude induces humility, and humility increases your capacity for experiencing and conveying gratitude. The more grateful you are, the more likely you are to help others. As your cup overflows, you feel a natural urge to help others.
Gratitude can’t cure cancer but it can strengthen your physiological functioning. Positive emotions improve health unlike the known link between a negative mental state and physical suffering. In a doctor-patient relationship the patient’s belief makes a world of difference as to that person’s health. What a doctor says and what the patient believes may be more closely tied to the patient’s outcome than what the doctor does physically.
If a doctor is warning about possible negative side effects increases the likelihood of the patient experiencing pain or suffering, as research consistently suggests will happen, the leading culprit is the patient’s mental state. Fear or a deep pessimism that they won’t get better can be the underlying enemy to health. The flip-side of the belief coin is the health benefit linked to a positive mental state.
According to a landmark review, positive expectations are associated with better health. Science Daily reported that the reviewers of more than 160 studies on the mind-body connection were shocked by the consistency they saw in the data. Over and over the evidence showed that a person’s positive beliefs are a strong influence for good on their health.
If the root driver of the body’s health, good or bad lies in what’s occupying your mind, it’s important to be much more alert to what’s tugging at you for attention. if you want to improve your health, improve your mind.
Gratitude is a positive emotion. It’s no far stretch that some of the benefits like better coping & management of terminal conditions, faster recovery from certain medical procedures, positive changes in immune system functioning, more positive health behavior, apply to gratitude as well.
In fact, some recent science shows just that — those who engage in gratitude practices have been shown to feel less pain, go to the doctor less often, have lower blood pressure, and be less likely to develop a mental disorder.
“Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.”
• Attitude •
There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror
and noticed she had only three hairs on her head.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think I’ll braid my hair today.’
So she did and she had a wonderful day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror
and saw that she had only two hairs on her head.
‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I think I’ll part my hair down the middle today.’
So she did and she had a grand day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed
that she had only one hair on her head.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘today I’m going to wear my hair in a ponytail.‘
So she did, and she had a fun, fun day.
The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and
noticed that there wasn’t a single hair on her head.
‘Yay!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t have to fix my hair today!’
• Attitude Is Everything•
Be kinder than necessary – everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
• The Gratitude Exercise Simplified •
Each day, when reflecting on the things you are grateful for; sit quietly and start tapping. Tap each point for 7-10 seconds then change to the next point and keep tapping throughout the exercise. While tapping, start with one thing you are grateful for, state it then state why you are so grateful and elaborate. When finished with the first thing you are grateful for, complete it with a fist pump and passionately say thank you! thank you! thank you! Then move to the next thing you are grateful for. Do this gratitude exercise for 10-15 minutes then spend a few minutes reflecting on what you just did.
This exercise can be done anywhere, anytime you are feeling grateful.
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
When life gets going too fast, many of us like to put it on pause hoping it will miraculously get better on its own.
I’m a class 5 white water boater and on the river, as in life the river never stops. When you pull into an eddy to get a breather, you still have to work to stay there. In life, when we hit pause, life does not stop moving — it keeps going, and when you’re working hard to keep it on pause, something unexpected happens and you find yourself out of control anyway.
Hitting pause in life is a placebo; a way to put off making a choice, a decision, and then taking action. No matter what you do or how long you tread water, in the end you must move or be moved. On the river I’ve learned an eddy is a god send when you’re running a long stretch of class 5 rapids. I can slow everything down long enough to survey what my options are, make a decision and go!!! I’ve also learned, waiting too long results in poor decisions that result in meager execution and poor results. Just like in life — and here’s why:
When I’m looking over a series of class 5 rapids and evaluating which route is most feasible and has the least risk, the longer I look at the rapids the more indecisive I get. I also get more concerned about each detail even while knowing it never goes as planned, and running a class 5 rapid is all about how you react and execute plan B and C. The faster you make a decision and put your plan into motion, the stronger you are, and faster your reflexes are, because you’re not stuck in the grips of fear. Once fear gets ahold of you, your strength, focus and reflexes are diminished — along with the mental grit needed to succeed.
This goes for life. The longer you stay in a bad situation the worse off it seems to you. You wait too long and you get mentally constipated — that’s an emotional loop filled with gloom and doom where all you see is what you can’t have. Imagination, enthusiasm, creativity, problem solving and strategizing are shut out, Your brain shuts down and can’t process information from right hemisphere to the left; otherwise known as homolateral thinking.
Your brain and your emotions are on a counterbalance scale. When your emotions are too high, your brain shuts down. One of the best responses to this is saying to yourself “oh screw it” and Go For It. Without action, opportunities will never appear to you. It’s only when you’re in action that your landscape changes and you can do something to change your direction in life. Just like the river; once you leave the eddy all hell breaks loose, but you are in control of the chaos, because you have a direction and can fight the whims of the waves, self-correct as you go and reach where you want to go in the end.
So, no matter what — don’t stay too long in your eddy, it’s a false place of safety and will eventually push you into action. It’s your choice, whether you’re in control of which direction you’re going in or the river’s choice. I’ll always take my chances on my own decision making process, that way I’m taking the fight to the river and not a victim of its whims.
I’ve been boating for almost 30 years and I’m still here — and still loving it. That’s the same for my life as well. As long as I can pick my route and take action, I’ll never give up until I get to where I want to go.
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
What’s going on in our world today is often described as "America’s Anger Epidemic." The list of reasons for all this anger is long but some state at the top of the list is; financial uncertainty, working long hours, (on average about one month more now than they did in the 1970s and with less vacation), opposing views about politics, religion, or tastes in music, cheering for a favorite sports team, the list of reasons for having so much anger is long, but the real problem lies in the inability to be emotionally composed and to “disagree agreeably” as my dad used to say.
What has you seeing red? Maybe it’s getting cut off in traffic, or being verbally attacked. For one guy seen on a viral video, he threw a tantrum over a city street trombone player. I guess he didn’t like the tune!
There are meltdowns happening all around us, whether it happens to you personally or you see it on TV or hear about it on the radio, or if you log in to any social media platform, much of what you see or read is negative, hate filled meltdowns. A recent study from the USA Today found 60 percent of Americans report feeling angry or irritable. That is up from 50 percent when a similar poll was taken in 2011.
Dr. Vince Berger states, “We know what anger is because we have all experienced it, whether as a fleeting annoyance or as full-blown rage.”
