Category: COUNSELLING BOOKS

Body, brain and mind in human disturbance

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Blog Post 3 – 25th February 2021

The causes and cures of emotional distress in counselling clients

Authors: Jim Byrne and Renata Taylor-Byrne

Copyright (c) 2021

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brick-man-image2Long before the emergence of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – and its original form was Rational Therapy, which appeared in 1954-ish – there was an appreciation that a human being was a whole body-brain-mind (although this was undermined significantly by Rene Descartes’s ‘cogito, ergo sum’).  The Freudians were frustrated because so much of our “emotional wiring” is below the level of conscious awareness.  They thought they could develop a science for “externalizing the unconscious” – but we believe that the bulk of our non-narrativized experience from childhood onwards is not just “below the level of conscious awareness”, but also “permanently beyond Direct Conscious Inspection”. We can infer it, but we can never know it directly!

(See our book, Models of Mind for Counsellors.***)

Later, the behaviourists argued that because we cannot see inside the “so-called mind”, we should keep our focus upon observable behaviour – and this approach gave rise to a few different forms of behaviour therapy. 

Then, the “cognitive turn” – driven by the development of computer technology, during WWII, plus research by Jean Piaget with children undertaking IQ tests – persuaded some psychologists in America that what goes on inside of the brain-mind is “cognitions” (which Albert Ellis translated into “self-talk” and “irrational beliefs”; and Tim Beck followed up with “Negative Automatic Thoughts”).

Front cover3 of reissued REBT bookAlthough Dr Albert Ellis and Dr Tim Beck argued that our emotional distress is caused by our own thoughts and beliefs, in E-CENT counselling we argue that emotional disturbances are multi-causal phenomena.  Some of the causal factors determining our emotional state include the quality and quantity of our sleep; diet and exercise; gut bacteria; self-talk (or self-story), environmental restimulation of feelings from the past, relaxation, meditation, current relationships, historic relationships, and general environmental stressors, etc.  Here is a brief insight into the gut-brain-emotion axis, from Celeste McGovern:

“Anyone who has ever felt nauseous or lost their appetite because of grief, fear or shock, knows that stress has an impact on the gut.  It has been more than a decade since animal studies began making the correlation between stress and changes in gut microbes.  The connection between stress, depression and anxiety is well established, and dozens of studies are now looking at how these conditions affect bugs in the gut.  The big questions – such as which comes first, the microbe shift or the depression – have yet to be answered. Because it’s a two-way street, though, it looks as if correcting the gut microbiome (or gut bacteria population, variety and balance JWB) could be a new way to treat depression”.  (Footnote: Dinan, T.G. and Cryan, J.F. 2013, Sept; 25(9): Pages 713-719: Melancholic microbes: a link between gut microbiota and depression?  Available online).

Quotation from: Celeste McGovern (2017) Bugs in the system. What Doctors Don’t Tell You, Jan 2017, Pages 28-36).

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Comment: Our way of understanding this new research is this: Food is probably going to prove to be one of the best medicines for emotional distress (all other things being equal – including adequate sleep, stress level, current relationships, historic relationships, regular physical exercise, and so on.  [Holistic. Holistic. Holistic!])  And supplementation with friendly gut bacteria, combined with eating the right kinds of foods will prove to be important.  Big Pharma’s drugs for emotional distress have proved to be a social disaster!

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Front cover, Lifestyle Counselling, 2020Our approach to counselling focuses on the whole person: body-brain-mind-environment. 

We care about your feelings and your difficulties. 

We care about your relationships and goals in life.

We link those concerns to your approach to exercise, relaxation, life balance, and various other factors.  For example, we do not overlook your philosophy of life.

Last year we posted this statement…

“Anybody can read philosophy uncritically, and believe what they read.  But we must develop the ability to critically evaluate what we read.  For example:

– Epictetus (a former Roman slave) wrote (in the Enchiridion) that people are not upset by their experiences of life, but rather by their evaluations of those experiences,

– However, the contrary view was expressed by Epicurus (a Greek philosopher), who taught us that ’the cry of the flesh’ to be free from hunger, cold and thirst, is far louder than our weak, little mental evaluations of hunger, cold and thirst!”

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We continue to develop our ideas about the body-brain-mind of the counselling client, and most of our publications on this subject can be found here, on The ABC Bookstore Online.***

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Jim.Nata.Couples.pg.jpg.w300h245That’s all for now.

Best wishes,

Jim and Renata

Jim Byrne and Renata Taylor-Byrne, practitioners of Emotive-Cognitive Embodied Narrative Therapy (E-CENT)

The Institute for Emotive-Cognitive Embodied Narrative Therapy (E-CENT

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Emotive-cognitive-embodied therapy versus REBT/CBT

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Blog post: 15th June 2020

Distinguishing Emotive-Cognitive Embodied Narrative Therapy (E-CENT) from REBT/CBT

By Dr Jim Byrne

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Preamble

Jim and the Buddha, 2The most fundamental difference between E-CENT theory and REBT/CBT theory is their models of human disturbance.

