Patrick Wanis PhD

The Secret to total freedom and empowerment

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:00:09 +0000

The secret to total freedom and empowerment

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to share the secret to total freedom and self-empowerment.

First a quick update:

**** Protecting your children from drugs – Eleven million American adolescents and young adults ages 12-29 need help with drug and alcohol problems. Research and real life studies reveal that parents play the biggest role and are the single most critical factor in determining delinquency, youth violence, and drug abuse; yes, even greater than environmental community factors. Listen to the exclusive interview with Aaron Huey of Fire Mountain Sober Living Boys Home and Fire Mountain Programs: http://patrickwanis.com/RadioInterviews.asp#protectfromdrugs

**** Receive my newsletters immediately – Follow me on Twitter to receive my newsletter immediately @behavior_expert

Now, let’s talk about the secret to total freedom and self-empowerment.

The dictionary offers various definitions for freedom such as: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action; liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another; independence; unrestricted use.

Ultimately, freedom is being able to make your own choices – no one else is able to control you except you.

While the word empower has various meanings based on context, it can also mean the ability to control your own destiny.

Thus, combined “total freedom” and “self-empowerment” imply that you and only you have power over yourself; no one else but you can control your destiny.

Is it truly possible to break the chains of other people’s power over you?

Is it truly possible to become totally independent?

Of course, we need other people and we depend on other people for certain things – friendship, love, companionship, community and so forth. And if we are physically ill then we will depend on others for assistance and possibly even for survival.

However, what I am about to share with you is a principle and philosophy that one can live by and which offers one extraordinary power and freedom.

“It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” This was the trademark slogan of Emiliano Zapata, a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution which broke out in 1910. Zapata was rebelling against what he believed to be tyranny.

Thus, the above phrase is a call to fight for freedom, to stand upright and fight for one’s rights, to not act or live as a slave on one’s knees or to live a life of submission and powerlessness; to not give away control of one’s life to others or to live at the mercy of others.

That slogan also has other implications such as believing in yourself and in your own self-worth; not letting others defeat you, or defeating yourself through your own poor or negative attitude.

Building onto the above phrase, I teach:

When you are willing to lose everything, to give up everything, then and only then are you totally free and only at that point are you free of other people’s control.

Look at your life. Which people control you and how do they control you?

There are various forms of control such as physical (survival), mental, financial and emotional.

Parents control children because the child depends on the parents for survival in the form of food, water and shelter.

Bosses attempt to control employees because the employee believes that he/she depends on the check for survival. And yes, in some cases that is true, but, only if one believes that there is no other possible source for money.

What about mental and emotional control?

Again who in your life has the ability to control you mentally or emotionally, to manipulate you?

Only those people to whom you have given that ability and power.

In one example, a wife completely controls and emasculates her husband by criticizing, bullying and demeaning him. (Yes, either spouse, male or female can do this.) He depends on her not for survival but for emotional self-worth and happiness. She controls him by threatening to leave or by continually tearing him down so that he no longer believes in himself, his self-worth or value.

In another example, a woman controls her boyfriend via similar tactics telling him he is not good enough, he is not doing enough for her, he is innately bad or unhappy, and, if she loved him he would act a certain way. In turn, he fears losing her and he hands her all his power and self-worth. Now he is on his knees to her and she controls him and controls the way he feels on a daily basis; sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis.

And yet, in another example, a male boss controls his employee by reminding her that he can fire her any time while he destroys her self-confidence by making demeaning and harassing remarks. She bows on her knees to him and she becomes his slave.

The one thing all three people have in common is the fear of losing something – the security, the relationship, the check, etc.

Whatever we choose to become attached to will inevitably control us!

If we attach ourselves to a job, a car, a person (or even a person’s approval) then that thing or person will control us and will lose all of our power.

Many years ago, I was living in The Gambia, West Africa. I was working for a very powerful and wealthy man – powerful because he owned multiple businesses, employed hundreds of people and he could easily control and influence government officials.

Other employees of his were shocked to see me stand up to him and say “no” during meetings when I knew that what he was suggesting or was doing was actually wrong. Ironically, I earned his respect by not acting like the others, by not living out of fear and being willing to speak the truth at any cost.

However, one day I was called to his office and the CFO told me, in front of him, that they had reduced my team for budgetary purposes. (i.e. they were going to fire people on my team.) Without blinking, and recognizing that this was an act of disrespect since they had not consulted with me, I replied “I quit. That way you can save even more money.”

He was stunned and the CFO went completely silent.

“Why are you getting angry?” he said surprisingly.

‘Because you disrespect me and you didn’t consult me. So, I quit.’

And with those few simple words, I walked out of his office,

I was willing to go home – wherever home was at the time – London or back to Australia. I had no attachment to the job. I loved what I did and the people but I was not willing to be controlled or to live on my knees.

When you are willing to lose everything, to give up everything, then and only then are you totally free and only at that point are you free of other people’s control.

A few hours later, my boss’ wife arrived and she said to me “I heard you had an argument with my husband. You can’t leave The Gambia because I hired you.”

‘I am leaving.’

A few hours after that, my boss arrived and sent someone to me with a beer in his hand and a handwritten note: “Aussies love a beer. Don’t worry be happy.”

That was his way of apologizing. And yes, he did not cut back my team but kept it intact.

Again, I was willing to lose and give up everything – my job, my life in Africa and my security – all for one thing – freedom & personal power.

How far will you go to protect your personal freedom & power?

“The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” – Abraham Maslow, American psychologist.

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” – Dr. Seuss

You can post your comment on this newsletter below.

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and would like to receive all of my newsletters please enter your email address on the home page at PatrickWanis.com.

I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist
www.patrickwanis.com

Facing the truth & avoiding victims

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:01:07 +0000

Facing the truth & avoiding victims

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal the significance of facing the truth of oneself and how to avoid playing the victim.

First a quick update:

**** Receive my newsletters immediately – Follow me on Twitter to receive my newsletter immediately @behavior_expert

**** “Emotional Mojo” – I will be a host with three women on a new TV show geared around self-help, psychology and personal development. The show will be broadcast first run on the Inspiration Network starting in June. Get a sneak preview here: http://youtu.be/zMf5SfZoqOg

Now, let’s talk about the significance of facing the truth of oneself and how to avoid playing the victim.

What would happen if you were to accept 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life? How would your life be different?

Of course, one cannot argue that we create every single thing in our life. For example, contrary to some of the teachings of New Age leaders and ministers, the victims of natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, tsunamis and wildfires cannot be blamed or accused of causing or creating those disasters. Teaching people to believe that they create natural disasters does not empower people, but rather, it causes them to engage in self-loathing, guilt and delusion.

Excluding natural disasters, what would happen if you were to accept 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life?

A new client recently complained that the man she had once briefly dated had turned his female friends against her. She believed that he had made negative comments about her to them and that they believed him.

“Are they your friends?”

‘No’ she replied.

“Does he have that much control over them, considering that they are adults?”

‘Yes” she said angrily.

“Well, if he can control them, why is their friendship that significant to you?”

‘I want them to like me.’

“So you are intent on pleasing them and getting their approval, even though they are not your friends. Therefore, they will actually be controlling you.” I said. “Equally significant – is there any truth to what his friends say about you?”

She paused and refused to accept that there could be any truth to what these women believed about her.

“What would happen if there were any truth to what they say? Would that make you weaker or stronger?”

She paused again but couldn’t immediately perceive the potential benefits of standing in front of the mirror and seeing the whole truth about herself.

By choosing to face even one truth about herself – that she makes herself helpless, miserable and frustrated by seeking other people’s approval and acceptance – she would have the power and opportunity to change her belief and issue and thus to take back her power by not letting other people decide her daily happiness or self-worth.

It’s never comfortable to face the truth about ourselves, particularly when that truth is not positive and when it infers that we must take responsibility for who we are, the way we behave, the things we believe and the way we treat other people. Most of us refuse to face the truth because it signifies that a change must be made; that we must accept responsibility for our life and results.

It is easy to criticize and blame people around us for the way our life has turned out. However, when we blame others we become the victim, we become helpless and we give away all of our power to change our life and world. Suddenly we are saying that all of our happiness and self-worth is determined by everyone else around us – or by a specific group of people to whom we have assigned power and control over us.

The paradox is that when we accept the truth about ourselves, even if it is something we do not want to hear and it means facing aspects of ourselves that we do not like, we become more powerful because we are given the chance to make a conscious positive change in ourselves and in our life. Once we begin to take control and responsibility for our lives, we stop becoming or playing the victim.