In general, we may become angry or frustrated whenever we are not able to achieve a goal. Life is full of frustrations from minor irritations to something really big. When we use our frustration and anger to motivate us to change something in our life, anger and frustration end up being good and helpful. But for many people anger and frustration result in irritability, rage, wrath, stress, resentment, loss of confidence, depression and other negative behaviors. While anger and frustration are not the same, the distinctions between them are lost and meaningless.
Understanding Anger and Rage
Anger is an emotional response to a real, felt or imagined grievance. It may have its roots in a past or present experience, or it may be in anticipation of a future event. Anger is invariably based on the perception of threat or a perceived threat due to a conflict, injustice, negligence, humiliation and betrayal among others.
Many words in our vocabulary describe various forms of anger that differ primarily by their intensity of passion and arousal. A partial list includes: irritation, frustration, annoyance, miffed, sulking, offended, indignation, exasperation, incensed, pissed, outrage, wrath, rage, fury, ferocity, and livid.
Anger can be an active or a passive emotion. In case of "active" emotion the angry person lashes out verbally or physically at an intended target. When anger is a passive emotion it’s characterized by silent sulking, passive-aggressive behavior, and hostility.
Anger can be caused by both external and internal events. You could be angry at a specific person or event (a traffic jam, a canceled event), or your anger could be caused by worrying or brooding about your personal problems. Memories of traumatic or enraging events can also trigger angry feelings.
Anger is a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion. But when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it can lead to problems at work, in your personal relationships, and in the overall quality of your life. And it can make you feel as though you’re at the mercy of an unpredictable and powerful emotion.
Physiological Aspects of Anger
Like other emotions, anger is accompanied by physiological and biological changes. When you get angry, your heart rate and blood pressure go up, as do the levels of your energy hormones, adrenaline and noradrenaline, your rate of breathing increases and your body’s muscles tense up.
While anger has a physiological preparation phase during which the body resources are mobilized for a fight, it also has a wind-down phase as well. The body starts to relax back towards its resting state when the target of the anger is no longer accessible or an immediate threat. It is difficult to relax from an angry state very quickly. The adrenaline-caused arousal that occurs during anger lasts a very long time (many hours, sometimes days), and lowers the anger threshold, making it easier for the person to get angry again later on. It takes a rather long time for the body to return to the resting state.
Expressing Anger
People use a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with their angry feelings. Expressing your angry feelings can be done in violent destructive ways or in an assertive, but non-aggressive, manner.
Anger can be suppressed, and then converted or redirected. This happens when you hold in your anger, stop thinking about it, and focus on something positive. The aim is to inhibit or suppress your anger and convert it into more constructive behavior. The danger in this type of response is that if it isn’t allowed outward expression, your anger can turn inward on yourself. Anger turned inward may cause hypertension, high blood pressure, or depression. Unexpressed anger can create other problems. It can lead to pathological expressions of anger, such as passive-aggressive behavior (getting back at people indirectly, without telling them why, rather than confronting them head-on) or a personality that seems perpetually cynical and hostile. People who are constantly putting others down, criticizing everything, and making cynical comments haven’t learned how to constructively express their anger.
Anger can make us blind to the truth and unable to accept what’s sensible and correct. When anger is the primary emotion being felt, we become less able to think and act rationally and in some cases, even our senses do not work properly because of extreme anger.
Anger is often followed by depression. When we feel particularly irate, we tend to express ourselves verbally or physically. Afterwards, when we recognize such outburst as atypical of ourselves and we end up feeling depressed with the reality of what we have just done.
Anger Addiction
We all know someone who seems to always be involved in a conflict. They seem to love to argue, are always itching for a fight, or purposely push all the right buttons to get a rise out of those around them. What makes some people so constant in their anger? The answer may be biological. When we are in the middle of conflict, our fight or flight instinct kicks in to help us respond to the perceived danger. This response is initiated by the release of the stress hormone cortisol by the adrenal gland.
While cortisol is important to a healthy system, it can also produce a chemical “high” that can be addictive. Normally, cortisol lowers once danger is gone but if a person constantly exposes themselves to high stress situations such as those caused by anger and conflict, their system never completely processes the cortisol. This causes the biological system to remain polluted, so to speak, with the excess chemical. Once we become more and more exposed to high levels of cortisol caused by increased conflict and stress, “like a drug addict, (we) need a bigger fix all the time.
The Solution –
Overcoming the Addiction to Anger
We are taught in our society that anger is bad therefore after we calm-down, we feel bad in some way or feel guilty for getting angry in the first place. Women are particularly affected by anger – for many its scares them because of the loss of control, it’s also unbecoming and can be embarrassing.
The 3 keys to Eliminating Anger
- Recognize why you got angry and forgive yourself. I’ve developed a simple tool to do that in three minutes or less. Journal about what triggered you. Getting it down on paper will broaden your understanding of the issues involved and open up some avenues to respond differently in the future.
- You must desensitize yourself to lower the intensity of your response by “tapping out” why you’re angry and why this response no longer works for you. Eventually this erases the trigger forever.
- Put in its place a constructive, emotionally satisfying response by “tapping in” how you’ll respond in the future to any provocations. Do this until on a scale of 1-10 you believe it between 8-10.
Anger as an addiction is not well understood.
Dr. Candice Pert in her book “The Molecules of Emotion” wrote that emotions are peptides (molecules). When you’re triggered the body produces these molecules which are then released into the body where they attach to receptors on the cells and trigger the feeling of the emotion. Each time you’re triggered more receptors are made that need to be filled or satisfied just like any chemical addiction. The brain goes about filling that need by setting up situations that cause you to be triggered.
So when you see people getting so easily triggered, they are not in control, they are just acting out while under the influence of the molecules (drug) of Anger.
Like any addiction you have to be vigilant and address anger every time it occurs. Get good at knowing when to use anger to your advantage and when to get rid of it. Having the tools to handle it effectively is what is most important and that’s what I’ve developed.
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
How to Prevent Debilitating Overwhelm and Burnout
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
Studies show that more than 50% of healthcare professionals are in poor mental health, borderlining on burnout which makes them more likely to make medical errors on patients. This research supports the findings of other recent studies, which have identified fatigue, overwhelm, and poor work-life balance as being major issues among health professionals. Burnout is defined as physical, mental and emotional exhaustion and can lead to dulled emotions and detachment. It weakens motivation, leaving a sense of despondency. For those experiencing burnout, the desire to engage in activities that used to be fun and exciting is lacking – the enthusiasm for life has vanished.
