How EMDR Therapy Can Relieve Your Psychological Stress

As an interactive technique implemented during a psychotherapy session, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR) therapy relieves psychological stress and anxiety. Mental health specialists use EMDR therapy to treat victims of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During an EMDT therapy session, the therapist overseeing the session encourages you to relive a traumatic experience that has a negative impact on your life.

What Are the Benefits of EMDR Therapy?

The primary benefit of EMDR is the fast rate that a therapist can help you resolve the issues surrounding the traumatic event that you experienced. One research study demonstrated “EMDR was twice as effective in half the amount of time of standard traditional psychotherapeutic care.”

Another benefit of undergoing EMDR concerns the limited amount of detail you have to divulge about the traumatic event. As opposed to talk therapies, you do not have to dig deep into your memory to resolve the issues surrounding a traumatic event. Although communicating with your therapist remains important, it is just as important for you to reprocess the traumatic event during the eye movement session.

EMDR represents a three-level approach to therapy by integrating somatic, cognitive, and behavioral methods. This approach takes the most effective elements of each of the three types of therapy and seamlessly blends them into an EMDR session. EMDR shares some of the characteristics of individual adult therapy, but it splits with conventional treatment methods by controlling your eye movement while you reprocess information.

How Does EMDR Work?

A licensed therapist breaks down EMDT into eight phases, with treatment requiring four phases of progression. First, your therapist reviews your history and then decides where you stand in the treatment process. You can expect a preliminary discussion concerning the traumatic event you experienced. Phase two involves preparation, which consists of you learning about the different strategies for coping with emotional and/or psychological stress. The assessment phase requires your therapist to identify short bursts of memory that get targeted for therapy. This phase of the eight-phase therapy program sets the table for the treatment phase.

During the four-session treatment phase, your therapist asks you to focus on the negative short bursts of memory you shared during the assessment phase. While you focus on the negative short bursts of memory, your therapist asks you to complete different eye movements. The stimulation can lead to other types of movements, such as tapping your fingers or raising one of your arms. After the bilateral stimulations, your therapist asks you to let your mind go blank to provide you with an opportunity to reflect on your thoughts and feelings. When you recollect your thoughts, your therapist might ask you to refocus on the negative short burst of memory.

The last phase of the process involves the evaluation of your progress to date, which is done both by you and your therapist. Although the treatment program moves through eight distinct phases, you might attend as many as 12 therapy sessions.

Continue Reading

Successful Behavior Strategies That Benefit Montessori Daycare Kids

Authentic Montessori daycare is a different type of educational system. It combines play-based learning with crucial emotional, physical, and developmental activities intended to help children expand and reach their individual potential. Because behavior is a critical aspect of development, successful strategies are inseparable from other class curricula.

The Value of Grace and Courtesy

Grace and courtesy are a cornerstone of the Montessori Method, and a regular part of an authentic Montessori daycare. Learning to say please and thank you teaches children important lessons about social interaction and helps them build strong habits the will benefit them throughout their lives. Since daycare children are only beginning to explore their individual worlds, learning how to use grace and courtesy benefits their search for more knowledge and understanding.

Applying the Golden Rule

The concept of doing unto others as you would want others to treat you is a valuable lesson for our modern world, and one that is central to Montessori daycare education. Grasping that other feel the same way about certain behaviors as they do themselves gives children a valuable insight into human behavior and works toward building a strong sense of empathy.

Classroom Cleanup Routines

Cleaning up after activities is more than busy work. Working together to put the classroom back into its proper order teaches children critical thinking skills, helps develop social interactions,  and instills a sense of responsibility and self-esteem. As often happens in Montessori education, the activity itself is not the end goal, but it is a tool to help children develop in multiple ways, including learning valuable practical experience that can be applied to various aspects of the rest of their lives.

Taking Turns and Sharing

Toward the end of their daycare years, children begin to develop an understanding of how it feels to share and be shared with. Prior to do so, children are unable to see how their actions affect someone else, or identify the connection between specific behaviors and the results they elicit. Learning the value of sharing and taking turns in daycare gives children a head start on other developmental goals as they go through preschool and into kindergarten.

The Montessori is focused on developing children into responsible, respectable members of the community. To do that, it uses successful behavior strategies as a matter of course. Children do not learn about sharing for the sake of sharing, for example, but as a way to interact in a peaceful and diplomatic way while pursuing other educational goals.

