New Study: Mental Health of Young People Took a Disturbing Turn After Trump Wad Elected in 2016
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Thursday, January 22, 2026
The Emerging Problem Of AI Psychosis; Psychology Today December 2025
AI reinforces what you already believe is true and continues in the same conversation. It does not introduce new perspectives, facts, or challenge you to think in new ways or consider new points of view.
Be careful with overuse of chat bots.
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
The Beautiful Truth about Trust, Forgiveness and Self Respect
The Beautiful Truth about Trust, Forgiveness and Self Respect
Forgiveness is given only when it is earned. When someone has done wrong behavior toward you, you forgive them when they have truly made a sincere apology, and have made acts of contrition. Meaning they have made sincere changes in their behavior toward you going forward, indicating that they take responsibility for their actions. Otherwise they do not deserve forgiveness. And, the forgiveness given is empty, and merely an act of stuffing emotions that will resurface later.
Trust. Trust-Worthy behavior is proof that the person has really changed. Building trust takes time - more time than it takes to break it.
Trust Building:
- The trust-breaker admits they violated the truth-values that caused the breach in the trust, and owns up to the behaviors (takes responsibility for their behavior).
- The trust-breaker builds a solid track record of improved behavior over time.
Without the first step, there should be no attempt at reconciliation in the first place.
When we allow others to disregard our boundaries of behavior toward us, or do not have good boundaries for others behavior toward us, we compromise our self-respect. This impacts us in lowering our self-esteem. We are good people and others should treat us well, as we treat others well. Not speaking up when others are disrespecting our boundaries of good behavior, is allowing ourselves to be treated badly, and is an act of self-disrespect.
When others repeatedly disrespect our boundaries of good behavior, we lose trust in them.
Close relationships are built on a strong base of mutual trust built over time.
Trust is like a china plate. If you break it once, with some care and attention, you can put it back together again. But if you break it again, it splits into even more pieces and it takes far longer to piece together again. If you break it more and more times, eventually it shatters to the point where it’s impossible to restore. There are too many broken pieces and too much dust.
Monday, August 5, 2024
Sleep Good
A common myth is that people can learn to get by on little sleep (such as less than 6 hours a night) with no adverse effects. Research suggests, however, that adults need at least 7–8 hours of sleep each night to be well rested. Indeed, in 1910, most people slept 9 hours a night. But recent surveys show the average adult now sleeps fewer than 7 hours a night. More than one-third of adults report daytime sleepiness so severe that it interferes with work, driving, and social functioning at least a few days each month.
Evidence also shows that children’s and adolescents’ sleep is shorter than recommended. These trends have been linked to increased exposure to electronic media. Lack of sleep may have a direct effect on children’s health, behavior, and development.
Friday, August 2, 2024
Forgiveness
The only person you need to forgive to heal is you! Make peace with you. Forgive yourself for any part of the bad thing that happened to you, that you feel you are responsible for causing. You don’t cause anyone to abuse you. That was their decision, and the responsibility for their behavior is on them. You don’t cause anyone to treat you badly.
And as far as forgiveness, you don’t need to forgive them to attain healing for yourself. You need to be kind, compassionate, caring, and forgiving to yourself.
Absolutely, stop beating yourself up!!!
They can seek forgiveness for their own self - if they gain insight enough to acknowledge their own bad behavior and take responsibility for it.
Let them seek forgiveness with their own God/Goddess/higher power. That is their responsibility.
You take good care of your beautiful self.
Amelia Hasenohrl, LPC, CHt.
August 2, 2024
Monday, July 15, 2024
Being Assertive in Communication
Great article on setting boundaries.
Boundaries build our resilience and self confidence, lower our stress and keep us safe.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202407/how-to-stand-up-for-yourself?#_=_
Thursday, January 11, 2024
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Sleep
To Eat, Perchance To Sleep
When you eat, perhaps as much as what you eat, has a direct impact on sleep and wake cycles set by the brain.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202311/to-eat-perchance-to-sleep
Friday, September 8, 2023
Thursday, July 13, 2023
Farmers Mental Health Resources
MSU Extension Services provide Resources for support of Farmers Mental Health concerns:
Friday, July 7, 2023
PolyVagal Theory - Vagal Vasal Response
Polyvagal Theory - A theory to Self Calm
Flight or Freeze:
A potent mechanism that has the potential to down-regulate threat resides in the ventral portion of the brainstem, in an area known as the nucleus ambiguus, where the vagus nerve, the star player of the autonomic nervous system, originates.
Vagus means wandering, and the vagus nerve begins at the base of the brain, branches down to the heart, the lungs, and the digestive tract, with stops along the way at the larynx, the pharynx, and the diaphragm, before descending into the abdomen.
The branches of the vagus nerve enable the organs to adjust instantly to the demands of a person’s surroundings. It is the duty of the vagus nerve to orchestrate bodily responses to keep you safe or prepare your body for danger before you are even aware of it or have a chance to think about it. Most of the vagus is composed of sensory fibers that function as our surveillance system, informing the brain of the status of our visceral organs.
In our evolutionary journey to becoming social mammals, the basic reptilian structures underwent modification. In order for animals to become social, there had to be a way to turn off threat reactions—animals had to be able to cue one another that they were safe enough to come close to.
As distinct from reptiles, mammals have neuroception not only of threat but also of safety. The vegas nerve responds to cues of safety—detected by higher brain structures—which bring on enough calm to open you up to socially engage with others.
Because information flows both to and from the brain via vagal pathways, the vagus nerve can be thought of as a major mind-body highway. Through the vagus nerve, you react to signals in your environment in ways that calm, alarm, or dysregulate the body, and these states in turn create emotional experience and play out in behavior.
Polyvagal Theory. defines how the vagal pathways operate and the control they exert
over our thoughts and bodies.
Worry is a personal narrative we create in a state of threat to justify why we feel bad.
Polyvagal theory not only explains anxiety as a physiologic state of threat, it also opens a portal of intervention.
Applying specific maneuvers effecting vagal pathways, we can use the nervous system to reset the physiologic state. Independent of the threshold of reactivity that pitches a person into alarm mode.
It is possible to re-educate the nervous system with cues of safety.
Removal of the threat isn’t a bad tactic, but it is not what the nervous system demands: It needs cues of safety. Shift the mental and physical state and you change the character of experience.
The most direct way to access the neural pathway that turns off threat is through breathing -
Diaphragmatic Breathing. Our evolutionary journey endowed us with a gift—the ability to control our breathing utilizing the diaphragm muscle; this enables us to regulate our mental, emotional and physical state.
Neurophysiologically powerful, it acts on fibers of the ventral vagus nerve ferrying signals between visceral organs and the brainstem, where autonomic control of body organs originates.
Diaphragmatic Breathing—also humming and gum-chewing—stimulates the nerve fibers of the muscles of the face, head, and oral cavity and opens the social engagement system, enabling people to respond reciprocally to the invitations of others.
Gaining control of physiologic state through Diaphragmatic Breathing is why some people turn to Hypnosis, yoga and meditation.
Singing uses the same neurophysiological structures of breathing and facial muscles as the social engagement system. Playing a wind instrument gives you no choice but to use Diaphragmatic Breathing.
Many anxious people feed the physiologic state of threat, anxiety etc. by making slow inhalations and rapid exhalations, high in the chest cavity. (Not using the diaphragm.)
Diaphragmatic Breathing, Shifting physiologic state restores access to your whole self. Calming and relaxing you. Memory and higher capacities are available. You become cognitively present to solve problems. The social engagement system becomes a portal to gaining back our human heritage.
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Monday, March 13, 2023
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Quit Smoking in the New Year
Quit in 4 easy relaxing sessions with Hypnosis
Hypnosis Facts
Percentages of Successful Stop Smoking
6% Will Power Alone
10% Nicotine Replacement Therapy
24% Aversion (Negative) Therapy
29% Exercise and Breathing
30% Recordings with Hypnotic Suggestions
60% Single Session Hypnosis
92% 4 Sessions Hypnotherapy with
Grand Traverse Hypnotherapy and Counseling
Smoking cost in Michigan: Price: $8.00 plus. Tax: $2.00
$ 12.00 / average cost pack of cigarettes. 1 pack per day X 7 days per week = $ 84.00 per week.
4 weeks per month = $ 336.00 per month X 12 months = $ 4,032.00 per year.
Quit completely for Less.
(According to the National Cancer Institute, the average cost of a pack of cigarettes is $6.28, which means a pack-a-day habit sets you back $188 per month or $2,292 per year.)
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
7 Qualities of a Great Therapist
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202211/7-qualities-of-a-great-therapist?eml
Sunday, August 7, 2022
VA Crisis Line
Crisis Care for veterans and their loved ones.
You don’t have to enrolled in VA Benefits or health care to connect.
Friday, July 15, 2022
988 Hotline
Mental Health & Emotional Crisis Hotline
Dial 988
Those seeking support during a mental health or emotional crisis may dial 988 to connect to a nationwide support network beginning tomorrow. The transition to a simplified three-digit number is meant to increase access to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and will operate similar to 911.
The move was facilitated by almost $300M in federal funding to both expand telephone infrastructure and increase call center staff. Via the network, trained counselors at more than 180 centers will be available over phone, text, or chat—users may call on behalf of themselves or others. The current 10-digit number has received more than 20 million calls since it was launched in 2005.
Suicide was one of the three leading causes of death in the US for those between 10 and 24 years of age in 2020 and claimed nearly 46,000 lives that year (see data)—almost double the number of homicides.
Tuesday, August 3, 2021
Hypnotherapy for Sleep can help increase deep restful sleep.
Melatonin, Magnesium, Theanine, and Tryptophan bring Sleep.
The natural human circadian rhythm cycle is 24.2 hours long.
Sleep is closely connected to Anxiety, Depression and Stress.
Theanine can be found in tea.
fMRI: 2 key regions of the brain : Amygdala which directs emotional responses, in the prefrontal cortex, is responsible for emotional regulation, decisions making, and critical thinking.
Deep-sleep stage called slow-wave sleep, is linked to strong activity in the Prefrontal Cortex and lower anxiety.
Slow-wave sleep resets the a balance between the sympathetic nervous system (guardian of the fight or flight response), and the Parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).
Stress and anxiety during waking hours activate the sympathetic system. But the parasympathetic system dominates slow-wave sleep, when heart rate slows and blood pressures drops. Sleep disturbances rob our body of this soothing cycle.
Circadian rhythm is governed by the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, a group of cells in the hypothalamus that receive input from light-sensitive neurons.
The right amount of sleep varies by a person’s age, adults from 18 to 64 need seven to nine hours per night, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
It typically takes an adult between 10 to 20 minutes to fall asleep.
A night of poor sleep lowers pain tolerance the following day by 15%.
10% of Americans experience chronic insomnia, according to the CDC.
Keeping the same sleep schedule every day, creating a relaxing bedtime routine, maintaining a cool bedroom, and avoiding screen time before bed all aid sleep.
Hypnotherapy for Sleep can help increase deep restful sleep.
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Relaxation in Nature. So Important
Speaking For The Trees
Suzanne Simard is opening our eyes to what forests are capable of.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/202105/speaking-the-trees#_=_
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