Albert Ellis, the creator of REBT, and the grandfather of general CBT, rejected the simple Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model of neobehaviourism, and Freud’s It/Ego/Superego, and substituted his own simple ABC model.

The simple SOR model assumed that, every time a stimulus impacted an organism, an adaptive response, based upon prior conditioning, was emitted or produced.  If a person saw something which had previously frightened them, then they would respond with fear. But if the same stimulus had previously angered them, then they would respond with anger.

Human-emotionThe simple ABC model dumped the role of experience, conditioning, and habit formation, and replaced those experiential psychological processes with a single concept: Beliefs! 

I have produced an extensive critique of the ABC model of REBT, in my main book on REBT, which is ‘A Major Critique of REBT’. What follows is a brief extract from Chapter 2 of that book:

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Introduction

The ABC model oversimplifiesLet us now take a look at the ABC model of REBT – which is the core model that not only determines the shape of each intervention by an REBT therapist, but which also structures the entire 45 minutes of time spent with each client.

To repeat what was said above, the ABC model is normally presented like this:

# The ‘A’ stands for an Activating event, or stimulus, which results in some kind of response from an individual.

# The ‘B’ stands for the Belief system of the individual (which includes distinctions to do with whether the individual is:

(a): Being (1) ‘demanding’; versus (2) merely ‘preferring’ something;

(b): Expressing (1) ‘awfulizing’ (which means [in REBT – but not in the Oxford English Dictionary] describing something as totally bad); versus (2) merely saying something is some small degree of badness;

(c): Implying (1) that they ‘cannot stand’ something at all; versus (2) the idea that it is merely difficult to stand it; or:

(d): Engaging in (1) condemning or damning of self, others or the world; versus (2) merely being critical of their own behaviour, the behaviour of others, and/or some features of the world/reality).

# The ‘C’ stands for the Consequent emotions (and/or behaviours) that are assumed to arise out of the interaction of the ‘A’ multiplied by the ‘B’ above.  At least, that is a form of the ABC model, which arose at some point in the evolution of the theory.  This interactional model is expressed by Windy Dryden (1999) like this: “…the C’s (consequences – JB) … follow from irrational beliefs (iB’s – JB) about negative A’s (or negative activating events – JB)…”. (Pages 7-8)[1].

But this is a construction which is honoured more in the breach than in the observance by Albert Ellis (and perhaps many other therapists as well).  Throughout the whole of his career, as illustrated below, Albert Ellis tended to imply that no Activating event (A) could cause a client to feel anything (at point C) – unless they were hit by a brick or a baseball bat.  This is an implicit denial of the strength, power and aversive influence of all activating events (A’s), leaving the B (or irrational beliefs) to largely (or almost exclusively) account for the client’s disturbance.  And the way Ellis normally expresses this construction, when under pressure to adhere to the interactional model, is this: “Although A’s often seem to directly ‘cause’ or contribute to C’s, this is rarely true, because B’s normally serve as important mediators between A’s and C’s, and therefore (the B’s) more directly ‘cause’ or ‘create’ C’s…”[2].  Thus Ellis hangs on to the idea that the client’s beliefs (B) are the real culprit – while seeming to accept the interaction of the A’s and B’s.  For Ellis, it is a sine qua non (or an essential condition) of human disturbance that clients, in fact, disturb themselves! (What a gift he handed to the immoral forces of the world! The exploiters, abusers and oppressors!)

In Ellis’s own words: “When I started to get disillusioned with psychoanalysis I reread philosophy and was reminded of the constructivist notion that Epictetus had proposed 2,000 years ago: ‘People are disturbed not by events that happen to them, but by their view of them’.” (Quoted in Epstein, R. [2001])[3].

Albert Ellis blames the client for upsetsFrom this position, Ellis often takes the view that people upset themselves.  Nobody does it to them.  “How can anybody make you feel anything?” he will demand to know.

But he is not always consistent.  Sometimes he will say it slightly differently, like this:

“People don’t just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness”, which sounds more like the ‘interactional model’ – which says, A (or activating event) multiplied by B (or the person’s belief) equals C (or their consequent emotional response). But then he adds his escape hatch: “They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can’t do.” (Quote from Epstein, 2001).

In other words, although they ‘only contribute’ to their upsetness, about some Activating event; nevertheless, since they have the power to think their way out of their upsetness, they are obviously still upsetting themselves (with their ‘goddamned irrational beliefs’) if they continue to be upset!  QED!