Continue Reading

4 Exciting Examples of Hands-On Learning Activities for Montessori Preschool Children

Montessori preschool children learn by doing. The idea is that engaging in multipurpose hands-on activities helps children enjoy learning and that enjoyment leads to the children being more interested in learning increasingly complex and abstract lessons. These 4 examples are only the tip of the Montessori iceberg, but they are enough to show you how and why Montessori works as well as it does.

1. Outdoor Treasure Hunts

Whether the kids are looking for colored rocks or an elusive Monarch Butterfly, the time Montessori preschool children spend outdoors benefits them in many ways. It helps them develop social skills, learn to think critically and solve problems, and assists their fine and motor skills development. The subject of the search is far less important than the purposes behind the search, but that is the secret of Montessori success.

2. Creative Arts

Making music, drawing a sunrise, or building a block tower are all creative endeavors used in Montessori preschool. Teaching children how to express their creative talents gives them a sense of self-esteem, but it also teaches vital skills like critical thinking, math, science, and language. The beauty of the Montessori Method is that the children’s activities are more often a means to an end rather than the goal itself.

3. Fitness Games

As the name implies, fitness activities are intended to help children develop critical fine and gross motor skills. Running, jumping, climbing, and building exercise young muscles and help young minds gain a better understanding of the laws of physics and how they apply to everyday life.

4. Montessori-Inspired Geography

Montessori-inspired geography often beings with maps in preschool, but it goes much farther than that. Montessori preschool children learn about cultural diversity, the origin of foods and animals, and a host of other information in the process of learning a place’s location on a map. They learn those other things because learning to remember a place's location is a poor substitute for learning the myriad bits of information that make every location a unique part of the world.

From preschool onward, Montessori students are involved in a whole-child form of education that uses special hands-on activities and invites learning about many facets of our world beyond that actual activity lessons. In addition to academic and physical development, they learn about culture, social etiquette, and practical skills, all while allowing every child to develop at his own place and in his own way.

Continue Reading

Make Your Laundry Routine Eco-Friendly with Green Detergent

 

When you think of going green, you probably think about reducing your carbon footprint by consuming fewer fossil fuels and recycling items that when left in landfills, can cause an environmental hazard. One way to go green is by using the right residential laundry services. Whether you take your laundry to a laundromat or have a trusted company provide laundry pickup service for dry cleaning, you want to minimize your carbon footprint by using an eco-friendly detergent.

The Problem with Conventional Detergents

Using a conventional detergent seems like a cheaper option, but the environmental costs of using standard detergents far outweigh paying a few more dollars a month for a green detergent. Every time you wash your clothes using a conventional detergent, you negatively impact the health of your family, as well as aquatic life and the water that moves downstream to pollute farmland.

Detergents that are not eco-friendly contain a toxic brew of additives and synthetic materials that are produced in a chemical plant before added to the final product. On the other hand, environmentally favorable tablets and other types of green detergents are produced using natural ingredients that leave behind not a trace of toxic materials.

Why Going Green with Detergent Matters

Using green detergent for commercial laundry services is just as important as using a green detergent for commercial laundry services. Commercial laundry services typically release more discharge because of the higher volume of materials that are needed to be washed and dried. Whether you use a commercial or residential laundry service, being exposed to a standard detergent can trigger a severe allergic reaction. Our bodies are designed to handle natural ingredients, not toxic materials that adversely impact our health. A green detergent should not have any artificial substances that can cause long-term health issues.

How to Leverage Green Detergent with Helping the Environment

The harmful chemicals found in standard detergents take a substantial toll on the surrounding ecosystem. Going green with your detergent makes a highly impactful eco-friendly statement. However, you can do more to preserve our fragile ecosystem and protect the planet. 

First, purchase green detergent that bypasses the distributor during the distribution process. Ordering online from a retailer or manufacturer dramatically reduces your carbon footprint, as well as the carbon footprint generated during the distribution of a green detergent. Second, wash your laundry in cold water to conserve energy.  Choose a green detergent that is specially formulated to wash your laundry in cold water.

The publicity surrounding the going green movement has typically focused on the larger projects that help protect the environment. However, it is the smaller steps you take daily that promote eco-friendly initiatives as well. One smaller eco-friendly initiative is to switch from a standard detergent made with harmful chemicals to a green detergent that contains all-natural ingredients.

Continue Reading