When you fall into quicksand, your gut reaction is to struggle and swim to safety. Your fight-flight instincts will make you want to run away or fight it. However, both running and fighting will only make you sink faster. Trying to run from or fight off an experience INSIDE you, such as pain, will not […]
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Dark moments from our childhood – divorce, emotional neglect, a parent’s mental illness, witnessing violence or addiction, being abused – can stay with us as adults, even though we ‘feel fine’ most of the time. Research shows that adverse childhood experiences produce toxic levels of stress hormones that can affect the development of the neural networks in a child’s brain. In the past 20 years, researchers have shown that high scores on the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) survey are highly predictive of adult mental, social and physical health problems later in life. The effects of these ACEs may be invisible, but they can weigh upon us decades later.
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LAUNCH TIME: I have been working on this ABC series over summer with Ashwin Segkar where we ask a comedian to share an issue they struggle with, and I offer ideas to them and the rest of us about coping with similar situations. Laughter and storytelling plus psych tips! In Episode 1, our guest was comedian Stav Davidson from B105 radio, where he discusses his chaotic childhood. Not quite “Comedians Get Therapy”, but almost! Click to listen to our first episode. More to come. Rachel
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Many of us don’t act until we feel like taking action. This might work well in some areas of our lives, such as getting our hair cut. But if we wait for the right feeling before being kind to others, starting an exercise program, or practising more patience, we may never take the critical first step. We […]
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