Jana Wesson-Martin

The Texas Hill Country weather is so super nice in the fall and spring. There are months and months around here when pleasant temperatures allow us to spend time in the beautiful outdoors.The correlation with good mental health and getting out in nature has become common knowledge.

There is a large volume of literature that provides psychological and physical validation for walking and its tremendous healthy benefits.  More and more discoveries are also published about the incredible power of exposure to nature.  Endless studies claim that walking can improve mood and boost self-esteem and reduce stress. And all of those benefits make an individual much healthier.

You knew this already. Right? So when someone suggests you “take a walk,” it isn’t just a casual suggestion.  Now this endeavor is so well-recognized, a relatively new therapy is on the rise.  Yep. Walk and talk therapy.  This therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach based on the idea that there is a strong relationship between bodily movement and cognition within outdoor settings.  The foundation of walk and talk therapy supports the idea that it is in the dynamics of walking and talking that the client and therapist interact to contribute in the change process. 

Research indicates that this vein of therapy can be instrumental in getting through an impasse in therapy.  Walk and talk therapy can be an invaluable means of furthering and enhancing the psychological processing that takes place in therapy.  Most of the practitioners who have used it do so not as the sole or absolute format, but rather with a variety of creative treatments and theoretical approaches particular to the client. 

Perhaps walking and talking is a way to get us all moving on a path, both literally and figuratively.  Walking on the soles of one’s feet can be a metaphor for reflection and self-realization.  It isn’t so easy to compartmentalize the physical from the psychological. 

So even if your therapist doesn’t offer walk and talk therapy, it could be coming in the not too distant future.  Yet there is one very important thing you can do in the here and now: get out there.  Walk. Walk your dog. Hike.

Here’s a good one: walk and talk with a good friend whom you consider a confidant. Nature stimulates us in extraordinary ways. And there are so many breath-taking places to walk or hike around here.  Here are a few of my favorites:

-Lady Bird Johnson Park

-Panther Canyon Nature Trail

-San Antonio Mission Trail

-Rio Medina Trail

Do our smartphones create more stress or relieve stress?  Do you ever lose your cool when you search your pocket or your purse and can’t locate your cell phone?  Then this terrible feeling comes over you?  Sure, now we can track the phone down from the smartwatch or computer.  But, worst case scenario, the phone can indeed be stolen or dropped into an irretrievable place. The inability to locate one’s smart phone can indeed stir up quite a lot of anxiety.

There’s a term for that, sort of a new buzzword:  nomophobia. People are becoming increasingly attached to electronic devices.  We’ve all heard the common term “FOMO,” fear of missing out, and that kind of fear contributes to more specific phobias, like nomophobia, meaning “no mobile phone phobia.” It’s a kind of anxiety and nervousness, even anguish, experienced by being out of contact with a mobile phone. People who have anxiety and/or panic disorders may be more vulnerable to distress in the absence of the phone.  So many of us stress out by seeing the red bar indication of battery loss and drop everything in order to recharge the phone.

Some researchers are proposing that the term “nomophobia” be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) under “anxiety disorders/specific phobias.  Nomophobia can not only result in mental issues, but research also indicates that it can cause physical problems, too, like neck pain and stiffness and ear pain and migraines and memory problems.

Research shows that digital overload is becoming one of the defining problems of our world today.  All day long we are bombarded with texts, emails, alerts, and messages.  Our mobile devices allow us to access endless information.  All the options can be forever tempting:  surfing social networking sites and dating sites and gaming sites and Amazon shopping and all places in between. Even sleeping with one’s cell phone is not so uncommon. What?

Almost anything can become an addiction. The thing is that people with mobile phone dependency share the same sort of addictive tendencies as people with substance related addictions. The difference in the therapy is that the goal is control, rather than abstinence.

The very technology we all love to love can actually spin out of control and be detrimental to our mental and physical health. While technology has incredible benefits, the severity of attachment to our sophisticated devices can turn into addiction, and ultimately manifest itself as a phobia.  The bottom line is that we are going to e forced to pay more attention to the power technology has over our good health and well-being.

Many of us may need a reminder that the smart phone is not a part of our bodies.  Take it easy. Turn it off. Leave it at home once in a while.  Life really can still happen without it.  Even theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who was born way back in 1879, left us this warning:

“The human spirit must prevail over technology.”

I was so fortunate to be present in the delivery room when my two grandchildren were born. Watching them grow these last few years has reminded me that everyday, a child learns something new. Everyday a child changes. Everyday a child grows.

What is the biggest influence on child development?

The debate regarding nature and nurture is ancient. Research now firmly suggests that development is based on both. Genetics and environment are interdependent. Stauffer and Capuzzi in Human Growth and Development state, “Our heredity comes with capacities for wonderful skills, but [those skills] must be nurtured by the environment.”

A Neflix documentary, The Beginning of Life, presents breakthroughs in technology and neuroscience. The research presented in this film shows that we should be paying ever more attention to the first three years of life. Those first years are referred to as a framework of sorts, like building the frame of a house. Learning takes place much more rapidly ages 0-3.