Albert Ellis absolves external pressures from human disturbance

Here is yet another Ellis formulation: “People condition themselves to feel disturbed, rather than being conditioned by external sources.” (Ellis, 1979)[4].  (Remember, in Chapter 1 above, I mentioned that Ellis acknowledged internal and external conditioning.  Now he dumps the external conditioning completely.  Such inconsistencies are a hallmark of Albert Ellis’s reasoning!  He clearly does not have a consistent model of the human brain-mind-environment complexity in his mind, at least not available to his conscious inspection!)

And, finally, here is a summary of Ellis’s view from Corey, (2001):

“…human beings are largely responsible for creating their own emotional reactions and disturbances.  Showing people how they can change their irrational beliefs that directly ‘cause’ their disturbed emotional consequences is the heart of REBT (Ellis, 1998[5], 1999[6]; Ellis and Dryden, 1997[7]; Ellis, Gordon, Neenan and Palmer, 1997[8]; Ellis and Harper, 1997[9])”.  (From Corey, 2001, page 300)[10].

Albert Ellis's false view of human disturbance

As I will demonstrate below, Albert Ellis has created a completely false view of human perceiving-feeling-thinking processes, by substituting an extreme Stoical philosophical proposition (which is false to facts) for any and all modern psychologies (with the possible exception of Adlerian therapy, which claims that our emotional reactions and lifestyle are ‘cognitively created’. See Corey, 2001, page 298).

This view (from Ellis and Epictetus) contradicts the modern neuroscience and interpersonal neuropsychology perspectives, which show emotion as innate, and underpinning all emotive-cognitive processes. (Siegel 2015; Panksepp, 1998; Hill 2015).

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For more of my critique of REBT, please see:

  1. A Major Critique of REBT: Revealing the many errors in the foundations of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

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  1. Discounting Our Bodies: A brief, critical review of REBT’s flaws. (If you want to know the essence of our critique of REBT, but you don’t want to have to read 500+ pages, then this 150 page summary should appeal to you).

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  1. The Amoralism of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT): The mishandling of self-acceptance and unfairness issues by Albert Ellis

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  1. Albert Ellis and the Unhappy Golfer: A critique of the simplistic ABC model of REBT

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A more comprehensive model of human disturbance

By contrast with the simplistic ABC model of REBT/CBT, we in E-CENT counselling theory have created a much more realistic, Holistic Stimulus-Organism-Response model.

The first step in creating this model involved “adding back the body” to our models of human disturbance.  In the ABC model of REBT/CBT, there is no body.  A person is just “a belief-machine”.

But in reality, our emotions are housed in our physical bodies/ brains/ minds; and socialized into our bodies/ brains/ minds.

Over time, I refined this body-brain-mind model of human disturbance, and this is how I wrote about it in our book on Lifestyle Counselling and Coaching for the Whole Person:

8.3(b): Elucidation

The elucidation stage of E-CENT counsellingThere are a number of models that I use for the purpose of elucidating the client’s concerns, dilemmas, goals, etc.

Chief among them is our own holistic version of the Stimulus-Organism-Response (or Holistic-SOR) model.

The original SOR model (created by the neo-behaviourists) suggested that, when an animal (or human) notices a stimulus (S), it outputs a response (R), because of the way the organism (O) processes the stimulus.

Figure 8.1: The classic S>O>R model:

the simple SOR model

That original SOR model of neo-behaviourism was dumped by Dr Albert Ellis, the creator of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), and replaced by the simple ABC model, in which the client is assumed to be always and only upset because of their ‘irrational beliefs’.  (And Freud’s ‘ABCs’ were no better, in that he implied that when something happens [let’s call it an ‘A’, or activating event], the client responds with their own phantasy [let’s call it a ‘B’, or belief], which upsets them [at point C – consequence]: though Freud did not use that ‘ABC’ lettering system)

Aaron Tim Beck (despite being a medical doctor, and theoretically aware of the importance of the human body) also adopted this simple ABC model. (Beck 1976).

So one of the main contributions of E-CENT counselling has been ‘adding back the body’ to the client; and accepting that the client’s body-mind-environment-whole is implicated in all of their emotional and behavioural states.

In the process we developed a more holistic version of the Stimulus-Organism- Response model. (See Figure 8.2 below)

In the simple, classical SOR model, an incoming stimulus (S) – (which is a sensed experience) – impacts upon the nervous system of the organism (O) – (or person, in our case) – causing a reactive response (R) to be outputted (or generated), to cope with the stimulus (or incoming experience).

In the early stages of our explorations, after looking at Freud and Ellis – on the ABC model and the Experience-Phantasy-Neurosis model – we turned our attention to the Parent-Adult-Child (PAC) model of TA, plus this simple, classic SOR model.

But then we began to ask ourselves what factors are most likely to affect the capacity for a human organism to be able to handle difficult incoming stimuli, or activating events.  We came up with an extensive list, which includes:

Diet: (meaning balanced, healthy, or otherwise).  (Does the individual/ organism have enough blood-glucose to be able to process the incoming stimulus, physically and mentally?)

