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Introducing Gavin de Becker

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

One of the biggest aspects of self-help is most certainly safety and it’s opposite, danger.

A huge chunk of psychiatry is taken up with the manifestations of this issue - anxiety, phobias, worry, self-confidence issues, paranoias, anger, violence.

A patient of mine gave me the trememdous gift of introducing me to a man who specializes in helping people living in anxiety and fear.

For those of you like me who hadn’t heard of Gavin de Becker before, he is an American specialist in security issues, especially for governments, corporations, and celebrities, and yet his core message is very much for individuals in our everyday life.

When he was 10 Gavin de Becker watched his mother shoot his stepfather while his 2-year-old sister slept in her bedroom. When he was 16, his mother, a heroin addict, killed herself. Violence and things to fear has been an integral part of his life, and his work.

I was first given his book “Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (And Parents Sane)” which was more meaningful for the fact that I have 3 young children of my own…

A generation ago, in Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock told parents that they already possessed most of the important knowledge about their children’s health. Similarly, when it comes to predicting violence and protecting children, I submit that you already know most of what you need to know.

You have the wisdom of the species, and the expert voice that matters most is yours. Yet, society has trained us to believe that we don’t know the answers, that professionals know what’s best and that good parents listen to them. As a result, we have come to believe that we will find certainty outside ourselves. We won’t, of course, but we can find the illusion of certainty, particularly if that’s what we’re willing to settle for.

-Dr Martin Russell

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Filed in Life & Death, Decisions, Foundations, Assertiveness, Self-esteem | Comments (1)

Working Through A Problem

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

What the **** does that mean really?

What does it mean to “get over” something?

What about “sort it out”?

And as for “deal with it”, are our lives some variation on Blackjack that we just need the right hand to show up?

It’s one of the questions I pondered when I made the “Self Help Me Over” online video product. People had come to me over the years in my counselling practice requesting exactly these things, and so I decided to record the consultation I would give people to help fulfill this request.

But I didn’t cover how to “work through” something.

Well I’ve just been sent some information that appeals to my sense of absurdity about the English Language.

If you have an emotion you need to “work through” then this is from NLPCo.com and it is for you…

The Tunnel Technique

1. Notice where in your body you feel the emotion. With your hands, remove it from yourself and put it front of you. Expand the image until it’s the size and shape of a doorway.

2. On the other side of the doorway is a tunnel of the emotion. In a moment, you will enter the tunnel and walk through it to find out what is on the other side. But there is a rule: once entering the tunnel you must keep walking.

3. Having agreed to keep moving your feet, step into the tunnel, close the door behind you, and feel the emotion surrounding you as you keep moving until you discover the exit on the other side. (This has never taken more than 30 seconds.)

4. Going through the emotion and out the other side typically moves a person into a very different place emotionally. Going through guilt can lead to freedom, going through rage can lead to compassion, but … sometimes it goes to other strong emotions which have been suppressed or masked. When that happens, go through that emotion as well until you’ve reached a place which feels healthy and whole.

You may consider doing this with someone around, even a counsellor, but for the 60-120 seconds the whole thing takes it’s worth giving this a go.

The morning after I read about this I was thinking about an emotion of disgust from my medical school days. I could handle dead bodies, but mucus and phlegm and spit was always a choking and gagging revulsion for me. I used The Tunnel Technique on it and now it’s unpleasant still (I do NOT want to drink a spittoon) but without the gagging or turning away.

One method of self-help is to be aware of your language, and do what it suggests literally.

With the appropriate techniques you can even turn “working through”, into “playing through”.

Golf anyone?

-Dr Martin Russell

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Filed in Procrastination, Emotions, Humor, Counselling, Personal Development, Therapy, Communication | Comments (10)

As Easy As…

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

maths-exam-answers-6.jpg

…knowing there is an alternative.

Life is a different sort of exam than we had at school.

There are more answers than you might have originally thought.

Be aware of the answer everyone else is giving, but there are always alternatives, so discover the ones that work for you.

It pays to take a second look.

-Dr Martin Russell

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8 Glasses Of Water Daily. Really?

Sunday, July 6, 2008

One of the most recurring health wisdoms is that you need to drink 8 glasses of water daily.

Also known as the 8×8 (8 glasses of 8 ounces each) or 2 Litres of water daily.

I seems to make sense to so many people, including bottled water sellers, that for many people it is pure common sense.