Experts in the field remind us that a 3-year-old brain is twice as active as our adult brain. We need only look into a child’s face to see that there is so much happening, all at once.

Andrew N. Meltzoff, PhD, is an American psychologist who is an internationally recognized expert on infant and child development. He states that 30 years ago, philosophers thought baby brains were undeveloped. Their babbling before language wasn’t taken so seriously. The truth is just the opposite, the good doctor emphasizes, for at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, research shows that babies learn more and know more than we ever thought possible.

Particia K. Kohl, PhD / Co-Director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, speaks to the idea that the baby’s brain is just waiting for the environment to show him/her how this culture does things. She calls it a “sense of self” (how does it feel to be me?) and a “sense of the world” (how does it feel to be human?). Her study reminds us of the term neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change with experience. It is a baby’s brain that is most adaptable.

Alison Gopnik, PhD, is a psychologist and neuroscientist who reminds us of something very important: We often say toddlers have trouble paying attention. What is actually true is that they have trouble NOT paying attention. Toddlers are, she urges, very sensitive to all info around them, taking it in and putting it into use. The irony is that children are so observant, while adults walk around with their eyes practically closed, not noticing, not observing all that is happening around them, in nature, in people.

Children don’t just babble. Rather, children are actually little scientists and the best learners, and they recognize novelty in what we might consider to be the most mundane things. We can’t underestimate what’s going on in a child’s brain. Could it be that babies learn more in the first three years of life than they will ever learn in that time span again?

Warning: it is also the baby’s brain that can be so vulnerable, suffering from threat or abuse. We must all tread softly. And the thing is that things, money and fancy toys, don’t matter so much. The film depicts mothers in great poverty who interact actively with their babies and whose babies are thriving.

As exhausting as it is to be a parent, the parent has great power to put a child on the right trajectory. This scientific documentary ultimately says that it is all about the love: “Love is the necessary background for exploration.” It is important to be paying attention to this new little life, offering interaction and affirmation. And parenting, (well and grand-parenting of course) is one the highest of callings.

Written by: Jana Wesson-Martin, LPC-Intern – Therapist – New Braunfels location

What are you doing with your time in quarantine? Since I’ve been sheltered in, I’m integrating a little more self-care into my life. After all, self-care isn’t selfish, as many have said, but self-care is indeed a necessary thing for all of us as we strive for good health and well-being.

I love movies, but all too often, in typical circumstances, I don’t take the time to settle down for a few hours (with some popcorn, of course) and actually indulge myself in viewing a good movie. And I was recently reminded of the deep impact a good movie can have upon its viewers. Who of us hasn’t been incredibly moved by watching a good film?

Cinematherapy focuses on the idea that art imitates life, and one film I recently watched did not disappoint. To the Bone is about a young lady with an eating disorder. The film is based on the life experiences of the film’s director, Marti Noxon, who states, “I didn’t want to try to show the particularities of this one ism, but to talk about the underlying issues. “Eating disorders for me, like substance abuse [for others], was me wanting to escape a certain pain or level of feeling that I didn’t want to have, and until I faced those feelings, I wasn’t going to get better.”

I especially like the film because it doesn’t just apply to eating disorders. Most anything can become an addiction. For centuries, we’ve observed so much about chemical addictions, but now we are also hearing more and more about process addictions. The American Society of Addiction Medicine now holds a wider definition of addiction to include not only drugs and alcohol, but also process addictions to such things as shopping, exercise, and gambling, for example.

We are all susceptible to addictions. True confessions – I have addiction to my phone. Seriously, nomophobia is the fear of being without one’s smartphone. This addiction has become so prevalent in our society that there is a proposal to include it in the next edition of the Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Sure, I joke at my addiction because I don’t really want to think about it that much. And I don’t want to change. That’s my denial. Yet, oh so quickly, those process addictions, too, can seep into one’s life in such a way that interferes with relationships and obligations.

The film To the Bone didn’t win any stellar awards. But the film reminds me of the complicatedness of relationships and of life’s twists and turns. There is also the reminder that hitting “rock bottom,” is not always a requirement in order for a patient to get help. Most importantly, the film portrays the idea that the commonality for any addiction is that recovery requires a choice, a willingness to change. One of the best lines from the film is this: “Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing.”

The ending. Oh, never mind. Of course, I can’t tell you the ending. But I will say that the ending reminds me of Viktor Frankl’s words:

Say yes to life, despite everything.

These words I want to remember. Especially now. Today.

Check out a few of my fave films that portray the incredible trait of human resiliency:

Harriet

He Named Me Malala

The Kite Runner

Life of Pi

The King’s Speech

Fences

Jackie

The Pursuit of Happyness

Unbroken

Invictus

Cast Away

Rocky

Wild

 

Written by: Jana Wesson-Martin, NCC, LPC-Intern – Therapist – New Braunfels location