Burnout not only affects caregivers, but also cascades onto the patients they care for. Studies show there’s a link between healthcare professionals suffering from burnout and how it affects those receiving care.
As a caregiver, nobody has to tell you what it feels like to be overwhelmed. When your life encompasses caring for others, being responsible for potential life or death situations, assisting grieving family members, working long shifts, tending to the electronic medical records, feeling unappreciated and dealing with the lack of support by management, it’s not surprising that so many in the health care profession suffer from overwhelm – which then can lead to full-on burnout. Often caregivers working in nursing homes or assisted living facilities are exposed to violent behavior by the residents in the facility. The issues listed here are just a few of the things nurses and caregivers experience – they just happen to be the ones most talked about.
Life becomes so hectic that you don’t have time or the mental bandwidth to take care of menial tasks like walking the dog or washing your car, much less doing something fun like meeting up with friends or attending an art show or any event that may interest you. This phenomenon of burnout in the healthcare community has reached rampant levels among healthcare professionals.
It’s a mistake to assume that burnout is merely an emotional response to the challenges healthcare professionals face. There’s mounting scientific evidence showing that burnout takes a profound physical toll that cascades well beyond your professional life. Burnout is not just a state of mind, but a condition that leaves its mark on the brain as well as the body and is associated with cognitive inefficiency. Simply put, you’re not thinking straight.
Becoming a healthcare professional and caring for others can be very rewarding and fulfilling, yet caring for those in need can also lead to a state of severe overwhelm and burnout. Some refer this phenomenon as “compassion fatigue” and is a unique form of burnout that affects people in caregiving professions. This will gradually wear you down to the point where you feel depressed, anxious, you’re gaining weight, problems sleeping, moodiness, anger issues, inability to focus, trouble remembering, physical aches and pains, drinking too much, etc. These problems can become so severe that some actually leave the profession.
Ways to address these issues are being seriously looked at and discussed among facility management organizations but the problem of overwhelm and burnout is happening faster than the processes in place can address them. In fact, just recently in the San Francisco area nurses hit the picket lines to bring attention to high turnover rates in the nursing staff at Bay Area hospitals and how it’s affecting the care they give to patients. This understaffing leads to an increase in time spent at work by the nurses which in turn leads to higher rates of overwhelm and burnout.
Because of my work with healthcare professionals, from doctors, nurses, paramedics and caregivers in all areas, and the impact my work has had helping them deal with what they face in so many scenarios – not just what they personally go through but how to handle situations with their patients, I was asked by Kaiser Permanente to teach a class for their medical staff.
Along with focusing on how to deal with patients that are angry, manipulative, demanding, or in some cases just plain nasty, we also focused on prevention. To prevent debilitating burnout I taught them the art of mental resilience by using my revolutionary PowerTapping technique and how to –
- Overcome worry, stress and anxiety
- Recharge and find balance
- Remain calm to prevent overreacting when dealing with a challenging patient
- Release resistance to self-care and embrace the joys of life
- Neutralize anger and resentment
- Alleviate self-sabotage, drinking, overeating
- Restore physical and mental energy
The techniques I teach to conquer overwhelm, feel empowered and stay in control can apply to any issue or situation. An example of that is this amazing personal story I will share with you from one of the nurses that was in the training:
“When I had finished a class one of the nurses that had attended the training came up to thank me for what she’d learned and to tell me how grateful she was for now having the confidence and courage to stand up to her abusive ex-husband and put what she’d learned into action.
She told me that she and her ex were co-parenting their two children and he was always finding ways to control her and make her life miserable…… and she was afraid that if she stood up to him she’d run the risk of upsetting her kids.
She was so excited to tell me that she had practiced and rehearsed what she wanted to say until she felt empowered and ready to confront him…. and….she did!
She arranged to meet him and had that difficult conversation she was so afraid to have, and with a big smile on her face she told me – “he just sat there almost in awe listening to me talk, and to my surprise he didn’t fight back! In fact his demeanor seemed to soften.”
She continued to tell me that since that meeting he’s backed off and stopped his bullying and intimidation. And best of all the opposite of what she had feared happened with the kids. They noticed the change not only in her but in their father’s behavior as well and began to treat her with more respect.
She was overjoyed with the results and the immediate life-changing impact it had in her life.”
As the creator of Invincible Mindset Training and a Peak Performance Life Coach, I have a broad range of clients and work with people from all walks of life to help them be successful and perform at their best.
“I consider Robert my life coach and a miracle worker. He has helped me through some very tough times dealing with my mental and emotional pain when I felt I was at the end of my rope. Since learning Robert’s work I can now handle the everyday obstacles that come my way. I’m forever appreciative for learning what he has taught me and I use his techniques every day.”
-Sandy Fischer, SL Surgery Center
If You Want to Learn How to –
- Prevent debilitating overwhelm and burnout
- Own emotional composure
- Feel inspired, motivated and mentally and emotionally resilient
- Eliminate self-sabotaging behavior
- Stay grounded and restore energy
Go to https://www.robertrudelic.com/schedule-a-phone-session/
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
I often get asked how I got on to the topic of coaching women who are going through a break-up or divorce since I’m best known as a sports therapist and peak performance coach who specializes in pain reduction, injury recovery and Invincible Mindset Training. Many of my clients are professional athletes as well as sports competitors on all levels and all ages – from high school to seniors.
Some years ago I began to see a pattern in the women coming to me because of pain – often unexplained, or sometimes referred to as “mystery pain”. There had been no injury or previous reason for the pain yet the pain was very real, and in some cases life altering. While working with them and using the tools I’ve developed, and seeing these women experience amazing results, this specific subject became a part of my work.
For more than 25 years, I’ve been helping people overcome not only physical pain but the pain associated with mental and emotional stress and in some cases trauma – and going through a break-up or divorce can be one of the most difficult events one can ever experience. The list of emotions is really long.
Whether leaving a relationship that’s lasted a short time or for many years, a break-up can cause heartbreak, feeling lost, despondent, physical illness and in pain, evenfibromyalgia, which is most common in women. Ending a relationship has very real effects on the mind and body. Studies show that break-ups can cloud your sense of self causing you to feel that your life has been turned upside down.
Statistics
- One in 5 million Americans are suffering from “Mystery Pain” wreaking havoc on their careers and personal lives.
