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How to Build Confidence and Reduce Anxiety after a Change

Photo of a girl making hors d'oeuvres in a sunny kitchen
Darlene Coleman

Darlene Coleman

+Photo Credit: Wasa Crispbread via Unsplash

 

This month’s contribution is brought to you by: Derek Goodman

 

Something in your world has shifted. Maybe it was a relationship or a job or a significant loss. Now you are trying to find your new normal, but it feels a little strange getting back out there. Building confidence can help you chase after your career goals, get your health back on track, and develop resilience against stress. In this article, Darlene Coleman Coaching explores some ways to become your best self so you can truly thrive in this new stage of your life.
Give Your Skin Some Love
Life has been incredibly stressful. If you’re feeling a little run-down, chances are your skin is feeling it too. Because stress triggers inflammation in the body, it can lead to flare-ups of acne, eczema, or psoriasis. Stress also causes a spike in cortisol and adrenaline, which are hormones that can dry out your skin. Give your skin some love and get it back to its peak health. Beyond reducing stress and applying moisturizer consider visiting a skin care specialist.

Aim for Better Work-Life Balance 

Stress isn’t just damaging to your skin. Chronic stress has a negative impact on every other part of your body as well. It’s important to try to control your stress levels and find ways to relax. Achieving a better work-life balance is one way to do this. Many of us have a hard time balancing the demands of our job with our personal needs. Try setting boundaries, using all of your vacation days, and working remotely once in a while.
And if your goal is landing a job that’s conducive to better balance, use a resume builder online that you can use to create a slick, professional-looking resume in minutes with free templates. You can then easily download and send digitally to a select few employers, then print out when it comes interview time.
You may feel stuck in your current routine and job, which can be incredibly frustrating. In fact, that frustration can prevent us from seeing and taking opportunities that occur all around us. Working with a life coach can free us from those blinders and allow us to focus on putting our own needs first. Darlene Coleman specializes in helping people evolve and gain control of their lives. She can help you to see and take advantage of changes to improve your happiness and work-life balance.
Make Fitness a Priority
Better work-life balance creates more room for activities that keep you feeling your best, like exercising! Since fitness has such a profound impact on health, it should be a priority in your life. Now is a great time to ease into a new exercise regimen! If you don’t feel comfortable heading back to the gym, create a workout routine that can be done from home. All you need is a workout mat and a set of weights. There are plenty of resources online that can help you move through an effective and efficient workout from home.
Get Your Finances in Order
Is the current state of your finances adding stress to your life? Instead of working more hours, find ways to cut costs. Do your own house cleaning and lawn mowing, work out at home instead of the gym, and brew your own coffee. If you’re a homeowner, consider a refinance. By refinancing, you can reduce your mortgage payments by giving up some equity in your home. If you’re considering refinancing, be sure to discuss your options with a reputable lender.
On the other hand, adding a little goal-oriented anxiety can actually push us out of a rut and into some better habits. Try pushing yourself towards a financial goal. Maybe it’s to reduce extraneous spending by $200 every month, or doubling your savings. Whatever your goal, lean into that discomfort and see where it takes you!
Eat More Vegetables
Nutrition is an important part of living your best life, but adhering to a diet can be time-consuming. Thankfully, nutrition is simpler than many people think! Aim to eat a balanced diet packed with vegetables, and you’ll get all the vitamins and minerals you need to operate at your peak. According to EatingWell, vegetables fight inflammation, improve blood pressure, support your digestive health, reduce your risk of disease, and improve your skin. Plus, packing your diet with veggies will help keep your brain sharp!
Live More Mindfully
If you want to make the most of your life, try to live mindfully. Declutter The Mind explains that mindful living is all about focusing on the present instead of dwelling on the past or concerning yourself with the future. When you think and act mindfully, you have full control over your thoughts and feelings. This can help you stress less and get out of your head.
Some simple ways to live more mindfully include waking up early, eating slowly, showing appreciation to others, paying attention to the content you consume, and noticing the sights and sounds around you as you go about life. These actions will put you in the driver’s seat as you work to rebuild your life after the pandemic.
Life can be a whirlwind of stress and anxiety. Now is your chance to look inward and think about what you can do to support your mind and body. Building confidence and practicing self-care will help you hit the ground running towards your goals! Once you move out of survival mode, focus on your goals. Use a positive amount of anxiety to push yourself out of your comfort zone and see what you can do.
When you’re ready to make some changes and refocus your perspective, reach out to Darlene Coleman Coaching. Together, we can set goals, reframe your focus, and set you on a path for happiness and balance.