Exercise: (meaning regular physical exercise designed to reduce stress, versus a sedentary lifestyle)[11]

Self-talk, scripts, frames and schemas: (Including conscious and/or non-conscious stories and narratives/ thinking-feeling states/ self-signalling/ attitudinizing / framing, etc.  Plus other culturally shaped beliefs and attitudes, expectations, prophesies, etc.  Plus non-narrativized experiences stored in the form of schemas and frames, etc.)

Relaxation: (or release from muscle tension and anxiety, versus tension and anxiety);

Family history: (including attachment styles [secure or insecure]; childhood trauma; and personality adaptations, etc.);

Emotional needs: (including deficits and/or satisfactions);

Character and temperament: (as in Myers-Briggs or Keirsey-Bates)[12];

Environmental stressors: (including home environment, work situation, economic circumstances, and so on);

Sleep pattern; and the balance between work, rest and play.

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By keeping our focus on the fact that the client is a complex, socialized body-brain-mind; steeped in storied- (or narrativized-) experiences (plus non-storied experiences) of concrete experiences in a concrete world; and living in a complex relationship to an external social environment – which is often hostile and unsupportive, resulting in stress-induced over-arousal of the entire body-brain-mind – we never fall into the trap of foolishly asking the client: “What do you think you are telling yourself in order to cause your own problem?” 

And we do not foolishly tell the client that the thoughts which (in reality, very often) follow on from their emotional experiences are causing those emotional experiences!

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We focus on the client’s story and the client’s physical existence, both with roughly equal, but variable, emphasis.  Sometimes the story needs most attention, and sometimes the state of the body-brain-mind, in terms of diet, exercise, etc., is more important.

Traditional medical doctors were guilty of separating the body from the mind, and trying to treat the body as a ‘faulty machine’ – which was in line with Newtonian mechanics of the nineteenth century, which lasted well into the twentieth century and beyond.

Sigmund Freud, as a trained neurologist and MD, came out of that tradition and began the process of moving towards some kind of appreciation of the mind.

However, many generations of counsellors and psychotherapists have gone too far in this direction, and forgot all about the body.

Some modern medical doctors are beginning to realize their original error.

Here’s how Dr Ron Anderson, Chairman of the Board of the Texas Department of Health, describes his aim for all the doctors he influences:

 

“I try to have people understand wholeness if I can, because if you don’t understand the mind/body connection, you start off on the wrong premise. 

You also have to understand the person within their family and community because this is where people live”.[13] 

 

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Using the Holistic SOR model

Figure 8.2 below shows how we present the holistic SOR model for our clients.

Holistic-SOR-Model

Figure 8.2: The E-CENT holistic SOR model

As indicated in Figure 8.2, E-CENT theory takes a holistic view of the client as a social-body-mind, with a habit-based character and temperament, living in a particular social and physical environment, with stressors and supports.

The client has a personal history which is unique to them; plus some social shaping that extends to their family, and some to their community; some to their nation/ race/ gender, etc.

This illustration should be read as follows: Column 1 – ‘S’ = (or equals) a stimulus, which, when experienced by an O = Organism (in our case a human), may activate or interact with any of the factors listed in column 2; and this will produce an R = Response, as shown in column 3.

To be more precise: The holistic SOR model states that a client (a person) responds at point ‘R’, to a (negative or positive) stimulus at point ‘S’, on the basis of the current state of their social-body-mind.

How well rested are they?

How high or low is their blood-sugar level (which is related to diet)?

How well connected are they to significant others (which is a measure of social support)?

How much conflict do they have at home or at work?

What other pressures are bearing down upon them (e.g. from their socio-economic circumstances; physical health; home/ housing; work/ income; security/ insecurity; etc.)

And how emotionally intelligent are they? (Emotional intelligence is, of course, learned, and can be re-learned!)

Within the Holistic-SOR model (in Figure 8.2 above), in the middle column, what we are aiming to do is to construct a balance sheet (in our heads) of the pressures bearing down on the client (person), and the coping resources that they have for dealing with those pressures.

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So this is a historical-social-stress model. It is not a purely ‘cognitive distortion’ model; nor a purely ‘biological/ sexual urges’ model; nor a purely ‘prizing and listening’ model.

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For more insights into this whole body-brain-mind approach to emotive-cognitive- embodied therapy, please take a look at the page of information about Lifestyle Counselling and Coaching for the whole Person.***

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That’s all for now.

Best wishes.

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Doctor of Counselling

Fellow of the International Society of Professional Counsellors (FISPC)

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

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The Institute for E-CENT Counselling

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ABC Bookstore Online

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Endnotes

[1] Dryden, W. (1999) Rational Emotive Behavioural Counselling in Action.  Second edition.  London: Sage Publications.

