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    Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies
    Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies
    Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies

    By Alan Haroldson

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    About this ebook

    Lack of insurance, geography, physical disability, and fear of treatment make it hard for many people to get proper care. Self-help is part of the solution. It's often recommended by therapists. Carl C. Bell, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Windsor University School of Medicine, has said, "You can't do everything in a psychiatrist's office in an hour. You've got to do some homework."

    Treating psychological problems with self-help alone is experimental and treating a serious case this way is very risky. For some readers, the most important part of this ebook is its information on getting help from a qualified professional and coping in a moment of crisis.

    In 2013, someone typed "self-help" into a search engine and got 250,000 results. Finding the few good books among the tremendous number of bad ones is hard, for the professional as well as the layman.

    Experts have written books on self-help. One is based on polls of more than 3,000 mental health professionals, but it came out in 2006. There's a pressing need for up-to-date information.

    In his 2016 book, a therapist explains that some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) respond to self-help. At Stanford University, researchers have done pioneering work in the use of therapeutic breathing for PTSD. Controlled breathing has been shown to help with a variety of problems, including anxiety, panic disorder, and depression. So much has been learned in recent years about lifestyle – basic lifestyle, nutrition, and traditional Asian practices. Depression is often the result of stress. People who are prone to depression should practice good stress management. Of all the things that help with stress, the best are low-risk, low-cost, and easy.

    What's safe and what's not? The facts may surprise you. The yoga boom has resulted in more yoga classes and more yoga injuries seen in hospital emergency rooms. There are even cautions with meditation. It can help but it's not for everybody.

    Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies is one of the very few books with facts about self-help. It's well-documented, with 161 references, but it reads like self-help, not a science textbook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlan Haroldson
    Release dateAug 12, 2020
    ISBN9780463094433
    Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies

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      Book preview

      Self-Help - Alan Haroldson

      SELF-HELP:

      A POCKET GUIDE TO THERAPIES

      by

      Alan Haroldson

      Smashwords Edition

      Published on Smashwords by:

      Alan Haroldson

      Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies

      Copyright 2020 by Alan Haroldson

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      The information provided herein is stated to be truthful and consistent, in that any liability, in terms of inattention or otherwise, by any usage or abuse of any policies, processes, or directions contained within is the solitary and utter responsibility of the recipient reader. Under no circumstances will any legal responsibility or blame be held against the publisher for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due to the information herein, either directly or indirectly.

      This document is geared towards providing exact and reliable information in regard to the topic and issues covered. The publication is offered with the idea that the publisher is not required to render accounting, officially permitted or otherwise, qualified services. If advice is necessary, legal or professional, a practiced in the profession should be ordered.

      The information herein is offered for informational purposes only, and is universal as so. The presentation of the information is without contract or any type of guarantee of assurance.

      CONTENTS

      PLEASE READ THIS FIRST

      INTRODUCTION

      A QUICK START GUIDE TO STRESS MANAGEMENT

      GETTING HELP

      DBT Methods for Coping in a Moment of Crisis

      THE LIFESTYLE THERAPIES

      Mind-Body Awareness Practices

      The Science of Breathing and Moods

      The Breathing Recommended by Brown and Gerbarg

      Applications of Slow Breathing

      Relaxation and Laxity

      Connections: How the Mind-Body Methods are One Thing

      Mindfulness and Meditation

      Basic Lifestyle: Stress, Depression, and the TLC Program

      Felice Jacka vs. the Nutrition Quacks – Exciting Facts from Real Science

      The Case for Journaling

      MOTIVATION, CONCENTRATION, AND MEMORY

      The Depressed Student

      THE EVIDENCE FOR SELF-HELP BOOKS AND PROGRAMS

      In Search of that Needle in the Haystack

      Research Tips

      AFTERWORD

      SOURCES

      PLEASE READ THIS FIRST

      For some people, Getting Help, a section in this book before the Introduction, will be the most important part. Getting Help illustrates an important point – that, while the evidence for self-help is encouraging, it’s not supposed to replace the standard treatments with office visits. The section that comes after that, A ‘Quick Start’ Section on Stress Management, was also written for the reader who wants useful advice right away.