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“Nobody can “treat” a war, or abuse, rape, molestation, or any other horrendous event, for that matter; what has happened cannot be undone. But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being.

The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind — of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.”

– Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD

First Responder Support

Being a first responder has its own unique challenges. As a former Paramedic/Firefighter, I understand those challenges and use a variety of tools and techniques to help process the stress that comes with the job. **I also offer my S.T.A.R. Program; Tools and Techniques to modulate your internal Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Response, which I offer to Fire Departments locally as well as across the country. If you are interested, please contact me directly.
Link to PTSD in First Responders:
I wish my head and body could forget the things my eyes have seen –

Self-Care Coaching Package

Caregiving can challenge the most resilient among us. If you’ve found yourself in the role of caregiver, feelings of overwhelm and stress are quite common. 

You may be feeling sad, irritable, angry, or depressed. You could be suffering from exhaustion or weight gain. The constant strain and worry can cause headaches or other physical symptoms which could then lead to self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, or unhealthy foods. 

In short, high levels of stress over a long period of time can have serious and long-lasting effects on both your mental and physical health.

However, you may be so focused on your loved one that you don’t realize your own health and well-being are suffering, and the thought of doing something for you can feel selfish. 

Now is the time when you need it the most.

Some of the best strategies as a caregiver are to accept help, find connection, and get support.

My Self-Care Coaching Package can provide that! 

Click on the following link for information about my group coaching package for caregivers

click here for details
For Parkinson’s Caregivers, you may also join 
parkinsonslifestylemanagement
which is an informational site on the management of Parkinson’s disease.

Reiki

Rei-Ki: The word translated means “life-force-energy”.  There are many different names for this life force and energy field we exist within such as; Chi, Prana, Qi, Higher Power, God force- in other words, spiritually guided life force energy.  It is administered by “laying on hands” in a variety of placements and is commonly used for stress reduction and relaxation and can also promote healing. 

Reiki is a very calming therapy and is performed with you lying on a massage table, fully clothed in a pleasing environment.  Essential oils, Tibetan singing bowls, and guided visualization are also used during your session to enhance the relaxation process.  

If you find yourself regularly stressed out, Reiki may be the therapy for you. 

Spiritual Support

When you are wanting expansion in your spiritual consciousness. These sessions are based and centered on the exploration of the ego, and include reading assignments. Phone sessions are also available.

B.A.U.D. RESET TRAUMA THERAPY

The BAUD is a sound based device that helps to disrupt the circuits of Trauma that get held in the nervous system of the brain and body. It is helpful with a variety of different personal issues.

Professional Speaking

If you’d like me to speak at one of your events, please contact me directly. I speak on a variety of topics all centered around living your best life.

Hypnosis

When people hear the word “hypnosis”, they immediately think of swinging watches, spinning spirals and mind-control that they see in the movies.  While it can be, it’s not really like that.

Hypnotic trance exists in many different forms in everyday life, for example when you are watching your favorite TV show or reading a good book or daydreaming.  We become hypnotized all of the time without our awareness, into particular mindsets. Many of these mindsets are created when we are children and learning to navigate the world around us. Powerful post-hypnotic suggestions can stay with us for years, especially in areas where self-esteem is concerned.  Often, the job of the therapist is to de-hypnotize the client.  

I am certified in “Ericksonian” style hypnosis, which uses more of what it is called indirect suggestions. Indirect suggestions are much harder to resist because they are often not even recognized as suggestions by the conscious mind.  

Hypnosis helps to open and relax the mind, works on many different topics and enables a space for healing to occur.

Neuro-Linguistics (NLP)

Your words and thoughts are powerful.  Very powerful.  This isn’t speculation; it is a reality. 

The basic premise of NLP is focused on the “language” of our thoughts and how that language is stored in the brain. The specific language we use reveals our inner, subconscious perceptions or beliefs around our problems and the world at large. If our language and our perceptions are inaccurate, as long as we continue to talk and to think in that same way, the underlying problems will persist. In other words, our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy and a way of remaining stuck.  Our words and thoughts create our own version of reality.

“The phrase “Neuro-Linguistic Programming” describes the process of how personality creates and expresses itself. Put simply, we are all made up of a neurology that conveys information about our environment to our central nervous systems and brains. Since we are also meaning creating creatures, we translate these perceptions in our brains into meanings, beliefs and expectations. As we continue to grow from a rather infant brain into a more complex adult human, we tend to filter, distort and magnify the input we get from our environment such that it matches the elaborate program we evolve to explain our life experience.”  -Wikipedia

In the early 70’s a man named Richard Bandler, decided for his thesis project that he wanted to develop models of human behavior to understand why certain people seemed to be excellent at what they did, while others found the same tasks challenging or nearly impossible to do.  Along with his then professor, John Grinder, and using inspiration by pioneers in the fields of therapy and personal growth, they began to develop systematic procedures and theories that formed the basis of NLP. They studied three top therapists: Virginia Satir, the extraordinary family therapist, who consistently was able to resolve difficult family relationships that many other therapists found intractable, the innovative psychotherapist Fritz Perls, who originated the school of therapy known as Gestalt, and Milton Erickson, the world-famous hypnotherapist.

“Their goal was to develop models of how it was that these people got the results they did. They sought to identify and model the patterns that produced these results and then to teach these models to others. These three gifted therapists were quite different personalities, yet Grinder and Bandler discovered some underlying patterns that were quite similar. These patterns became the underlying structure of NLP, with names such as meta-model, sub-modalities, reframing, language patterns, well-formed conditions and eye accessing clues.”

NLP allows you to change the language and beliefs that you are holding, thereby allowing you to create new, healthier, productive patterns.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

When you first hear about EFT you may find yourself feeling skeptical at first…until you experience it. EFT is a meridian based therapy that some texts say has been around in one form or another for thousands of years and is used to help neutralize fear based emotions. At the most basic of all levels, the building blocks of life, our bodies are comprised of systems of energy. Every thought you have has an electromagnetic or energetic consequence, creating physical symptoms in the body. The basic premise of EFT is that the cause of all negative emotion is a disruption of the body’s energy field. To better understand how EFT works you would first need to know a little about the brain. If you were to think of the organ of the brain itself, it would be like the hard drive in your computer. Every time you have a thought, especially one where a negative emotion is attached, it’s like loading software onto your brain, and a neural pathway or program is formed. These negative thoughts land in a part of the brain known as the “amygdala”, the part of the brain associated with fear. Over time, these pathways become bigger and stronger until they form patterns and become part of your sub-conscious. Before long, these unconscious fear based programs become a filter through which you see and live your life. Research has shown that by tapping on the energy meridians of the body while associated into a particular feeling, a signal disruption occurs, and a neutralizing effect happens. New, healthier pathways are created, and a cessation of anxiety is experienced. This technique has been shown to be especially effective when used on PTSD patients. A special technique called “Tearless Trauma” allows one to process and experience a release around particularly traumatizing events, without necessarily having to rehash painful details. In a critical review published in the American Psychological Association’s (APA) journal Review of General Psychology last year, researchers found that EFT “consistently demonstrated strong effect sizes and other positive statistical results that far exceed chance after relatively few treatment sessions.”

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For Research:

EFT Research

National Library of Medicine


Life Coaching

The coaching process is a focused conversation in combination with different techniques designed to move you out of your state of confusion, limitation or fear, to where you aspire to be. It does so by addressing specific personal or business goals, analyzing general conditions such as emotional and physical health or addictions, as well as relationships or transitions in the client’s personal life. Through close examination, I help you discover what your obstacles or challenges might be, then choose a course of action to make your life become what you want it to be. A variety of modalities are included in this process.