The CBT Workbook for Mental Health – by Dr. Simon Rego & Sarah Fader
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We have often reviewed psychology books here with a note saying “and no, it’s not just a book of the standard CBT techniques that you probably already know”.
So today, this one’s for anyone who was ever thinking “but I don’t know the standard CBT techniques and I would like to know them!”.
The authors outline specific solutions to many common quantifiable problems, with simple exercises that are well-explained and easy to implement.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is not a panacea, but for the things it can be used for, it’s very effective and is a very good “first thing to reach for” to see if it works, because its success rate for a lot of problems is very high.
What kinds of things is this book most likely to help with? A lot of common forms of stress, anxiety, self-esteem issues, cravings, shame, and relationship issues. Other things too, but we can’t list everything and that list already covers a lot of very high-incidence stuff.
Bottom line: if CBT isn’t something already in your toolbox, this book will help you add all its best tips and tricks.
Click here to check out The CBT Workbook for Mental Health, and get tooled up!
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If Your Adult Kid Calls In Crisis…
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Parent(s) To The Rescue?
We’ve written before about the very common (yes, really, it is common) phenomenon of estrangement between parents and adult children:
Family Estrangement & How To Fix It
We’ve also written about the juggling act that can be…
Managing Sibling Relationships In Adult Life
…which includes dealing with such situations as supporting each other through difficult times, while still maintaining healthy boundaries.
But what about when one’s [adult] child is in crisis?
When a parent’s job never ends
Hopefully, we have not been estranged (or worse, bereaved) by our children.
In which case, when crisis hits, we are likely to be amongst the first to whom our children will reach out for support. Naturally, we will want to help. But how can we do that, and where (if applicable) to draw the line?
No “helicopter parenting”
If you’ve not heard the term “helicopter parenting”, it refers to the sort of parents who hover around, waiting to swoop in at a moment’s notice.
This is most often applied to parents of kids of university age and downwards, but it’s worth keeping it in mind at any age.
After all, we do want our kids to be able to solve their own problems if possible!
So, if you’ve ever advised your kid to “take a deep breath and count to 10” (or even if you haven’t), then, consider doing that too, and then…
Listen first!
If your first reaction isn’t to join them in panic, it might be to groan and “oh not again”. But for now, quietly shelve that, and listen to whatever it is.
See also: Active Listening (Without Sounding Like A Furby)
And certainly, do your best to maintain your own calm while listening. Your kid is in all likelihood looking to you to be the rock in the storm, so let’s be that.
Empower them, if you can
Maybe they just needed to vent. If so, the above will probably cover it.
More likely, they need help.
Perhaps they need guidance, from your greater life experience. Sometimes things that can seem like overwhelming challenges to one person, are a thing we dealt with 20 or more years ago (it probably felt overwhelming to us at the time, too, but here we are, the other side of it).
Tip: ask “are you looking for my guidance/advice/etc?” before offering it. Doing so will make it much more likely to be accepted rather than rejected as unsolicited advice.
Chances are, they will take the life-ring offered.
It could be that that’s not what they had in mind, and they’re looking for material support. If so…
When it’s about money or similar
Tip: it’s worth thinking about this sort of thing in advance (now is great, if you have adult kids), and ask yourself nowwhat you’d be prepared to give in that regard, e.g:
- if they need money, how much (if any) are you willing and able to provide?
- if they want/need to come stay with you, how prepared are you for that (including: if they want/need to actually move back in with you for a while, which is increasingly common these days)?
Having these answers in your head ready will make the conversation a lot less difficult in the moment, and will avoid you giving a knee-jerk response you might regret (in either direction).
Have a counteroffer up your sleeve if necessary
Maybe:
- you can’t solve their life problem for them, but you can help them find a therapist (if applicable, for example)
- you can’t solve their money problem for them, but you can help them find a free debt advice service (if applicable, for example)
- you can’t solve their residence problem for them, but you can help them find a service that can help with that (if applicable, for example)
You don’t need to brainstorm now for every option; you’re a parent, not Batman. But it’s a lot easier to think through such hypothetical thought-experiments now, than it will be with your fraught kid on the phone later.
Magic words to remember: “Let’s find a way through this for you”
Don’t forget to look after yourself
Many of us, as parents, will tend to not think twice before sacrificing something for our kid(s). That’s generally laudable, but we must avoid accidentally becoming “the giving tree” who has nothing left for ourself, and that includes our mental energy and our personal peace.
That doesn’t mean that when your kid comes in crisis we say “Shh, stop disturbing my personal peace”, but it does mean that we remember to keep at least some boundaries (also figure out now what they are, too!), and to take care of ourselves too.
The following article was written with a slightly different scenario in mind, but the advice remains just as valid here:
How To Avoid Carer Burnout (Without Dropping Care)
Take care!
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10 Lessons For A Healthy Mind & Body
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Sadia Badiei, food scientist of “Pick Up Limes” culinary fame, has advice in and out of the kitchen:
Pick up a zest for life
Here’s what she picked up, and we all can too:
- “I can’t do it… yet”: it’s never too late to adopt a growth mindset by adding “yet” to your self-doubt, focusing on progress and the possibility of improvement.
