Is Replaying An Emotional Trauma Good Or Bad For You?

Who Cares – But Why

Controlled mental replaying of your negative experience (event) is excellent therapy. Repetition with new understanding deadens, dulls and benumbs the pain from the original occurrence.

Mental repetition of a traumatic event desensitizes your emotions. Examples: a severe car accident, the boss firing your fundament, a dirty divorce, war battles or personal physical attacks (rape). The secret is in your cognitive strategies.

If you don't have special desensitizing strategies you fall into PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and depression for years.

Inquiring Minds need this scientific core knowledge. It's baby-easy to learn and use for yourself and those who touch your life. You can teach it to others.

So What

Normal folks use Escape Mechanisms like getting drunk, bar fights, drugs or make life miserable for those around them to eliminate negative feelings. PTSD is receiving more notice today because of thousands of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it applies to 308, 802, 372 U.S. citizens and almost seven billion world population so it is important to Inquiring Minds.

Many of us experience chronic stress because of a bullying boss, disruptive kids, and an emotional Significant Other. These strategies help control our emotional reactions to stress. It works for corporate executives, law students and the military.

Scientific Research

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Christine Hooker, proves that how we react to painful trauma and stress is located in our LPFC (lateral Prefrontal Cortex). That's right, locating the brain site is a new discovery.

What does your PFC do all day?

You trigger it voluntarily for your problem solving, decision making, learning and

memory. It is your Executive function for goal setting and works Top-Down, using

your volition (free will) to organize and create a successful career and relationships.

Get this: our LPFC is the control center for our emotional reactions to negative facial expressions by others. Sounds weird? Homo sapiens react emotionally and

behave negatively based on the antagonistic (angry) looks on the puss of those whose lives we touch. Can you ignore the puss on your significant other, boss, or kid?

Stop and remember the facial expression on your significant-other just before your

last prize fight (conflict and altercation) with him or her. That is what sets the mood

for loss of control. Yes, their expression affects you and you may be the causative factor that enflames their emotions.

Operant Conditioning

Remember this secret – your mother told it to you and you forgot.

Repetition is the Mother of Learning and Memory. How do you get to

Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice and more…

Would it be a valuable personal skill to avoid chronic stress at home or in your career? How to short-cut emotional traumas and stress is a learnable talent.

Fact: facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our Genes.

Fact: your Lateral PreFrontal Cortex can raise your threshold of tolerance and

avoid reacting irrationally.

Fact: your brain can be conditioned (Operant Conditioning) through Positive

Reinforcement. You get more of what you want, and less negative punishment

(avoid what you dislike).

It is not brainwashing, but a scientific system to reinforce positive behaviors.

Fact: humans are hardwired genetically to achieve two goals in life: the pursuit of

pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

For Inquiring Minds

Whatever is reinforced (rewards or punishment) is enlarged and increases. There are emotional rewards like a smile and loving affection, a gold star on the refrigerator, and financial rewards like a weekly salary, bonus and promotion.

Your brain gives you a dose of Dopamine – the pleasure hormone triggered by rewards – and we are conditioned (programmed) to repeat the behavior because we choose to be further rewarded, right? It feels good.

Four Consequences to Any Behavior

a) Reinforcement: the behavior is repeated and increased.

b) Punishment: the behavior is eliminated or decreased.

c) Positive: something is added to increase the behavior.

d) Negative: something is removed (you desire) and the

behavior is decreased.

What's the secret? Answer: cause and effect; there are consequences to our actions.

Use Positive reinforcement in Operant Conditioning to get more of what you want and less of what you want to avoid.

Two Strategies

a) sit at your desk and take a deep diaphragmatic inhalation

and slowly exhale. Do it two more times to set the mood.

b) place you attention and concentration on your face and

your facial expression. Can you tell if you are smiling or

frowning? Of course.

c) inhale and place a make-believe (fake) smile on your face,

There are three muscles groups involved, but basically

your eyes and the sides of your mouth.

d) use your will power to raise the sides of your mouth and

show some teeth. Simultaneously crinkle the sides of both

eyes. Create crows-feet and feel your eyes smile.

e) Hold your eyes and mouth smile for twenty (20) seconds

and release. Deep breathe and do it for another 20 seconds.

Do the third rep (repetition) for the last 20 seconds.

The second strategy adds one thing to the a-e smiling exercise. Ask your students to

close their eyes and imagine their significant other, child or best friend smiling, laughing or giggling in delight. Hold that Creative Imagery for three reps of 20 seconds each. It is short and sweet and a fun learning experience.

When you and those you teach become aware they are responsible for their own emotional responses, and they can control the pain of chronic stress and depression,

they are amazed and motivated. Who needs painful PTSD in our lives?

