by Rachael Chatham | Dec 26, 2013 | Good Reads, Therapeutic Services
The New Year represents new beginnings, a fresh start, a chance to get closer to the person you would like to be, the life you want to be living. Setting aside bad habits, letting go of crutches that you may have outgrown or no longer need and patterns that are no longer serving you can be both empowering and challenging. Ultimately, we all want to feel better about our bodies, minds, capabilities, or station in life, but how do we implement our ideas of being more fit, well educated, healthier, or more financially secure?
According to the blogpost Hacking Habits: How To Make New Behaviors Last For Good by Jocelyn K. Glei on www.99u.com , there is a very specific protocol for changing behavior. Through modifying habit loops, which include the 3 steps ‘cue, routine, and reward,’ we are able to set ourselves up for success in our new endeavors.
If you want to get rid of a bad habit, you have to find out how to implement a healthier routine to yield the same reward. – Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
If you are seeking to create life changes this new year and would the support of a Licensed Professional Counselor, contact me to set up an appointment. It would be my honor to help you to create and maintain positive change in your life!
by Rachael Chatham | Sep 10, 2013 | Good Reads
I just read (and loved) Leah Sottile’s Finding Happiness in Angry Music, featured in The Atlantic. I related to Sotille as she described her experience of rocking out to heavy metal as (strangely) soothing, and cited how heavy metal enabled her to express and process some of her ‘negative’ emotions, namely, anger, in a way that little else allows for. Heavy metal for some, hardcore punk, gangsta rap and other forms of more aggressive music for others, allows people to “actively engage with anger in a controlled, safe, temporary way.”
In her article, Sotille cites a study done by Maya Tamir and Brett Ford at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in which individuals are asked to perform certain roles and get to choose from three different types of music prior to their role-play. Tamir found that the people who chose to be pissed off actually showed a greater sense of well-being overall than the people who avoided feelings of unpleasantness.
“Music is often used as a way to manipulate emotions… emotions are something that we humans know how to use strategically, and avoiding the bad ones and always seeking the happier ones won’t really get us anywhere” says Tamir.
*What do you listen to when you need to let out some rage?
Read the full article:
