emotions Archives | Camila Williams

Book Review: Boundaries

September 11, 2018 by Camila Williams

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, When to Say No, to Take Control of Your Life by Drs. Cloud and Townsend is a Christian/Biblically based book on an essential life skill: setting healthy boundaries. I did not know this book was Biblically based when it was first recommended to me, and though I am still searching for a good secular book I can recommend, this book does an excellent job in educating the reader about what are boundary problems, where they come from, and how to address them. Setting healthy boundaries is a skill that most survivors of trauma, abuse, or controlling environments needs to learn. I plan to do a blog series on boundaries later on but for now here is a cliff notes version of the basic boundary problems:

4 Types of Boundary Problems:

Can’t Say No – this person is a compliant, people pleaser. …read more

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: anger, anxiety, behaviors, boundaries, CBT, choices, cognitive behavioral therapy, depression, emotions, healthy boundaries, self-care, self-worth, thought challenging

Book Review: The 5 Second Rule

September 4, 2018 by Camila Williams

The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins pleasantly surprised me. I honestly thought it was a gimmick and just another pop culture self help book, but there was a lot more substance to it. Mel did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the research in psychology and human behavior and condensing it into short and easy to understand take away points. Psychologists get caught up in psychobabble, and their research articles are dense. It’s nice when someone else does the work for you and gives you the cliff notes version.

Mel defines the 5 second rule as:

“The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must [say to yourself] 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and physically move or your brain will stop you.” When you start to think, your brain wants to pull you right back to the safe familiar zone, so just go and do!…read more

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: CBT, choices, cognitive behavioral therapy, emotions, feeling stuck, focus, goal focused, goals, motivation

Mental Health First Aid Kit

August 31, 2018 by Camila Williams

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

Filed Under: coping, Self Care Tagged With: 1st aid, anger, anxiety, coping, depression, despair, emotions, mental health, mental wellness, panic, post traumatic stress, PTSD, self-care, stress

Book Review: The 5 Ways We Grieve

August 29, 2018 by Camila Williams

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

Filed Under: Book Review, coping, Uncategorized Tagged With: book review, emotions, grief, thoughts, values

How to Cope With PTSD: Symptoms of Re-experiencing

August 17, 2018 by Camila Williams

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?

Filed Under: coping, PTSD Tagged With: anxiety, depression, emotions, grounding, mindfulness, post traumatic stress, PTSD, self-care, therapy

Book Review: The Optimistic Child

August 14, 2018 by Camila Williams

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

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, depression, emotions, learn, symptoms, talking, therapy, thought challenging, thoughts, treatment

When Couples Grieve

August 2, 2018 by Camila Williams

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:

Filed Under: coping Tagged With: couples, emotions, grief, grieving, love, partner, support

Book Review: Grieving mindfully

July 31, 2018 by Camila Williams

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

Filed Under: Book Review Tagged With: book review, cognitive behavioral therapy, emotions, grief, identity, loss, love, mindfulness, therapy

3 Types of Trauma No One Talks About

July 6, 2018 by Camila Williams

When we talk about trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) we think of specific events: Combat, Rape, Assault, Fire, Car Accident, etc… However, there are 3 other types of events that occur daily, little by little, over a long period of time that are also traumatic and can lead to the development of PTSD in some people:

Uncertainty

One night you make your partner’s favorite meal: steak. You go out of your way to get it just right and look forward with hope to see the smile on his face when he sees you remembered his favorite and nailed it. Dinner goes smoothly. He loved it and praised your excellent cooking skills. All is good. Two weeks later you decide to do the same thing. Surprise him with his favorite steak dinner. This time though, as soon as he realizes it he starts berating you for wasting money, steak is expensive! He blames you for all your financial troubles starting with buying steak! Then he berates your cooking: overdone, under seasoned, etc… You are no good, you’re stupid, you’re lucky he’s even with you! Uncertainty. You never know if what you do will please him or upset him. You and everyone else walk on eggshells around him. Life is an uncertain mess and because of that you are always on guard, always on alert, just waiting for something to go wrong. Another example: …read more

Filed Under: PTSD Tagged With: anger, anxiety, CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, depression, emotions, needs, post traumatic stress, PTSD, self-care, self-worth, symptoms, therapy, thoughts, treatment

A Major Pitfall of Self-Medicating to Deal with Stress

June 29, 2018 by Camila Williams

You’ve been there before: you have a long, stressful day at work, and you can’t wait until you get home to kick off your shoes and have a drink. It is a way to unwind from the cares of the day. There is nothing wrong with that, right? Or perhaps your family is very intense, you love them, but man the only way to survive a family dinner or backyard BBQ is with a cold one in your hands. After all, that is what keeps you from telling Aunt Sally what you really think or from getting into a political debate with Grandpa Joe. There is nothing inherently wrong with either of these scenarios. The problem begins when turning to alcohol to “unwind” or to “tolerate others” starts to become your go-to, your default mode of dealing with stress. This is the biggest pitfall of using alcohol to deal with stress:

It makes you LESS able to handle stress