Repetition: success requires this one-minute exercise for 21 consecutive days to turn it into a habit. Our corporate executives and law school students call it life altering.

Endwords

Mouth and eyes muscles create our facial expressions, but we can either put them on

auto-pilot (autonomic nervous system) or take voluntary (will power) control. The second way avoids high levels of stress and depression and even becomes a habit.

You do not have to remember the brain location is the Lateral PreFront Cortex,

just do the simple routine. Make it a daily ritual like brushing your teeth and you

will improve your mental and physical health for life.

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Would a unique competitive advantage over your peers improve your career prospects? Our corporate executives and law students read and remember three (3)

books, articles and reports while their peers can hardly finish one. Knowledge is power, huh?

For a free speed reading report with all the details, contact us now.

See ya,

copyright © 2010 H. Bernard Wechsler textwww.speedlearning.org

texthbw@speedlearning.org

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In a world that's more connected than ever before, communication skills training is vital. Never before have we been able to cause so much anguish, so much trouble, exacerbate so many problems and rub so many backs up the wrong way thanks to the wealth of communication opportunities now open to us.

Communication skills' training is essential for businesses to ensure that both internal and external communications are effective. In many instances the problem with communication is not expressing views, making points or delivering sales patter, but in listening, being receptive and adapting the delivery, the approach and the method as and when necessary.

Communication must be a dynamic experience, with each person adapting to the other in order to achieve a successful outcome. The writer Margaret Miller once noted that 'most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness,' which is more true than ever before, and it is often the listening skills which are more important than the delivery of words.

Having said that, communication skills training will often involve people beginning to listen more carefully not just to the other person, but to themselves. Often we can hurl out diatribes, rattle off curt responses and solidify hasty thoughts with ink without really being aware of how we sound, how we are viewed, and the impact of our choice of medium, method and approach.

One of the biggest problems we face today in terms of effective communication is that it is rarely face-to-face. Most conversations used to be in person, and those which weren't were written carefully by hand.

In the first instance face-to-face conversations tend to result in each party being more conscious of the way they are coming across, and will be more able to pick up on the body language and subtle nuances of the other person's responses and statements.

In the second instance hand written communications took time, and were often signed - giving the writer time to reflect on the tone, and an opportunity to check that the contents were worthy of their signature.

Today increasingly our communications are virtual - we are facing nothing but a computer screen and a keyboard, and our words tend to spill forth as they would if we were mumbling bitterly to ourselves in private. Take away the face and you take away the person; take away the person and you reduce a conversation to being a mere monologue which is certain to fail, or at least offend.

Communication skills training provide a range of opportunities for businesses to understand the problems, and develop skills which allow people to appreciate the problems inherent in various forms of communication. In some cases this could simply be a case of examining how written reports or sales letters are compiled, reducing the amount of fluff and waffle and creating a smarter, more professional and more effective result.

In other cases telephone manners will be examined. Often we sound quite different on the phone compared to how we imagine we sound. In face to face conversations more than half of the communication is non verbal, with body language a highly important aspect of effective communication.

Removing this benefit through telephone or email conversations requires an even greater understanding of effective communication, and a range of methods and techniques which will help compensate, and ensure effective and successful communication.

Communication skills training will help to turn witnessed monologues into dialogue, talking into speaking, and words into conversations which are effective, pleasant and successful.

When speaking on the phone, there is no backspace key, and when you hit the send button, there's no time for second thoughts. Reputations can be made or broken with only a few words, which is why a communication skills training is a vital part of building a successful business.

textConstruction jobs overseas offer many opportunities outside of the UK industry and there are several benefits both financial and tax-related to a non-UK residency. Some benefits and issues to consider before you apply for construction jobs overseas include:
Accommodation: What sort of accommodation do you require? Will your family be joining you? Where do you want to live? Your accommodation may not always be provided by your employer so it's worth researching a little about where you're moving. You should assess any offer of employment in the context of local currency, potential costs of living and the kind of environment you are prepared to live in.
Medical Insurance: Does your employer provide this? If so, what are the specifics of their policy? It's worth checking to make sure that repatriation in case required medical treatment is unavailable or that other features, such as cover for your family, are included in case you need them.
Termination clause: If you lose your employment overseas it can be much more disruptive than when you're in your home country -particularly if your employer provides your accommodation or potentially depending on the terms of your work visa. Make sure you're clear on the exact circumstances from both your perspective and that of your employers.
Leave entitlement: What arrangements do you want - and what arrangements are offered in your contract? You should make sure that you know, ensuring that you can accommodate travel time and the need to visit family at home.
Travel: What provisions has your employer made for your travel? Do you have the right documentation before you go? Does your offer cover the costs of moving your family as well?