Three Minute Refutations (TMR) Involve a Powerful Exercise For Changing Your Addictive Thinking While the Three Minute Exercise (in my book, Three Minute Therapy see pp. 9,18, 32, 40, etc.) helps you dispute your demands–your “musts” and “shoulds”–Three Minute Refutations targets your rationalizations or excuses, which arise from your demands. (Also available at www.ThreeMinuteTherapy.com) Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D., is a clinical[…]
Tag Archives: Mental Health
02
Dec
Dec
How to Discern Which Attractions Lead to Pain & Which Can Lead to Real Love If I could only share one insight with my single readers, it would be this: Learn to distinguish between your “attractions of deprivation” and your “attractions of inspiration.” Then, only follow your attractions of inspiration. I believe that’s the wisest path to[…]
01
Dec
Dec
Intelligent People Are More Likely to Do Stupid Things Not only are more intelligent individuals more likely to consume more alcohol more frequently, but they are also more likely to engage in binge drinking and to get drunk. In an earlier post, I show that consistent with the prediction of the Hypothesis, more intelligent individuals consume larger quantities of alcohol[…]
01
Dec
Dec
Rich ہr Poor, Adverse Childhood Experiences Predict Future Problems Research on what is called “adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs) is showing that there is a shortlist of five things that happen to children when they are with families that are very likely to cause them mental and physical health problems later in life. In fact, the relationship between these factors[…]
Willing Ways Articles
People, Places, and Things – How Important are Drug-Related Triggers For Relapse?
01
Dec
Dec
Drug Associated Triggers Are Powerful Re-activators of Addictive Behavior In cognitive-behavioral therapy they’re a big part of the “Five W’s” = When, Where, Why, With, and What. In the various 12-step programs they’re simply referred to as “People, places, and things.” But no matter how you refer to them, drug-associated cues, or “triggers” as they[…]
01
Dec
Dec
Creativity Can Thrive Without Alcohol & Drugs My entire life I grew up around creative people. Indeed, my godfather was John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie and my godmother was the wife of legendary saxophone player Stan Getz. I was so close to both of these men since I was practically born and when they died I[…]
29
Nov
Nov
What’s The Difference Between Being “Sober” Versus Being in “Recovery”? There is an important distinction between being “sober” and being in “recovery”. The differences are clear to those who have experienced both phases in their healing process from alcoholism. When an alcoholic is “sober” from alcohol without attending a mutual-help program, therapy, medication management, and/or treatment then they are in a[…]
29
Nov
Nov
Protecting Our “Humanware” By Changing Our Smartphone Behavior I AM A SMARTPHONE JUNKIE. I am not embarrassed by this since nearly everyone I see in my world appears to think that what is contained in the little box in their purse or pocket is more important than what is right in front of their face[…]
29
Nov
Nov
Causes For Addiction & How Mindfulness Meditation Can Help With Them One of the first steps in dealing with addiction is to discover the emotional cause of it, whether it is fear, depression, anxiety, or pessimism. Many times these unwholesome thoughts and beliefs come from what I call the “wanting mind.” In our wanting mind, we feel that our current[…]
29
Nov
Nov
Let’s Clear Something Up, Correlation isn’t Causation, But It’s Important! A comment posted by a reader on a recent post reprimanded me for suggesting that marijuana caused relationships to go bad. In this instance the reader was mistaken, as I had specifically used the word “associated”, but the comment made me think that maybe I should explain the differences between[…]