My Skills Class Secret

Very little people know that I participate in a group skills class. All the more reason to write about through the inter webs of "who even reads this anyways."  I'm pretty good at keeping secrets, actually excellent, and also very good when something is precious to me and I feel like I need to protect it.  If I have any hint that my beliefs or my ideas will be subject to criticism and judgement, I will keep my lips tightly pursed.  Who knows if I will continue to be this way in the future, its something that I am currently on the fence about.

Anyways, even though my head feels funny and it would be best to stay off the computer, my head was generating sentence after sentence for this entry, so I decided to sit down and write about all the lines that were coming into my brain.

Behaviorism is one of the things that I learned in my group skills class.  Behaviorism teaches us that if you are trying to change some aspect of yourself smoking, gossiping, losing your temper, whatever, in my case right now it is checking Facebook, that you will be most successful in changing that behavior by rewarding yourself every time you have the urge to do it and don't.  It is particularly effective if you reward yourself right after you avoid the urge.  I have been working with it and so far it works.  Every time I have the urge to check Facebook, unless it is for a class, message, or event and is not early in the morning or late at night, I put a dollar in a bucket.  A bucket, only because I don't have a piggy bank.  If you are struggling changing something about yourself, please avoid berating and negative self talk, instead reward your self every time you avoid it.  When rewarding it is best to engage in a positive activity :) Make Sense?

The other day I learned about PACE breathing.  PACE breathing helps decrease anxiety by counting the breaths that you inhale and counting the breaths that you exhale and making sure that the exhaled breaths are longer in count than the inhaled breaths.  What I found particularly interesting is that the reason why so many people feel relaxed after having a cigarette, isn't because of the cigarette itself because cigarettes are actually stimulants, it is because they are engaging in PACE breathing, longer exhalations.  The other day one of my triggers for anxiety got a nice kick.  So I made sure to try this PACE breathing and it not only slowed down my heart rate but also helped me feel more relaxed.

Here is some healing energy for you! The light of the candle is at the point where energy radiates through these images of creatures who love all.