      INTRODUCTION

      I want to emphasize that this is not a How To book. I have no way of knowing what you need or what your client needs. My book is only an educational resource. If you have a serious psychological problem, I suggest talking about the ideas in my book with a qualified professional.

      This would be a longer book if more of the tremendous number of self-help books on the market were supported by scientific evidence. Experts agree that many are useless, or worse than useless.

      The experts also say that there are good books and programs, which is not to say that people with serious psychological problems can get by with nothing but a good book. The value of self-help without the benefit of standard treatments is debated, and dealing with a serious problem with self-help alone is very risky.

      Under Lifestyle Therapies, there’s information about something shown to be safe and useful in a variety of ways: therapeutic breathing. Specifically, these are the breathing methods recommended for coping in a moment of crisis and the slow rate of breathing recommended for daily use by two psychiatrists who have published papers on therapeutic breathing and use it in their work. Therapeutic breathing has been shown to help people suffering from anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s used in programs that help people with their phobias. It can enhance the results of psychotherapy for anorexia.

      I’ve tried to make the science in this book as readable as possible. There’s an especially long section, The Science of Breathing and Moods. You might want to read my summary of the section first.

      Generally speaking, the lifestyle therapies I discuss in my book are safe, but there are cautions. For example, it pays to have good information about fish oil capsules and therapy lamps. Steve Ilardi gives you this in his book. The increase in yoga-related injuries should be considered, especially if you’re over the age of sixty-five. There are even cautions with meditation. Many people benefit from it, but it’s not for everyone.

      Finally, I have advice for finding good self-help resources. In particular, I recommend two books on self-help based on extensive study of the problem.

      A QUICK START SECTION ON STRESS MANAGEMENT

      Stress management is something we all need in this stress-filled society. There’s a variety of things that can help. You can find ideas on the Internet, try them, and see what works best for you.

      Stress management should be personal. Deal with the things that are stressing you as an individual. If you have a problem with noise, you can look up noise pollution and find solutions for your problem.

      There are people who respond to the daily nuisances of our modern world the way our prehistoric ancestors did when they saw a saber-toothed tiger. In time, these overreactions take their toll, mentally and physically. They shorten people’s lives. Control of the breath is very useful for dealing with the minor setbacks that make a day stressful. Here’s a good habit – respond to moments of stress by taking at least two slow breaths through the nose. This reminds you to slow your breathing. You can do it anytime, anywhere, driving in rush hour traffic or at a meeting. You can do it without anybody noticing. The science of breathing and mental health is discussed in detail in the Lifestyle Therapies section.

      A rate of about five breaths per minute is ideal, mentally and physically. It’s much slower than that of the average adult. To breathe at this ideal rate, inhale six seconds and exhale six seconds, not pausing in between. You don’t have to completely fill your lungs. Breathe with a gentle, fluid motion.

      Breathing with your big belly muscle, the diaphragm, is good for our moods. Also, doctors say that when office workers sit so that they can’t breathe freely, this can have a bad effect on blood pressure. Do what you can to maximize your belly breathing. Always sit with a posture that lets you breathe freely and wear comfortable clothing, no belts or neckties that restrict your breathing.

      Soldiers say that they are able to calm down immediately by slowing their breathing. The explanation for this seems to be anticipation of slow breathing’s effects. By way of analogy, in a restaurant your hunger goes away as soon as you see the waiter bringing your dinner although you haven’t begun to digest the food.

      When you use the thinking part of your brain, you get control of the emotional part of your brain. If you’re in the habit of making mountains out of molehills, get into the habit of calming down and thinking. Think about the possible outcomes, good and bad. Ask yourself how

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