- The spotlight effect: people are generally too absorbed in their own lives to focus on you, so don’t worry too much about others’ perceptions.
- Nutrition by addition: focus on adding healthier foods to your diet rather than eliminating the less healthy ones to avoid restrictive mindsets. You can still eliminate the less healthy ones if you want to! It just shouldn’t be the primary focus. Focusing on a conceptually negative thing is rarely helpful.
- It’s ok to change: embrace change as a sign of growth and evolution, rather than seeing it as a failure or waste of time.
- The way you do one thing is the way you do everything: be mindful of how you approach small tasks, regular tasks, boring tasks, unwanted tasks—you can either create a habit of enthusiasm or a habit of suffering (it’s entirely your choice which)
- Setting goals for success: set goals based on actions you can control (inputs) rather than outcomes that are uncertain. Less “lose 10 lbs”, and more “eat fiber before starch”, for example.
- You probably can’t have it all at once: you can achieve all your dreams, but often not simultaneously; goals and desires unfold in stages over time.
- The five-year rule: before adopting a new lifestyle or habit, ask yourself if you can realistically sustain it for five years to ensure it’s not just a short-term fix. If you struggle with this prognostic, look backwards first instead. Which healthy habits have you maintained for decades, and which were you never able to make stick?
- Are you afraid or excited?: reframe fear as excitement, as both emotions share similar physical sensations and signify that you care about the outcome.
- The voice you hear most: speak kindly to yourself in self-talk to create a softer, more compassionate tone. Your subconscious is always listening, so reinforce healthy rather than unhealthy thought patterns.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
80-Year-Olds Share Their Biggest Regrets
Take care!
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Ready to Run – by Kelly Starrett
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If you’d like to get into running, and think that maybe the barriers are too great, this is the book for you.
Kelly Starrett approaches running less from an “eye of the tiger” motivational approach, and more from a physiotherapy angle.
The first couple of chapters of the book are explanatory of his philosophy, the key component of which being:
Routine maintenance on your personal running machine (i.e., your body) can be and should be performed by you.
The second (and largest) part of the book is given to his “12 Standards of Maintenance for Running“. These range from neutral feet and flat shoes, to ankle, knee, and hip mobilization exercises, to good squatting technique, and more.
After that, we have photographs and explanations of maintenance exercises that are functional for running.
The fourth and final part of the book is about dealing with injuries or medical issues that you might have.
And if you think you’re too old for it? In Starrett’s own words:
❝Problems are going to keep coming. Each one is a gift wanting to be opened—some new area of performance you didn’t know you had, or some new efficiency to be gained. The 90- to 95-year-old division of the Masters Track and Field Nationals awaits. A Lifelong commitment to solving each problem that creeps up is the ticket.❞
In short: this is the book that can get you back out doing what you perhaps thought you’d left behind you, and/or open a whole new chapter in your life.
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Bamboo Shoots vs Asparagus – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing bamboo shoots to asparagus, we picked the asparagus.
Why?
Both are great! But asparagus does distinguish itself on nutritional density.
In terms of macros, bamboo starts strong with more protein and fiber, but it’s not a huge amount more; the margins of difference are quite small.
In the category of vitamins, asparagus wins easily with more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B9, C, E, K, and choline. In contrast, bamboo boasts only more vitamin B6. A clear win for asparagus.
The minerals line-up is closer; asparagus has more calcium, iron, magnesium, and selenium, while bamboo shoots have more manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. That’s a 4:4 tie, but asparagus’s margins of difference are larger, and if we need a further tiebreaker, bamboo also contains more sodium, which most people in the industrialized world could do with less of rather than more. So, a small win for asparagus.
In short, adding up the sections… Bamboo shoots, but asparagus scores, and wins the day. Enjoy both, of course, but if making a pick, then asparagus has more bang-for-buck.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Asparagus vs Eggplant – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Clean – by Dr. James Hamblin
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Our skin is our largest organ, and it’s easy to forget that, and how much it does for us. All things considered, it’s good to take good care of it! But what if we sometimes take too much “care” of it?
Dr. James Hamblin, a medical doctor-turned-writer, has explored this a lot both personally and in research. Through such, he has come to the conclusion there’s definitely a “sweet spot” of personal hygiene:
- Too little, and the Bubonic plague sweeps through Europe, or other plagues sweep through other places when European invaders came.
- Too much, and we strip our skin of one of its greatest qualities: the ability to protect us.
Dr. Hamblin asks (and answers) such questions as:
- What is good hygiene, and what is neurotically doing ourselves multiple levels of harm because advertising companies shamed us into doing so?
- Is it good or bad to use a series of products, each to undo the problem caused by the previous?
- What the difference between a 5-step skincare routine, and a series of gratuitous iatrogenic damage?
- Which products clean us most helpfully, and which clean us most harmfully?
- How often should we bathe/shower, really?
If the book has a weak point, it’s that it’s written mostly with his body in mind. That makes a difference when it comes to hairwashing, for example. He’s a white guy with short hair. If you’re black and/or have long hair, for example, your haircare needs will be quite different. Similarly, many women engage in shaving/depilation in places that most men don’t, and the consequences of that choice (and implications for any extra washing needs/harms) aren’t covered.
