Jeffrey Alexander Martin

I'm seeing a lot of ads online for vagus nerve stimulators. They all tell me they can calm me down. And of course there are a lot of tv ads for Valium and Xanax, also promising to calm me down. Obviously, a lot of people are searching for a way to calm down. These things will work to a certain extent. I haven't tried them, but by forcing the body to calm down it can calm down your mind. There are some problems with that though. It's a classic joke that the side effects for drugs and medications are longer than the benefits. That can be an issue. There's another obvious issue. If when you need to calm down you need to go to something outside of you, the only obvious answer when you need to calm down again is to use again, and again, and again, and when you need to calm down more, you need to use more. The key then is to choose something that isn't bad if you need to use it again, and if you need to use it more, and if you need to use it long term. Preferably it's...

We wish words could solve our problems. That saying we're sad would solve our sadness, that admitting our anger would allow us to let go of our anger. That anxiety and depression could be fixed with just the right words said in just the right order. But it doesn't work. Words are powerful things. They effect us. When someone says something mean to us it hurts, but when they apologize it doesn't fully make up for it. The feeling that is triggered by a series of words can't be put back in the bottle by a different series of words. The only way to sort that feeling out is to feel it. Feelings are deeper than words. That's why I have a client that was recently surprised when she started feeling and found that she had fear, when she expected to find anger and sadness. That's why I had a past client recently message me that knowing how to practice feeling probably saved his life when he recently experienced a major loss. If it would have worked for her to say, "I...

When you accidentally touch a hot stove you don't think about what to do. The pain receptors in your hand send a signal to your brainstem that says, "Pain!", and your brainstem sends a signal back to your arm that says, "Pull your hand back!" Your hand doesn't send a signal to your brain that says, "Make a pros and cons list on whether or not you should pull your hand back." There isn't time. Something has to happen immediately. You have a reaction built into you, and you react. It's the same with emotions. You don't look out at the world and think, "This might be a good time to start worrrying about a bunch of things from the political structure of society to when I'm going to be able to get to the store to pick up groceries." That's not what happens. You're just worried. When you're worried, or anxious, or sad, or angry, it's a reaction to your external environment. But that doesn't mean that you have...