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SPOOKY CRAFTS FOR TELETHERAPY AND IN-PERSON THERAPY
Looking for the easy button for Halloween crafts? I’ve got some links for ya.
When I look for activity ideas online, I automatically skip sites with annoying popup boxes and popup ad videos. Unfortunately, that’s like 90% of the internet.
These links have ads, but they aren’t super intrusive. Most of the crafts link to other websites that have annoying popup ads, but you can get the general idea of what you need for each craft without clicking through.
Yes, you can use Pinterest, but all of those Pinterest links are chock full of popup ads, too. It makes me crazy.
I think the pineapple jack-o-lantern is a genius idea that could be used all year.
FEAR AND ANXIETY SHARE THE SAME NEURO PATHWAYS
This makes a lot of sense intuitively, even though we were all taught that fear and anxiety were governed by separate pathways and structures in the brain.
New research using functional MRI (fMRI) techniques shows that while fear and anxiety are distinct emotions, they share the same neurological pathways.
“…Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at New York University who studies how the brain perceives danger, says these findings reaffirm what he has long believed: the two emotions are distinct, but connected.
“Fear morphs into anxiety almost immediately, and anxiety can trigger fear. As soon as you’re anxious, you start seeing dangers everywhere,” LeDoux says.
He wasn’t surprised, then, to see a similar response in the two neural regions.”
Anxiety seems to be more of a top-down reaction, requiring cognitive processing to make sense of what is happening, while fear seems to be more of a bottom-up reaction…the fight, fright or flight response that we have such little control over.
Once you experience fear about something, you use self-talk and other cognitive strategies to see danger everywhere, which leads to generalized anxiety.
Many, if not most, of our kids have a lot of difficulty with top-down processing and top-down approaches to therapy (mindfulness, cognitive-behavioral strategies, etc.). They don’t have access to those higher level cognitive skills that make top-down strategies successful.
I think this research helps explain why bottom-up, relationship-based/co-regulation strategies are so effective whether you are dealing with fear or anxiety, and provides support for using those strategies as a first line of defense for both emotions.
The Best Questions To Ask Yourself Today
Even though it’s not the sexiest tech around anymore, I’m still a big fan of Evernote. Every interesting article I find, every photo I like, every idea I have is saved somewhere in my Evernote account. It is my second brain.
I keep an Evernote notebook of articles that I like to read several times a year to remind me how far I’ve come and where I’m going. This one from Tim Ferriss is one of my favorites. His answers are great, but his questions are better.
My favorite questions from the article:
- What are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here?
- If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do?
- Could it be that everything is fine and complete as is?
- What would this look like if it were easy?
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