Episode 77: Making Your Behaviors Your Goals - with Clinical Psychologist, Amita Ghosh

Today I am excited to bring you an interview with psychologist Amita Ghosh. Amita and I both worked at St. Elizabeth Hospital in the weight management center. Looking to broaden the scope of her counseling to help a larger variety of clients she started Resolve Counseling and Consulting, LLC. She now specializes in Couples Counseling, EMDR for Trauma, Anxiety and Depression, and Weight Loss through Mindfulness. Amita is also a certified yoga instructor and she helps clients with cognitive behavioral and mindfulness techniques.

 Make your behaviors your goals.

Being too focused on the prize can make you frustrated. Keep your attention on the path enjoy the journey and the destination.

Goal setting is a delicate balance.  You have to have goals, but if you are so focused on “Are we there yet” it will never come fast enough, and you will be disappointed.  If you make your behaviors your goals, you will feel like you are reaching them on a daily basis. If you focus on losing weight it won’t come fast enough, but if your goal is to track your food and exercise 3 times a week then you are reaching your goal every day.  The weight loss now becomes a side effect.  In that process you feel good and positive and encouraged and motivated.

What are your beliefs about yourself?

If you aren’t meeting your goals, think about what got in the way.  It could be that your reality at this point in time makes those goals unreachable, so you may need to evaluate and scale down to what is doable.  Or it could be a problem with your beliefs. You don’t try because you don’t think it will work, you don’t think you can do it, or you don’t think achieving that goal will get you where you want to be. Your beliefs are the story you have told yourself your whole life, but you can rebuild your belief system and rewrite your story.

Ask yourself “Why do you believe that?” “Where did you hear that? “ Was it from your childhood, your parents, your friends, your spouse? Are you surrounding yourself with people who bring you down or build you up?

If your child or best friend said they didn’t think they could do something, what would you tell them. Saying things that come from your heart and mind helps you to believe them. If you can convince them they can do it, why are you different. You can convince yourself too.

Yoga, a joining of mind, body and spirit.

In the last 10 to 15 years psychologists have come to believe that our emotions are stored in our physical bodies. If you had a trauma you might have pain with no physical cause.

There is a body, mind connection. If you bridge the two you can access your emotions. Yoga is a way to do that. The different poses bring you in or out of your normal self. For example, if you are nervous or anxious around people you bring yourself in to make yourself smaller. Amita helps you practice expansive poses such as Warrior or Tree to make themselves big, physically and mentally. That connects their emotion and cognition and helps them not to shrink into them self. It makes them more comfortable with their presence.

Breathing helps us connect to ourselves.

Your mind is a time traveler, past, present and future. Most of the time you are in the past or future not the present. Breathing is the present moment.

Cognitive behavioral and mindfulness techniques

What we tell ourselves determines how we feel and that determines how we act. Everyone has different reactions to the same trigger. In a fraction of a second each person reacts according to what they tell themselves. When a car slams on its brakes, one person may feel thankful that they were able to stop in time to avoid an accident. The next person may be angry because now they will be late to work. A third person might be having a bad day and get so angry they want to get out and fight. Three different reactions to the same event because of what each person was thinking.

What we tell ourselves determines how we feel and that in turn determines what we do.

In weight loss you may have believed for so long that you aren’t healthy and can’t lose weight so you never can change. You have a built-in mechanism to combat positivity. The first step is insight building. What do you think healthy looks like? Are you trying to look like the people you see in magazines? Is the media telling you that is what you should look like? Rather than measuring your health on photoshopped images, use a different measuring system. Can you run a 5K, do sit ups, cook healthy meals or have good relationships? Don’t measure your health as a number on a scale or tape. Redefine what you think healthy is.

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Francine Shapiro was an American psychologist and educator who originated and developed eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a form of psychotherapy for resolving the symptoms of traumatic and other disturbing life experiences.

When you talk about past trauma you activate one side of your brain. Using EMDR helps the trauma memory and the emotion tied to it dislodge from each other. You still remember the event but don’t have the emotional intensity that goes along with it. It helps you move forward.

8 Weeks to a Mindful You

Join an 8 week-long mindfulness class. Meet virtually, once a week. Class dates will be announced on https://www.facebook.com/consultamita/

Resources:

https://www.consultamita.com/

www.healthaccountabilitycoach.com

www.facebook.com/houselifestyles

IG: @houselifestyles