Hidden Barriers to Happiness Blog
Have you always wondered about the invisible forces that affect your health, wealth, relationships and happiness?
For over 25 years, first as a neuroscientist, then epidemiologist, and now as a Holistic Brain Health Practitioner, I’ve been passionate about identifying underlying causes of mental and cognitive health challenges. This blog reveals my discoveries from my academic training, my passion for functional medicine, psychology, sociology, energy medicine and what I’ve learned from identifying secrets held by the subconscious.
If you want more health, wealth, better relationships and more happiness, find out what could be getting in the way! When you sign up to get my Top 10 Tips for a Happy & Healthy Brain, you’ll also get 2-4 newsletters per month featuring my blog, “Hidden Barriers to Happiness”.
What are you waiting for? Knowledge is power!
7 Fun Games to Exercise Your Brain
I love games, but I admit, I don’t love them them all. Give me a game that keeps me challenged, that is easy to learn, and I can do with others offline, and I’m usually happy.
So this is why I’m thrilled to share these awesome games that I learned about from Scott Lebhar, the manager at Marbles, the Brain Store in Seattle! Not only do they have a mission to find and distribute fun and easy-to-learn games, but they also help you develop 6 different critical skills!
What are they?
How Releasing Subconscious Barriers Changes the Brain
I call myself a Holistic Healer for a Happy & Healthy Brain, and yet I release subconscious barriers. So how does releasing subconscious barriers change the brain?
While I can’t provide decisive evidence about how it changes the brain, I can conjecture a theory based on current findings in neuroscience.
We know, thanks to the discoveries of neuroplasticity, that our brains are constantly evolving, and that habit changes rewire the brain.
One Mindset Shift that Will Help You Forgive
I spent most of my life hating my father. When growing up, he constantly criticized us or lectured us about how or who we should be. Because he had so much anger, and insisted that we were responsible for not making him angry, I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells. I never felt like I could be myself. The constant striving to please him to avoid his anger was exhausting!
I remember being told more than once as a young adult that I needed to forgive him. That just deepened my despair, because I just couldn’t figure out how. So much of his criticism left me feeling anxious, unlovable and unacceptable, and I blamed him for his role in making me feel that way.
I remember the day when my perspective shifted.
The Global Consequences of Ignoring our Mental Health
It saddens me terribly to say this, but I truly believe that in this country, we are facing an epidemic of cruelty. Forty years ago, I don’t think we could have ever imagined America as a country, where we would have an average of one mass shooting a day, where police would be regularly caught on tape beating up minorities, or where presidential candidates were allowed to openly incite violence towards anyone they didn’t like.
The reasons for this trend are many. I believe that rising inequality breeds greater unhappiness, and I’ve outlined the reasons in my article, “Does Inequality affect Your Happiness?” I also believe that as more of us compete for fewer resources, the greater need we have to prove our worth. If we aren’t careful, we can become less trusting. The need to survive can increase our tendency to discriminate against minorities, women, children, the elderly or people who are different than us.
But humans also have tremendous capacity to come together in crises. We have the power to work together, and respond to our collective suffering with empathy and compassion.
So what is the underlying difference between those that choose the path of hate vs. the path of compassion?
3 Tips to Find the Courage to Change
For most of my life, I ran away from opportunities because I lived in fear. I had no courage to change. When I was a child, I wanted to be an actress. I remember one of my earliest performance experiences. I was playing a young Chinese little sister who had to bring out a Chinese dust broom to the girl playing my mother. When my teacher cued me out on stage, I handed the broom to ‘my mother’, and we dropped it. We picked it up again, and in my nervousness, we dropped it again. By then the audience was laughing, and I couldn’t get off that stage fast enough!
I remember in High school, my school put on really fun musicals that I would have loved to be a part of. By then I was playing the French horn, and I felt safer in the theater orchestra with people I knew. I was afraid to be associated with the acting crowd, and resisted, even though acting and dancing seemed like so much fun!
In college, there were opportunities to live abroad. I would have loved to travel, and explore other cultures, but I passed those up, because my experience living in Hong Kong as a child was so traumatic for me.
I’ve missed out on so much that would have made my life more fun and more meaningful. But thank goodness, I now have tools to release my fears! (more…)
What to Say to the Skeptics of Energy Medicine
When I first realized the power of energy medicine, I was working in a psychology department, and I tried to persuade a professor that Emotional Freedom Technique worked. So, he let me work with him on his neck pain, and it went from a pain level of 4/10 to 0/10 in minutes. But was he convinced? I don’t think so. What I do know was that it made him very uneasy, and he began to distance himself from me.
I’ve had a couple of other experiences where I’ve either helped experts in mental health or Western medicine heal from injuries, and even though we’d been close for months, they stopped returning my calls.
Why?
5 Subconscious Barriers to Emotional Intimacy
For most of my life, I’ve feared emotional intimacy. As I’ve grown aware that I’ve been unconsciously pushing people away, I’ve been on a mission to find and develop deeper and more meaningful relationships. In my search, I found these 5 barriers that often hinder emotional intimacy. If you struggle with having or keeping meaningful relationships, where it feels safe to be authentic and vulnerable, see if any of these apply to you:
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Why You Should Consider a Holistic Approach to Mental Health
Our Western medical system is set up to divide the brain from body. We treat mental and cognitive health, by addressing issues from our past, by seeing counselors, psychiatrists or neurologists. They focus either on psychological or the chemical, and occasionally the anatomical aspects of the brain that drive our pathology. But is that enough to make us mentally healthy? Sometimes, but I would argue that in order for the problem to go away (without a lifelong dependence on pharmaceutical drugs), the underlying causes need to be considered, and that they are rarely being examined through traditional Western medical care.
http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/446132_3
As an epidemiologist who specialized in determining the risk factors that contribute or protect us from mental or cognitive disorders, I’ve always known that the Western medical approach of separating the brain from the body would be insufficient to help many people who suffer with psychiatric disorders and mental health challenges. After all, we are made up of more than just our head. There are both signals that go towards and away from brain described both by Eastern and Western medicine. Furthermore, we often identify feelings peripherally, in our stomach or heart, for example, rather than our brain!
Those of us who exercise, are keenly aware that both cardiovascular exercise and weight lifting increase can increase our self-esteem and elevate our mood. Many of us know, that we get more cranky when we haven’t eaten, when we are tired, sick or even at certain times of the month.
So here are just a few underlying causes that can affect brain health that are not typically considered, but should be, when you are struggling with any mental or psychiatric illness.
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5 Hidden Obstacles Most Professionals Face that Keep Them Stuck, Unhappy & Unfulfilled
Do you feel like you are getting in your own way of reaching your professional goals?
Are you getting distracted?
Do you procrastinate?
Do you make excuses?
On Monday, Jan 11th, I was interviewed with Wendi, Krista and Shermin on Sky’s the Limit Radio.
I talked about the 5 Hidden Obstacles Most Professionals Face that Keep Them Stuck, Unhappy & Unfulfilled
The interview was packed with good information that you are unlikely to get anywhere else! And luckily, it is online so you can still hear it!
In this interview, you’ll learn:
5 New Year’s Resolutions to Consider for Personal Growth
People often use New Year’s Resolutions as an opportunity to try to break a bad habit. Some of the most common ones are to lose weight, exercise more, or stop smoking. But have you considered setting goals that will help you personally and interpersonally? Here are a few to consider:
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