Children are the only real victims because they are fully dependent on parents or caretakers for their survival – food, water, shelter and physical love & affection. Adults, on the other hand, possess the power to change their world, or at the very least, change the way they respond to their world.

In another client example, a divorced father expressed distress over his situation whereby his children do not like him and resent him, the result of his ex-wife playing the victim constantly blaming & criticizing him to their children. This is known as “parental alienation” (one parent has been alienated from his/her children by the other parent.)

The question is “Is this father a victim?”

Perhaps he is a victim to his wife’s actions as are her children, but he can take responsibility and thus action to correct the situation and mend the relationship with his children. It was for that very reason that he came to me to find a solution (one of many such clients.) By being open, this father can also explore whether or not there is something that he did that either contributed to his wife’s responses or worsened them.

Being responsible means that you are the author of your life, you write the script by the way that you respond to the things that happen in your life, you have the power to choose in every moment, and only you are accountable for your happiness. By taking control of your life, facing the truth about yourself – the pleasant and unpleasant – you can take action and change your world, avoid depression and get what you want. Read my article about the link between “Responsibility and depression” http://patrickwanis.com/blog/responsibility-and-depression/

If you find yourself constantly playing the victim, consider what might be the benefits of behaving this way. What does it get you – attention, pity, empathy or even praise for being a martyr? Now stop and explore the negative consequences of playing the victim and the various ways it stops you from getting what you really want – and from developing real meaningful relationships. One client believed that the only way that she could get attention was to scream and be negative – but the result was that she alienated all of her friends, and ended up feeling very alone. Read my article with strategies and tips about “Stopping the victim game” http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stopping-the-victim-game/

Finally, if you find that there are people in your life who constantly play the victim and are therefore, draining you like emotional vampires, read my article about “Dealing with emotional vampires” http://patrickwanis.com/blog/dealing-with-emotional-vampires/

You can post your comment on this newsletter below.

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and would like to receive all of my newsletters please enter your email address on the home page at PatrickWanis.com.

I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist
www.patrickwanis.com

Significance of journaling & 7 steps to effective journaling

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:56:46 +0000

The significance & benefits of journaling – & steps to effective journaling

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal the significance of journaling, its link to emotional freedom and 7 steps to effective journaling.

First a quick update:

**** Receive my newsletters immediately – Follow me on Twitter to receive my newsletter immediately @behavior_expert

**** “Subconscious Rapid Transformation Technique” – Learn about my unique therapeutic tool which helps clients to make radically fast behavioral and emotional changes without reliving trauma and without months or years of talk or emotional or psychological dependence upon the therapist. And if you are a coach, counselor, therapist or practitioner, you can also learn this technique: http://patrickwanis.com/srtt/srtt-st.asp

Now, let’s talk about the significance of journaling, its link to emotional freedom and 7 steps to effective journaling.

“Sometime around 600 BC, one of the Seven Sages inscribed on the Temple of Delphi in Greece the now famous words, “Know thyself.” To know yourself refers to knowing what you want, how you feel, what makes you tick. What are your dreams, your fantasies, your fears, your goals, and your passion? What are your deepest desires? What would you try and do if you had no fear? What moves you and motivates you? What are your fears? What are your issues? What pushes your buttons? What do you most like about yourself and what do you least like about yourself? If you were to write your own epitaph, what would it say? What are the things you want to be remembered for when you leave this world?”-

Self-awareness is a key component of emotional intelligence (the awareness of and ability to manage and control one’s emotions.) And emotional intelligence determines much of our success in relationships. And the success of our relationships determines our happiness and success in almost every area of our life (at home and at the office.) The rise and fall of successful people is often directly tied to the way they treat other people as well as the respect, support & loyalty they get from those other people. (Read my article “Emotional Intelligence”: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/emotional-intelligence/ )

Self-awareness creates the opportunity to reflect and make necessary changes. It also helps a person to become clear about what they truly want from life and thus focus on and pursue only what they want.

Journaling is one way of gaining self-awareness, developing emotional intelligence and becoming clear about one’s values and goals in life. However, journaling also has many other benefits including enhancing growth and learning.

Journaling is not the same as writing a daily diary. The latter is a record of daily experiences, thoughts and reactions to those events.

A journal, on the other hand, can be used daily but is designed to record personal thoughts, experiences, and evolving insights. It can also serve as a way to gain clarity about events, experiences and emotions. Writing entries every day in a diary is not sufficient in itself to bring about deep changes in one’s life.

Furthermore, on a daily basis we are communicating faster and shorter via texts, Twitter, Instagram photos and brief email & voice mail messages. But we are also losing the ability to gain insight into and expression of complex ideas and more importantly, we are losing insight and awareness of our deeper emotions and subconscious beliefs.

Personal opinions, hopes, fears, inner conflicts, dilemmas, challenges, dichotomies, predicaments, evolving views, confusion about personal values & beliefs, life changes and other problems cannot be solved via text messages.

The key is to become self-aware:

Uncover & clarify one’s thoughts & beliefs
Gain mental clarity
Identify various subconscious emotions
Release pent-up emotions
Solve problems
Engage your intuition

Journaling is powerful way of recording personal changes and insights as well as elucidating opinions, beliefs, and feelings and thus also lowering stress. The journal’s effectiveness is determined by your approach – writing openly, free of fear, judgment, blame or justification. In fact, the very act of writing this way can lead to emotional freedom. Journaling can create the opportunity for greater self-acceptance.

Here are 7 simple steps to effective journaling:

Understand and accept that the journal is for you and you only
Obtain a lined or unlined pad (writing by hand is preferable as it encourages a faster flow of thoughts, ideas and emotions)
Find a place where you feel safe and free to be private and express yourself – away from distractions; this allows for a freedom of expression that may be inhibited or hindered in a group setting
Determine the purpose of the journal i.e. is it a gratitude journal or a journal designed to solve a problem, express an idea or express and release a pent-up emotion?
Write without thinking about grammar, spelling, mistakes or any other judgment; writing freely and openly creates “flow” also known as being “in the zone” or creative disassociation. This is also necessary for expressing and releasing emotion.
Write for quantity not quality i.e. focus on expressing every thought and emotion that arises. Allow yourself to continuously write and express yourself. If you come up with an “Aha moment” circle it and keep writing. You can review it later.
If you intend to express emotion, use phrases such as “I feel” to begin some sentences.

Remember, you can create and write a journal for every area of your life – gratitude, dreams, memoirs, emotions, goals and dreams. The key is to begin writing so that you can create the flow and “Know theyself.”

You can post your comment on this newsletter below.

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and would like to receive all of my newsletters please enter your email address on the home page at PatrickWanis.com.

I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist
www.patrickwanis.com

The radicalization & alienation of youth

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:26:57 +0000

The radicalization and alienation of youth – and the link to terrorism

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal eight causes of the alienation of youth and its connection to the terrorist bombings in Boston.

First a quick update:

**** Stress and its impact on women’s menstruation – Read the interview between myself and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-years-no-period-progesterone/

Now, let’s talk about the eight causes of the alienation of youth and its connection to the terrorist bombings in Boston.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev age 19 is a naturalized American citizen of Chechen origin. He has been charged with the twin bombings that killed 3 people and injured more than 170 during the Boston marathon.

Dzhokhar was enrolled as a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and his classmates describe him as “normal”, “really nice”, “very charismatic” and someone who made “friends easily.”

Those close to him believe it was his older brother Tamerlan, who brainwashed Dzhokhar into committing the act of terrorism.

There has been conflicting opinions about whether or not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be perceived as a teenage child led astray or as an adult; the legal age for purchasing alcohol and for voting in the US is 21, but the legal age to join the army is 18.

Of course, domestic terrorism is not new. In the 1990s, in the US, there were dozens of bombings and arson of abortion clinics. Also adults have been persuaded to commit acts of murder and suicide by various cult leaders. Joseph Kibweteere was the leader of a suicidal cult that splintered from the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda. In March 17, 2000, in a mass murder/suicide, at least 780 people died.)

http://patrickwanis.com/RadioInterviews.asp#guruscultbrainwashing

Reverend “Jim” Jones led the cult murder/suicide in 1978 of 909 of his church’s members in Jonestown, Guyana where more than 200 children were murdered – most of them by cyanide poisoning.

Nonetheless, as evidenced by the bombings in Boston and numerous acts of terrorism and violence around the world, along with young people who are being ‘groomed’ to carry out ‘terrorist’ attacks, the newest threat in the 21^st century is the alienation and radicalization of youth.

Alienation is “a condition in social relationships reflected by a low degree of integration or common values and a high degree of distance or isolation between individuals, or between an individual and a group of people in a community or work environment.”

