Category: Blog Posts

Many entrepreneurial couples I work with decided to pursue this lifestyle because they crave flexibility, independence, and the ability to spend more time with their family. However, what often ends up happening is they get sucked into working every waking minute to make it all happen. The result? They experience extra stress and their marriage suffers.What can help? Taking time to unplug and reconnect.

Entrepreneurs do not have the luxury of “leaving work at work.” The entrepreneurial life is demanding and requires time and attention outside of 9 to 5. And since most of your work is conducted through your smartphone, unplugging seems impractical, perhaps even impossible. Making time for friendship, romance, and family is difficult, but if you continue to ignore the most important people in your life you might wake up one day and discover they’ve moved on without you.

So how do you make time to reconnect? Put down your phone, tablet, or laptop! It really is that simple. Put it down, put it away, turn it off. Start small, taking just a few minutes each day to unplug, unwind, and refocus. As a couple take 15 minutes to engage in meaningful conversation without the distraction of devices. Talk to your significant other, not about business, but about your feelings, hopes, and problems.

Schedule larger blocks of “unplugged” time, too. Notice the word “schedule.” Successful entrepreneurial couples realize that spontaneous dates and waiting for the “right moment” to reconnect probably won’t happen. Rather, they have to plan for love to happen and be sustained. This is where scheduling comes in. Schedule a date night once a week. Take a long weekend or a mini-vacation, something that pulls you away from the demands of entrepreneurial life.

When you spend this time together, do your best to put away your devices. Sitting in the same room together or eating at the same table is not the same as connecting. To connect to each other, you must disconnect from technology for a while.

Of course, as business owners you can’t always completely disconnect from the outside world. On vacation, for instance, you may have to take time to reply to some emails, make a call, check in with your business. Give yourself a time limit. Once your time is up, put everything away and get back to that relaxation and reconnecting you went away to do!

Spending blocks of time disconnected from devices provides a great opportunity to examine the way you interact with technology. Are you spending so much time on your devices because they are helping you be efficient and creative? Or has your technology usage become a compulsive behavior? As you spend more time away from your devices, you will get a clearer picture of when they are truly helpful and when they are simply distractions.

You work diligently to ensure that your business runs smoothly, receives adequate attention, and continues to grow. Do this with your relationships too. Take time out from the rigors of business-ownership and the constant pull of technology to remember why you’re working so hard in the first place – to share your success with the ones you love.

If you need help reconnecting and making love your top priority, and you live in the Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA area, please contact my office to set up an appointment. If you live out of the area, I can still help! Please consider Video Education sessions that are available to help you as an entrepreneurial couple.

Negative thoughts are like pouring gasoline on a smoldering fire. Normally, anxiety, like the smoldering fire, will die down as you complete the letting go process. However, people who have developed anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks, phobias, or obsessive compulsions, have trouble processing things. In fact, their negative thoughts add fuel to their anxiety as they tend to jump to wrong conclusions or predict the worst case scenario.However, if you suffer from an anxiety disorder, be assured you can identify and correct these negative thoughts and beliefs. You can change the way you think, thereby changing the way you feel. You’ll finally be able to douse and extinguish the fear and anxiety you feel.

How can you stop negative thoughts?

Identify negative thoughts. Do you perceive situations as more dangerous than they really are? It may not be so easy to see negative patterns in yourself, so one strategy is to ask yourself what you’re thinking when you start feeling anxious. Often it helps to have a mental health professional assist you in identifying your specific anxieties and negative thought patterns.

Challenge negative thoughts. Evaluate these anxiety-provoking thoughts by asking yourself: Is there real evidence for your frightening thoughts and predictions? Are they founded in unhelpful beliefs? What are the pros and cons of worrying or avoiding the thing I fear?

Replace negative thoughts with realistic thoughts. Once you’ve identified the irrational or negative distortions in your anxious thoughts, replace them with new thoughts that are more realistic and positive, which is easier said than done. Often, negative thoughts are part of a lifelong pattern of thinking. It takes time and practice to break these habits. So don’t expect instant results, but be kind and patient with yourself.

Anxiety disorders are not all treated the same, and it’s important to determine the specific problem before embarking on a course of treatment. Your doctor will conduct a careful diagnostic evaluation to determine whether your symptoms are due to an anxiety disorder, which anxiety disorder(s) you may have, and what coexisting conditions, perhaps alcoholism, may be present. The coexisting condition will need to be treated at the same time or before treating the anxiety disorder. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

NET stands for Neuro Emotional Technique. It involves treating behavioral and physical conditions through removing the neurological imbalances related to the physiology of unresolved stress. It treats the total mind/body connection.We all experience unpleasant events, but most of the time we can resolve them and move on unaffected. However, when we experience stress that isn’t resolved, it creates a mind/body pattern that emerges again at a memory or a similar experience. This collective unresolved mind/body pattern is called NEC (the Neuro Emotional Complex). NEC is defined as “a subjective mal-adaptation syndrome adopted by the human organism in response to a real or perceived threat.”

Whether you remember the event accurately or not, your response is your emotional reality. Even if you only dream an unreal nightmare, you’re physiological response – racing heart and profuse sweating – are very real. Or say you were attacked by a dog in the past, every time you see a dog you relive the same response, such as rapid heartbeat, fear and loss of speech. NET helps you re-engage the physiological response and complete the unresolved mind/body pattern of stress and extinguish it.

A NET Practitioner also uses Manual Muscle Testing to pinpoint the physiological response to a stimulus. The NET Practitioner can then treat the disruption with a homeopathic remedy that uses the verified law of pharmacology –Law of Similars – or like cures like. For example, a large dose of ipecac will induce vomiting. However, minute particles in a homeopathic remedy will stop vomiting.

Here are two videos that explain in detail how NET works:

Background Concepts and Dynamics of NET

Two Minute Stress Relief Procedure Demo

Being a Level 2 Certified NET Practitioner allows me to pinpoint quickly and accurately the sources of emotional stress and the best way to resolve them. Are you suffering the effects of unresolved stress? If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment so you can enjoy life once again.

Recently I mentioned exposure therapy as a treatment for PTSD, and some of you have been wondering what exposure therapy is and how it works. Here’s a summary of how exposure therapy works, plus an explanation of why I prefer NET (neuro emotional technique).Fear and anxiety are debilitating states of mind. It causes a person to react in ways that they don’t want to. Often it causes the sufferers to avoid situations, even important events, if they know it will trigger these strong reactions. The problem with avoiding your fears is that you won’t have the opportunity to overcome them. To the contrary, it often makes them stronger.

Exposure therapy makes you confront the situations or objects you fear. A mental health professional will either ask you to imagine a situation that causes you anxiety, or you may literally confront it in real life. Of course, facing your biggest fear right away would only add to your trauma, so exposure therapy starts with a situation that’s only mildly threatening and works up from there. This step-by-step approach is called systematic desensitization. The idea is that through repeated exposures, you’ll gradually challenge your fears, build your confidence, and learn how to control the panic and anxiety.

NET has longer lasting benefits and is a much gentler approach.

First, it’s important to understand how your body reacts to stress. When something disrupts the natural letting go process, the mind and body holds onto this unresolved stress and continues to reproduce the same stress reaction when it’s triggered by a stimulus or memory. Then the person experiences real physiological problems such as chronic pain, organ dysfunctions, neurological problems, musculoskeletal and immunological conditions, allergies, and headaches. It may also cause psychological problems such as phobias, depression, anxieties, ADD / ADHD, nightmares, disruptive behavior, fear of public speaking and more.

A NET practitioner treats the disruption with a homeopathic remedy that uses the verified law of pharmacology Law of Similars – or like cures like. For example, a large dose of ipecac will induce vomiting. However, minute particles in a homeopathic remedy will stop vomiting. Once the system is brought back into balance, your body and mind can heal itself relieving you of the headaches, chronic pain, phobia or whatever symptom is caused by this unresolved stress.

NET helps you re-engage the physiological response and complete the unresolved mind/body pattern of stress and extinguish it. Rather than making you relive the experience, N.E.T utilizing Manual Muscle Testing, which pinpoints your very real physiological response (such as a racing heart and profuse sweating) to a stimulus (a situation that brings up the unresolved stress reaction memory). This accesses how emotions affect the way your body works and helps identify the best way to resolve the issue.

In order to help my clients obtain lasting relief, I’ve trained to be a Level 2 Certified NET Practitioner. If you’re ready to get your life back, please seriously consider NET as a highly effective alternative treatment for PTSD and anxiety. And if you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please feel free to contact my office and schedule an appointment.

Read more on my website: Coping with Anxiety Disorders.

Do you remember when you first heard about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? It wasn’t formally recognized until 1980. That really wasn’t long ago, so therapies for treating PTSD are still in their infancy.One traditional medical approach involves using medication and controlled re-experiencing of trauma, called exposure therapy. However, veterans aren’t finding this as helpful as hoped. Rehashing the event, without giving them coping skills, leaves them feeling helpless, which compounds the problem.

As a result, many alternative therapies are springing up. According to a recent New York Times article, some of them are: “therapeutic fishing, rafting and backpacking trips, horse riding, combat yoga, dogs, art collectives, dolphin swims, sweat lodge vision quests and parrot husbandry centers, among many, many others.”

Are these viable options or are they just ways to avoid the issue?

Some of these therapies challenge veterans to overcome fears and build new experiences that put traumatic memories into perspective, which can be helpful.

“Aren’t all men like that?”

“It takes two to make a problem and two to resolve it.”

“No one’s perfect.”

“Look for the silver lining.”

“I would never allow someone to talk to me like that!”

“If it’s that terrible why don’t you leave?”

These are only a few of the comments we receive from our family and friends when we try to explain our plight with our ASD loved ones. After being shut down several times, many of us don’t even try anymore, for fear that we’ll be blamed for complaining yet again. In fact, we might even believe we’re at fault for the failure in the relationship, so we suffer alone in silence.

Recently the New York Times published an article on “Who Blames the Victim?” I think this article sheds some light on why it’s so difficult to explain ASD and our Asperger loved ones. First, of course, autism is complex, so coming to terms with our Aspie’s Mind Blindness, Context Blindness and lack of Empathy has taken a lot of work on our part, let alone helping others understand the theories.

Second, it’s a stretch to consider ourselves victims. No one likes that. However, this group is about just that. Recognize that you are being victimized and that it’s time to take back your life. It matters not that your Aspie doesn’t intend to harm you. Simon Baron Cohen considers the Aspie as having Zero Degrees of Empathy. Zero means that you are left holding the bag over and over again, with no sympathy from your Aspie, or those who blame the victim.

Third, a bulk of the population tends to blame the victim for breaking the rules of loyalty, obedience and purity. A minority understands that to truly understand the victim, you need to care about an individual and consider fairness. Truly enlightened people understand that you can be harmed by an Aspie who doesn’t intend to harm you. And they want to help. They will listen to our complex story.

If you’re a member of the Asperger Syndrome: Partners and Family of Adults with ASD, please come to our group for support. No matter where you are in the world, you can chat with others and gain insight.

And if you’ve been putting off getting a copy of Out of Mind – Out of Sight: Parenting with a Partner with Asperger Syndrome (ASD) because you thought it was just about parenting, don’t wait another moment. It also explores the science behind Aspergers. If you want to understand your Aspie better, this is a must read. Get a free chapter by clicking on the image below.