Anxiety Certificate Course - SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals

Understanding the 3 Fundamentals to Master Post-COVID and The New Normal

Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin, PhD, LCSW — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 19:05:51 +0000

The 3 Fundamentals are the one Truth that governs all human beings in their entirety. It is studied as 3 separate Truths for better operationalizing, better organization, and better use. This makes it easier to discuss how they can each be broken down, though, they are always one. First, their names: Mind, or Intelligence Center; Thought or Belief; Consciousness or Awareness. Second, operationalizing or defining each one of them and then collectively: The Mind or Intelligence Center governs everything in us and about us. It coordinates every single process, and it is where everything takes place. Thought or Belief is the Operant Factor and what catalyzes or activates the Intelligence Center. It’s what changes or adjusts things. It’s how things happen. Consciousness or Awareness is the Decisional Factor and what allows us to decide the type of relationship we have with our thoughts or beliefs. It is what decides our predominant thoughts, and therefore what we experience, how we experience it, and how aware we are of the experience itself. The 3 Fundamentals are always in operation, and whether you are aware of that or not, doesn’t change anything. How they operate is similar to the 3 Fundamentals of Nature, which are: the Gravitational Force, the Electromagnetic Force, and the Nuclear Force. They are occurring whether we are aware of it or not. Third, how are they organized? Naturally, since they are actually One, the 3 Fundamentals are designed to work as one. In this case, they are integrated. However, due to evolutionary processes, our thoughts and beliefs, being the Operant Factor, having passed from one generation to the next over millions of years, have led us to operate mostly unconsciously. As a result of the lack of integration, we operate mostly from an unconscious level, making it harder for the Decisional Factor (Consciousness or Awareness) to operate properly. This is because it’s basing its decisions on an unconscious process. For the Decisional Factor (Consciousness or Awareness) to operate properly, we ought to shift. This means unlearning, relearning, and learning is to take place for Consciousness to play its proper role of the Decisional Factor. This is in no way a deficiency; rather, part of the evolutionary [2] process. Fourth, what is the use of all this? 1. We get to rediscover who we really are; 2. We get to bring to light why and how we got here; and, 3. We get to realize Life, what it is all about, and how to live. The ramifications of all this are as follows: We live well, in harmony, in peace, joy, and love for ourselves and for others Without the need to understand Physics, we get to fully understand what Einstein meant when he said, “We are part of a whole, called by us, Universe; but we experience our thoughts, feelings, and ourselves, as if we were separate from the rest-a kind of an optical delusion.”[3] We get to fully experience what it means that we are One [4], and what it means that we are Whole We get why health, abundance, happiness, and success are natural to us, and all it takes is Consciousness and Awareness to decide We get to understand that we are here to be a joyful model for one another, to elevate one another, and to create an environment that enhances everyone from our generation and beyond. We get to appreciate how suffering is self-made; how no one is a victim of one’s life or circumstances; and how everything we live and experience is simply a reflection of our Operant Factor We get to fully understand that no one is ever stuck where one is at; that no one is ever broken, and everyone can shift at any time by simply knowing how We realize that we get to design the new “normal” for us in the post COVID era. Fifth, given that the Mind or Intelligence Center governs everything in us and about us, one may wonder if it means that we are not responsible; that we are at the mercy of life, circumstances, or of the nonlinear pattern and cyclical nature of life. The answer is a resounding, “No!” The Mind or Intelligence Center is neutral and gets activated and operated through our thoughts and beliefs, which are the Operant Factor. Because we can always change our thoughts and beliefs, we always get to change or choose the output of the Mind or Intelligence Center. Sixth, what’s the best way for us to change the output of our Mind or Intelligence Center? We do so by shifting. We shift from one state of Consciousness to the next. First, we shift from the lowest state of consciousness to the next one up. Then we shift from an unconscious state to the first conscious state. And then we shift from one conscious state to the next one up. Seventh, what’s the best way for us to shift? Take one of the SWEET Certificate Courses. Here are your options: The Psychotherapy Certificate Course; The Inside-Out Certificate Course; The Anxiety Certificate Course; The CBT Certificate Course Are you ready to design your new “normal” in the post-COVID era [5]? If so, please reach out and we will work with you so you continue to best serve your clients, loved ones, and yourself. Until soon,Karen and Mardoche [2] HOFFMAN, DONALD. CASE AGAINST REALITY: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. W W NORTON, 2021. [3] Einstein, Albert, and Stephen Hawking. A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: the Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein. Running Press, 2009. [4] “Oneness – How We Are All One.” Better Believe It!, 16 Sept. 2016, betterbelieveit.net/oneness-how-we-are-all-one/. [5] Fisher, Max. “What Will Our New Normal Feel Like? Hints Are Beginning to Emerge.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/world/americas/coronavirus-social-impact.html.