I cannot claim to offer all of the reasons youth and someone such as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be swayed, persuaded or led to commit acts of terrorism. However, I would like to offer some insights into the causes of youth alienation.

I would like to begin with Charles Manson.

Charles Manson is a cult leader who led the Manson Family, a quasi-commune in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, which were carried out by members of his group at his instruction.

In prison, Manson still receives a large amount of mail, most of it from young people who want to join the Manson Family; there is also a Facebook page to join the Family.

Many of Manson’s original followers and Family were impressionable young girls from disturbed backgrounds; they were from affluent, middle and upper class families but they themselves were lost, confused, lacked direction and were seeking significance and purpose. Manson gave them significance and a purpose (albeit a twisted one) – to precipitate “Helter Skelter”, the impending apocalyptic race war.

Manson met many of the key needs of these young followers: significance, identity, challenge, a sense of belonging, meaning and purpose. (Read my article “Getting your six human emotional needs” http://patrickwanis.com/blog/getting-your-six-human-emotional-needs/

These are some of the same methods being used to recruit and radicalize youth on an individual basis as well as on a grand scale. It is the alienation of youth that creates the opportunity to radicalize them.

Here are eight causes of youth alienation today:

Absent fathers

Lack of validation, guidance, discipline, leadership or a positive role model results in hostility, low self-esteem, poor self-image, negativity, and less ambition Read my article about the new study conducted over 50 years that reveals that rejection by father can be even more devastating than by mother, negatively impacting the development of happy, well-adjusted children and into adulthood.

http://patrickwanis.com/blog/dads-moms-can-prevent-killings-suicides/

Breakdown In families

Severe dysfunction within families is one of the greatest causes of youth alienation. A lack of a sound, stable and secure family and support system creates vulnerable youth, who are already impressionable and seeking identity and purpose. A breakdown in families (divorce, abuse, isolation, loneliness, abandonment, lack of attention et al) results in a lack of a voice or an outlet for emotions such as fear, anger and hatred, which, in turn, can stimulate actions leading to violence.

In February 2007, UNICEF conducted a report to measure children and adolescent’s well-being in 21 industrialized countries. It used 40 indicators such as relative poverty, health, family & peer relationships and behaviors & risks. The US and Britain scored at the bottom of the report.

Idealogical fragmentation

The world is becoming global due to the internet and technology, but it is the same technology that allows for people to locally become diverse and fragmented. “In many situations this brings with it community tensions, division and segregation. For many young people within such environments there develops for them a ‘contradictory consciousness’ which often results in conflict and violence against the perceived ‘other’ in ‘defense’ of community, identity, culture and/or way of life.” – Dr. Dr. Alan Grattan, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire, UK – author of “The Alienation and Radicalisation of Youth: A ‘New Moral Panic’?”

Social isolation

Technology and social media allow for digital exchanges of information but not real emotional or physical connection, meaningful friendship and bonds or understanding and support. Children spend nearly 55 hours a week watching TV, texting, playing video games and using computers. This allows little time for social interaction and results in social isolation.

Absence of respect for authority

This is driven by lack of involvement by parents, lack of discipline and boundaries by parents, the absence of fathers and the media which promotes and glamorizes extreme individuation, reckless abandon, and constant hedonism without any meaning or purpose.

Few positive role models for youth

Most role models offered by the media are hedonistic, narcissistic celebrities who achieve an empty form of significance and identity via fame, attention and power.

Peer guidance and lack of social skills

Children spend more time with their peers than with adults and the result is a lack of basic social skills and a lack of guidance, wisdom, meaning and purpose. MTV and Nickelodeon deliberately created a policy that peers would determine much of the programming and direction. Nickelodeon specifically promoted its development and programming policy as “by children for children.” In both above cases, the result is also a lack of respect for authority as evidenced by many of the TV shows on MTV and the constant promotion of hooliganism.

“Because they don’t have that structured interaction with adults, it damages their life chances. They are not learning how to behave, how to get on in life, as they need to.” Nick Pearce, Director of The Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain. In Britain, 45% of 15-year-old boys spend most of their evenings out with friends i.e. little interaction and time with their family and parents.

Frustration, isolation and life crisis

This pertains specifically to Muslim youth who struggle for identity. They desire to fit in while also trying to retain their religious tradition; they are strongly tied to their current home country versus ancestral homeland but face clashing worlds of conservative parents and a secular world outside home They ultimately choose one identity but feel alienated by both Muslim and Non-Muslim communities. They also often lack positive role models and suffer from discrimination in the form of jobs, travel, visas, etc.

In conclusion, change can only occur by each person taking action in their own world – at home and with their family. What can you do to support and guide the youth in your world?

You can post your comment on this newsletter by going to:

http://patrickwanis.com/blog/are-you-hero-coward/

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and would like to receive all of my newsletters please enter your email address on the home page at PatrickWanis.com.

I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist
www.patrickwanis.com

Are you a hero or a coward?

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:17:58 +0000

Are you a hero or a coward? What makes a hero?

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal the psychology of a hero; what makes a hero? Can we all be heroes?

First a quick update:

**** Stress, hormones and the fountain of youth – Did you know that biologically, we should be able to live to 120 years of age? Read the interview between myself and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care revealing the links between stress, hormones and staying young, and; ways you can safely maintain youthful levels of hormones. http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-hormones-fountain-youth/

Now, let’s talk about the psychological profile of a hero; what makes a hero? Can we all be heroes?

“A retired football player carried a wounded woman from the Boston Marathon finish line. A father who lost both his sons, one in Iraq and one by suicide, rushed to aid the fallen. A veteran turned the shirt off his back into a bandage. A surgeon from Kansas finished the race and then started removing shrapnel from other runners.” – NBC News reporting on the aftermath of two blasts April 15, 2013 that killed three people and wounded at least 176.

The above people were described by NBC News as heroes.

The dictionary defines a hero as a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

On that day in Boston as referenced above there were numerous, extraordinary examples of the human spirit soaring and triumphing – of humanity rising above evil.

There is also a difference between acts of kindness & help during a time of crisis and acts of heroism. Science has identified that empathetic and altruistic actions are driven by ocxytocin – also known as the mother-love-chemical. However, a hero demonstrates concern for other people in need or defends a moral cause while openly knowing that there is a personal risk. In other words, the hero puts himself in danger to help or rescue others and does so without any expectation of a reward.

Are we all capable of this action; can we all be heroes?

The hero acts contrary to the hard-wired Fight-or-Flight response which is about self-preservation and survival (fighting or fleeing to protect oneself); the hero is willing to give up his own life to save that of another human being.

Philip Zimbardo is one of the world’s most distinguished living psychologists. A professor emeritus at Stanford University, Dr. Zimbardo has spent 50 years teaching and studying psychology and has published more than 50 books and 400 professional and popular articles and chapters, including “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.”

In an interview and conversation Dr. Zimbardo and I recorded in 2008, he told me that he was intrigued by the actions and behaviors of Jehovah’s Witnesses who demonstrated extraordinary heroic acts as one of the only groups during the Holocaust who never informed, never worked with any of Nazis against any of the other prisoners in the concentration camps. “Heroism always involves a conscious choice. You see the evil; ‘Do I give in or do I oppose it?’” (Listen to the interview here: http://patrickwanis.com/RadioInterviews.asp#TheEvil ) He also told me that he could not explain what made people act heroically. And so, after more than 40 years of studying evil, Professor Zimbardo launched The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) to learn more about heroism and to create the heroes of tomorrow.

Numerous behaviors such as conformity, obedience, desire for approval, fear of rejection and the Bystander Effect prevent people from acting as heroes.

A person who is afraid of what people think of him will not take action in a time of need; a person who conforms and is blindly obedient will be afraid to question or defy unjust authority; a person who is not clear about his own morality and values will also be resistant to taking action when moral injustices are occurring.

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read my article about “The Power of No” and the experiments by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s and 1970s in which most people obeyed orders to deliver gradual electric shocks and eventually electric shocks of 450 volts to an innocent person in the next room – in spite of the screams of agony from the person receiving the shocks. The participants caved into social pressure, almost resulting in blind obedience and thus going against their own previous moral convictions and conscience. http://patrickwanis.com/blog/the-power-of-no/

The Bystander effect is the “diffusion of responsibility” – ‘someone else will do something about this and therefore I don’t need to do anything.’ In fact, numerous studies over decades reveal that “bystanders are less likely to intervene in emergency situations as the size of the group increases.”