From my medical training I already liked to tell people who tried to convince me to have my 8 daily glasses, the stories of people who died from “water intoxication” including a spate of deaths in my own state from people trying to avoid the dehydration when they took the party drug, Ecstasy.

On a more personal level, this idea of 8 daily glasses of water ended for me when I watched the “Lawrence of Arabia” movie and watched an Englishman train himself to drink water like a desert-living Arab.

Of course this was a movie, not science.

But often movies are better than science for personal change anyway.

Still the idea of 8 glasses of water on a daily basis has been put to the test by researchers, and in summary - the idea doesn’t hold water.

The most complete study was this year in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

The best thing about this study was that they specifically addressed the 4 key health benefits proposed for 8 glasses of water daily: that it leads to more toxin excretion, improves skin tone, makes one less hungry and reduces headache frequency.

All these had no scientific evidence of benefit, and the closest was the question of affecting appetite where two studies disagreed with each other, and the researchers considered it was worth looking into further.

Of course this all begs one question.

Where did this daily water myth come from?

An excellent review paper in 2002 in the American Journal of Physiology suggested a possible source. Professor Valtin proposed that…

…the notion may have started when the [US] Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately “1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food,” which would amount to roughly two to two-and-a-half quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces). Although in its next sentence, the Board stated “most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods,” that last sentence may have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water one should drink each day.

Myth busted. There is no scientific basis for a recommendation of 8 glasses of water a day.

So what’s my advice?

I say decide for yourself.

[What do you expect on a self help blog, really.]

More specifically, figure out how to know when you are thirsty. The signals for wanting water in are as clear-cut as the ones for wanting water out. We just seem to get better trained on the full bladder than we do on the parched lips.

Then have what ever you feel like; water, other fluids (even caffeinated ones), or foods that have water in them.

If adding a bit more water than that helps you with headaches, skin tone, appetite etc go for it.If it doesn’t then don’t.

-Dr Martin Russell

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Weight Loss Radio Podcast

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The big splash last week about Australia being a gold-medal contender in the Obesity Olympics ain’t true.

The official stats from the OECD that came out at the start of 2008 (as pointed out to me by an observant patient of mine) show the US is 1st, Mexico 2nd, UK 3rd and Greece 4th.

Australia was a measly 5th.

Even if the new study I mentioned in “The Fat Bomb Cometh” found a new figure that is higher for Australia, it still lags behind US and Mexico.

However all is not lost. Australia is catching up. Obesity rates have tripled in the last 20 years, whereas in the US they’ve only doubled.

Seriously, no matter where in the world you are weight and eating are still important issues, and the most popular talk-back radio station in my local town caught up on the idea and one of their presenters, 5AA’s Amanda Blair, invited me in for a chat.

Weight loss. The myths, facts, and what you can really do to make it happen.

Listen in on the podcast here…

http://podcast.fiveaa.com.au/afternoon080620.mp3

-Dr Martin Russell

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The ‘Fat Bomb’ Cometh

Friday, June 20, 2008

In the world Olympic event for obesity, apparently the US has been dethroned.

Turns out in the “Australia’s Future Fat Bomb” Report as splashed across The Age newspaper that Aussies have put in a gold medal winning performance. This report finds that 26% of Australians are obese (BMI >30 ie significantly overweight) just pipping the US at 25%.

And Aussies haven’t even got the same extent of Super-Super-Size me options yet.

Australia, we can do better!

Seriously, if we are to believe the “eat less, exercise more” mantra then this result is a fluke.

In terms of eating Australia seems to still be behind the US in oversized meals, take-away lifestyle, and the plethora of “diet” food alternatives to help us out.

And in exercise terms most of Australia has a much more favorable climate for participating in sport and getting out and being active than much of the US. Not much snow to keep most Australians stuck indoors for a winter.

I even understand that the levels of exercise activity and participation in sport in Australia have slightly increased over the past decade, so the trend is that Aussies should be getting thinner, shouldn’t they?

But no.

When 7 out of 10 middle-aged men, and 6 out of 10 middle aged women are overweight or worse (ie BMI >25) then epidemic is a reasonable word.

So what is really going on?

My suggestion is that the seemingly obvious idea of “eat less, exercise more” idea is actually deeply flawed.

The calories in, calories out model of human bodies is incorrect. We are not machines.

Just take the most obvious example - calories out with exercise.

How much weight do you lose by exercising?

What do gyms tell you? What do “health experts” make you believe? What are you hoping for when you start on an exercise program?

Forget theoretical calorie counting, what’s the reality?

