Physical Exercise Is a Surefire Way to De-Stress

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

We have always considered exercise as a very important factor in developing the ability to keep stress from taking you down. Here are some reasons:

  • Exercise, especially challenging exercise, can take our minds away from painful experiences. It also stimulates the release of chemicals that calm us. Three especially notable chemical changes are
    1. Increased secretion of endorphins, the body’s natural version of opiates.
    2. Increased secretion of endocannabinoids, which are natural, healthy soothers related to the active substance in marijuana.
    3. If the exercise is increased gradually to improve fitness, it produces a decrease in blood lactate. High lactate levels encourage anxiety. Activity of untrained muscles results in increases in blood lactate levels and can even produce acute anxiety attacks. Fitness of the muscles counteracts this increase in lactate.

Continue reading →

Posted in General Resilience Topic | Leave a comment

Research Shows that Loneliness is Toxic, but What Can We Do About It?

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

Loneliness can be toxic, and even lethal.  Among other things, it can shorten your life, and make it more likely you will suffer from our leading killers, cardiovascular diseases.

Most of us are lonely at times, but it gets risky when loneliness hangs on for a long time, when it is “chronic”.

Common sense would seem to tell us that social support is an antidote to loneliness, but life isn’t that simple. A LOT of research shows that we can live healthier and longer lives with the support of others, but it also shows that mere lists of how many sources of support we have are not good at predicting our health or how long we live.  How we think about our lives and ourselves as well as how we view and mentally process the attempts of others to support us is crucial. Continue reading →

Posted in General Resilience Topic | Leave a comment

Self-Understanding, Self-Expression, with a Little Help From Your Friends.

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

So far, we haven’t given much attention to the third and final factor we identified in our research on the determinants of resilience. That factor has two components:

  1. Attending to your feelings about distressing experiences to understand them, and
  2. Expressing them in a way that makes you feel better, without alienating others.

This factor comes to mind because, in the last few posts, we have been discussing the importance of support from others. Social support is not the same as our third factor, but the two influences are clearly interconnected.

One of the best ways to understand how you feel about something that is distressing is to talk about it to trusted people and especially to express how it has made you feel.

Continue reading →

Posted in General Resilience Topic | Leave a comment

When Life Becomes a Tsunami of Stress

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

One test of the usefulness of our program and techniques is whether we really practice what we preach. We are not perfect models of what we believe in, nor are we people of super-resilience. I think in an earlier post I acknowledged that my life was far from handing me a cornucopia of resilience skills, and I think I am safe in saying that would also be true for Debbie.

Nevertheless, there were things in our early experiences that helped us develop a fighting spirit and a sense that we can improve by learning what we need to do and doggedly putting what we learned into practice.

For some months we have been dealing with extremely stressful situations. I cannot be explicit about them because that would violate the privacy of others, including others that we care deeply about. I think it’s okay if I say that it involves the approaching death of someone who has been important part of our lives. This is aggravated by dementia of a beloved member of our family, and intense pressure put on even the tiniest of fractures between members of the extended family.

So what has helped us to deal with these things?

Continue reading →

Posted in Adversity and Resilience, Attitudes of Resilience, Benefits of Resilience, Deep Relaxation, Effective Communication, Exercise, Expressing Feelings, Physical Contact, Self-Soothing | Leave a comment

The Love and Support You Get From Others Enhances Your Health and Well-Being.

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

So far our posts have emphasized building your inner resilience. In particular, we have emphasized cultivating positive attitudes, practicing skills that help you minimize your stress reactions, and, learning to be compassionate with yourself. All of these are things you can do by yourself.

But resilience is not all inside you; you are not an island. The people you are connected to are centrally important to your resilience. There is much scientific evidence that your health and well-being are strongly influenced by the people who are linked to you.

A recent example came to our attention and triggered this post. It showed clearly that better work performance and success depended on whether people had strong emotional support at home.

Continue reading →

Posted in Effective Communication, General Resilience Topic, Resilience Skills | Leave a comment

Depressed, Anxious, Being Hard on Yourself? New Insights about the Value of Learning to Be both Self-Compassionate and Self-Soothing.