Professor Zimbardo’s research has indentified 5 human behaviors/tendencies that prevent people from becoming heroes:

Tendency #1: to react automatically to the things we are not paying close attention to

When we fail to be vigilant, we respond automatically and often in a different way than how we would prefer to respond if we were paying attention.

Tendency #2: to rely on labels and categories in making judgments about ourselves and others

We tend to put things in neat boxes as a means to make sense of and quickly navigate the world around us. However, this leads to rash judgments about others based on the groups we think they belong to and we misinterpret the causes of our feelings and behavior.

For example in one study – an actor dressed up as a homeless man laying on the steps of Liverpool St. Station in London. Multiple people passed by for 20 minutes but did nothing; when the same actor dressed up as a businessman, it took only 6 seconds before people stopped to help. Why? Labels, categories and judgments such as the gentleman’s wellbeing is more important than that of the homeless man. In the same study, an actress dressed casually lays on the same steps, unconscious for 4: 55 seconds with people passing by but not stopping.

Tendency #3: to depend on those around us for our own interpretation of what’s going on

This tendency is also connected to the Bystander Effect – waiting for others to lead or tell us what to do. We watch and wait rather than act, and we feel less personally responsible to intervene on behalf of another.

For example in the study referenced above – a woman lay on the ground; as soon as one person began to help, others did the same. But many stood around and watched and did nothing until one person took the lead and took action.

Tendency #4: to seek acceptance and avoid rejection

This paralyzes people. It prevents people from taking action when an obvious injustice is occurring and pushes people to fit in and give into peer pressure, rather than do what is right or speak one’s truth.

Tendency #5: to assume that certain aspects of ourselves and others can’t be changed

Believing that we and things can’t change causes us to give up on ourselves as well as allow injustices.

In the same way that there are behaviors and tendencies that prevent people from becoming heroes, there are also behaviors and other elements that encourage people to act heroically.

Professor Zimbardo and his team surveyed 4,000 Americans exploring heroes and heroic actions. Here is a summary of the findings along with some of my own insights and conclusions.

Heroes surround us: 20 % qualified as heroes: helping another person in a dangerous emergency; whistle blowing on an injustice; sacrificing for a non-relative or stranger; defying an unjust authority.

Opportunity matters: Most acts of heroism occur in urban areas

Education matters: Education leads to greater awareness of situations

Volunteering matters: 30% of the heroes also had engaged in significant amounts of volunteered, thus indicating greater concern for fellow humans

Gender matters: Males reported performing acts of heroism more than females. Possible explanation – greater opportunities for males, and women may not perceive their life and roles as mothers as heroic

Race matters: Blacks were eight times more likely than whites to qualify as heroes. Possible explanation – greater opportunities and need

Personal history matters: Having survived a disaster or personal trauma makes you three times more likely to be a hero and a volunteer. Possible explanation – when one has experienced great pain it makes him/her more likely to be compassionate towards fellow humans; contrast this with someone who is sheltered and showered with material goods and attention and thus grows up to become narcissistic and entitled.

“Every reasonable man and woman is a potential scoundrel and a potential good citizen. What a man is depends upon his character what’s inside. What he does and what we think of what he does depends upon his circumstances.” – George Bernard Shaw

It is hard to accept that we all have the potential to commit good or evil and most of us would scream out that we would never torture or commit atrocities. The truth is that few people commit evil but even fewer commit heroic acts; the majority of people do nothing and become bystanders. Which one will you be?

You can post your comment on this newsletter below.

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I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist
www.patrickwanis.com

Stress, hormones and the fountain of youth

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:06:21 +0000

Stress, hormones and the fountain of youth

The following is a transcript of an interview between Patrick Wanis, Human Behavior and Relationship Expert, PhD and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care revealing the links between stress, hormones and staying young. Patrick Wanis and Dr. Mike also reveal ways you can maintain youthful levels of hormones.

Patrick: This is Patrick Wanis, celebrity life coach, human behavior and relationship expert, PhD.

As part of the series exploring and discovering and looking into the link between emotions and health, we are talking with Dr. Mike Bauerschmidt.

Dr. Mike Bauerschmidt is the medical director of Full Potential Healthcare.

Please also take a look at the other topics, interviews, and also transcripts of interviews between myself and Dr. Mike Bauerschmidt looking at the link between, particularly anger, anxiety and other negative emotions and your health. http://Patrickwanis.com/blog/radical-healing-functional-medicine/

Today, we’re talking about hormonal health.

Dr. Mike, what is a hormone?

Dr. Mike: Patrick, thanks again for having me on. I really enjoy talking with you and sharing this information.

A hormone is basically a chemical substance that’s secreted by your body that has particular actions on what we call the target organs. It depends on what the hormone is and what the target organ is in terms of its effect. As an example, thyroid hormone is secreted by the thyroid gland, but the target organ is basically every other organ in the body because it really helps regulate – it’s sort of the thermostat for your body.

Your sex hormones, for women, estrogen and progesterone are secreted primarily by the ovaries but also, to a degree, by the adrenal gland; and in men, of course, the testicles and testosterone.

The target organs vary with the effect. But basically, all our cells are affected by an imbalance of our hormones.

Patrick: Is it true that if we were looking for the fountain of youth, it would be maintaining hormone levels at the same levels as a youth or a young person?

Dr. Mike: Yes and no. We don’t lose our hormones because we get older. We get older because we lose our hormones. So, to that degree, you’re correct.

However, the body of evidence has been primarily with women. As women approach their 40s and early 50s, they go into this period called perimenopause where their periods start to become irregular, they don’t ovulate as frequently or as regularly and that kind of throws their system off.

The idea is not to replace their hormones to the levels that they were when they were 20 because our body actually — you can increase the rate at which you age if you — it’s like having a car tuned perfectly and not running it over the speed limit as opposed to having your car tuned perfectly and running it like an Indy racecar; Indy racecars, the engines have a very short half-life.

What we want is for everything to be running as smoothly and as evenly for as long as we can. That doesn’t necessarily mean replacing your hormones with levels that they were when you’re in 20s. However, it is replacing your hormones to the degree to which your body no longer experiences symptoms from the lack of the hormone.

Patrick: Let me understand this properly. Why would it be bad, wrong or even possibly dangerous to maintain youthful hormonal levels at a much older age?

Dr. Mike: Define youthful. Again, if we’re talking you’re in your 60s and you want to be in your 20s, once structural changes start to take place it’s very hard from a functional medicine standpoint to reverse structural changes. It is quite possible and is often the case that we delay the rate at which we age.

The bottom line, Patrick, is it goes back to what we’ve talked about on our first discussion about oxidative stress. Oxidative stress occurs normally in the production of energy. http://Patrickwanis.com/blog/anger-shortens-life-kill-you-oxidative-stress/ Every time we produce a molecule of energy, we create another free radical, that free radical creates the oxidative stress that we experience in our bodies. So, even under optimum conditions, we are slowly aging, which is why we can’t live forever.

If we take a 60-year-old engine and try to make it run like a 20-year-old engine, we’re just going to increase the rate at which we’re creating that oxidative stress because the engine is just not mechanically capable of having that degree of efficiency and power that the younger engine did.

Patrick: But why is it not capable, that’s the real question.

Dr. Mike: Because, along the line, we have accumulated degrees of oxidative stress. We have created free radicals throughout our existence that have slowly been aging us. That damage has been done.

[0:05:16]

The newest research in anti-aging medicine, the hottest button that everybody talks about is telomeres. Telomeres are the caps at the end of our chromosomes. Each time our chromosomes open to replicate our cells, we lose a little bit of that telomere. The quicker that we set our bodies through this replication phase, the quicker we lose telomeres.

If we take the 60-year-old engine and we try to make it 20 years old again, we’ve got a lot of damage repair we’ve got to deal with. So to the degree that we are really forcing that repair is the degree that we’re really pushing our aging process. We might do it enough to keep us from aging quickly, but we don’t want to do it so much that we put our body into overdrive. Does that make sense?

Patrick: Not completely to me yet, but I’ll keep working on it. Meaning, if you started at age 40 to try and maintain youthful levels, levels of a 25‑year‑old, would that work?

Dr. Mike: Yeah, that’s much more doable. Absolutely, that’s much more doable than starting at 60 and trying to hit 20.

Patrick: Okay. You also talked about telomeres and you talked about the fact that telomeres are being used up. Is there any way to refill the telomeres?

Dr. Mike: That’s really the basis of discussion; it depends on who you talk to.

There is a product that’s on the market now that does say that they can enhance the enzyme called Telomerase, which is the enzyme responsible for making your telomeres. It’s a product I use personally, but I don’t have any evidence. I measured my telomeres ahead of time. I’ve been taking it now for about two months, I need to take it for six months before I re-measure them again and tell you whether it’s working for me or not.

For right now, the product has been shown to increase the shortest telomeres, but it’s not been necessarily shown to add years to our life.

Patrick: If it could potentially show an increased level of telomeres, does that mean that we would have additional years and quality of life?

Dr. Mike: Yeah. That would truly be the fountain of youth because then we could control the four factors of oxidative stress: diet, emotions, environmental toxins and physical to reduce the rate at which we’re aging and also, on the backend, increase the length of our telomeres which has, basically, reversed the process of aging. The more that we do both of those things, the longer and healthier we live.

Patrick: Dr. Mike, please remember that the people you’re taking to are not medical doctors, so we ask you to slow down because there’s such amazing information that even I can’t keep up with at all. So, list again those four stressors.

Dr. Mike: Okay. This is what I call my DEEP approach. This is something that’s more or less going to be the title of my book that I’m in the process of writing.

It all has to do with the fact that as we are here on this earth and we are just going through the normal biochemistry of our life, we are creating oxidative stress, just from the production of our energy that we need to walk and talk and eat and sleep and all the other things that we do as human beings.

Under optimum circumstances, the degree of our oxidative stress just through normal cell rate production and replication should enable us to last about 120 years of life. This has been shown in the laboratory, taking our cells and putting them in the Petri dish and seeing how many times can they replicate before they finally quit doing that, and it usually would equate to 120 years of human life.

Now because of things like our diet, here it’s the processed foods, as we take — I can go into these individually as we go along, or I can give you an overview and then go into each one specifically, whichever you’d like to do.

[0:10:10]

Patrick: Let’s just do the overview because we have talked about it in our very first discussion, it’s good to summarize it again. The first one is diet, correct?

Dr. Mike: Diet, and basically get rid of the processed foods because the processed foods rob our body of nutrients. Nutrients basically serve as antioxidants. They reduce our oxidative stress from normal energy production. If we don’t have a good diet, we, by definition, are raising our oxidative stress because we’re lacking the nutrients to balance the reduction-oxidation equation.

The second is emotional, and this is what we’ve spent the vast majority of our time together on is the emotional impact on our health. The bottom line is bad emotions increase the wear and tear on our bodies. And in the repair of that wear and tear, we’re increasing our oxidative stress because we require more energy.

The third area is environmental. The environmental is the toxins we’re exposed to throughout our lifetime — all the chemicals in our foods, the GMOs and the growth hormones in our milk and the antibiotics in our animals, the pesticides, the herbicides, the phthalates.

Our little plastic bottles. We think we’re drinking all this good water in our little plastic bottles, we’re loading ourselves up with these plasticides, these are BPAs which are known hormone disruptors as well as carcinogens in some instances.

Patrick: So the BPA (Bisphenol A) actually increases estrogen, doesn’t it?

Dr. Mike: I’m sorry?

Patrick: BPA contributes to increased estrogen production, is that true?

Dr. Mike: Yeah. They mimic estrogen, so they act like estrogens. They’re what we call xenobiotics. They have all the action of the hormone without necessarily increasing the production of the hormone in the body. It’s like taking a birth control pill; it’s not a hormone that your body makes, but it will act like that hormone in your body.

Patrick: Is it true that as a way to counteract the effects of BPA because BPA is difficult to completely avoid, is it true that consuming or ingesting indole‑3-carbinol will rid your body of excess BPA or excess estrogen?

Dr. Mike: It helps with the methylation pathways, and those are primarily ways which your body can get rid of it. Basically, your body gets rid of toxins through sweat, through stool and through urine; those are your three routes of excretion. So having two good bowel movements a day will help dump the chemicals from the liver that are excreted in the bile.

So, in the instance of BPAs, you’re correct, doing indole-3-carbinol or I3C with DIM, which is basically just cruciferous vegetables. If you eat lots of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, you’re achieving the same thing as taking the pill. It’s just a little more convenient, the pill.

Patrick: Right and it’s concentrated.

Dr. Mike: It’s concentrated, yeah.

Patrick: Right. So that’s another reason why so many nutritionists recommend kale?

Dr. Mike: Yeah, kale is a great thing. I remember there was one woman that came in and she was a representative for a whole food product and she says, “You cannot get me to eat kale.”

Well, Patrick, I’m here to tell you that a kale salad tastes really good. You just chop it up finely and break it down a little bit, by crunching the leaves up, throwing on some lemon and some garlic and some salt. It’s a wonderful, wonderful salad. I’ll sit there and eat a bowl of it.

Patrick: Join us again for another addition of a recipe with Dr. Mike.

The fourth stressor in life is?

Dr. Mike: Yeah, part of the physical. The P of DEEP is physical. This is keeping your hormones balanced.

I see so many people coming in and they say, “I’m tired. My doctors told me my thyroid is fine.” Well, there’s ways to look at the thyroid and there’s ways not to look at the thyroid.

For Part 2 of this transcript – the continuation, click here: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/thyroid-excess-estrogen-balancing-hormones/

Thyroid, excess estrogen and balancing hormones

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:42:05 +0000

Thyroid, excess estrogen and balancing your hormones

The following is a transcript of an interview between Patrick Wanis, Human Behavior and Relationship Expert, PhD and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care revealing the links between stress, hormones and staying young. Patrick Wanis and Dr. Mike also reveal Thyroid, excess estrogen and balancing hormones. For previous part of this transcript (Part 1), click here: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-hormones-fountain-youth/

Dr. Mike: I see so many people coming in and they say, “I’m tired. My doctors told me my thyroid is fine.” Well, there’s ways to look at the thyroid and there’s ways not to look at the thyroid.

There’s a lot of people walking around with functional hypothyroidism. That is, they’re losing their hair, they’re gaining weight, their eyebrows are getting thin. But chemically, according to the lab tests, your thyroid’s “within normal limits.”

[0:15:08]

Well, I got news for you. Your thyroid’s still whacked. If you’re gaining weight, your hair’s getting thin, your eyebrows are getting thin and you’re cold all the time, you’ve got a thyroid problem, regardless of what the lab says, same thing with hormones.

So many women, even in their 20s, they come in and say, “For anywhere from two days to two weeks before my period, I turn into a raving lunatic. I get migraines. My breasts are tender. My flow is irregular. I get angry at the slightest thing. Am I going crazy?”

No, you’re not going crazy. You’re just estrogen-dominant. You have too much estrogen for the amount of progesterone your body’s making.

Patrick: Are you saying that it’s not natural for a woman who’s having a period to experience that intensity of emotions and pain and tenderness?

Dr. Mike: Absolutely. What is natural or normal about feeling bad?

Patrick: Well, nothing. But sometimes –

Dr. Mike: There’s no reason for it.

Patrick: But aren’t all of those emotions a natural part of the human experience?

Dr. Mike: Well, yes. But should they be concentrated for two days to two weeks before each and every one of your periods?

If somebody cuts you off in traffic, you’re going to get angry. If you find out your significant other has been cheating, you’re going to get angry, you’re going to be sad, and you’re going to be anxious. There’s all kinds of emotions that come in as part of the human experience. But to have them predictably recur on a regular basis? That’s not the normal human experience.

Patrick: What you’re saying is that –

Dr. Mike: There’s something physiologically different that’s going on.

Patrick: It’s an imbalance and you’re saying –

Dr. Mike: It’s an imbalance.

Patrick: The imbalance in this case is excess estrogen?

Dr. Mike: Correct.

Patrick: What can you do about that?

Dr. Mike: There’s a few things you can do about that. One is do a 24-hour urine and find out – I sent you a chart about how your hormones are metabolized.

Patrick: Yes, that’s going to be part – [View and download the chart here: Downloadable Hormonal Chart -PatrickWanis.com - allow time for chart to open - it is printable quality.]

Dr. Mike: Do you remember that chart?

Patrick: I have the chart in front of me.

Dr. Mike: All right. When you look, everything starts with cholesterol. I don’t want to get sidetracked here, but remind me to talk about cholesterol and why it’s really good for you.

It starts with cholesterol and goes to pregnenolone and then to progesterone. From progesterone, come all our other hormones. Our sodium and potassium balance is done by aldosterone. Our stress hormone responses come from some of the hydroxyprogesterone which is a direct offshoot from progesterone and also, our androstenedione which is a precursor to testosterone, which is the precursor to estrogen.

Basically, if you do lab work, what the doctor is going to be looking at, because this is the only thing he could measure in the blood, is your estradiol, which is your primary estrogen, your progesterone, your testosterone and your DHEA, which may look perfectly to be in balance, within the normal range.