[2] Ellis, A. and Dryden, W. (1999) The Practice of REBT.  Second edition.  London: Free Association Books. Page 9.

[3] Epstein, R. (2001) The Prince of Reason: An interview with Albert Ellis, developer of rational emotive behaviour therapy. Online blog article and interview. Psychology Today online blog article https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200101/the-prince-reason

[4] Ellis, A. (1979). Rejoinder: Elegant and inelegant RET. In A. Ellis & J.M. Whiteley (eds.). Theoretical and empirical foundations of rational-emotive therapy (pp. 240–271). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

[5] Ellis, A. (1998) How to Control your Anxiety before it Controls You.  Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group.

[6] Ellis, A. (1999) How to make yourself happy and remarkably less disturbable.  San Luis Obispo, CA: Impact.

[7] Ellis, A. and Dryden, W. (1997) The Practice of Rational Emotive Therapy (Revised edition).  New York: Springer.

[8] Ellis, A., Gordon, J., Neenan, M., and Palmer, S. (1997) Stress Counselling.  London: Cassell.

[9] Ellis, A. and Harper, R. (1997) A Guide to Rational Living.  Third Edition. Hollywood, CA: Wilshire.

[10] Corey, G. (2001) Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Sixth Edition.  Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

[11] The British National Health Service (NHS) supports the view that exercise is good for mood disorders, like anxiety and depression.  Here’s their comment specifically on depression:

“Exercise for depression

“Being depressed can leave you feeling low in energy, which might put you off being more active.

“Regular exercise can boost your mood if you have depression, and it’s especially useful for people with mild to moderate depression.

‘Any type of exercise is useful, as long as it suits you and you do enough of it,’ says Dr Alan Cohen, a GP with a special interest in mental health. ‘Exercise should be something you enjoy; otherwise, it will be hard to find the motivation to do it regularly.’

“How often do you need to exercise?

“To stay healthy, adults should do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity every week.”  In E-CENT we recommend 30 minutes of brisk walking every day, minimum. Source:   http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/pages/ exercise- for- depression.aspx) Accessed: 23rd February 2016.

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[12] Keirsey, D. and Bates, M. (1984) Please Understand Me: Character and temperament types. Fifth edition. Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis Book Company.

[13] ‘The healing environment’: An interview with Dr Ron Anderson, in Bill Moyers’ (1995) book: Healing and The Mind.  New York: Doubleday. Page 25.

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The amazing power of well-managed sleep to cure insomnia

Renata’s Blog Post

30th April 2020

Copyright © Renata Taylor-Byrne 2020

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Do you want to feel better tomorrow morning, at no cost?

The amazing power of well-managed sleep to transform your life

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By Renata Taylor-Byrne, Lifestyle Coach-Counsellor

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Full cover JPEG, 21 April 2019

Introduction

Sleep has a huge impact on your life, in ways you may not even notice!

Let me illustrate that claim for you with a quote from an outstanding sleep scientist:

“You may find it surprising to learn that vehicle accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined. Drowsy driving is worse than driving drunk.

“This may seem like a controversial or irresponsible thing to say, and I do not wish to trivialise the lamentable act of drunk driving by any means. Yet my statement is true for the following simple reason: drunk drivers are often late in breaking (applying their brakes!) and late in making evasive manoeuvres.

“But when you fall asleep, or have a microsleep (which means momentary unconsciousness), you stop reacting altogether.

“A person who experiences a microsleep, or who has fallen asleep at the wheel. does not brake at all, nor do they make any attempt to avoid an accident”.

 (Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep, 2017) [2]

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Front cover, sleep book, Feb 2019Matthew Walker is an expert in sleep science and has strong opinions about the necessity for sufficient sleep before people set out driving.  His reason is the insight that many people sometimes fall asleep for a couple of moments whilst driving, if they are sleep deprived.  These are called ‘micro-sleeps’.

If you are a driver: Have you ever been aware of having a micro-sleep whilst driving – that means a split-second break in concentration (because you are unconscious!)? If so, you may recall that this happened because you were tired and your eyelids closed or half-shut for a few seconds.

What are the known, measured implications of these kinds of micro-sleeps?

Walker gives the example of micro-sleeping while driving at 30 miles an hour:

This is the bottom line:

“A two second microsleep at 30 mph with a modest angle of drift can result in your vehicle transitioning entirely from one lane to the next. This includes into oncoming traffic. Should you do it at 60 mph, it may be the last microsleep you ever have”. (Page 134)

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Sleep education

Were you taught the importance of getting enough sleep when you were a child; at home or in school? Maybe teachers can’t cover everything, but what about doctors?  Have you ever been coached by your GP regarding the importance of sleep, and how it might be affecting your physical health or emotional well-being?

Dr Chris Winter (2017)[1] writes about one researcher, Raymond Rosen, who discovered that, in the four years of medical training given to trainee doctors (in America), most of them had received less than 2 hours of training in sleep science.

Full cover JPEG, 21 April 2019It seems there is a woeful lack of information available to the general public about the importance of sleep. It was not until 2000 that a major book on sleep science was published, and became somewhat popular (with the Book of the Month Club), thus making detailed knowledge from the basic science of sleep relatively widely available, perhaps for the first time.  (There have been earlier books on sleep science, but not so widely available).

This allowed readers to become aware of what happens to their bodies and minds if they don’t get enough sleep.

We now know, as a matter of scientific fact, that insufficient sleep can cause a range of physical and mental health problems; not the least of which is that it reduces your emotional intelligence, which seriously impacts your relationships and life chances.  (And there is a definite link to dementia!)

My learning journey

Nata-Lifestyle-coach8I was so affected by the contents of Walker’s book that I set out to study the major sources of information on the subject of sleep science.

I began by reviewing a dozen books on the subject, including the following authors:  Matthew Walker, William Dement [3], Nick Littlehales [4], Arianna Huffington [5], and several others.

I then set out to summarize the essence of those books, in an accessible form.  And in the process, I had to consult a total of 108 sources, including books, journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles, and website blogs.

The results were published in my own book – ‘Safeguard your sleep and reap the rewards: Better health, happiness and resilience’ – last year.

Some of the contents of my book include:

– Explaining our inborn sleep patterns (and how this varies depending on our age);

– the different types of sleep and the importance of dream sleep;

– why sleep deprivation is so bad for our health;

– what is insomnia; and strategies to overcome it;

– how our anger levels and emotional intelligence are dependent on sufficient sleep;

– the link between lack of sleep and impaired fertility;

– sleep’s importance in learning and memory;

– physical and mental strategies for improving your sleep;

– and creating a sleep-enhancing bedroom environment.

Social pressure and employment demands can work against getting sufficient sleep, and so several strategies to manage this effectively are described.

Your sleep needs

Sleep-Habit-calloutIf you know you have problems getting to sleep, or staying asleep; or getting the kind of sleep which restores you, so you awake feeling refreshed, then this book is for you.

If you want to improve your sleep quantity and quality, you need to be able to stick to your commitment to change your sleep habits, and assertively alter them in the face of possible pressure from others.

As Dr Phil says, “This is when the rubber hits the road”. And so I have included a chapter on changing your sleep habits; as well as a chapter on how to cure insomnia!

Also, by way of a summary, there are eight key learning points about the ways in which lack of sleep can harm you, and the six crucial ways to protect your sleep are described.

Here is what the book gives you:  In summarized form, the most recent research findings about the crucial need for sleep, with full explanations of how to restore your sleep so that you get maximum nourishment and rest!

The main sleep destroyers are described and ways of protecting your sleep are examined.

If you follow the strategies in this book you will, firstly, experience deeper, more therapeutic sleep; and will be able to face the world with resilience and vitality each day.

Secondly, your knowledge of the fundamental importance of protecting your sleep will make you strong in the face of pressure, from outside forces, to neglect it.

Thirdly your health will improve, and your immune system will be strengthened.

Helping children to sleep

Sleeping-pairIf you are a parent: You also need to think about your children’s sleep, because there is overwhelming evidence that lack of sleep, and anxiety and depression, in children, go hand in hand. Lack of sleep also affects their memory, blood sugar balance, likelihood of obesity, the functioning of their immune system, emotional intelligence, etc.

You are the major role model for your children, including your approach to sleep. Do you remember how much your parents influenced you? That’s the advantage that you have with your children – you are there every day of the week. And they will copy exactly what you do in relation to sleep.

In my book I explain the sleep needs of children and teenagers, which are not widely understood.  If you want to be able to support your children in getting the right amount of sleep, then you need to know the facts.

For more information…

You can get more information about the content of my book here: ‘Safeguard your sleep and reap the rewards: Better health, happiness and resilience’.

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That’s all for now.

Best wishes, and sound sleep!

Renata

E-CENT logo 1 red lineRenata Taylor-Byrne

Lifestyle Coach-Counsellor

The Coaching/Counselling Division

Email: renata@abc-counselling.org

Telephone: 01422 843 629

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[1] Winter, C. (2017) The Sleep Solution: Why your sleep is broken and how to fix it. Melbourne: Scribe Publications.

[2} Walker, M. (2017) Why We Sleep. London: Allen Lane.

[3] Dement, W.C. (2000) The Promise of Sleep. New York: Random House, Inc.

[4] Littlehales, N. (2016) Sleep: The myth of 8 hours, the power of naps, and the new plan to recharge body and mind. London: Penguin, Random House.

[5] Huffington, A. (2016) The Sleep Revolution: transforming your life one night at a time. London: Penguin, Random House, UK.

Can counsellors become truly holistic and polymathic?