- People seeking relief from unexplained painful conditions are often dismissed by their doctors as being psychological or imagined. Researchers carried out tests on eight people. Some were hypnotized and told they were in pain. Others were subjected to physical pain. Scans showed that both experienced similar brain activity.
- Mystery pain is often a result of emotional or physical trauma trapped in the body. The resulting biochemical and physical changes lead to numerous painful conditions some of which are headaches, chronic back pain and fibromyalgia.
- For fibromyalgia (FM,) medical practitioners most frequently prescribe antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft, along with aerobic exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy, which is aimed at modifying negative thoughts and encouraging healthier ways to adapt to illness.
1. Are there common personality traits among people with mystery pain?
Recent studies suggest that high harm avoidance and lower self-directedness may be the most distinguishing personality features of chronic pain sufferers. High harm avoidance refers to a tendency to be fearful, pessimistic, sensitive to criticism, and requiring high levels of re-assurance. Low self-directedness often manifests as difficulty with defining and setting meaningful goals, low motivation, and problems with adaptive coping. Evidence for this personality profile is found across a wide variety of chronic pain conditions including fibromyalgia, headaches, chronic fatigue, muscle tension and the list goes on.
2. How do the present treatment protocols work over the long term?
Not very well! Many of the treatment protocols cause more problems than they solve and often the pain will remain in some form and at some level. Often the treatment leads to many more problems on a broader level. Weight gain, insomnia, decreased sexual desire, cognitive issues, autoimmune diseases and more.
3. What has your experience taught you about working with mystery pain?
First, I make sure the intake interview is broad based. Second, address the initial presenting issue first – often making an attempt to address the underlying cause, (being the emotional issues) can cause resistance and sometimes a loss of the client. Third, build trust – I make sure my recommendations are inclusive, meaning nutrition, supplementation, exercise and lifestyle. And finally, be a good listener and a great questioner.
4. How can you dislodge the trauma without causing even more distress?
This is where the magic happens and where I’ve made my mark as a coach and therapist. It must be done from the “body out”, meaning the result of the therapy needs to be physically felt to be believable by the mind. I’ve studied NLP, visualization, hypnotherapy, physical training and more. I’ve integrated all of these with PowerTapping to create a high impact tool set that makes an immediate impact on someone’s life. Talk therapy is not cheap and it’s also fairly ineffective at addressing the emotional roots of mystery pain – which are held in the body.
5. Do people avoid situations that could bring on their intrusive symptoms?
Yes, consciously and unconsciously. We are programmed to avoid pain and seek pleasure. The reasons go further than that though. One example is when someone finds they get something pleasurable because of their pain, like attention, sympathy, love and more, it can give them a feeling of power which can and often does lead to manipulation. They do not want their behavior exposed, nor do they want to get over it. I’ve developed several strategies that break the behavior down and eliminate the cause of the pain issue, all of which are “body out” approaches.
So, let’s begin to debunk the mystery. First, the cause of such pain is no mystery – it’s stored emotions that are being held in the body and physically manifest as pain. Second, there are answers that will alleviate the pain and restore the body’s proper function quickly and the most powerful, efficient, and cost effective of those answers is PowerTapping.
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
moving forward and on track!
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
Mystery pain solved as well as lifelong mental blocks –
A new client came to me suffering from lower back pain and cervical pain that came up all of a sudden. Her friend told her about me and said “you need to see this guy”.
She was very fit, athletic and in her 40’s. After filling out her intake form we sat down and discussed her situation. She told me this pain started four months ago and she couldn’t figure out why. There was no injury or specific incident that triggered it.
I noticed on the intake that she was seeing a psychologist and I began asking her about what they were working on. Often when unexplained pain appears, stress, either emotional or situational is a key element in it. I mentioned this fact but she dismissed it immediately telling me she had been seeing a psychologist for over 20 years and talked through all of it. I did not press it any further and went back to exploring possible physical reasons for the sudden pain attack.
As we began to work I noticed the high level of tension in her whole body and how guarded she was. I had to do some work to quiet her nervous system and get her to relax. She became noticeably more relaxed when I started using the AAA Breathing Exercise that I developed and she started opening up about other aspects of her life. I then went back to testing her to see if I could pinpoint the cause of her pain. My gut was telling me there was a lot more to this than physical pain. I asked her if there had been any new developments or big changes in her life in the last 6 months. WOOOO! She immediately tensed up and started to cry uncontrollably. I began tapping her hand and instructed her to let it out. I kept this up for a several minutes, then, all of a sudden she stopped crying, sat up, looked at me and began telling me about a new relationship she was in and how her past was getting in the way. She said how they are tied together and somehow attached to her pain. It really caught her off guard – just imagine, she thought she had overcome this in therapy… but, she hadn’t.
I had her mirror me as I tapped on a different point and I lead her through several rounds of tapping. We worked for 90 minutes and in that time she laid out everything, and as she did we cleared all the traumas from her body. Every so often she would stop crying and say “WOW it’s gone, I don’t feel it anymore!” She was amazed that when I brought up incidents she had told me about earlier, she felt no anger or fear.
Without revealing her issues, she was stuck and had been so for months. She was falling in love with this man yet unable to be intimate with him. She told me she had been working with her therapist about all of this but never once felt this good afterwards. After the session was over she told me she had never told her therapist half of the stuff she revealed to me in just 90 minutes and it felt so natural. She was able to proceed with her relationship and was overjoyed. Oh, and her pain was almost completely gone within two days. I taught her an exercise that would help her maximize her time with her therapist who she really liked.
So the question is why did she get so much from just one session of coaching versus years of talking it out with her therapist?
Why people need one or the other –
We all need help from time to time especially when we are in a stressful state, situational chaos or emotionally and mentally overwhelmed. Getting unstuck and figuring out what to do and how to do it can seem impossible. That’s why coaching works so well in these situations. Its results orientated and has a high impact in a very short amount of time where talk-therapy is not designed to do that.
Priorities – fast results vs long term analyses
Coaching provides speed, thoroughness and the tools necessary to advance on your own. Understanding all the reasons why you’re in the predicament does not give you the tools needed to change your situation or your behavior and the time it takes to “figure it out” could jeopardize your ability to succeed or get what you need in a situation. It’s the difference between knowledge and knowing. Coaching leads to knowing based on results. Talk-therapy is knowledge based on a deeper understanding of why.
Which one is better for what type of problems?
What type of therapist you choose to see can make all the difference in the outcome of your situation. Coaching and psychotherapy (talk-therapy) are very different and focused on different outcomes.