What you get from the 24-hour urine is, if you look, there’s all kinds of downstream products, the 2-hydroxyestrone, the 4-hydroxyestrone, the 16a- hydroxyestrone. Women can have high levels of these that are not going to be picked up on blood work and they will have the same effect, if not greater effect than the original parent estrogen, in this case, estrone and estradiol.

I’ve had so many women come in and say, “Well, the doctor tells me it’s not my hormones because the blood work is fine.” I say do a 24-hour urine. They come back and their bioactive estrogen metabolites are way high and they’re not going through that methylation pathway, which is kind of the bottom line on the chart that takes it to the 2‑methoxyestrone. The 16 goes –

Patrick: Hold on a second because we’re going to get lost easily here. What you’re saying is blood lab test can show that your initial hormones, the main hormones appear to be in the normal range, but those hormones are supposed to break down and convert into other hormones and only a urine test will reveal that these main hormones are not actually breaking down properly or converting properly, correct?

[0:20:06]

Dr. Mike: Correct.

Patrick: And the only way to find that out –

Dr. Mike: Forty percent of us in this country have problems with that methylation pathway in order to take those hormones and make them into a substance that our body can then excrete and that’s why we have the buildup of the hormones. I see this time and again with women with premenstrual symptoms.

Patrick: Going back to the example you gave us of a female patient that comes to you and says, “I’m experiencing these extraordinary symptoms leading up to my period,” and you say it’s an imbalance. What is the one suggestion that you give her to remove excess estrogen?

Dr. Mike: If it is the excess estrogen that’s the cause, then the I3C with DIM or other things that will help improve the methylation pathway, like methyl B12, methylfolate, MSM, anything that can help support those methylation pathways can be important.

Often the quick and easy way is to increase the level of progesterone in their system by giving them some bioidentical progesterone around the time that they start having symptoms so we’re balancing it out.

There’s also the possibility that a lot of their issues are the environmental exposures, things like BPAs and other xenobiotics that mimic estrogen. Now we’ve got a whole other topic of what do you need to do to detoxify your system? What do we need to do to support your liver and your kidneys? What’s a good way to sweat efficiently without losing too many of your supportive minerals as you’re detoxing?

It depends. Is this basically not making enough progesterone? Is this making too much estrogen or not metabolizing estrogen metabolites or is it xenobiotics that are in play in terms of mucking up the whole hormone balance system?

Also, now, coming into play are your adrenals because remember, progesterone is the precursor for your stress hormones. If your stress hormones are high because you’re constantly under stress, you’re using up your progesterone and you’re not going to have enough to balance out your estrogen.

I think a lot of women just by fixing their adrenals and reducing their stress, their periods become regular, their symptoms go away, their breasts are no longer tender, they’re not getting menstrual cramps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Patrick: Briefly, what about women who go for a long period and, in some cases, years without a period?

For Part 3 of this transcript – the continuation, click here: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-years-no-period-progesterone/

Stress, years without a period & progesterone

Patrick Wanis — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:51:47 +0000

Stress, menstrual pain, years without a period, and progesterone

The following is a transcript of an interview between Patrick Wanis, Human Behavior and Relationship Expert, PhD and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care revealing the links between stress, hormones and staying young. Patrick Wanis and Dr. Mike also reveal what women who have not had a period in years should do, and they discuss the significance of progesterone For previous part of this transcript (Part 2), click here: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/thyroid-excess-estrogen-balancing-hormones/

Dr. Mike: I think a lot of women just by fixing their adrenals and reducing their stress, their periods become regular, their symptoms go away, their breasts are no longer tender, they’re not getting menstrual cramps, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Patrick: Briefly, what about women who go for a long period and, in some cases, years without a period?

Dr. Mike: They definitely need a 24-hour urine, as well as they need to be looking at the pituitary gland in terms of is your brain telling your ovaries to kick out stuff? Is your brain telling your thyroid — that’s where you look at things like FSH and LH, prolactin, TSH, ACTH. These are all levels of the pituitary part of the brain. The pituitary is part of the brain that secretes what’s called the gonadotropins or the hormones that make your body secrete the other hormones.

Patrick: In a moment, we’ll take a look at the breakdown of hormones. You talked there about progesterone. Is the level of progesterone critical to the health of both men and women?

Dr. Mike: Yeah, just like cholesterol is. Look how far up the chart it is. You’re looking at the chart I’m sorry the listeners can’t see this chart. Perhaps you can figure out some way to put it into the – [View and download the chart here: Downloadable Hormonal Chart -PatrickWanis.com - allow time for chart to open - it is printable quality.]

Patrick: I’ll put it on the blog.

Dr. Mike: If you look at the very top, it says cholesterol and then, as you go down the pathway, about two down, what pops up? Progesterone.

Progesterone, through a few more steps, goes over to aldosterone over on the right hand side of the chart, which is your sodium-potassium balance, it goes down to cortisol and cortisone, which are your stress hormones, and then it goes over to DHEA and androstenedione which are your other sex hormones.

[0:25:01]

Patrick: So why not simply supplement or increase your pregnenolone levels?

Dr. Mike: You could. However, now you’re assuming that your pregnenolone is going to be converted only to the progesterone, which is not necessarily the case. If you notice, pregnenolone also pops over to the right to go down and become androgens.

So the pregnenolone kind of takes a direct path down over towards the DHEA. Theoretically, I suppose you could; however, I find it much easier to use a bioidentical progesterone cream because pregnenolone is basically something you can only take orally.

If you look at hormones and think about hormones for a moment, hormones are meant to be excreted by an organ and go directly into the bloodstream, that’s part of the definition of a hormone. Hormones do not go into the mouth, down through the stomach and in through the liver before they go anywhere else.

I tend to like to mimic nature as much as possible, which kind of takes pregnenolone off the shelf for me because I’m not mimicking nature, number one, and number two, I’m now overburdening the liver. And trust me, our liver has got enough to deal with, with the environmental toxins we’re exposed to every day, it doesn’t need to do any more work.

Patrick: Okay. So the goal is to try and get the hormone directly into the bloodstream. But there are versions of pregnenolone in either a sublingual form or a spray form; do they not work?

Dr. Mike: There are a lot of doctors that will use things like troches, which are dissolvable compounds, like chewing tobacco, you stick it between the cheek and your gum and you let it sit there, you’re swallowing a certain amount of it. I guess the pregnenolone sublingual spray would be an acceptable alternative, provided you don’t swallow because once you swallow, you’re going to be taking some of it through the liver.

I just try to avoid overtaxing our poor liver as it is. We’ve done enough damage to it in our lifetimes. It doesn’t need any extra help.

Patrick: So to summarize what we’ve discussed so far, we’re saying that hormonal health is obviously critical to your overall health because the level and the quality of hormones determines the quality of your organs and thus, determines the quality and the function of your entire body.

You also talked about the fact that right now based on what science knows, our body can live, depending on the kind of stress we present it with, can live to about 120 years of age. As we get older, it’s harder for us to maintain the levels of hormones that we had in our 20s. The earlier we start, the healthier we can be and we can stay because we can maintain those levels as much as possible.

You also talked about the four main stressors, which you abbreviate to an acronym, DEEP – diet, emotions, environment and physical state. You gave us an example of a patient who experiences extraordinary pain leading up to her period and that that’s not natural – that’s an imbalance and usually that’s an imbalance of hormones that might be connected either to her diet, her emotions, her environment, or her physical state.

Now, let’s talk for a moment about the difference between the hormones that are stress hormones and the hormones that are sex hormones. You started talking about how pregnenolone can break down into progesterone and then 17-hydroxyprogesterone that then breaks off into the sex hormones or the adrenal corticosteroid hormones. Explain how that works briefly.

For Part 4 of the transcript and interview – the continuation – click here: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-sex-hormones-dangers-cortisol/

Stress and sex hormones and dangers of cortisol

Patrick Wanis — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:42:43 +0000

Stress hormones and sex hormones, and the dangers of cortisol

The following is a transcript of an interview between Patrick Wanis, Human Behavior and Relationship Expert, PhD and Dr. Michael Bauerschmidt, Medical Director of Full Potential Health Care revealing the links between stress, hormones and staying young. Patrick Wanis and Dr. Mike also reveal the differences between stress hormones and sex hormones as well as cortisol and its role and danger. For previous part of this transcript (Part 3), click here: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-years-no-period-progesterone/

Dr. Mike: It’s really quite simple. Your body is kind of like the ultimate triage officer. It sends the things to where they’re needed the most.

If your body is under particular stress and you had a lot of stress hormones, that progesterone is going to be hanging on down and shooting right down that cortisol pathway and there’s going to be precious little left over for the sex hormone support.

