Blog posts, news articles, and other resources from The Center • A Place of HOPE
You may have heard of cortisol as a harmful stress hormone. But cortisol isn’t always negative; our bodies actually depend on the release of cortisol for several key functions. The problem is when high stress, and cortisol release, are chronic. Humans aren’t meant to live under chronically high levels of...
Have you ever not been able to stop thinking about something? You’re trying to get to sleep at night, and suddenly a thought enters your brain. It’s a disturbing and anxiety-provoking thought. Perhaps you can’t stop thinking about a past relationship. Maybe you made a mistake at work today, and...
Possible causes and solutions for feeling irritable and short-tempered. Do you get annoyed by everything? Do feelings of frustration arise often? Perhaps other people notice that you are irritable, impatient, and snappy. There could be many reasons you are short-tempered, and plenty of ways to stop it. Find out why...
We all have our day-to-day worries, but worrying can become an incredibly stress-inducing experience. Although the feeling of worry is a normal human emotion, understanding how to react to and address it is essential. Without the proper resources, knowledge, and coping mechanisms, over-worrying can take over your life and make...
As the pandemic associated with the Coronavirus continues, it is normal to feel increasing amounts of stress. Insecurity about your job, an over-saturation of information, some of it conflicting, fear of catching the virus, stress of being cooped up over a long period of time without a social release. But...
As we are facing a global crisis of coronavirus, with isolation, social distancing and lock down becoming words we hear daily – how do we cope with this great unknown? There are many worries, not just for your health and the health of your loved ones, as well as financial...
We are living in very stressful times, living in the time of this Coronavirus outbreak. The situation seems out of our control and our new way of living – either or lockdown or social distancing from loved ones –is uncomfortable and different. Here are 10 things you can do to...
The news and spread of COVID-19 have shaken the world to its core. Everyone is in fear as the situation has started to take an emotional toll. You must be feeling stressed, powerless and anxious as well. You need a break from all that worrying. You need to detach yourself...
We each tend to harbor one or more secret activities or behaviors that we just can’t seem to get enough of. This “never enough” activity becomes our absolute necessity, our reward, our coping mechanism. We need (or so we think) this activity to insulate ourselves from the world. Because this...
A number of our clients come to The Center with chronic pain that has persisted for years. This is often referred to as Fibromyalgia. The client has tried pain medications, diets, stretching, physical therapy, massages, and more. Nothing has seemed to work. But after we begin treatment using the whole...
Do you know the difference between fear and anxiety? If you look in the dictionary or ask most people, these words are often used interchangeably. However, there is an important distinction between them. To understand, let’s consider Janet and Marc. The sun was just beginning to peek through the blinds...
Did you ever play with wind-up toys as a kid? Remember how if you wound the toy too far, it broke? Well, you are the wind-up toy. You are the wind-up toy, and anxiety keeps winding and winding you up. At some point, anxiety could over-wind you, so you’ll break....
People respond to stress in two basic but different ways: they’re either go-getters and stay-putters.
Have you ever noticed how relaxed you can feel after you've done something physically strenuous? It's possible to relive a little of this feeling by engaging in progressive muscle relaxation.
When people are burdened by fear, worry, and anxiety, they struggle to live productive, happy lives. These same feelings propel them headlong into excesses. Often, they are focused on the negativity associated with their excesses, such as obesity or alcoholism or addiction to pornography. They want help to "just stop"...
If you try to live without balance, you will invariably retreat to older patterns of thinking. The tendency is always to default to previous, often unbalanced, behavior when the going gets rough, when feeling boxed in, or when the pressures of life become more than you feel you can bear. ...
Stress is not the ideal environment to make the best decisions. Stress skews your priorities and downsizes goals. Desperate, you make short-term decisions that have long-term consequences.
To help you identify your patterns of worry and what activities or thoughts they are most associated with, you need to answer the following questions. Take your time to answer these questions and rally think about your answers.
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The whole person approach to treatment integrates all aspects of a person’s life: