Stack of colorful books

Book Recommendation: Quiet Your Mind and Get To Sleep

By | Anxiety, Biltmore, Blog, Book Recommendation, Depression, Health, Sleep Deprivation | No Comments

Feeling so sick and tired of not getting enough sleep? Are you waking up exhausted, feeling depressed or anxious throughout your day? We suggest getting your hands on, Quiet Your Mind and Get To Sleep by  Richard Bootzin PhD, Colleen E. Carney PhD, and Rachel Manber PhD.

The book is actually a work book designed to help you get to the root of your insomnia and sleep issues. It will help you stop worrying, and improve your health issues related to loss of sleep. The workbook is based on cognitive behavioral therapy that helps you develop healthy patterns, and useful tools to a better nights rest.

 

#psychlopedia – Sleep Deprivation

By | #psychlopedia, Biltmore, Blog, Health, Mental Health, Sleep Deprivation, Stress | No Comments

Happy Monday! Or depending on how you slept last night, perhaps it is a not so happy Monday. If you aren’t the type of person who keeps the same sleep schedule through out your weekend, or you suffer from sleep problems, Monday mornings can be rough. If you are chronically suffering from lack of sleep, you might be experiencing affects of Sleep Deprivation.

Sleep Deprivation:

-is the condition of not getting or having enough sleep. This can be a long term condition, or a short term condition. It is something that affects your emotional, physical, and cognitive processes. And the longer it occurs, the worse the symptoms and affects have on your body and brain.

-it can also cause weight gain, or weight loss. It can lead to mind cloudiness, clumsiness, inability to concentrate and excessive sleepiness.

 

So if you’re reaching for that extra cup of coffee this Monday morning, ask yourself if your sleeping habits are healthy? What could you be doing to improve them, and thus improving your overall health?

Young woman doing a plank with a dumbbell in one hand, while cameras and lights surround her for her social media.

Instagram and Body Image

By | Biltmore, Blog, Happiness, Health, Mental Health, Self-Awareness | No Comments

If you use Instagram, you probably are inundated with people posting their healthy meals, smoothie bowls, gym routines and fit bodies. The social media platform has become quite the haven for promoting the healthy lifestyle. But what if it is doing more harm than good?

Instagram uses a photograph or a group of photographs to snag the attention of the everyday user. So what grabs attention and gets you more followers? Usually a photograph of perfectly arranged brightly colored foods, or posing in fitness gear with a rock hard body. But what does this do to our positive body image? It does the same thing that magazines and society has done for years. It promotes a body image that is often unattainable and sometimes unhealthy.

When we are constantly bombarded with images of what we perceive as “perfect bodies”, we are telling ourselves that we need to do everything possible to look like that. We need to eat what their eating, do the workouts they’re doing, and document every living second of it. When we see other people succeeding in their life, it changes how we think about our own bodies. We start to think, “I need to do this to look like that.” A lot of women (and men) tend to think of their own bodies with an outsiders view in mind. We want others to think we look great, eat healthy, and are happy more than we want that for ourselves. It can create quite an obsession of trying to do everything perfectly, and can lead to unhealthy habits, anxiety and even depression.

The most dangerous thing about Instagram, is we can scroll through our feed and see “everyday normal people” promoting unattainable lifestyles. We know that when we look at a magazine ad, it is probably photoshopped and the model has prepared for the shoot for months beforehand. When we look at Instagram, we think this person just posted a photo and they’re not famous, so if they can look that good, eat that well, be that fit, than obviously we can too. We fail to admit that most photos on Instagram are actually heavily edited and photoshopped as well.

Not all Instagram is negative for our body image. It can help create a community with supportive people all around the world. It can give tips and tricks on how to eat healthier, workout more efficiently, and the wide array of resources are endless. But the safest way to enjoy Instagram without falling into the thought process of, “I’m not good enough” is to tread lightly. As with any form of social media, limit your time on it. Acknowledge that a lot of pictures are edited, photoshopped, prepared for, and not necessarily “real”. Know that what works for someone else might not work for you. Be realistic about what is really going on behind the camera. And most of all, enjoy it. Follow a variety of accounts, not just ones that focus on eating habits, body habits and aesthetics.

Exercise and Depression

By | Anxiety, Biltmore, Blog, Depression, Happiness, Health, Mental Health, Stress | No Comments

We have been talking about the positive impacts of eating healthy, physical activity, exercise, and sleep patterns lately. It seems like everywhere you turn, you see something promoting the plethora of benefits of exercising for mental health. Here at Biltmore Psychology and Counseling, our staff outside of work engages in many different kinds of activities to help our emotions and moods. We have Clinicians who do Zumba, some do circuit training and Crossfit, others do yoga and pilates. No matter what activity we try to do, we know the immense benefits it can have on us as individuals and as coworkers.

Depression specifically has been linked to possible heart disease, stroke, and heart attacks. And adding just 30 minutes of exercise into your day can help combat these health risks. It can lower blood pressure, boost your mood, create community and much more. Don’t worry if you have never exercised before, start with a walk around your neighborhood or a bike ride to your local coffee shop. Physical activity doesn’t have to take place in a gym to get the full benefits to lift your mood and help depression. The most important thing is to get your body moving, and do what makes YOU happy. When we engage in activities that make us happier, we are more likely to continue to do them and create a healthy pattern in putting our mental and physical health first!

Word cloud with different adjectives that describe what happens when we're sleep deprived

What happens when we don’t get enough sleep?

By | Anxiety, Biltmore, Blog, Health, Mental Health, Sleep Deprivation, Stress | No Comments

Sleep deprivation. We’ve all been there. During the week it seems like we are a zombie, slowly going through the motions until the weekend where we hope to catch up on sleep. It seems like in our society today, we are constantly on the go and don’t put sleep as a priority in our lives. Or simply cannot put it as a priority. We might have insomnia, or sleep apnea, or just plain lack of time to get the necessary amount of sleep in.

Sleep is a biological necessity. We need sleep to repair tissues, strengthen muscles, and synthesize hormones. There are a vast array of studies that differ in exactly how much sleep we need to function at our best. But most can agree on adults needing 7-9 hours of good, quality, uninterrupted sleep. So what happens when we sleep less than that, on a recurring basis?

At first the signs of sleep deprivation might not seem so extreme. We may experience fatigue, moodiness, and loss of ability to concentrate.  As if that isn’t bad enough, the more sleep we lose the worse our symptoms become. Our body temperatures decrease, and we have an increase in our appetite often causing us to choose foods that aren’t the healthiest. We might experience poor judgement, and our vision or language might start to be impaired. In the worst signs of sleep deprivation, we can experience hallucinations, severe lethargy, and be at risk for many health conditions like heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Specifically psychologically speaking, sleep can wreak havoc on our emotions. We can experience cognitive lapses, and our ability to process information is significantly slowed. We feel cloudy, and angry, and are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

If you are hoping to catch up on sleep during the weekends, studies show that it isn’t enough to combat the loss of sleep during the week. In short, you cannot just “make up” sleep that you’ve already lost. The best way we can function as humans, is to get consistent sleep every single night. We will talk about the best ways to ensure we are getting enough sleep on a later blog post, but for now, what kinds of things do you experience with lack of sleep? Not convinced? Take a look at Sherie Bourg Carters article on Psychology Today about 10 Frightening Costs of Sleep Loss.