Getting Mental Health On The Line – Weekending 26/03/17

This is a weekly post to act as an additional resource for both clients and fellow therapists alike.

This week, we’re presenting some of the best from the past week featuring topics as diverse as digital addiction, calming your nerves before a big meeting, pain management, making people feel good hypnotically, and a little bit of entertainment with some of Derren Brown’s most memorable hypnosis moments.

If you have a video that you would like featured in our weekly roundup, then drop Lawrence a line with a link to your video.

Digital Addiction: How Half the Developed World Got Hooked on the Internet | Adam Alter

by Big Think

It’s not your screen you’re addicted to — it’s just the conduit for your high. NYU professor Adam Alter explains that behavioral addiction is similar to substance addiction: it feels good in the short term, but over time can negatively impact your mental state, social life, financial stability, and physiological wellbeing. There’s been a steep takeoff of digital addiction in recent years, with approximately half the developed world now exhibiting addictive tendencies when it comes to the internet. It comes down to portability. The more wireless our devices become, the more our addiction follows us around, and the more we turn to our phones as “adult pacifiers” — just a swipe of your screen is enough to feel relaxed again. Adam Alter is the author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (goo.gl/NGxqmV).

How to Calm Your Nerves Before a Meeting

by Steps for Change

Various forms of social anxiety are common in the workplace. Even highly successful people can suddenly find a particular work situation becomes a trigger for high anxiety or even panic. One such situation is the conference call or business meeting. Many people find themselves with sweaty palms and crawling skin when they are about to give a status update or give a presentation in a conference call. Even more common are the rattled nerves before a presentation.

Being overly nervous can hinder your performance and leave you with a feeling that you did poorly, even your presentation went reasonably well. If you have to white-knuckle through the experience, then your are setting yourself up for unpleasantness the next time you have to give a presentation.

One solution involves a two step process. First, you practice specific relaxation skills over time so that you don’t have to learn them on the day of the call or the meeting. Second, you have some simple notes in front of you that are your cheat sheet for how to calm yourself. This results in increased emotional intelligence so that you can outsmart your rattled nerves and be at your best. In this episode, Dr. Greg Hamlin presents a quick-and-dirty audio cheat sheet for how to calm your nerves before a meeting.

How to Make Other People Feel Good Around You Using Simple Hypnotic Principles

by RICHARD GRANNON SPARTANLIFECOACH

Affecting other people’s emotional and mental states in a way that is useful, in a way that makes them feel better and see new possibilities in their situation quickly and effortlessly is down to learning some simple, elegant tools that allow us to cause significant shifts in perception. These tools have to be invisible, gentle and accurate if they are going to work. We have the power of suggestion, state, intent, focus and stories all in our arsenal.

Anyone can learn to make the people around them feel calm, powerful and resourceful because the principles are simple.
With the patient and repetitive application of these simple principles, you can build a skill set that allows you to help and empower the people around you to heal, to move forward, to embrace changes and to be and do more.

Trauma holds us all back. If we can see ways in which we can do better or help others to do better, it could be kind of cool if we were able to develop the tools to make that a reality.

Here are some powerful tips for altering people’s emotional and mental states and even their core perceptions of the world around them.