Dr Jim’s Blog Post

22nd April 2020

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Can counsellors become truly holistic – truly polymathic – or are they permanently stuck in the ruts created by Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers?  

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Introduction

Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, by Bern Schwartz - NPG P1256In 1959, Charles Percy Snow declared that there was a serious gulf of incomprehension between scientists and humanists; and this has only got worse over the years. On January 11th, 2020, writing in The Lancet – Correspondence section – Michael Araki declared that, “We have been in the age of the two cultures for too long – the losses, as Snow foreshadowed 60 years ago, are taking their toll. To face today’s daunting problems, our institutions must go beyond their old, crippling strategies, and design novel structures that leverage the power of polymathy. By allowing polymathic thinking to flourish, society will be in a much better position to reach the innovation required to tackle our most pressing challenges”. (Page 114).

CAuses of emotional disturbanceAnd the problems that I am most concerned with have to do with the fact that, while economic policy and environmental stresses and strains (as well as lifestyle factors) affect mental health, happiness and emotional well-being, most counsellors and psychotherapists are still ignoring those aspects of their client’s situation; and focussing on such narrow issues as: “What are you telling yourself?” and “How did your mother treat you?” – to the exclusion of diet, exercise, sleep, relaxation, housing conditions, economic circumstances, current relationships, personality adaptations, and a whole host of stressors coming from growing inequality and insecurity of employment.

Some of those factors are beyond the control of the counsellor and the client; but the lifestyle factors can, to at least some extent, be brought under the control of the client, if the counsellor would only address their importance.

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Adding back the body to the disembodied mind

Body-mindsAs early as 1948, Merleau-Ponty was drawing attention to the disastrous way in which the followers of Descartes (rather than Descartes himself) had misled us into dumping the body, and focusing exclusively on the mind (as if it was not a function of a body-brain, linked to an inescapable space-time environment).

This is what he wrote on that subject:

“We are once more learning to see the world around us, the same world which had turned away from in the conviction that our senses had nothing worthwhile to tell us, sure as we were that only strictly objective knowledge was worth holding onto.  We are rediscovering our interest in the space in which we are situated. Though we see it only from a limited perspective – our perspective – this space is nevertheless where we reside and we relate to it through our bodies”. (Page 53, The World of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1948; republished in London in 2008 by Routledge.

But there is very little evidence today that most counsellors and therapists have discovered “an interest in the space in which we are situated”. (Gestalt therapists are the obvious exception!)

The frequently overlooked fact is this: We relate to the world in which we live, through our bodies; or, as we say in E-CENT; we relate to our social and physical environment through our body-brain-mind (as sustained or undermined by our diet, exercise, sleep, self-talk, relaxation, and our historic and current relationships; the state of the economy and society in which we live; and so on).

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Emotions are embodied realities, with positive functions

We have, yesterday, released our latest book, which is built upon our comprehensive, polymathic approach to human biology and culture.  The subject is how to control your anxiety; but it is a far cry from the trite ‘ABC’s of anxiety’ promoted by the CBT/REBT community.  Here is how we announced it:

Foreword

By Dr Jim Byrne

Preamble

Front cover 2Many people live lives which are tied up in knots of worry, anxiety, fear, apprehension and dread.  They can hardly remember what it was like to feel relaxed, happy and at ease.  This book will teach you how to cut through these kinds of emotional knots, from various angles, one at a time, to produce a state of greatly improved relaxation and ease.

This book will show you how to tackle one thing at a time; one aspect of your anxiety problem(s) at a time; so you do not become overloaded or overwhelmed.

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We have all heard of a ‘Gordian knot’, which is a very difficult or intractable problem.  Many of our problems consist of getting ourselves tied up in knots, trying to avoid the unavoidable difficulties of life.  We also tend to tie ourselves in knots trying to avoid the necessity to take responsibility for our own lives. And we weave some knotty, tangled webs when we fail to be scrupulously honest with ourselves.  (But, of course, our early childhood, which is normally something of a nightmare, tends to throw us into a tangle of knots, which are not of our own making!)

And all of this tangling and knotting goes on as we sleepwalk through our lives.  The important thing is to wake up, and to address the knots in our emotions, and to begin to untangle them, one by one.

Most people would agree that anxiety is a state of feeling fear, fright, alarm, or intense worry[1].  It is an intense emotion, which pains us in a way which is comparable to a physical pain.  It is not easy to ignore or brush off.  It can tighten our breathing, and make us tremble and become clammy. We often feel we are out of control, and in great danger.

