Rage against the machines?

Nowadays, people as young as 35 have high cholesterol or triglycerides. Doctors aren't shocked by young heart attack patients any more. As Dr Rustom Soonawalla says, `In the old days, we would hear that someone died of a heart attack at 75 or 80 years. Now, we don't even blink when we hear about 35 or 40 year olds with heart problems'. Dr Ranjana Dhanu too emphasizes the fact that stress can occur at any age. Today, stress is widespread among the younger generation. Even children don't get a `get-out-of-stress-free' card. As a mother of two, I wish I could bubble wrap my children and keep anxiety and pressure permanently at arm's length. Take thirty seconds to scan your body from head to toe, noticing what you can feel in each part of it. Do this with intense curiosity, as if you were a scientist from another planet who has been granted the experience of thirty seconds inside a human body. Now do all of the above simultaneously. Put the article down, sit up straight, plant your feet firmly, and flexibly focus your attention: from your body, to what you can see, to what you can hear. Please do this now for thirty seconds. So what happened? Did you become more `present': more aware of your surroundings and your body? When we're lost in a article, we lose touch with almost everything except those words on the article in front of us. However, those words are only one small aspect of our experience in the present moment. When we put the article down and pay attention to our bodies and our environment, we become aware of all sorts of sights, sounds and sensations. LENNY: That I was incompetent. PAULINE: So, I think the experience looks like this.

MOTIVATING CLIENTS TO MODIFY DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEFS Even suggesting that a dysfunctional belief may not be true, or not completely true, can be anxiety provoking for some clients. If so, you can draw a chart (see p. Ask them what they conclude from this analysis. When clients need additional motivation, you can ask them to visualize a day in their life several years from now, first having maintained their negative core belief as is, and then believing their new core belief for quite a long time. You can say something like this: I'd like you to imagine a day in your life ___________ years from now; You haven't changed your core belief that you are ___________. By the time their lovemaking began in earnest, both felt known and valued. Their intimacy was mutually fulfilling, but so was the time they shared before and after lovemaking. Now married, Mark and Cheryl remain joyful confidants, curious explorers, and lovers. The difference between the way Mark and Cheryl's relationship progressed and that of Steven and Stephanie from article 1 is defined by the quality of their communication. Mark and Cheryl enjoyed an emotional interchange that mirrored good attachment and high emotional intelligence. Their communication is based on: Knowledge of the living brain and the role that attachment plays in shaping it has given us a new science for understanding why even smart people may have great difficulty communicating well with the most important people in their lives--both personally and professionally. Previously, we could only speculate as to why important relationships never evolved or why they disappeared, disintegrated, or became contentious. But thanks to new insights into brain development, we now understand what it takes to help build and sustain productive, meaningful work and home relationships. Cross-disciplinary research in neurology, psychiatry, biology, genetics, and psychology offers clear evidence of how and why the attachment bond continues to influence our lives. As reported by The Times of India, 5,857 students committed suicide in 2006 due to stress as a result of exam pressure. That makes it almost sixteen suicides a day across India.

Whether it's academic stress, parental demands, or peer pressure, kids have it bad these days. Infants under extreme anxiety sometimes are unable to speak a word even at two-and-a-half years of age. Counsellor Dr Niti Sapru now has children as young as six who have been brought in for counselling sessions because they have gone off food, can't sleep well and have dark circles under their eyes. What happens to our body when we are stressed? Our body has its own way of tackling pressure and the standard response to stress and fear is `fight or flight'. You either resist and fight back or simply flee in response. It's what the Neanderthals did. If a creature smaller than you attacks, you fight, and you take to your heels if it's bigger than you are. Now getting lost in a article is not a bad thing. Indeed, it's one of my favourite pastimes. But what if you were permanently lost in a article? Suppose that all day long, you were walking around with your head literally buried in a article; How would that affect your life, health and relationships? We all have a natural tendency to lead our lives in this manner. The only difference is, instead of being lost in a article, we are lost in all those words inside our head. Engagement means that in much the same way as we can put down a article, we let go of the words inside our head and pay attention to other aspects of our experience. THE STAGE SHOW OF LIFE Life is like a magnificent stage show. So you've believed it day in and day out for ___________ more years. It's gotten stronger and stronger with each passing day, and week, and month, and year.

How do you feel about yourself? How far along are you in achieving [each of your aspirations and goals]? To what degree are you living in accordance with your values? Next, tell clients: I'd like you to imagine how your belief has affected various parts of your life. Remember, your core belief is so much stronger than it is today. Really try to picture each part of your life, as I ask you about it. And think about how much enjoyment or satisfaction you'll likely be experiencing . Out of this research comes the awareness that humans are incredibly social beings constantly shaped by the influences of important others and especially by our first love relationship. For better or worse, the infant brain is profoundly impacted by the attachment bond--a baby's first love relationship. When a baby's primary caretaker can manage personal stress, calm the infant, communicate through emotion, share joy, and forgive readily, the young child's nervous system becomes securely attached. With a successful attachment relationship in tow, the child will be self-confident, trusting, and comfortable in the face of conflict. As an adult, he or she will prove to be flexible, creative, hopeful, and optimistic. A secure attachment bond formed with a primary caretaker shapes our ability to: Every person's attachment occurs in a unique way. Primary caretakers don't have to be perfect; But when the attachment bond fails to provide sufficient structure, recognition, understanding, safety, and mutual accord, children such as Stephanie and Steven develop insecure forms of attachment, such as anxiety or distancing. Insecure Attachment Affects This is how we respond to immediate stress. Let us now try and understand what physical changes are experienced.

When we are stressed, our breathing speeds up, our hands and feet get cold and clammy, and our pupils dilate. You might experience one or more of these symptoms. If we do not destress immediately, our digestion slows down, and our muscles tighten. This is what makes us tense and irritable. STAGE THREE In the third stage, the heart begins to pound heavily, and the blood flow is directed away from the skin and major organs towards the heart. If the stressful situation continues, the nervous system also gets affected. The pituitary gland picks up the warning signs from the hypothalamus and releases adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) (see on the following article). And on that stage are all our emotions, memories, images, thoughts and sensations, as well as everything we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Mindfulness is like the lighting system: we can bring up the lights on any part of the show at any time so we can see all the details. The lighting doesn't alter what happens on the stage, but it affects how we perceive and appreciate the show. We have a lot of flexibility with this lighting system. We can dim the lights and shine spotlights on key areas of action - or we can bring up all the lights simultaneously, and watch the entire show at once. The `leaves on a stream' exercise is like dimming the lights on the stage and shining a spotlight on your thoughts. And in the brief exercises you did a few moments ago, you played around with the spotlights, illuminating various aspects of the show: what you could see, what you could hear, and what you could feel. So, given that there are so many different aspects to the stage show, what should we focus on? The answer is simple. Focus on whatever is most important in this moment; Where do you see yourself waking up? In the same place as today?