[0:30:16]

Here’s the deal, when you’re dealing with the body, we can look to economics as a thing. One of the economic principles is all resources are scarce. That is, there isn’t an infinite supply of everything for anybody. We may experience individually plenty of food, water and air; but collectively, there really isn’t enough going around, otherwise there wouldn’t be any starvation in the world.

As this principle works in the human body is that if your body is under constant stress and you need a lot of the stress hormones, it’s going to start shutting down other organ systems that are not immediately involved with your survival. So the hormones tend to take a big whack when you’re under stress, particularly your thyroid will begin to down regulate as you demand more out of your adrenals for adrenal support.

Your ovaries may start to shut down because your neurochemistry in your brain or your neurotransmitters are now all in fight-or-flight mode and there isn’t the normal levels of your feel good hormones, like serotonin, dopamine and prolactin, which your body needs in order to keep your hormones balanced. This is why women under stress, whether it’s physical or emotional stress, will start having irregular periods or quit having periods altogether.

The classic example is the woman who really starts running and training aerobically. You look at her, perfect body weight, 4% body fat, like a lean, mean running machine and she’s not having periods. Because of all the amount of physical stress that’s going on in order for her to maintain that high level of performance, other things are shutting down because you just don’t have enough to go around for everybody.

Patrick: So the body makes a choice, whether it chooses to convert or methylate or use up the hormones either for sex or for stress?

Dr. Mike: In the simplest terms, that’s correct. There’s a little complication in the methylation thing; but, in essence, you’re correct.

Cortisol

Patrick: Why is cortisol bad for us?

Dr. Mike: It’s not in normal amounts. Remember, everything is in balance. Cortisol is a wear-and-tear thing but it also keeps us out of trouble. We want good cortisol levels if we’re suddenly frightened. It’s a survival mechanism.

Patrick: Cortisol is part of the fight-or-flight, correct?

Dr. Mike: However, if we’re walking around in a chronic stress state, which most of us in this country are, then we’re actually wearing our machinery out. Our transmission is going to need to be replaced soon, our valves are going to need to get redone, our injectors got to get cleaned more often, and that ages us more quickly.

Patrick: What is the primary –

Dr. Mike: This engine we call our human body.

Patrick: Dr. Mike, what is the primary purpose of cortisol?

Dr. Mike: The primary purpose of cortisol it is the stress hormone. It’s your fight-or-flight hormone. It’s going to raise your sugar level, which is your primary mechanism for getting the heck out of there, you got to fuel the system. It also is going to suppress the immune system, which is why doctors love giving steroids for sinusitis or sprained ankle or whatever it is because it suppresses the immune system so that energy can be used for the more acute getting the heck out of there.

Along with the cortisol comes norepinephrine, which raises your heart rate, constricts your blood vessels, dilates your pupils so you can take in more light so you can see more keenly and acutely. The whole thing puts the body in the fight-or-flight mode.

[0:35:06]

Patrick: Cortisol also converts to cortisone and –

Dr. Mike: Right, and that’s on a tissue level, same principle applies. It’s the action of the cortisol; cortisone is basically the same thing.

Patrick: That’s part of the stress, fight-or-flight syndrome?

Dr. Mike: Exactly.

Patrick: So that’s another clear way of stating why we need to maintain or lower our stress levels to lower the production of cortisol in our body?

Dr. Mike: Correct. Here’s the bonus question, this is how methylation also pulls into this, is the same pathway that breaks down your stress hormone levels are the same methylation pathways that are used to break down your sex hormones so that if you overwhelm the system with stress hormones, you’re automatically going to be backing up your sex hormones, those metabolites.

Patrick: When you say “backing up”, what do you mean?

Dr. Mike: That means you’re not getting rid of those active estrogen metabolites, which is another way of being estrogen-dominant. It doesn’t necessarily have to happen that way, but that’s another complicating feature of why it’s so hard to balance women’s hormones when they’re chronically stressed.

Patrick: Are you saying that when a woman is chronically stressed, she’s producing more estrogen?

Dr. Mike: Not necessarily producing more, but she may have more of the active metabolites because those active metabolites are — it’s like trying to get into the store on Black Friday, you got a lot of people vying for a very narrow space. If you’ve got an overabundance of cortisol or stress hormones, the estrogens aren’t going to be able to get in there to get processed with the same efficiency because, again, your system can only process so much in a given length of time.

Patrick: So then we have an excess level of –

Dr. Mike: Then you have the excess level of the estrogen metabolites, which can also lead to all the premenstrual symptoms. If that’s not the case and you have low estrogen levels to begin with because you’re getting near that menopausal stage and your ovaries aren’t working as well as they should or could and you’re chronically under stress, you’ve got no progesterone left over to make any, the adrenals can kick in a little bit to help the ovaries out. If the adrenals are so taxed by making cortisol, they got nothing left over to make the sex hormones, so you’ll suffer equally on the other side.

You actually have two ways that the increased stress hormone levels can affect you. One is making your premenstrual symptoms worse because of the bioaccumulation of the active metabolites of estrogen. Or two, it can bring on early menopause simply because your adrenals aren’t able to give that little boost, that little extra kick to the women when their ovaries start going out on us.

I know this to be an absolute truth because I’ve had a number of patients in their 60s, finished menopause years ago, don’t have any symptoms and then, all of a sudden, they come in and say, “Why am I having hot flashes again?”

My first question is usually, “How’s your marriage?” or “What’s happening with the grandkids?” There’s usually some acute stressor in their life that has brought on the hot flashes, has nothing to do with anything other than stress.

Patrick: So if a woman is experiencing extreme stress and obviously the hormones are being used to handle the stress and then you’re saying the reason that men and women lose interest in sex when they’re overly stressed is because the body isn’t then producing enough of the sex hormones?

Dr. Mike: Yeah. That’s the Reader’s Digest abridged version.

Patrick: You also talked earlier about the fact that the hormones are produced by glands, the hormones determine the health of the glands. When one of the hormones goes out of balance, is it true that all other hormones go out of balance?

Dr. Mike: Generally because the body is self-regulating. It’s not like the hormones have a little meeting and say hey, the adrenals are having a hard time, what can we do to help? The body is now trying to rebalance itself under less than optimum circumstances and this all gets back to how the brain responds to stress or how the brain responds to environmental influences.

[0:40:14]

There is a whole new body of literature that’s come up probably in the last ten years about the psychoneuroimmunologic system. It all has to do with the investigation of how emotions influence the biochemistry in the brain in terms of neurotransmitters, which then influences things like your immune system, which a lot has to do with the endocrine system in this regard as well.

It’s really fascinating that, say, we’re under stress, it’s not that the thyroid and the pancreas and everybody else kind of getting together and having a little meeting and saying what can we do to help out the adrenals. It all has to do with what is happening in the brain in terms of the balance of the neurotransmitters and how is that affecting our different hormone levels.

Patrick: How are the other organs affected when we have this stress? Right at the beginning you talked about the impact of stress on liver and kidneys, can you explain that?

Dr. Mike: There is not a single organ in the body that doesn’t have some hormone receptor on it. As an example, if estrogen and progesterone were just involved with sex and reproduction, then why do women have hot flashes after they go through menopause?

Why do women get osteoporosis after they go through menopause? Why does the incidence of heart disease go way up after menopause? Why does the skin start looking terrible after menopause? Why does the brain fog set in and why does the memory go after menopause?

It all has to do with the fact that you need your hormones down on a cellular level to tell the cells what you want them to do. In that effect, you can’t have an imbalance of any of your hormones and expect your body to be working properly.

Patrick: But that is what I said a moment ago that the imbalance of your hormone levels affect your organs, which, obviously, is going to affect the function of your body. You did talk about stress playing a big part or putting additional pressure on your kidneys and liver, what were you referring to?

Dr. Mike: Your stress hormones, you’re going to raise your blood pressure, you’re going to be increasing your — because you’re now in an increased energy production state, you have more toxins and more byproducts of energy production, you’ve got more exhaust to deal with. Your liver and your kidneys are your exhaust system for the body.

Patrick: In other words, you’re saying with more toxins –

Dr. Mike: There’s more toxins releasing.

Patrick: Okay. And that’s what’s going to put pressure on the kidneys and liver to cleanse out those toxins?

Dr. Mike: Precisely.

Patrick: In summing up, what is the best advice you can give to everyone listening right now regarding maintaining hormonal health?

Dr. Mike: Meditate, preferably twice a day for at least 15 minutes. It does wonders for quieting the brain and taking the foot off the accelerator or the hand off the fire alarm in the brain. Other than that, pay attention to your body.

