Positive Thinking and Body Language

Body language is something that we are not often aware of, but it sometimes can say more than our words ever could. That is why it is so important to pay attention to body language and always be aware of what it is saying to others.

Body language is the movements of your body, the way you hold your body, and facial expressions, including eye movement. It often corresponds with our attitudes and sometimes contradicts what our words are saying.

When our body language and our words do not match (congruency), people are likely to believe the body language as it is often an unconscious thing that gives away the truth.


When you are trying to implement positive thinking in your life, you also have to implement positive body language. When you are truly committed to a positive way of thinking then your body language will follow. However, if you are not whole-heartedly into positive thinking your body language could give you away.

It is very important that when you want to put positive thinking to work in your life that you become aware of your body language. You may actual want to learn a little about body language so that you can recognize negative body language and not let it interfere with your positive thinking and attitude.

A great example of how body language can affect others and reflect your inner feelings is the smile. It is likely that you have smiled at a stranger before.

What happened? Probably what happened is that they smiled back. Do you know that smile probably prompted them to smile at someone else and so on with your smile becoming contagious? I call this the "what you give you get to keep" syndrome. It must be mentioned here the domino effect.

One smile you give a stranger could prove to be just the motivation someone needs to be cheerful that day instead of grumpy. You never know the distance your one small act of kindness will travel or the people it will touch. I believe what Andy Andrews says. "Every move you make and every action you take matters".

A smile is powerful body language.

It is also common when you approach a situation in a cheerful manner with positive body language that you end up having a positive experience. People are more likely to help you and to go out of their way to make sure you get what you need when you approach things in a positive manner.

You should definitely learn about body language and make sure you avoid negative body language. It will take some effort at first until you train your body not use negative body language.


Body language can be a dead give away that your true feelings are not positive. That is why part of positive thinking involves positive body language.

Dedication From My Book PTSD: Pathways Through The Secret Door

I wish to dedicate this book to several people who have given me inspiration in my struggles. My wife, Brenda, a.k.a. “Tutz”.  You have stood by me through thick and thin.  I cannot express in words how you have helped with your love and kindness.   Behind every man there is a great woman (with a boot at the backside when needed). Dr. Williams, whom I would have never known what, was wrong with me without his knowledge and expertise.  Dr. Milos Subervi, who has been a measuring stick for me, my thoughts and ideas.

I wish to thank the gazillion doctors that I educated through my insane behaviors, drunken binges, and bouts of rage including pride, lust, anger greed gluttony envy and sloth. We both learned something in the process over the past 15 years. Gratitude is also expressed to every employer that fired me or that I told to “stick it”. I learned burning bridges can be a positive motivating force.

Special thanks to my wrestling heroes who allowed me to live vicariously through them.  It is truly “my soap opera”. Linda and Vince McMahan, who I have never met, but I learned how to turn “a negative into a positive” by there visions. You will never know what it meant to me to hear “Summer Slam” in Somalia in 1993 over the AFRTS radio live. Dusty Rhodes, “The American Dream”, I learned it is okay to be different, thank you. Kevin Nash, who was always a shit to me when we were in Basic Training together but I knew you would be a star and set a standard somewhere.  I always looked up to you.  Not because of your height, because of your class, and the way you were then and have been throughout your career and the care you take in “keeping it real” and helping the young guys. Ric Flair, who proved there is no traffic along the extra mile. Bobo Brazil (RIP) when I was a kid, Ed Farhat, a.k.a.“The Sheik”(RIP) who would scare the crap out of the devil himself.  Jarrett promotions, for allowing me to be a ring announcer in 1986 for one special night in Clarksville Tn. Bill Dundee for understanding that I knew how to “pay my respects” when I was in the locker room with the boys before the show. Hulk Hogan, or as dream calls you “yellow finger” The old Cap Center in Landover Md. (I thought the ceiling was going to collapse circa 1985) There is no greater gift to give than to touch ones soul.  That night like many others you did just that. Rowdy Roddy Piper and anyone who has allowed “marks” like me to escape as we watched you in “the squared circle”.

Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Joseph Murphy, Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins. Thank you.  Finally, Paul Miceli, a friend who is always there and has been through think and thin.

Overcoming Self-consciousness and Inhibition

Social anxiety symptoms often begin during adolescence. For most people, the teenage years of life are filled with self-conscious focus on how we look to our peers. It’s a developmental process that creates profound psychological change, especially in terms of how we relate to others. One of the most frustrating aspects of the adolescent years is the tendency for self-focus to decrease the amount of focus we have left for the feelings and needs of others.
While these changes are fairly universal, those of us who were born with a shy temperament can carry the fears of adolescence into adulthood. An anxious temperament (meaning inborn personality traits that cause us to be more anxious and sensitive) causes our brains to react with greater force when exposed to the stress of sudden awareness of our peers and how we come across to them. Because we experience those fears at a heightened level, our brains label the fear of exposure or embarrassment as highly dangerous. The result is what you have experienced for many years: excessive self-consciousness and inhibition when you feel you are being observed.
Without sounding condescending, and without oversimplifying the problem, I would like to challenge you to strive for increased focus on other people, in place of your excessive focus on yourself. Yes, I know, this is easier said than done. The fear causes your mind to feel as if it is practically glued to the thoughts of losing control or making a fool of yourself when you are in the spotlight. But if you begin to build a new response, or habit, in reaction to your fears, you will gradually build up a stronger response than the inhibited fear response that currently dominates your neural circuitry (habits of your mind).
Here’s what you should do. When you are NOT anxious and feeling self-conscious, try to increase the amount of attention, time, and focus you place on observing other people. I know of a psychologist who spent some time studying treatments for Social Anxiety Disorder in London. One of the things that was very helpful to her patients was the instruction to go into a pub with the assignment to come out fifteen minutes later with details about the people they talked with. They were told, “I want you to tell me what color their eyes were, what they were wearing, what emotions they wore on their face, and what signs you saw of energy or fatigue in their face. Did they have wrinkle’s under their eye? Did they seem to be in a good mood?” These questions led the social anxiety sufferers into a different sort of mental focus than they would typically have upon entering a pub. The effect? Less self-consciousness, which leads to an automatic decrease in feelings that lead to inhibition of social energy. Spend some time thinking about how you could apply this technique in your own life.
Be Courageous!
Dr. Todd Snyder 
 Click Here!
 

Advocates see trouble for misdiagnosed soldiers

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer Anne Flaherty, Associated Press Writer – 