What each one is and the strengths and weaknesses of each
Our tool sets and strategies are very different. From my point of view, coaching is intended to have a high impact in the shortest amount of time. It gives you the tools so you can roll up your sleeves and take immediate action. It’s meant to define the issue, determine the outcome you want then take action and get the results you want ASAP. Many of my clients see me for situational coaching so they don’t labor on figuring out all the whys before solving the situation or getting the needed change.
I believe psychotherapy (talk-therapy) is designed to bring awareness of the issues then delve into figuring out why your situation is the way it is. The therapist can help you to dig deep and see why you feel or behave a certain way in a situation. It’s mainly a mental exercise of exploration and that is what some are looking for, but for others it leaves them frustrated because the situation needs to change quickly, and they may not have the money to see someone on an ongoing basis. I liken it to “coaching gives you the “how-to’s to get your situation handled and psychotherapy gives you the understanding of why you’re in the situation in the first place.”
Both have a place in people’s lives, so how do you determine which one is right for you in your present situation?
Personality types and your choice
Money is almost always a factor. Psychotherapy can be covered for a limited number of sessions by some insurance companies but you have to deal with the company and often those sessions are used up before any resolution takes place. Coaching is not covered by most insurance companies.
Time is a factor for many people especially if the situation has an endpoint like the fear of an upcoming event, a divorce or self-destructive urges. Most people in these situations can’t afford to talk it out over a period of months or years because their situation is moving along and they need to be fully engaged to change it. Coaching is highly effective in these types of situations because it moves you quickly to solutions that make a difference in your outcome.
Personality also makes a difference. I’ve had clients who needed change immediately yet were more interested in knowing all the whys than actually taking action and getting things done. Unfortunately most of them get run over in the end yet felt ok because they were not ready to take action anyway (victim mentality). Others want to get on top of things as fast as possible and feel a sense of control over their lives. Waiting causes anxiety and mistakes in judgement. For them the whys come after they have gotten the results they wanted, when looking back the whys are self-evident.
Whichever approach you choose, make sure you’re going to get what you need in a timely manner and you learn how to handle yourself mentally and emotionally in the future without relying on others for help. In my coaching practice I teach my clients the tools to become their own best therapist and only when they’re really stuck would they need to seek out assistance. They are self-assured, confident and more emotionally composed than when they first came to me.
My prescription/recommendation and how to use it all together for amazing results
My approach to coaching is a combination of coach, motivator, accountability partner, investigative provocateur and good friend (as defined by the Eastern teaching of good friends/ bad friends.) My approach and personality is to address everything head on, disregard the opinions of others and have total self-responsibility for your thoughts, words and actions. Measure what you do by basing it on whether it creates value for yourself and others – or not.
It comes down to the type of tools that are used in coaching. My tool set includes tools that eliminate the emotional intensity of past experiences which create beliefs that produce sabotaging behaviors. Psychologists frequently focus on past experiences yet their tools are often inadequate at eliminating them permanently. My tool set has a high impact in a very short amount of time where psychological tools are not designed to do this. As stated in their definition of their profession, “they explore past experiences to define present behaviors then address them over a period of time” – not high impact in a short amount of time! So, it’s a choice to determine which approach is appropriate.
Coaching and Talk-Therapy are distinct in many ways and it’s important to draw a clear line between them.
Talk-Therapy generally speaking, is for people dealing with a psychological issue that undermines their ability to function in healthy and adaptive ways. The focus is retrospective and includes repairing damage from previous experiences.
Identifying and treating disorders and pathologies and alleviating symptoms through behavioral, cognitive or analytic interventions is the scope of Talk-Therapy.
Coaching, on the other hand, has a present/future orientation, focuses on goals and desired outcomes, draws on the client’s potential, strengths, and skills to maximize fulfillment in life and work. It can be broad based or singularly focused.
Even though both approaches rely on developing awareness, Talk-Therapy relies on awareness of past experiences to bring about improvement in the present, and Coaching sheds light into unseen possibilities and strengths therefore linking that awareness to action and results.
For more information about my coaching visit my coaching page and let’s see if we are a fit.
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
Eat for the body you want, not for the body you have!
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
Psychology Today reports that “15% of women and 11% of men said they would give up five years of their life to be slim – and still people cannot lose weight! And, a whopping 36% of Americans vow to lose weight every New Year – but most never succeed!”
Weight loss is one of the most complex problems in our society. Working with clients who want to lose weight has been easy in recent years because I was only dealing with the physical and nutritional reasons for their weight gain.
I’ve been very successful at helping c lients lose the weight and achieve their goals but they have not been very successful at keeping the weight off – there’s a disconnect – whether it’s the coaching they get working with me during the weight loss process, or they like the challenge and measurable goals of the weight loss, when they have achieved the target weight they seem to lose interest in maintenance. It’s not as glamorous to maintain as to lose. They also don’t get as much positive support maintaining as when they did while losing the weight. They know what to eat, when to eat it and how much of it to eat, that’s part of what I teach them……but, something was missing.
I was working with Andrea (not her real name) for several years. She came to see me regularly for tune-ups. In the past we had put together weight loss plans that worked initially but she always seemed to “fall off the wagon.” This was followed by feeling bad, beating herself up and feeling guilty. She eventually came full circle and wanted to lose weight again. Each time around her belief that she could pull it off was weaker but her intension and optimism was stronger.
It was in the Fall when her urge to lose became strong again. This time I added a new element to her program, PowerTapping. She had already experienced using PowerTapping for pain so it was not completely foreign to her. She was surprised to learn it could be used to help her be more healthy and to lose weight. We went through all the usual steps around food choices, supplements, water intake and an exercise plan. On her next appointment she came in with her first week food diary and that’s where we started.
We were going through the diary and as I questioned her about why she ate what she ate and why she ate it, it was by identifying when she ate it she began to notice she ate for no reason (other than boredom.) Without saying anything she told me why she gained the weight back and it wasn’t because she ate too many fatty foods.
She listed three things that cause her to gain weight. She ate too much at each meal, she ate too late in the evening (big dinners after 8PM) and snacked on chocolate too often.
Now we had something to start with! I went to work on the overeating problem because it would make the biggest and fastest impact with what she’s learned about her eating habits to help her start losing weight again. As we were tapping she stopped and said, “I don’t have to over eat. I just don’t think about what I’m doing. I’m on autopilot and I lose my focus.” So we tapped on her inability to stay focused on her goal. She rated that high on the frustration scale and within a few minutes it was a non- issue, but what came up for her was her anger at sabotaging her efforts and feeling discouraged because she had to start all over from the beginning.