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

Most of us are aware that we have an inner critic that can make it hard to enjoy life, and, in the more severe instances, induce such things as anxiety and depression.

We have written several posts about the inner critic and how to deal with it through changing your inner self-talk.

We have also encouraged the use of mindfulness meditation. With mindfulness we observe the flow of our experiences with compassion and acceptance, the opposite of self-criticism.

This post is about an important new insight into what it may take to stop unhelpful self-criticism. It involves learning to be compassionate toward the inner critic, which is, after all, an aspect of ourselves. This means to understand that the self-criticism is something you learned in order to adapt to the environment in which you grew up.

In addition we must also learn ways to sooth ourselves.

Continue reading →

Posted in Avoiding Self-Criticism, Deep Relaxation, General Resilience Topic, Mindfulness, Physical Contact, Self-Compassion, Self-Soothing | Leave a comment

For Those Who Have to Struggle With Distress Just to Reach a “Normal” Life.

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

Someone wrote to us and asked, “what about those of us who have to struggle just to live a normal life?” Recently, Debbie and I discussed this question at length. Have we given the impression that we are only addressing people who want to go from good to great? Neither of us intended anything like that.

Improving resilience is valuable for people who are trying to go from good to great, but also for those who are struggling to barely stay above water. Neither your starting point nor how high you are aiming will exclude you from benefits of learning effective strategies to enhance your resilience.

Continue reading →

Posted in Adversity and Resilience, Resilience as Positive Psychology | Leave a comment

Does Our DNA Have Final Say Over Our Reactions to Stress?

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

When people ask whether resilience is genetic, I tend to suspect they are asking whether they can reasonably hope to improve how they act to stress. I worry that they will give up without a fight because they believe they are forever closed in a prison of misery by the chemical code of their genes.

Is the way we react inborn? Is it unchangeable? Continue reading →

Posted in General Resilience Topic, How Hard Is It To Change Resilience? | Leave a comment

From Negative Thinking and Self-Criticism to Positive Thinking and Self-Compassion

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Jerry Sheridan

In this post we provide some guidance on how to deal with your inner critic. Being self-critical rather than being compassionate toward yourself is the second greatest component of resilience. Yet most people suffer from the persistent though often questionable claims of their “inner critic”.

This video exposes the inner critic at work.

When I first heard the criticisms in this animation, I was almost overwhelmed by them. It took a while for me to see how to fight back against them. It is one thing to hear the words, but the emotional tone greatly intensifies their power.

Lest you think this is an unrealistic portrayal of self-criticism, here are things Major League pitchers used to describe themselves: “idiot,” “loser,” “dummy,” “gutless,” and “I stink,” “I can’t,” “I don’t have it,” and “I’m clueless.” Keep in mind that major league pitchers are a VERY highly selected for their outstanding talent and performance.

Obviously, it is demoralizing to have statements like these hurled at you, even though you are the person who hurls them.

The legendary Rabbi Hillel said “”If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Almost anyone can see this is wisdom in its clearest form. Yet, so many of us are not “for ourselves”.

What can we do about this?

Continue reading →

Posted in Attitudes of Resilience, Avoiding Self-Criticism, General Resilience Topic, Resilience Skills, Resilience Training, Self-Compassion, Self-Soothing | Leave a comment

Don’t Let Overwhelming Distress Take You Down.

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Jerry Sheridan

When one distressing thing happens after another, it’s natural to be overwhelmed. Though it is natural, that doesn’t mean it is inevitable. There are a few things you can do to keep these stressful things from piling up, but many, even most of them are out of your control. However, you CAN have control over your reactions to them. In this post we outline ways to reign in your reactions to stress and avoid becoming overwhelmed. We include links that provide more detail about

Here are the steps to take:

Continue reading →

Posted in Adversity and Resilience, Deep Relaxation, Exercise, Resilience Training, Self-Soothing, Stress | 1 Comment