WASHINGTON – At the height of the Iraq war, the Army routinely dismissed hundreds of soldiers for having a personality disorder when they were more likely suffering from the traumatic stresses of war, discharge data suggests.
Under pressure from Congress and the public, the Army later acknowledged the problem and drastically cut the number of soldiers given the designation. But advocates for veterans say an unknown number of troops still unfairly bear the stigma of a personality disorder, making them ineligible for military health care and other benefits.
"We really have an obligation to go back and make sure troops weren't misdiagnosed," said Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a clinical psychologist whose nonprofit "Give an Hour" connects troops with volunteer mental health professionals.
The Army denies that any soldier was misdiagnosed before 2008, when it drastically cut the number of discharges due to personality disorders and diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorders skyrocketed.
Unlike PTSD, which the Army regards as a treatable mental disability caused by the acute stresses of war, the military designation of a personality disorder can have devastating consequences for soldiers.
Defined as a "deeply ingrained maladaptive pattern of behavior," a personality disorder is considered a "pre-existing condition" that relieves the military of its duty to pay for the person's health care or combat-related disability pay.
According to figures provided by the Army, the service discharged about a 1,000 soldiers a year between 2005 and 2007 for having a personality disorder.
But after an article in The Nation magazine exposed the practice, the Defense Department changed its policy and began requiring a top-level review of each case to ensure post-traumatic stress or a brain injury wasn't the underlying cause.
After that, the annual number of personality disorder cases dropped by 75 percent. Only 260 soldiers were discharged on those grounds in 2009.
At the same time, the number of post-traumatic stress disorder cases has soared. By 2008, more than 14,000 soldiers had been diagnosed with PTSD — twice as many as two years before.
The Army attributes the sudden and sharp reduction in personality disorders to its policy change. Yet Army officials deny that soldiers were discharged unfairly, saying they reviewed the paperwork of all deployed soldiers dismissed with a personality disorder between 2001 and 2006.
"We did not find evidence that soldiers with PTSD had been inappropriately discharged with personality disorder," wrote Maria Tolleson, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Army Medical Command, which oversees the health care of soldiers, in an e-mail.
Command officials declined to be interviewed.
Advocates for veterans are skeptical of the Army's claim that it didn't make any mistakes. They say symptoms of PTSD — anger, irritability, anxiety and depression — can easily be confused for the Army's description of a personality disorder.
They also point out that during its review of past cases, the Army never interviewed soldiers or their families, who can often provide evidence of a shift in behavior that occurred after someone was sent into a war zone.
"There's no reason to believe personality discharges would go down so quickly" unless the Army had misdiagnosed hundreds of soldiers each year in the first place, said Bart Stichman, co-director of the National Veterans Legal Services Program.
Stichman's organization is working through a backlog of 130 individual cases of wounded service members who feel they were wrongly denied benefits.
Among those cases is Chuck Luther, who decided to rejoin the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks. He had previously served eight years before being honorably discharged.
"I knew what combat was going to take," he said.
Luther, who lives near Fort Hood, Texas, said throughout his time in the Army, he received eight mental health evaluations from the Army, each clearing him as "fit for duty."
Luther was seven months into his deployment as a reconnaissance scout in Iraq's violent Sunni Triangle in 2007 when he says a mortar shell slammed him to the ground. He later complained of stabbing eye pain and crippling migraines, but was told by a military doctor that he was faking his symptoms to avoid combat duty.
Luther says that he was confined for a month in a 6-by-8 foot room without treatment. At one point, Luther acknowledges, he snapped — biting a guard and spitting in the face of a military chaplain.
After that episode, Luther says, the Army told him he could return home and keep his benefits if he signed papers admitting he had a personality disorder. If he didn't sign, he said, he was told he would be kicked out eventually anyway.
Luther, whose account was first detailed by The Nation, signed the papers.
His case highlights the irony in many personality discharges. A person is screened mentally and physically before joining the military. But upon returning from combat, that same person is told he or she had a serious mental disorder that predated military service.
As in the civilian world, where many insurance companies deny coverage for illnesses that develop before a policy is issued, the government can deny a service member veteran health care benefits and combat-related disability pay for pre-existing ailments.
Despite the Defense Department's reforms, groups such as the National Veterans Legal Services Program say they don't have enough manpower to help all the veterans who believe they were wrongly denied benefits.
Stichman says his organization has more than 60 law firms across the country willing to take on the legal cases of wounded veterans for free. But even with that help, the group doesn't know when it would be able to take on even one new case.
A congressional inquiry is under way to determine whether the Army is relying on a different designation — referred to as an "adjustment disorder" — to dismiss soldiers.
Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, wants the Pentagon to explain why the number of these discharges doubled between 2006 and 2009 and how many of those qualified to retain their benefits.
As for Luther, he got lucky. After about a year, he says the Veterans Administration agreed to reevaluate him and decided that he suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome coupled by traumatic brain injury. The ruling gives him access to a psychologist and psychiatrist every two weeks, despite his discharge status, he said.
But Luther acknowledges that he still struggles. In June, he received word that the Army had turned down his appeal to correct his record, which means he could never return to the service or retire with full benefits.
A week later, he says, he lost his job delivering potato chips because a superior felt threatened by him. Luther says he misses the Army.
"When I was in uniform, that defined me," he said. "It's what made me, me."
___
Online:
U.S. Army Medical Command: http://www.armymedicine.army.mil
Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov/
"Give an Hour": http://www.giveanhour.org
National Veterans Legal Services Program: http://www.nvlsp.org/