Her two issues were anger and the inability to forgive herself, and then also the feeling that she had to start all over again from the beginning. We tapped to overcome her anger at herself which quickly turned into not being able to forgive herself for failing, and not looking or feeling like she wanted when she knows she’s capable of it. That took several rounds and we found several other issues around a lack of self-forgiveness.
We often have unreal expectations of our selves. I’ve found that having unreal expectations is one of the most prevalent issues for yoyo dieters as well as anyone trying to quit mindlessly doing something over and over again. This went on for a while so I gave her a homework assignment where she tapped twice a day with self-forgiveness and overeating in her intension statements.
She called three days later and told me that she had lost 2 pounds without doing anything! On her next visit she said she noticed she was eating less and was not as hungry at dinner lately so she went with it but felt as though she needed to eat dinner. We tapped to eliminate the belief she needs to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner but instead she should pay attention to her body and mind and eat a snack size meal when she feels the need to eat without being too hungry. The combination of good nutrition, better eating behavior and tapping to eliminate self-sabotaging beliefs works almost every time. Andrea made a curious statement to me one day – she said that her husband noticed that she was far less frustrated with herself and had more patients overall.
Often when someone is making changes they only see the conspicuous changes, others though will notice all the other changes that happen as a result of the work they have done.
Andrea had a number in mind as to how many pounds she wanted to lose. So we set up a goal and continued to work on it. At the 5 week mark she said to me in response to my question as to how things were going that she had lost some momentum and had stopped losing weight. She was not gaining any back but she had plateaued.
We talked for a while and I felt it was time to see if there was anything from her past that was getting in her way of success. Sure enough as is often the case, there was. As a child she had issues with her mother. Her sister was a favorite – cute and social – you know the type. Her mom always compared the two sisters and Andrea felt inferior to her sister. There was a lot of resentment towards both of them with a dose of anger towards her mom and jealousy towards her sister. We focused on a specific incident that brought back many of these issues at once. I had her visualize the whole episode and whenever strong emotions came to the surface I had her stop and tap them out. Needless to say we stopped several times in the beginning to tap on very strong emotions. I could clearly see the correlations to her present plateau.
This technique is something I recommend for everyone as a way to access how you are feeling and is particularly good when you can’t access your feelings about a subject.
When we were through she took a big breath and sighed. She said she never put it together like that before but it all made sense now. She then remembered there was this girl at school, which triggered another round of questioning and exploration and a visual tapping sequence.
This girl was another influence in her life that made her self-esteem suffer by feeling less than pretty and less than popular. As we went through this it was clear to her that it was all the same, just a different aspect of the problem. By the end of the session she felt relieved and emotionally settled. Again she was on her way and this time it was even easier than before.
One thing that’s important is to be persistent and continue doing the work even when you don’t want or feel you need to.
There’s an old saying, “If you stop on the road to Kamakura (a city in Japan) on the 11th day you’ll never be able to see the cherry blossoms on the 12th. So, if you stop short of your goal you’ll never know the delight that awaited you.
It was the 11th day for Andrea with just a few weeks left until her target date and only 5 pounds to go. The holidays were fast approaching and work was stressing her out but she was determined to remain steadfast – she now had an invincible mindset and would not allow her inner saboteur to win. We made some minor adjustments in her program and had her focus on amplifying her desire of achieving her goal. Remember persistence and consistency is the key to long-term success and happiness.
Simply put –
PowerTapping is the master tool that enables you to change old self sabotaging beliefs and create new habits that allow you to accomplish you goals.
Remember the famous Babe Ruth Quote –
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
All of the articles in this series:
Are you now over letting your past and emotional wounds control you? Emotional freedom is at your fingertips…
ac·cept·ance – the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered.
Accepting your new reality does not mean that you necessarily feel good or right about the loss of your previous way of life. This stage is about accepting the fact that you’re living a new reality and how this new reality will impact your life and relationships. Acceptance does not mean that you slip back into denial – pretending that none of this has happened. Acceptance means embracing the present – both good and bad – in order to shape the future. It does not mean that you no longer can think about your past, out of sight does not have to mean out of mind. It’s important to reflect upon the good times you had with your partner.
New priorities are now on your plate and as you begin to take ownership of your new responsibilities and work toward accomplishing tasks, you will feel a sense of pride in the results. Near the end of the acceptance stage, you will find yourself beginning to actually look forward to a promising new future.
Be aware that the past is past; it’s time to live in the present, and even though the future is perhaps still a bit unknown, it’s time to start preparing yourself to step forward into the future.
You are in control and get to define “moving on” – no one can determine that for you. It’s time to completely let go of your remaining feelings of blame, resentment and regret and by doing so you will truly experience the freedom to move forward.
It’s then – when you begin the process to stop and reflect, turn inward and do the work on yourself that you’ll experience dramatic and positive changes in your life.
When you begin the inner work you will realize things that have been unresolved for years. You become more conscious of your behavior and your choices. You become aware of the subconscious and how it can run your life and how you can quickly – with the right tools change a negative pattern to a positive one, release the emotional wounds that flare up when triggered and create extraordinary changes.
Some of the positive effects of acceptance include:
- An exciting time and a chance to rediscover yourself
- Having time for yourself to work on your mental, emotional and physical health
- Finding your confidence and feeling empowered and embrace the ability to kick limiting beliefs to the curb
The damaging effects of staying stuck in acceptance:
You can’t stay suck in this stage forever – life must go on – you must be willing to change. Change is the only way to grow and progress into the person you want to become.
Being afraid of change can be devastating to your progress. What if you are ready to make an exciting positive change in your life, when suddenly you feel it: the cold, iron grip of uncertainty. Even though part of you is excited about the possibility of change, there’s another part that’s attached to your present reality, comfortable with inaction – stopping any forward movement.
Instead of feeling a sense of joyful anticipation about the prospect of change, you might feel paralized by fear. There are so many questions: Am I really doing the right thing? Will I be overwhelmed by my new situation and decide that I’m just not up to its challenges? What if I fail?
When you keep an open mind and are willing to change, you are then able to grow into the person you want to become.
Acceptance for some can feel like compromise or an admittance you made mistakes and screwed up.
Acceptance can be a lingering state of uncertainty or a jumping off point of excitement. It’s easy to go from state to state feeling hopeful one moment and angry the next.
It’s easier to accept what’s happened and how it turned out when you have a real plan that’s been put into action and already taken root. You’ve already made the bargains needed to bridge the gap between where you were to where you are going. You came to realize being angry is not a functional way to get things done and you’ve already decided being stalled in depression is not how you want to feel for the rest of your life.
It’s time to move from Acceptance to Ownership.
Taking ownership means you hold yourself accountable for all of your actions both positive and negative and how you handled yourself during the transition.
Taking ownership is really taking responsibility for your life. It will accelerate your growth and development as an individual. Acceptance is not ownership, its ownership lite and that does not make you feel as powerful or confident in your-self as ownership does.
Here is a powerful exercise to make ownership real in your body/mind:
1 – Make a list of your mistakes, all of them that you made during your break up. Then – go through each mistake one by one, say it out loud while continuously tapping around your Left Ear (from front to back) then end it with saying “I’ve learned from my mistake and it’s made me a stronger, better person” and say that with emotion!
2 – Make a list of your triumphs, all of them, things you did well during your break-up, be thorough and include even the smallest wins. Then – go through each triumph one by one, say it out loud while continuously tapping around your Right Ear (from front to back) and end it with saying “I deeply love and accept myself, I’ve done a great job” and say that with emotion!
The exercise erases the old beliefs and replaces them with powerful new beliefs about your-self that reinforce your new life decisions. The exercise is from my body of work called PowerTapping and it’s a life changer. More on PowerTapping later.
Your new life is on the horizon –
ENJOY YOUR FREEDOM
If You Want to Learn How to –
- Own emotional composure
- Eliminate self-sabotaging beliefs
- Have an unshakable “Yes I Can Attitude”
- Bravely stand up for yourself, think ahead, and make decisions with clarity and confidence
Go to www.InvincibleDivorcee.com
My Program is an experiential training that pays off immediately by teaching you how to quickly change your mindset putting you in full control. You’ll learn how to replace the old beliefs with new beliefs and lock them in permanently, be inspired, and own emotional composure. The results are life-changing!
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
All of the articles in this series:
Are you spiraling downward in a loop of negative thoughts constantly worrying about what you’ve lost and how to survive it?
de·pres·sion – feelings of severe despondency and dejection.
Depression is a disorder involving low mood and a wide range of other possible symptoms, which can vary from person to person. It can develop quickly or gradually, and be brought on by life events and/or changes in body chemistry, and it is often accompanied by feelings of anxiety. It can strike anyone, but can be especially intense when going through a break up or divorce. It’s not uncommon that you could experience some degree of situational depression as part of the normal grieving process over all the losses the end of a relationship brings.
Depression affects how you feel, think, and act and is different from normal feelings of sadness. Suffering from depression can cause a lack of energy, diminished interest in daily activities and feeling irritable and short-tempered most of the time.
What is situational depression?
A great description posted in Behavioral Health – “Situational depression is a short-term form of depression that can occur in the aftermath of various traumatic changes in your normal life, including divorce, retirement, job loss, or the death of a relative or close friend. Doctors sometimes refer to the condition as adjustment disorder.
A person with situational depression may have symptoms that are more or less identical to someone with clinical depression; however, there are certain key differences. Situational depression occurs when you haven’t yet adapted to the changes brought about by these situations and incorporated them into your overall life experiences.”
Situational depression symptoms develop within roughly 90 days following the event that triggers the condition. Along with the symptoms mentioned above –
Symptoms of situational depression include:
- Feelings of hopelessness
- Sleep problems
- Recurring bouts of crying
- Fatigue
- Significant weight loss or weight gain
- Withdrawal from friends and family
The damaging effects of staying stuck in depression:
If you’re suffering from depression you run the risk that your brain will shrink and will remain smaller over time. Depression not only makes you feel sad and dejected – it can also damage the brain permanently, so you’ll have difficulties remembering and concentrating. It is well known that chronic stress can provoke depression. Scientific studies show an explanation for this phenomenon…
“Stress reduces the brain’s innate ability to keep itself healthy. As a result, the hippocampus – a vital part of the brain – shrinks, impacting negatively on both our short-term memory function and your learning abilities. Being easily stressed which in turn creates a susceptibility towards depression, gives an imbalance in the serotonin system and thus a greater risk of developing depression.”
You can conquer depression, boost your brain and eliminate stress – and remember – The Right Tools For The Job Cuts The Work In Half!
Depression and situational depression are both serious conditions and only separated by depth and length of time.
How fast it comes on, how deep or intense it becomes and how long it lasts largely depends on how well you manage stress and your emotions in the beginning stages. Depression can come on very quickly for some and the longer you stay in a depressed state the more long-term damage will be done.
There are things you can do to keep from getting depressed and also to get yourself out of being depressed. I address both in-depth in other blog articles and in my digital training products.
There are some things you can do right away that will have a big impact and keep you on the bright side of life.
Things to do to avoid falling into depression include:
1 – Wall yourself off from your “helpful friends” – those people who want to console you and that tell you everything will be alright. It won’t be unless you get off your butt, make a plan and take action. These people are also known as enablers or co-dependents. They mean well but only make your situation worse and stifle your recovery.
2 – Make a long term plan (12-18 months out) for what you want to have in your life when your break up or divorce is final. Then find someone to be your Accountability Partner. Make sure they are strong enough to keep you on track when you may not want to. Share with them your plan and your plan of action, have bench marks and a timeline. A plan will help you look past the self-doubt and get out of the pity party going on in your head and your accountability partner will keep you on track.
3 – Take massive action. Nothing staves off depression more effectively than taking action, getting busy and seeing results. Results are King, they are tangible and undeniable. Your accountability partner will be there to point that out. Staying busy also eliminates any tendencies of dropping back into a downward depressive cycle.
Things you can to do to recover faster from being depressed:
1 – Exercise, now this is not news to most people but exercise is the #1 suggestion in most protocols to get rid of depression. It is a high impact tool for situational depression and works almost immediately for most people.
2 – Twice a day take 5 minutes to be grateful. Being grateful is not knew either but I developed a powerful exercise that works quickly to change your physical state and your mindset.
The Gratitude Exercise – State something your grateful for and why, say thank you 3 times then move on to the next thing you’re grateful for. Repeat this 9 more times. Do this out-loud and with a lot of emotion (even if you have to manufacture the emotion).
