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Informative Articles

4 Steps to Teaching Your Family to Treat You Better
Case #1- Elizabeth, a 40 year old homemaker was always feeling angry and “used” by her family, constantly saying that everybody took advantage of her. She felt that she worked like a slave but her family showed no appreciation or acknowledgement of...
Health And The Economy
Copyright 2005 Dr Randy Wysong We normally do not think that health is related to economics other than with regard to the costs of medical care. But there is another more fundamental way money impacts our wellbeing. If you could not pay your...
STRESS MANAGEMENT FOR 2004: The Rest of the Story
Perhaps you are like many of the people I talk to who have moved on from the stress of the holidays and are now feeling the stress of everyday life. Would you really like to reduce or even eliminate some of the stress rather than just “manage” it?...
What You Need to Know to lose weight without dieting
If your commitment to eat right, exercise, and lose weight always seems to lose its steam, you are not alone! Weight problems are not just about what you are eating, but why you are eating in the first place. To see what I mean, ask yourself...
What’s causing my Depression and Fatigue?
Chronic Fatigue and Chronic Depression are absolutely systemic in our society today. Recent studies done by the AMA and CMA purport one in four people in North America are suffering from some form of chronic fatigue or depression and it’s...
 
5 Steps to Raising Optimistic Children

I had just completed a session with 17-year old Julie who suffered from severe depression. Julie believed she was a total failure and would never be able to change anything in her life. Julie also felt all her shortcomings were her own fault.
Where, I ask myself, did such a young person acquire this negative and fatalistic thinking?

The answer soon became apparent when I invited her parents into the session. They began discussing numerous life events and explaining them in ways that their children were learning. The car, for example, got dented because you can’t trust anybody these days; Mom yelled at brother because she was in a bad mood; you can’t get ahead in this world unless you know somebody, etc.

As a parent, your own thinking style is always on display and your children are listening intently!

The Importance of Optimism

Why should you want your child to be an optimist? Because, as Dr. Martin Seligman explains: “Pessimism (the opposite of optimism) is an entrenched habit of mind that has sweeping and disastrous consequences: depressed mood, resignation, underachievement and even unexpectedly poor physical health.”

Children with optimistic thinking skills are better able to interpret failure, have a stronger sense of personal mastery and are better able to bounce back when things go wrong in their lives.

Because parents are a major contributor to the thinking styles of their children’s developing minds, it is important to adhere to the following five steps to ensure healthy mental habits in your children.

How Parents Can Help

Step 1: Learn to think optimistically yourself. What children see and hear indirectly from you as you lead your life and interact with others influences them much more than what you try to ‘teach’ them.

You can model optimism for your child by incorporating optimistic mental skills into your own way of thinking. This is not easy and does not occur over night. But with practice, almost everyone can learn to think differently about life’s events – even parents!

Step 2: Teach your child that there is a connection between how they think and how they feel. You can do this most easily by saying aloud how your own thoughts about adversity create negative feelings in you.

For


example, if you are driving your child to school and a driver cuts you off, verbalize the link between your thoughts and feelings by saying something like “I wonder why I’m feeling so angry; I guess I was saying to myself: ‘Now I’m going to be late because the guy in front of me is going so darn slow. If he is going to drive like that he shouldn’t drive during rush hour. How rude.’”

Step 3: Create a game called ‘thought catching.’ This helps your child learn to identify the thoughts that flit across his or her mind at the times they feel worst. These thoughts, although barely noticeable, greatly affect mood and behavior.

For instance, if your child received a poor grade, ask: “When you got your grade, what did you say to yourself?”

Step 4: Teach your child how to evaluate automatic thoughts. This means acknowledging that they things you say to yourself are not necessarily accurate.

For instance, after receiving the poor grade your child may be telling himself he is a failure, he is not as smart as other kids; he will never be able to succeed in school, etc. Many of these self-statements may not be accurate, but they are ‘automatic’ in that situation.

Step 5: Instruct your child on how to generate more accurate explanations (to themselves) when bad things happen and use them to challenge your child’s automatic but inaccurate thoughts. Part of this process involves looking for evidence to the contrary (good grades in the past, success in other life areas, etc).

Another skill to teach your child to help him or her think optimistically is to ‘decatastrophize’ the situation – that is – help your child see that the bad event may not be as bad or will not have the adverse consequences imagined. Few things in life are as devastating as we fear, yet we blow them up in our minds.

Parents can influence the thinking styles of their children by modeling the principals of optimistic thinking.

2005 © Dr. Tony Fiore All rights reserved. Dr. Tony Fiore (www.angercoach.com) is a So. California licensed psychologist, and anger management trainer. His company, The Anger Coach, provides anger and stress management programs, training and products to individuals, couples, and the workplace. Sign up for his free monthly newsletter "Taming The Anger Bee" at www.angercoach.com

 

Stress Management Tips and Techniques from Mind Tools
More than 100 stress management tips and techniques, helping you manage the job-related stress in your life.
www.mindtools.com
 
Stress Management Techniques, Stress Relief & Stress Reduction ...
Mind Tools helps you manage the causes of stress and teaches useful stress management techniques.
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Stress Management: Information and Resources on Stress From About.com
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Stress Management
Links to stress management information on the web.
www.pp.okstate.edu
 
Links to Stress Related Resources
Return to the Stress Management and Emotional Wellness Page ... Cognitive Restructuring Approaches to Stress Management ...
www.imt.net
 
International Stress Management Association(UK)
The leading professional body for stress management. The ISMA website has articles from their journal Stress News, links and general advice on lifestyle and ...
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Stress Management for Patient and Physician
Stress management for patient and physician. Stress is the most common cause of ill health, probably underlying as many as 70% of all visits to family ...
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Stress Management: Counseling Services, University at Buffalo
The description on stress management. ... Stress Management. Introduction Stress is a part of day to day living. As college students you may experience ...
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Stress Management and Anxiety Relief
Welcome to stressmanagement.co.uk - We specialise in managing your stress.
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Stress Management for effective ways to manage stress
Our stress management services allows you to find the solutions to all types of stress. We also have professional stress management counsellors available 7 ...
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Stress Management--UIUC Counseling Center
Self-help Brochures. What is Stress? Stress is the "wear and tear" our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment; ...
www.couns.uiuc.edu
 
The Stress Management Society
Congratulations to taking the first step to freedom from the stress trap. This is the place to learn more about stress and its management.
www.stress.org.uk
 
Stress management - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stress management encompasses techniques intended to equip a person with effective ... Definition of stress: Stress management defines stress precisely as a ...
en.wikipedia.org
 
Stress
Stress Management. Everyone experiences stress from time to time, so it is perfectly normal ... Fortunately, stress management is largely a learnable skill. ...
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SBC Academic Resource Center | Stress Management
With stress management training, you can learn to avoid procrastination and other stress-producing situations. Stress Quiz: How Stressed Are You? ...
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Mind Tools - How to Master Stress
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Stress, stress management, occupational stress, stress prevention ...
A recent survey showed that 70-90% of us feel stressed at work and outside. Unless we learn to manage stress, we will get sick.
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HSE - Stress Management Standards Homepage
The International Stress Management Association has produced a leaflet showing how employees can work with their employers to tackle work-related stress ...
www.hse.gov.uk
 
Stress Management Tips for Stressed and Overworked People.
Free weekly stress management tips and relaxation CD plus practical resources for stressed people.
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