Bottom line: notwithstanding the aforementioned blind-spots, this book will help readers reduce the amount of harm we are doing to our bodies with our washing routines, without sacrificing actual hygiene.
Click here to check out Clean and help your skin to help you!
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In Plain English…
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It’s Q&A Time!
This is the bit whereby each week, we respond to subscriber questions/requests/etc
Have something you’d like to ask us, or ask us to look into? Hit reply to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom, and a Real Human™ will be glad to read it!
Q: Love to have someone research all the additives in our medicines, (risk of birth control and breast cancer) and what goes in all of our food and beverages. So much info out there, but there are so many variations, you never know who to believe.
That’s a great idea! There are a lot of medicines and food and beverages out there, so that’s quite a broad brief, but! We could well do a breakdown of very common additives, and demystify them, sorting them into good/bad/neutral, e.g:
- Ascorbic acid—Good! This is Vitamin C
- Acetic acid—Neutral! This is vinegar
- Acetylsalicylic acid—Good or Bad! This is aspirin (a painkiller and blood-thinning agent, can be good for you or can cause more problems than it solves, depending on your personal medical situation. If in doubt, check with your doctor)
- Acesulfame K—Generally Neutral! This is a sweetener that the body can’t metabolize, so it’s also not a source of potassium (despite containing potassium) and will generally do nothing. Unless you have an allergy to it, which is rare but is a thing.
- Sucralose—Neutral! This is technically a sugar (as is anything ending in -ose), but the body can’t metabolize it and processes it as a dietary fiber instead. We’d list it as good for that reason, but honestly, we doubt you’re eating enough sucralose to make a noticeable difference to your daily fiber intake.
- Sucrose—Bad! This is just plain sugar
Sometimes words that sound the same can ring alarm bells when they need not, for example there’s a big difference between:
- Potassium iodide (a good source of potassium and iodine)
- Potassium cyanide (the famous poison; 300mg will kill you; half that dose will probably kill you)
- Cyanocobalamine (Vitamin B12)
Let us know if there are particular additives (or particular medications) you’d like us to look at!
While for legal reasons we cannot give medical advice, talking about common contraindications (e.g., it’s generally advised to not take this with that, as one will stop the other from working, etc) is definitely something we could do.
For example! St. John’s Wort, very popular as a herbal mood-brightener, is on the list of contraindications for so many medications, including:
- Antidepressants
- Birth control pills
- Cyclosporine, which prevents the body from rejecting transplanted organs
- Some heart medications, including digoxin and ivabradine
- Some HIV drugs, including indinavir and nevirapine
- Some cancer medications, including irinotecan and imatinib
- Warfarin, an anticoagulant (blood thinner)
- Certain statins, including simvastatin
Q: As I am a retired nurse, I am always interested in new medical technology and new ways of diagnosing. I have recently heard of using the eyes to diagnose Alzheimer’s. When I did some research I didn’t find too much. I am thinking the information may be too new or I wasn’t on the right sites.
(this is in response to last week’s piece on lutein, eyes, and brain health)
We’d readily bet that the diagnostic criteria has to do with recording low levels of lutein in the eye (discernible by a visual examination of macular pigment optical density), and relying on the correlation between this and incidence of Alzheimer’s, but we’ve not seen it as a hard diagnostic tool as yet either—we’ll do some digging and let you know what we find! In the meantime, we note that the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (which may be of interest to you, if you’re not already subscribed) is onto this:
See also:
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (mixture of free and paid content)
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports (open access—all content is free)
Q: As to specific health topics, I would love to see someone address all these Instagram ads targeted to women that claim “You only need to ‘balance your hormones’ to lose weight, get ripped, etc.” What does this mean? Which hormones are they all talking about? They all seem to be selling a workout program and/or supplements or something similar, as they are ads, after all. Is there any science behind this stuff or is it mostly hot air, as I suspect?
Thank you for asking this, as your question prompted yesterday’s main feature, What Does “Balancing Your Hormones” Even Mean?
That’s a great suggestion also about addressing ads (and goes for health-related things in general, not just hormonal stuff) and examining their claims, what they mean, how they work (if they work!), and what’s “technically true but may
be misleading* cause confusion”*We don’t want companies to sue us, of course.
Only, we’re going to need your help for this one, subscribers!
See, here at 10almonds we practice what we preach. We limit screen time, we focus on our work when working, and simply put, we don’t see as many ads as our thousands of subscribers do. Also, ads tend to be targeted to the individual, and often vary from country to country, so chances are good that we’re not seeing the same ads that you’re seeing.
So, how about we pull together as a bit of a 10almonds community project?
- Step 1: add our email address to your contacts list, if you haven’t already
- Step 2: When you see an ad you’re curious about, select “share” (there is usually an option to share ads, but if not, feel free to screenshot or such)
- Step 3: Send the ad to us by email
We’ll do the rest! Whenever we have enough ads to review, we’ll do a special on the topic.
We will categorically not be able to do this without you, so please do join in—Many thanks in advance!
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