3 – Here’s a buffet of impactful things you can choose from to assist you in recovery: immerse yourself in learning something new, volunteer, clean up your diet and avoid alcohol and marijuana (yup -marijuana for many is a strong trigger for depression).
Keep this in mind, depression is addictive, it’s a chemical addiction just like anger. So interrupting it and doing something that changes your state as fast as possible is vital. PowerTapping is the primary tool I use in all of my work to create massive change quickly and completely. It is the easiest and most powerful tool to avoid getting depressed and recover from it. More on PowerTapping later.
End the cycle of negativity and misery –
And Thrive
Next, go to the fifth blog post in the series – Divorce: Stage 5 – Acceptance
If You Want to Learn How to –
- Own emotional composure
- Eliminate self-sabotaging beliefs
- Have an unshakable “Yes I Can Attitude”
- Bravely stand up for yourself, think ahead, and make decisions with clarity and confidence
Go to www.InvincibleDivorcee.com
My Program is an experiential training that pays off immediately by teaching you how to quickly change your mindset putting you in full control. You’ll learn how to replace the old beliefs with new beliefs and lock them in permanently, be inspired, and own emotional composure. The results are life-changing!
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
Contact Us: www.RobertRudelic.com/contact
E-Mail: support@RobertRudelic.com
By Robert Rudelic BS, NMT, MES
All of the articles in this series:
Are you attempting to alter the past by asking yourself “if only” questions in a bid to try and change the inevitable?
bar·gain·ing – negotiate the terms and conditions of a transaction.
Bargaining is really an attempt to postpone; it has to include a prize offered "for good behavior". It also sets a self-imposed "deadline" and it includes an implicit promise that the person will not ask for more if this one desire is granted. During the bargaining stage of grief, the grieving person starts making bargains – If I do this, will you take away the loss? It is often a need to regain control over the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. Thoughts like, if only I had paid better attention to what was going on or, if only I had been more sympathetic, etc. It’s a time when deal making is an attempt to push back the unavoidable. This is a weaker line of cover for protection from the painful loss.
It’s easy to become lost in a maze of “If only” or “What if” statements. The bargaining stage of grief starts as a form of a temporary truce. You want your life to go back to what it was and go back in time.
Guilt is often a companion in the bargaining stage of grief. You may tend to beat yourself up and think about what you could have done differently. You may even try to negotiate with the pain. You’ll do anything to not to feel the pain but trying to negotiate your way out of the hurt in the bargaining stage of grief, you’ll remain in the past.
You may think that the bargaining stage may last for weeks or months. But you should remember that these stages of grief are the responses to your feelings and grief. There is no set pattern to slip in or out of any stage. You may feel one, then another and back again to the first one of these different stages of grief.
Bargaining is a last ditch attempt to try to control your life so things will go your way. This phase of grief is often the briefest of all the stages. It is the final effort to hold onto what is important or if it has already been lost, then to find some way to ease the pain.
Bargaining is very human—it may even be a necessary part of the grief process; it is not, however the way one automatically alters events.
Some of the positive effects of bargaining include:
- In the short-term, bargaining is helpful when there is a chance your relationship can be saved
- In the short-term, bargaining can help you see if such hopes are realistic
- In the short-term, if agreements made in the bargaining stage are not viable it will become clear
The damaging effects of staying stuck in bargaining:
Staying stuck in the bargaining stage you may feel yourself slipping further and further into the sadness that accompanies grief. The bargaining stage often includes feelings of guilt and remorse that can quickly lead to depression. There may be attempts to try and continue a marital connection. Desperate promises and unrealistic attempts at reconciliation. Sometimes being stuck in bargaining occurs when former partners behave as if they have a right to be “key players” in each others’ lives.
Keep in mind, when the relationship has ended, neither partner has the right to be a major part in the other’s life, except for shareing the responsibilities of co-parenting their children.
Being stuck in the bargaining phase prevents achieving the emotional clean break necessary to move forward and focus on your future.
This phase is where you can modulate the intensity of your situation by making deals to get your soon to be ex to be more reasonable or cooperative.
The Bargaining Stage is where you can find a middle ground and test how flexible your ex will be.
The Bargaining Stage is where you can test how much you can trust your ex as you move into negotiations about the hard stuff.
The Bargaining Stage is a chance to keep the break up process moving forward and to minimize hurting each other further.
Warning: Bargaining for the sake of tranquility alone will only lead to more bargaining and an undermining of your confidence and self-esteem. Bargains must have a purpose and be win-win to succeed.
The Bargaining Stage is best done after a lot of thought has gone into what exactly you want in the end. When you hit a snag, keep those things in focus and only make bargains that help you achieve what you want to get in the end and keep the intensity of the situation civil. Remember strength with kindness leads to win-win outcomes.
There is no one-way to make bargains, every person and every situation is different. This is how I help ensure any bargains that are made are successful.
1 – Prioritize what’s important to you in the end and think through what you think he wants in the end. Bargains are a softer way to negotiate; you want to know what your bargaining chips are and what his might be.
2 – You must have an overall plan and focus all of your bargains and decisions towards making your plan work out.
3 – Don’t commit right away unless you are getting what you want. Take your time, be kind and let him know you appreciate his willingness to bargain and that you might need to think about it overnight. Make sure you give him a time (within 24 hours or less if possible) you’ll decide by and stick to it!
It will build trust and give you time to think it through and amend the bargain if needed, remember it’s a mini negotiation.
A lot of bargains are quick and easy, just make sure they work for you.
The issue I come across the most in helping women through this phase is fear of confrontation. In my course I have some great tools to eliminate this as a consideration forever. This process above is a key work-though and it can be effective in many areas of your life … so use it!
Reject the feelings of helplessness –
TAKE BACK YOUR POWER
Next, go to the fourth blog post in the series – Divorce: Stage 4 – Depression
If You Want to Learn How to –
- Own emotional composure
- Eliminate self-sabotaging beliefs
- Have an unshakable “Yes I Can Attitude”
- Bravely stand up for yourself, think ahead, and make decisions with clarity and confidence
Go to www.InvincibleDivorcee.com
My Program is an experiential training that pays off immediately by teaching you how to quickly change your mindset putting you in full control. You’ll learn how to replace the old beliefs with new beliefs and lock them in permanently, be inspired, and own emotional composure. The results are life-changing!
For more information, visit our PowerTapping page.
San Francisco, CA 94107
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