All posts tagged: anxiety

Sleep Tips 2020 | Therapy NYC | Find a Therapist

Sleep Tips for 2020

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

This is a comprehensive guide to better sleep. In this article you’ll learn six actionable sleep tips: The psychology of insomnia. Ideal conditions for sleep. How to stop nightmares. 7 actionable steps to sleep better. 8 sleep hygiene tools that get results. How to use “brain tapping” to fall asleep. Let’s get started. Psychology of Insomnia It’s useful to remember that, in one way or another, we all seek relaxation through sensations that bring us back to a state of complete, passive, dependency – the most profound of these experiences being the period in which we were nestled safely inside our mother’s womb. Sounds, beats, enclosed spaces can all take us back to this state, where letting go, relaxing, and falling asleep posed no challenge. Since sleep is one of the most natural things we do, insomnia is typically an issue with experience overriding this natural proclivity due to perceived risk to survival. This episode of Radiolab on sleep makes a compelling case that predation threat is one such environmental factor that could make falling asleep difficult. Difficulties falling …

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7 Sleep Tips for New Moms

Published by Elizabeth Mitchell

Here are 7 sleep tips for new moms and borns. In this article you’ll learn: How to teach your baby to sleep Start with yourself Make sleep a priority for your baby Falling asleep is a skill Creating a sleep routine Understanding your baby’s need to cry Sleep training How to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Nobody functions well on little sleep.  Sleep is a basic need for both physical and mental health, yet new parents are chronically sleep-deprived. Sleep is a loaded area for most new parents.  Not only is our ability to parent as a calm leader for our child impaired by sleep-deprivation, the territory of “sleep training” is full of judgment and anxiety.  Am I harming my child by letting them cry in their crib?  Is cosleeping safe?  Am a better parent if I never let my baby cry or if I let them learn to handle their feelings?  Can babies actually self-soothe?  Family, friends, and even our partners have different feelings about how babies should sleep and this pressure can create …

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5 Reasons to Consider Psychiatric Medication

Top 5 Reasons to Consider Psychiatric Medication

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Introduction A surprising dichotomy of viewpoints seems to arise around the topic of psychiatry and management; the first is that psychiatrists are real doctors and psychotherapists are quacks.  The second is that medication is for suckers, weaklings, and the desperate. The polarization I’ve observed about these topics is surprising considering all evidence seems to indicate that both work pretty well together.  While it’s not my place to tell people they must be on medication (As in, legally I’m not allowed to), I can certainly tell you about my experience with medication as a supplement to psychotherapy, and why it may make sense to consult with a psychiatrist about your needs. 1. Step Outside the System Our personalities and individual psychologies are complex dynamic systems.  Our character structures consist of many forces, mounting pressures, levers, sources of friction, algorithms, contingencies, etc. that come together to create an overall feeling of goodness or badness of some kind.  The important point about our personalities being systems is that they seem to favor repeated, stable, and predictable outcomes, regardless …

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