Camila Williams | Living Well CBT

Mental Health First Aid Kit

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You probably have a first aid kit somewhere in your home, car, or work. You are ready for any mishap from a paper-cut to a gash. Are you as prepared for a mental health emergency? You know when you feel that panic attack coming on, or your anger is going through the roof, or your depression is nose diving into despair. It is just as important to be prepared with a mental health 1st Aid Kit to help you survive those intense moments on that emotional roller coaster. Below are some suggestions of things to include in your 1st Aid Kit but you can be as creative with this as your heart desires. It is supposed to be a personalized grab bag of things to help you slow down the intense reactions in order to think more clearly. I previously wrote about making a soothing kit for coping with symptoms of PTSD, this is the same concept. The goal here is to remove the thinking part out of the equation when you’re in panic mode or despair. The last thing your brain can do when emotions are riding high is think clearly. So prepare a 1st Aid Kit with pre-planned things to do to help settle your mind and get back in control of your emotions.…read more

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Book Review: The 5 Ways We Grieve

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The Five Ways We Grieve by Susan Berger reviews the different ways that people respond to death and grief. I personally gravitate more towards Grieving Mindfully by Sameet Kamur when it comes to books on coping with grief. Both books stress that the healthy way to cope with grief is to find meaning from the loss and develop a new identity that incorporates the loss. What distinguishes Berger’s book is that she uses research to identify 5 main types of identities that people develop after suffering a loss (whereas Kamur focuses more on the process of grieving and feeling). The 5 identities are:

“Nomads – who have not yet resolved their grief and often don’t understand how their loss has affected their lives.

Memorialists – who are committed to preserving the memory of their loved ones by creating concrete memorials and rituals to honor them.

Normalizers – who are committed to …read more

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How to Cope with PTSD: Arousal Symptoms

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The arousal symptoms of PTSD most commonly overlap with the symptoms of Panic and Anxiety. Imagine your body is like a car engine. With PTSD (and anxiety/panic) your engine is always revved up and ready to go. It’s like you have your foot on the gas pedal and on the brake, this way all you have to do it let off the brake and off you go. The flight, fight, freeze survival system our body has does this on purpose so you do not waste precious time accelerating, which makes sense if you are in a life and death situation, the problem is when your body starts to react like this to regular day to day stress. Imagine what happens to a car engine if you constantly rev the engine while holding down the brakes. It gets worn down and starts to break down. This is what happens to our body when it is under the constant strain of anxiety. Fatigue and exhaustion are all common experiences for those who suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and panic. With PTSD, the body is always revved up and ready to go, aka it is in a state of arousal; that means muscles are tense, breathing and heart rate are fast, and blood pressure is high. People with PTSD often feel on edge, on guard, easily startled, and hyper vigilant. This also primes them to be more easily irritated and angry. It is also very hard to concentrate and sleep. So the primary way to cope with symptoms of arousal is slow the body down through 1) Breathing and 2) Soothing.…read more

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Book Review: The One Thing

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The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller is intended for an audience of business employees who are trying to be more productive and thus hopefully more successful. This book was recommended to me when I was starting up my private practice. I felt like I was being pulled in so many directions with so many things that needed to get done. This book helped remind me to prioritize my tasks and focus on the one thing that would help me advance my private practice the most. This helped with my decision making and task list. If you’ve ever stared at your To Do List and had no idea where to start, start by reading this book.

Keller’s message is in the same vein as McKeown’s message in Essentialism; however, I felt it was easier to apply Keller’s message in the moment. As a psychologist, I love it when authors present things within a cognitive framework. Keller starts his book out with “The Lies.” These are dysfunctional thoughts that derail us and keep us stuck. He then follows that up with “The Truth.” These are healthy thoughts, that allow us to move forward. He backs these thoughts up by summarizing the research in this field (examining the evidence is the primary task of thought challenging in CBT). For example, Keller reviews why the belief that we can multitask and depend on willpower to get things done are lies. The truth is our brain can only genuinely focus on one task at a time, and our willpower is finite and it runs out (which is why resisting that bowl of cereal late at night is so hard when you’ve put in so much effort throughout the whole day to be good). The topic of willpower comes up in a lot of these types of books, most notably Mel Robbin’s The 5 Second Rule, where she talks about why we’ll “never feel like it” when it comes to doing things we know we have to. The overarching message here, is that we can’t rely on willpower and need to learn to create habits and routines to keep us on track and to basically parent ourselves.

A visualization Keller uses about the importance of choosing the One Thing right now that is the most likely to help your project, job, goal, move forward is of dominos:…read more

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How to Cope With PTSD: Symptoms of Re-experiencing

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I previously wrote about understanding the symptoms of PTSD here and learning about how it develops and factors that maintain it here. Today’s focus is how to cope with the cluster of PTSD symptoms called re-experiencing or “intrusive” symptoms.