Get your paperback copy today, from one of the following Amazon outlets:

Amazon US and worldwide Amazon UK and Ireland
   
Amazon Canada Amazon France
   
Amazon Germany Amazon Italy
   
Amazon Spain Amazon Japan
   

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Or you can buy a Kindle eBook version of this book from one of the following Amazon outlets:

Amazon.com, US+ Amazon UK + Ireland Amazon Germany
 
Amazon Spain Amazon Italy Amazon Nether-lands
 
Amazon Japan Amazon Brazil Amazon Canada
 
Amazon Mexico Amazon Australia Amazon India

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We go on to elaborate as follows:

Anxiety is not a disease; not a mental illness. Anxiety – at its best – is part of our normal, innate, mental signalling system which tells us what is happening to us, and what to do about it.  That is to say, it is part of our emotional wiring. Our emotional intelligence.  (For an official definition of anxiety, please see this endnote)[2]. But – at its worst – anxiety, in the body-brain-mind of an individual human being, often proves to be a complex knot of non-conscious self-mismanagement!

Jim.Nata.Couples.pg.jpg.w300h245

Trying to get rid of anxiety with drugs is like hanging two overcoats and a duvet over your burglar alarm bell when it goes off.  The burglar alarm is designed to give you helpful information, which you can then use to guide your action. Should you check to see if a burglar has got into your house? Or call the police? Or realize that you’ve mismanaged your alarm system, producing a false alarm, and that you should therefore switch it off?

Getting rid of the alarm signal, by dampening it down, defeats the whole object of having it in the first place!

Once you understand anxiety correctly, it becomes as useful as a burglar alarm; and you can learn how to manage it correctly.  (It’s just the exaggerated knotting of strands of anxiety, worry and stress that you need to cut through!)

When you buy a burglar alarm, it comes with a little Instruction Book about how to set it; calibrate it; monitor it; reset it; and switch it on and off.

cropped-e-cent-logo-1-red-lineYou should have got just such an Instruction Book about your anxiety alarm, from your parents, when you were very young – and some people did.  But if your alarm goes off at all times of day and night, in unhelpful ways, then I guess you were one of the unlucky ones who did not get your Instruction Book.  This current book contains your Instruction Book, plus lots of other backup information, which will help to make you the master of your anxiety, instead of its quaking slave.

Don’t let your burglar alarm make your life a misery. Learn how to use it properly!  (Learn how to cut the inappropriately alarming connections that do not serve you well).

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You can read some more on this subject here: https://abc-bookstore.com/how-to-reduce-and-control-your-anxiety/

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Jim and the Buddha, 2That’s all for now.

Sincere best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Joint Director, the Institute for E-CENT

Joint Director, the ABC Bookstore Online UK.

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Lifestyle self-management: Diet, exercise, sleep

E-CENT Blog Post

14th September 2018

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 2018

Dr Jim’s Blog: Mental health is not just about childhood experiences;

Or about current stressors; or badly managed thoughts…

Mental health is related to diet and nutrition, inner dialogue, physical exercise, re-framing of experience, and sleep science…

Introduction

Revised-front-coverIn science as well as popular culture, the body and mind have long been pulled apart, and treated as separate entities.  And when they are treated as being connected – as in the modern psychiatric theory of ‘brain chemistry imbalances’ causing negative moods and emotions, the ‘brain chemistry’ in question is taken to be unrelated to how you use your body; what you eat; how well you sleep.  It is assumed to be ‘special brain chemistry’ – separate and apart from Lifestyle Factors – which can only be fixed by consuming dangerous drugs!

If you are interested in the impact of lifestyle practices on mental health and emotional states, then you will enjoy our page of information about how all of the ideas above are presented in our book about Lifestyle Counselling.  We see this as the core of most holistic healing practices of the future.

The way ahead

Body-brain-mindIn the immediate future, lifestyle counselling practice will be a novel service offering for counselling and psychotherapy clients who have realized that:

# the body and mind are intimately connected;

# that the body-mind is an open system, permeated by a whole range of lifestyle factors which can be managed well, or mismanaged,

# which results in excellent or poor mental health, physical health, and personal happiness.

In the pages of our popular book on lifestyle counselling, we have presented:

– a summary of our previous book about the impact of diet and exercise on mental health and emotional well-being;

– a chapter which integrates psychological theories of emotion with physical sources of distress – for the emotions of anger, anxiety and depression – and recommends treatment strategies;

– a chapter on the negative effects of sleep insufficiency on our thinking, feeling and behaviour;

– a chapter on how to re-frame any problem, using our Six Windows Model (which includes some perspectives from moderate Buddhism and moderate Stoicism) – but excludes the extreme forms of those philosophies of life!);

The SOR Model, Fig 1

  • a chapter on how to divine and assess the counselling client’s multiple sources of emotional disturbance, using our Holistic-SOR Model;

– and a chapter on how to set about teaching lifestyle change to counselling and therapy clients.

For a page of information about this book’s contents, including extracts, and the contents pages and index pages, please click the following link: *Lifestyle Counselling and Coaching for the Whole Person… by Jim Byrne***

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That’s all for now.

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

E-CENT Institute

Email: dr.byrne@ecent-institute.org

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