If you’re one of those women with the premenstrual symptoms, you don’t have to suffer with that. There are doctors out there to help you. Sometimes it’s just a question of finding the one that wants to treat the patient and not the lab report. That may take a little searching.

I could give you a couple of recommendations of websites your audience could go to find somebody in their area.

[0:45:02]

Patrick: Obviously, they should look at your website, www.fullpotentialhealthcare.com

Dr. Mike: By all means, Full Potential Healthcare. Please make that your first stop. But that may not help you if you’re in California; although, I do see people from out of state and out of country.

There are other doctors that have been trained and think the way I do and they are likely in a town near you, hopefully.

Patrick: What is your other website?

Dr. Mike: The other website is www.acam.org It’s the American College for Advancement in Medicine. I received a lot of my training at their seminars and workshops. On their front page, you just punch in your zip code and they’ll tell you people that are in your area.

What you want to look for is somebody that’s been trained with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Or, you can simply Google BHRT and people in your area will pop up.

I strongly, strongly recommend, however, if that’s the way you go, that you avoid anybody that wants to give you troches that is the stuff you stick in your mouth and you suck on because that’s overpowering the liver.

I also do not like pellets. Pellets can be very effective. However, they usually last for about four months and just the way they’re manufactured and made, you’re going to have a really good level the first month, the second and third month, you’re going to be okay, and the fourth month you’re going to feel like oh my god, what happened to me, my hormones aren’t working anymore. They also tend to be rather expensive.

Patrick: Dr. Mike, this has been truly enlightening.

Dr. Mike: Absolutely you have to do a 24-hour urine. If you’re not doing a 24-hour urine, you’re getting set up for a bad result.

Patrick: All right. Summarizing:

No. 1: meditate;

No. 2: find a doctor in functional family medicine;

No 3: ensure that the doctor treats the patient not the lab report;

No 4: ensure that he also runs a 24-urine analysis

Dr. Mike: Correct.

Patrick: Dr. Mike, this has been extraordinarily enlightening, very, very challenging at times to follow the amount of information you have because we’re talking about something that’s extremely complicated and complex. Thank you for doing that.

I look forward to speaking with you again soon. The advice you give is truly empowering and beneficial. Thank you for that.

Your website is www.fullpotentialhealthcare.com

Dr. Mike Bauerschmidt, thank you very much.

Dr. Mike: Thank you, Patrick. It’s always a pleasure.

[0:48:02] End of Audio

– [View and download the hormonal chart mentioned by Dr. Mike here: Downloadable Hormonal Chart -PatrickWanis.com - allow time for chart to open - it is printable quality.]

****Read here all of the parts of this interview revealing the links between stress, hormones and staying young.

Part 1: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-hormones-fountain-youth/

Part 2: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/thyroid-excess-estrogen-balancing-hormones/

Part 3: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-years-no-period-progesterone/

Part 4: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/stress-sex-hormones-dangers-cortisol/

6 Steps to overcoming self-criticism

Patrick Wanis — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:10:57 +0000

6 Steps to overcoming self-criticism

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal 6 ways to overcome self-criticism.

First a quick update:

**** Rejection by dads is devastating – From the series “Get Motivated” on the TV show The Daily Buzz, Patrick Wanis PhD reveals how rejection by dad is worse for kids than rejection by mom. Watch the video here http://youtu.be/CbPm6ce6yv8 and read about the 50 year study and how dads affect kids’ self-esteem: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/dads-moms-can-prevent-killings-suicides/ Also read the article about the significance and impact of dads hugging their sons: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/dads-hug-your-sons/ :

Now, let’s talk about 6 ways to overcome self-criticism.

One of the great contributors to daily stress is our constant thinking and worrying. We are bombarded by stimuli and messages all day long; and for those that can’t turn off their phones, the bombardment and constant thinking can be all night long as well.

Additionally, we are also constantly talking to ourselves, and often unconsciously; we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. Those thoughts and messages are labeled as the Inner Chatterbox. This is the voice telling us what we need to be doing and should be doing, what we did wrong, and why we are not good enough or deserving. Read my article “Controlling the Inner Chatterbox”: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/controlling-the-inner-chatterbox/

The voice that tells us that we might fail and that we are not worthy is the voice of self-doubt. Read my article “Conquering self-doubt” http://patrickwanis.com/blog/conquering-self-doubt/

The voice that criticizes us after the event can be referred to as the Inner Critic.

This is the voice that attacks us after we have completed an event or task and it identifies what we did wrong and proceeds to criticize or harshly judge us.

All the voices or messages we experience or playback in our mind come from the programming we received in childhood – specific events, parents, teachers, peers, media, advertising, religion and so forth.

The Inner Critic – the voice that judges you also determines the way you judge yourself – the way you perceive yourself. If you experience harsh self-judgment, then most likely you will also judge others just as harshly – even if you do it unconsciously.

The result is that harsh self-criticism damages your self-esteem and self-image, creating deep insecurity, and damaging your relationships because you exude self-loathing and repel people. In other words, if you don’t like yourself and don’t think you are god enough, you will then attract people who will reflect to you what you subconsciously believe about yourself – they will treat you the same way or you will attract someone who will try to rescue you and convince you that you are worthy but you will sabotage them.

Here are 6 steps to overcoming self-criticism.

Identify the voice

Listen to the words that you use or hear after you have completed a task or event; whose words are they really? Who first used those words or judged you this way? Most likely it was a parent or authority figure. In other word, it’s not really your voice.

Break the voice

The thoughts or voice can be relentless. Simply say aloud “Stop” – as if you were speaking to someone. By saying “stop” you break the cycle of the automated response. Remember, this voice is also a habit – an unconscious response or behavior that was repeated sufficiently until it became a standard automatic response. If you sense that this voice or words originally came from someone specific such as mom or dad, then imagine saying “Stop” to them or telling them only to respond with solution-oriented responses.

Observe the thought

After you have practiced saying “Stop”, begin to distance yourself from the thought/voice; observe it as if it does not belong to you. When you separate and distance yourself from it, it loses its power over you. You can also imagine observing from a distance the person who initiated those harsh words (mom, dad, etc) and imagine seeing them further away from you and below you i.e. they are smaller than you. Also, pause and consider that most likely their intention was to help you to realize your potential but they were completely unskilled in how to do that.

Identify what you will do differently next time

Note the negative feedback and transform it into a positive behavior or response for next time. Focus on the ways you can correct the behavior in the future – the ways you will act or respond differently next time. For example, you just completed a business meeting and now you hear the attacking voice say “You screwed up because you talk too much and you wouldn’t shut up.” Respond now by saying to yourself, “Next time, I will listen more and talk less.” You can also be specific – “I will ask more questions and give brief answers; I will focus on showing more interest in him/her and his/her achievements and I will talk less about myself.” Thus, the Inner Critic can become beneficial by now serving as feedback rather than harsh emotional judgment.

Identify good behaviors

Stop and list a couple of good behaviors. In the example above of a business meeting, identify also what you did right. Write down steps 4 and 5 i.e. write down what you will do differently next time and what you did well this time that you will also repeat.

Forgive yourself

Even if your inner critic is extremely ruthless or severe, consider its truth. For example, the voice might tell you that you did something really bad; and maybe your actions did hurt or wrong someone or, they resulted in negative consequences. Again follow Steps 3, 4 and 5, and then, look at the mistake you made. Beware of the pressure of perfectionism which is coming from all around you (advertising, TV, and the internet) as well as from any childhood programming and expectations. Seek to be the best, do your best or to excel at what you do but be wary of perfectionism which creates extreme disappointment, self-loathing, anxiety and depression. Read my article “The poison of perfectionism and self-centeredness”: http://patrickwanis.com/blog/the-poison-of-perfectionism-and-self-centeredness/

Accept that you and everyone are imperfect and will thus make mistakes. Now, review your mistake and seek understanding for the reasons you did what you did, and express compassion to yourself. Only when you express compassion and forgive yourself are you able to learn from the mistake/experience and improve upon it next time.

You will notice from the above 6 steps that the entire approach to the Inner Critic is to focus on the solution. What can we learn from the Inner Critic without allowing it to engage in emotional attacks? We all need feedback and we can understand that all learning requires mistakes and errors. We can correct ourselves without the emotional criticism. Accordingly, remind yourself that the past event which is now over obviously cannot be controlled but the future action can be shaped differently. And if you want different results in your life, then change the voice in your head to support you not tear you down; people will respond to you the way you respond to yourself. The more you love and respect yourself, the more others will love and respect you!

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I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist
www.patrickwanis.com