Well fortunately this is an easy piece of scientific research, and the studies have been done many times and the collated results over many good quality studies show a consistent result…

You will lose, on average, 1 kilogram or about 2-3 pounds.

That’s all.

And that’s not per week or per month, that’s forever.

This comes from the most well-reputed body for summarizing medical research, and the studies are consistent all the way from 3 month programs out to a full year…
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003817.html

But there is a slight ray of hope.

If you increase to really vigorous exercise you can make it 1.5 kilograms or almost 4 pounds of weight loss. Yeah, go kill yourself for that extra pound!

Exercise is great for improving fitness, living longer, toning up and improving mood, but it’s yet another disappointment for most people in trying to lose weight.

Once gyms face up to this fact, they will stop having the reputation of churn and burn, and will start realistically informing people of what results to expect. The first gym that seriously does this will remove much of the “buyer’s remorse” in gym memberships, and also build a lasting trust with their clients. It’s a slower dollar, but more repeat business.

That’s just the “calories out” side of the equation.

I have been taking the last couple of months to do free public talks about the “Myths and Facts of Weight Loss”.

Exercise for weight loss is one of the most pervasive myths around, and yet it is one of the easiest to answer in the literature.

If you are current taking advice about your weight, does your health expert know these facts about exercise?

Most either overstate the weight loss you can expect, or they give vague and “it depends” answers. The results however are clear. The “exercise myth” is my test for whether someone is advising based on the research, or based on beliefs.

If you want to know what to do instead of exercise and “eating less”, then follow the 4 habits/rules from this book I reviewed.

If you are in Adelaide and want to be notified of future public talks, events and more, then you can enter your details here…

http://www.drmartinrussell.com/adelaide/

Either way, you’ll be hearing more about this.

-Dr Martin Russell

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What Can We Learn From Computer Nerds?

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

“Would you like me to give you a formula for… success? It’s quite simply, really. Double your rate of failure… You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all… You can be discouraged by failure — or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success. On the far side of failure.”

-Thomas J. Watson
Founder of IBM

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”

-Bill Gates
Founder of Microsoft

-Dr Martin Russell

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Compensation Is Worse Overall

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
“There is sound evidence that people who are injured and seek compensation tend to have worse outcomes than people with the same injury who remain outside of compensation settings.”

This is front page of my local Worker’s Compensation Service newsletter (WorkCover SA Newslink Issue 11 - April 2008.)

They are right - except for the word “seek”.

Some people end up in a compensation system even if they don’t want to be there and don’t seek to be there. I know of no evidence that says they do any better in the system than those who “seek” compensation.

Something about the system itself is so flawed that it actually injures people or worsens injury or prevents the natural course of recovering from an injury.

This is tragic.

This title at the top of the article says, “Improving health outcomes in the compensation sector.”

In my state we are having an entire debate about how much we should be funding a compensation system and what it should be providing for injured workers.

With the statement at the start it seems like they would then go on to say that we should scrap the compensation system entirely, but no.

Later on in the article it says ignores the opening line and says…

“Early notification and connection with the compensation sector are essential for people with compensable injuries, as are appropriate treatment or diagnosis of the injury.”

With the best of intentions in the world, compensation schemes are somehow a flawed system.

I used to treat people under the local compensation system. I now no longer do. It wasn’t until I left the system that I recognized that the experiences I had in treating people and needing to cover a much wider range of issues than just the original injury, were not just about me.

The research literature says that there is something about being in a compensation scheme itself, that makes injuries take longer to recover and recover less completely in the end.

It doesn’t matter whether the system is for workers, or for motor vehicle accidents, nor whether it is a no-fault compensation or not, the results almost always come out worse.

That’s why I took the best of my advice and experience and put it into an “online consultation”.

If you, or someone you know, is considering or already involved in compensation then I have collated all my expertise and advice to help you manage the situation here:

http://www.SelfHelpCompensation.com

-Dr Martin Russell

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Weight Loss Self Help

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

This entire blog is about self help. Weight loss is a key self help area where people often try, and about 80-95% of the time they fail.

But THEY don’t fail. In my opinion the METHODS they are using for weight loss are the failure. They don’t help for most people!

In typing this I am literally at a loss for words to express how vital this video’s message is below.

The entire western world needs to heed this weight loss call, from individuals, to health practitioners and to people in positions of wider influence. If you believe in self help then there is no more vital place to begin than by discovering what Paul McKenna is talking about.

In this promo video the important part is the specific 4 step approach to weight loss. See for yourself…

-Dr Martin Russell

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