What are Re-experiencing Symptoms?

Re-experiencing or Intrusive symptoms of PTSD are symptoms where you feel as if you are re-living the trauma or being haunted by the trauma. The memory of the trauma plays out so vividly for you that you feel as if it just happened again. The most intense version of this is when you have a flashback and for awhile you forget that you are safe and you believe you are back in the trauma again. These memories are “intrusive” meaning they pop up and intrude on your day at the worst times. These memories also cause intense emotional and physical reactions, leaving you feeling very upset and very worn out.

Why do we Re-experience the Trauma?

…read more

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Book Review: The Optimistic Child

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The Optimistic Child by Martin Seligman, Ph.D. teaches you how to “immunize” your child against depression by teaching them how to think optimistically. Dr. Seligman is the former president of the American Psychological Association and the founder of the Positive Psychology movement. I absolutely loved his book and I recommend it for anyone, even if you don’t have kids. It is a very dense read. It did make me feel like this was a textbook for a course on child psychology, but what you learn from it is invaluable. The Optimistic Child basically outlines, in a very clear, easy to follow manner, how to use cognitive behavioral therapy in your life. If you want to know what a CBT therapist does in session read this book! Dr. Seligman advocates that every parent has to first learn how to use these skills themselves before they can teach it to their own kids. My poor kids have a psychologist for a mother and I of course read this thinking about how I can help my own kids but the target range for the program here is for 8 to 13 year olds. Children under 8 years don’t yet have the ability for meta-cognition so the approach is a bit different but Dr. Seligman addresses this too at the end of his book.

A few of the key highlights from the book:

Optimism is not just a look at the silver lining, think positive, or wear rose colored glasses approach to life. Optimism, as taught in cognitive behavioral therapy, is how you explain the things that go on around you. It is your explanatory style. Dr. Seligman outlines 3 patterns of thinking that differ the most between optimists and pessimists:…read more

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Why Does PTSD Develop?

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Last week we reviewed what PTSD looks like (you can read about those symptoms here). This week we are going to review why PTSD develops. The focus will be on the role our Fight – Flight – Freeze survival response system plays in the development and maintenance of PTSD.

Fight – Flight – Freeze Survival Response System

Is our instinctual survival system that keeps us safe and protects us from harm:

          Fight = stay and fight off the danger/threat

          Flight = run away from the danger/threat

          Freeze = shut down physical or emotional pain to just survive when you know you can’t escape or fight back.…read more

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Book Review: The Happiness Equation

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The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha originally started as a letter to his unborn child about how to be happy. He reviews 9 “secrets” that will make you happy, which I paraphrase below:

  • Be happy first: hard work and success won’t bring you happiness, you have to actively do things to create it for yourself.
  • Do it for you: setting external goals will always leave you wanting more as there will always be someone else who set the bar higher; forget them, and focus on doing things for your own reasons.
  • Remember the Lottery: be grateful you even exist in this vast universe with all the amazing technological comforts of our time.
  • Never Retire: all of us, no matter what age, need a reason and purpose to get up in the morning.
  • Overvalue You: learn to value your time more than anything else, and then spend your time wisely, doing the things that matter to you.
  • Create Space: re-evaluate how you spend your time, cut out most things and focus only on what matters, make sure to leave space to do nothing, that’s often when our best ideas and moments happen.
  • Just Do It: forget motivation and desire. Just get up and do something, the motivation and desire will come later.
  • Be You: you need to be authentic and genuine to yourself in order to be truly happy
  • Don’t Take Advice: even clichés contradict themselves, just follow your gut.

…read more

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When Couples Grieve

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A lot of my work is focused on helping people work through trauma. An inherent part of the process is working through grief. Trauma brings with it so many losses. I previously wrote about these losses in another guest blog here. Recently, I contributed to an article that discusses loss within the context of a relationship and how you can cope with your partner in a way that brings you closer rather than drives you apart. You can check that out here. For a quick summary:

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Book Review: Grieving mindfully

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Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss by Sameet Kamur, Ph.D. is a wonderful book about coping with any type of loss. I like that it addresses the many types of loss that we experience throughout life such as breaking up, moving away, growing apart, and of course, when someone passes away. If you’re already familiar with the traditions of mindfulness then this book will be a great fit for you. If you are not familiar with the traditions of mindfulness Dr. Kamur does an excellent job of introducing you to this wonderful practice. Though I focus on cognitive behavioral therapy in my practice, mindfulness has been and continues to be one of the primary coping skills that I teach for distress tolerance. I often feel like CBT and mindfulness are two sides of the same coin. They are how we learn to not let our thoughts and feelings control us.

Dr. Kamur describes loss as rupture to our identity. …read more

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