Tri-Valley Psychotherapy

Free yourself from Emotional Eating

When you're happy, your choice of food could be steak or pizza, when you're sad it could be ice cream or cookies, and when you're bored it could be potato chips.

Food does more than fill our stomachs -- it also satisfies feelings, and when you quench those feelings with comfort food, that's emotional eating.

Emotional eating is defined as eating for reasons other than hunger because an emotion triggers the eating. But what if hunger was also an emotion that could be managed just like anger. Hunger is defined as a craving or urgent need for food. If we live in poverty and food is scarce, it is normal to feel hungry.

However, if we have plenty of food available to us and we just ate 1, 2, or 3 hours ago and feel hungry, it is hard to say if we are really hungry or not.

• How do we differentiate biological urges for food vs. psychological or emotional urges?
• Why is it so hard to stop ourselves from overeating?
• Why can't we consistently eat small portions and always be able to maintain our ideal weight?

Well the answer is simple our emotions can control when and how much we eat as well as our food choices. "Exercising restraint from bad, unhealthy food is a form of mental exercise that can be taught using a series of techniques including mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance."

This 1 hour workshop will teach you the methods, Dr. Christine Dickson has used to help people manage their hunger and emotional eating. It is perfect for anyone who wants to get healthy and lose weight.

Go on a Low Information Diet

 When we think about going on a diet, we usually think about whether or not the food we eat is healthy. 

• But, have you ever considered whether or not the information you are absorbing each day through the TV, news, magazines, and advertisements is healthy? 
• Have you ever considered what unhealthy information might be doing to your mind and body or what it might be doing to your children and family? 

More than ever before, we are bombarded with information from the Internet, TV, movies, newspapers, and advertisements. Advancements in technology are making information more and more accessible each day through cell phones, ipads, laptops, and email. Let's face it, we live in a 24/7 information culture.

How does all this information affect us when a large percentage of it is unhealthy? People who have gone on a low information diet for 30 days report:
This 1 hour seminar will teach you the tips and tricks of going on and sticking to a Low Information Diet. It's perfect for anyone who wants to find ways to increase their productivity, and improve their overall health and well-being.

Dress yourself in Love

 When we get dressed in the morning, we usually think about the type of clothes we are going to wear and what other people will think about us. All of our focus is on ourselves. Does this outfit make me look fat, does it look wrinkled or out of fashion, do I look good? We are so preoccupied with ourselves that we never consider, even for a moment, how we could be a blessing to someone else today or how we could practice loving kindness.

• What if we made a decision each morning to dress ourselves in love and to stop focusing on ourselves. To practice loving kindness by going out of our way to encourage someone who's out of hope, to smile at a stranger, or o do something kind and expect nothing in return? 


• How does dressing yourself in love improve your relationships, your community, and your personal sense of peace and well-being?  

The answer is simple when you practice loving kindness each day our old culture of selfishness and greed will fall away and then be replaced with a new culture of concern for others. Our power to create change starts at the local level and spreads from person to person, house to house, and town to town. The impact of dressing yourself in love and practicing loving kindness each day will transform your life in ways you can never imagine. 

This 1 hour seminar will inspire you with stories of how ordinary people practiced loving kindness in their day to day life and how these acts of kindness and love began to transform their family, community, and their own lives. 

Build your Emotional Intelligence

When I say the word intelligence, people immediately think about intellectual intelligence. If you get straight A's and score 160 on an IQ test, you are not only intelligent but also a genius. But does that mean you also have a high level of emotional intelligence? The answer is no. Many "smart" people never take time to develop their emotional intelligence and have difficulties understanding themselves and managing their relationships with others. Emotional Intelligence consists of four core areas: Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, Self-Management, and Relationship Management. 

• Did you know that emotional Intelligence is the #1 predictor of success both personally and professionally in life?
• Did you know that unlike your IQ, you can actually improve your Emotional Intelligence?
  

The concept of emotional intelligence is grounded in decades of research. For example, a series of studies from Yale University linked emotional intelligence to personal achievement, happiness, and professional success. In addition, a study on 500,000 people showed that 90% of top performers were high in Emotional Intelligence

This 1 hour seminar will discuss ways that you can improve your Emotional Intelligence. It's perfect for anyone who wants to find ways to become more successful in their personal and/or professional life.

Move Beyond the Mind 

Over 2,500 years ago, Buddha said, "The mind is everything, what you think you become." For thousands of years great teachers have known the power of our minds and thoughts.  What we think not only affects who we become but also who we are and what we do. We are complex creatures and often we don’t even know why we do what we do, what causes our reactions, and why we feel what we feel. Living mindfully is living with an attentive awareness of what’s really going on in our minds. It’s important to know what we really think and what we are thinking about. Our thoughts are actually the root cause of our emotions, which affect our actions.

• Our thoughts and beliefs are the foundation of our lives.

• As we change our thoughts and beliefs in any area of life our feelings, actions and even our personalities change.

• Therefore, it is important for us to know what we really believe, and to carefully monitor our thought life.

This 1-hour seminar will focus on ways to take control of our thought life and to manage our thoughts in a new way. Participants will learn the tips and tricks of stepping back and becoming observers of their minds as a way to transform their lives and increase their sense of inner peace and personal wellbeing.

Become an Optimist 

Optimists have time and again proved to be the survivors. Their optimism allows them to persist, makes them see the light at the end of the tunnel. They end up being more successful, resourceful and thereby healthier and happier. 

Oscar Wilde smartly differentiated the two personalities as "the optimist sees the doughnut", while "the pessimist sees the hole!”

With life being the same mix of sweet and sour for all of us, learn this amazing skill of appreciating what we have instead of looking "before and after and pining for what is not."

Positive thinking is a mental atti­tude that expects good things to happen. A positive mind anticipates joy, happiness, and health. In this seminar you will learn how your outlook on life can affect your life, and how you can use the power of optimism to improve your life.
 

Pragmatic Thinking, Learning & Beyond 

Computer programmer, Dr. Aurelius Prochazka and Clinical psychologist, Dr. Christine Dickson will present, Pragmatic Thinking, Learning and Beyond at Agilistry Studios. Below is a summary of their talk.

In the last decade, computer programmers have gone from being strange outcasts of society sitting alone in dimly lit rooms to being cornerstones of our companies, visionaries and icons in our culture, and creators of our social networks.

But because programmers have historically been outcasts, they still often exhibit inherent social awkwardness, lack of self-awareness, and insecurity. Addressing these personal weaknesses will allow programmers to reach their fullest potential.

Andy Hunt, in his book, "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware", describes how programmers can use their brains to be better thinkers by understanding how their own software, i.e. their brains, work. In this talk, Drs. Dickson & Prochazka will begin with an overview of Andy's book and discuss how to continue the arc of learning outside of the programming world, into business, personal relationships, and finally, both physical and mental health and wellness.