The post Understanding the 3 Fundamentals to Master Post-COVID and The New Normal first appeared on SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals.

Fear About Going Back to Normal

Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin, PhD, LCSW — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 12:18:34 +0000

Hearing for the first time, “We need not be afraid of our thoughts,” can leave us feeling confused, shocked, or even upset. Yet, our attitude will determine what follows next. If we have a growth mindset [1], we are likely to be curious, wonder, ponder, ask questions, and even look for more information. On the other hand, if we have a fixed mindset [2], we are more likely to ruminate upon how confusing, shocking, and upsetting such an assertion is. This then leads to more confusion, shock, and upset. And this then confirms what the assertion was based upon to begin with. In other words, the reason why the more we ruminate on how upset we feel the more upset we feel, is because our brain works through associations. Association takes place through the firing of neurons [3]. And the more intense and the longer the firing of our neurons, the more we are likely to experience the effects. And that’s the same thing that happens when we feel. Our neurons are firing so regularly, frequently, and intensely, that our feeling has reached an action potential, whose effects are then experienced. The above biochemical explanatory model of thoughts and feelings has been simplified to make it available to all. However, if fully understood, it will be enough to appreciate and understand the following biochemical based fact, “We need not be afraid of our thoughts.” Regardless of whether we are talking about fear, worries, anxiety, or feeling upset, it is a biochemical fact that we are simply feeling our thought. Moreover, the Neuroscience basis for this assertion is best explained through the Inside-Out Paradigm [4]. Simply put, our thoughts are simply reflected in the outside through our feelings, through our somatic symptoms, through our behaviors, and the like. This means when we feel fear, we must be having fear thoughts; and we need not be afraid of these fear thoughts because, in fact, being afraid of them entails thought association. Thought association entails neuron firing, leading to action potential. All this means is that we continue to activate the same thought that is being reflected as a type of feeling that we want to go away. In other words, we are reinforcing the fear thoughts and feelings because we are focusing on them. In Reality, in Truth, we need not be afraid of our thoughts, not those of fear, not those of upset, not those of worries, or anxiety, none of them. When we fully understand that we will be able to: Develop a healthier relationship with our thoughts Develop a healthier relationship with fear Understand how we do not fear anything other than our thoughts Understand once we are no longer afraid of our thoughts of fear, we will no longer need to be afraid of our feeling of fear Appreciate that once we’re no longer afraid of our feeling of fear, we will develop a healthier relationship with our fear of going back to normal. At SWEET we are: Translating the latest in Science into clinical care Bridging the 25-year gap in translational research Organizing the rapidly increasing vast of knowledge in our field (doubles every 18 months) in such a way that all of us clinicians can use, implement, practice, and develop into skills, leading to mastery We are committed to this because the two of us (Karen and Mardoche) have witnessed in clinical practice and in the literature the following: Patients who have physical health needs experiencing successful intersection with mental health, emotional health, and behavioral modification so that they benefit from optimal health Patients in the general mental health, psychiatry, and neurology systems are shown to have started displaying symptoms early and we therefore ought to start early Adolescents who get involved in the juvenile justice system and who use mind altering substances. This means pediatric mental health is to be comprehensive and requires multifaceted skills Those involved in the criminal justice system have high recidivism rates that are related to challenges around reentry and around substance use disorder. This means to properly make a difference in the lives of this patient population, we ought to hone on our skills on transition and on substance use disorder treatment Most of those with a substance use disorder enter recovery and then relapse, then recover and then relapse. A phenomenon often related to their environment, among other factors, but most being related to the Social Determinants of Health. To help our patients then, including those with substance use disorder, we ought to address the Social Determinants of Health with a focus on systems, and management Clinicians are working with clients from primary care, to criminal justice system, to FQHC, to College mental health, inpatient, community mental health and beyond. All of them with no exceptions are being cared for by us, clinicians, on the front line. And as we are taking care of them, we find ourselves to be burnt-out. The vast majority of us experience exhaustion, a sense of cynicism, and a sense of lack of accomplishment – the burnout triad. Then, we realized and asked, how can we really make a difference in the lives of our patients without making a difference in the lives of those of us taking care of our patients? Then SWEET was born to be the place for all clinicians throughout the world. To be the community, the place of support for one another, the place of training, cutting edge education, and where each clinician and agency alike feel empowered to care for everyone from those who are the most vulnerable to those who are the highest functioning. This is what SWEET is all about. As such, as we are learning to develop a healthy relationship with fear about going back to normal, we hope you will use this opportunity to make SWEET your second home, so together we work on ceasing suffering once and for all. No one, absolutely no one, is to be afraid of one’s thoughts, when […]

The post Fear About Going Back to Normal first appeared on SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals.