The holiday season is among us, so here is a delicious and healthy recipe to share with your family and friends! Find more nutritious recipes from our nutritionist, Kim Shackelford, in her 90 Day Meal Plan Ebook
Ingredients: 2 dozen sustainably harvested wild shrimp 4 zucchini or yellow squash Sea salt and black pepper (to taste) Pesto: 3/4 cup Macadamia nuts 1 bunch cilantro 3 clove garlic 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil Sea salt and black pepper
Directions: 1. Make the pesto first. Combine the Macadamia nuts, cilantro, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and pepper in a food processor and blend until smooth.
2. Peel the shrimp. Place in a steamer basket in a large saucepan and boil and inch of water. While the water is heating run a julienne peeler along the side of each zucchini (or use zucchini noodler). Steam the zucchini for about 3 to 5 min. and set aside.
3. Steam the shrimp for 3 to 5 min. until pink all the way through.
4. Place the steamed zucchini in a mixing bowl with the pesto and toss until covered. Add and subtract based on the consistency that you want! Top the noodles with shrimp and serve.
Kim is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified GAPS and Restorative Wellness Practitioner. She develops bio individual nutrition and supplementation protocols to support optimal health, weight loss and deficiencies that create symptoms, imbalances, and disease. She utilizes a natural foundational approach to rebuilding health, which includes high-performance foods and resources to fuel a sustainable shift in your life for permanent results.
If you would like to schedule an appointment with Kim, please call her cell phone at 919-427-5946 or Bull City Psychotherapy at 919-382-0288. Or you can e-mail her at kim@bullcitypsychotherapy.com
How to get the most out of your experiences (and life).
Quick hits
The anticipation can be almost as great as the thing itself
You are missing out on joy and pleasure if you do not appreciate and reflect on things
We become wired to overlook the positives in our lives. Fight this.
Here are 3 things you should do to enjoy your life more today.
Here’s the thing – we’re wasting so much pleasure. Most of us grind through our weeks and find a couple of highlights to enjoy. Some quality time with someone we love, a cheat meal, etc. Whatever those moments of happiness are, we usually confine them to the moments themselves – and this, dear reader, is the heartbreaking part: we’re leaving 60% of our pleasure on the table.
For the sake of this conversation let’s agree on the following math: 30% of our pleasure comes from anticipation, 40% comes from the event itself, and 30% of our pleasure comes from reflection, otherwise known as the back 30.
Anticipation
Before I focus on the main point of this post (the back 30) I want to focus on anticipation. There have been many studies that indicate anticipation can be almost as pleasurable as the thing itself. I like this article for describing the phenomenon.
The main idea here is that if you intentionally look forward to something, for example a vacation, you can deepen the richness of the experience by reading up on the location, watching movies that feature the location, making a playlist to go with the trip, planning your outfits, planning your meals, etc. Looking forward to the trip can be almost as fun as experiencing it all.
The back 30%: Active Reflection
So, you spent all this time training for your 5k. You researched a training plan, bought some running gear, picked a race, trained like crazy, and crushed it! What an experience! The training was liberating. You did things you weren’t sure you could do. You pushed through pain. The energy on race day was unlike anything you’ve been a part of before. The pride immediately after was special.
Then what? Did you let the experience die there? Did you immediately start planning the next one? If so, you left 30% of your joy on the table.
You accomplished something wonderful! Take a little bit of time to acknowledge that! Think about a way that’s meaningful to you and soak up that back 30! Maybe it’s a great steak dinner with dessert. Maybe it’s a framed case for your certificate and medal. Maybe it’s a thank you note to your partner for watching the kids all those hours you were out slogging through training runs. Whatever it is –this reflective activity will deepen the richness of your experience and help you tap in to that back 30% of joy to be had.
Here are some more ideas and suggestions:
A Shutterfly/memory book to finally organize those pictures from that great vacation
A thank you note to a friend/family member/parent who helped
you with that favor – tell them what it really meant to you and what it allowed
you to accomplish.
A new portfolio, brief case, or outfit in honor of that new
job you got last year.
If you’re not sure where to start, make an “Accomplishments in the Last Year” list. Our weekly routines wire us to forget all the great things we’ve done so we can move on to whatever is next on the list. Take a break. Take a breath. Intentionally reflect on how great you are and how much pleasure you are forbidding yourself to experience by moving on so quickly.
This week
Pick 1 thing from your past and brainstorm how to tap into
the back 30% of joy you left sitting on the table.
Pick 1 thing you did today that you did not fully relish. What can you do right now to get the most out of that experience?
Pick 1 thing you’ll do this week. What is something you will intentionally do to make sure you don’t waste the back 30?
Take stock of how rich these experiences become and how your pleasure deepens as you tap in to this reflective gratitude. I’m going to go reward myself for writing such a phenomenal blog post.
We understand that losing weight is a struggle that can be a long and frustrating process. Bull City Psychotherapy can help you to achieve your weight loss goals with acupuncture and Chinese herbs.
First, we have a specific technique designed to relieve your stress, help you safely shed unwanted pounds, improve your physique, enhance metabolism, and excrete unnecessary moisture from the body.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), most overweight is related to unbalanced metabolism, caused by malfunctioning of the spleen and liver systems.
In five element theory in TCM, the spleen is for the proper functioning of the digestive system, deficiency of the spleen Qi will have symptoms such as fatigue, slow metabolism, water retention, loose stool and feeling of heaviness. Many people with fat on belly are all for this reason. Use acupuncture or moxibustion to stimulate the acupoints along the stomach meridian and spleen meridian, to improve the function of spleen and stomach and to promote metabolism and reduce abdominal fat.
The liver’s job is to keep the flow of organ’s Qi and blood running smoothly. Stagnation of the liver Qi will have emotion problems, make the function of the whole digestive system poorly and can be some of the triggers to lead to cravings and overeating. By stimulating the acupoints of the liver meridian, make the flow of qi and blood smoothly, and the effect of detoxification and detoxification is achieved.
Ear acupoints are specific points of diagnosis and treatment on the external ear, and corresponding to the internal organs of the human body. We can also use ear acupressure to maintain the stimulation of the therapeutic effects between your visits.
And finally, our customized herb formulas enhance your organ functions and improve overall health, helping you look and feel your best.
Dr. Geng Wu, with a Diploma of Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), is licensed by the state to practice in North Carolina. M.D. (China). Dr. Wu graduated from Beijing University of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the best six-year full-time TCM program in China. She practiced and taught as a chief doctor in the affiliated hospital of Beijing University of TCM. As a counselor and instructor, Dr. Wu practiced and taught TCM for nearly 16 years in Japan. Providing treatment and relief for specialties such as, pain management, sport injuries, GYN diseases, infertility, menopause symptoms and problems, weight loss, auto-immune and endocrine system disorders, stroke rehabilitation, hypertension, gastrointestinal disorders, low energy, fatigue, respiratory diseases, allergies, neurological and stress-related disorders, insomnia, addictions and skin problems
Dr. Wu published more than 50 professional articles. She is a member of China Association of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, and a member of the Chinese Medical Association.
If you would like to schedule an appointment with Geng, please call her at Bull City Psychotherapy at 919-382-0288, or you can e-mail her at geng@bullcitypsychotherapy.com
Thanksgiving is a holiday where we are reminded to count our blessings and be thankful. However, for many of us it is a reminder of who we have lost and what we do not have. If we have lost a loved one who is still living, and we feel grief or sadness still, then we are possibly experiencing ambiguous grief. Ambiguous Grief is the feeling experienced when we lose a loved one who is still alive. This can be due to divorce, diagnosis, disclosure of traumatic information, or change of a relationship.
How can we feel thankful if someone we love is no longer in our lives, but still living, and we miss them terribly? How can we feel thankful if our loved one has a mind altering diagnosis, such as Dimentia or Alzheimer’s, and they are not the same person we used to love? How can we feel thankful if we recently discovered that our life partner has spent most of the retirement savings, in an investment that he/she never discussed with us? These are just a few examples of how ambiguous grief can present in our lives. And expanding upon the original definition, ambiguous grief also applies to the awareness of what we never had, yet we knew we needed, such as loving, healthy, or safe childhood.
Yes, it is very painful to experience loss, regardless of the cause. However, after a loved one passes, we do not hope they will return, because rationally we know that they will not, and with ambiguous grief, during the holidays especially, we might still hope that our living loved one might return to our former relationship.
How can we move through ambiguous grief and still feel thankful during this holiday season? First, it is so very critical to be mindful and stay in the present moment; meaning make efforts to keep your focus on this day, rather than the days of the past. This takes practice, but if you practice Mindfulness Meditation, your mind can learn the practice of staying in the present rather than looking backwards, or being preoccupied with preparing for the future. Staying in the present moment can help us appreciate what we DO have. Notice the small things that the present moment can offer you, such as, food to eat. How does each morsel and bite taste in your mouth? Next, notice and appreciate the people you are sharing your time with, whether they are family, friends, strangers, or a ‘chosen family’. Notice them for who they ARE. Appreciate them for their uniqueness, and most importantly, appreciate them for sharing their time with YOU. Try to appreciate your loved ones as they are, and try not to make assumptions about who you think they are based on your ambiguous grief. Finally, be thankful for YOURSELF. You are the most important person in your own life, and as such, you can be thankful for simply, being. Try writing a gratitude list for what you notice and appreciate in your present moment awareness.
However, keeping your mind in the present also means acknowledging any ambiguous grief that you may be feeling, and allowing the feeling to be felt. This is so important, because ambiguous grief needs to be felt in order for us to move through it. Notice I said ambiguous grief needs to be felt, not obsessed about. There is a difference between feeling and thinking. A feeling is something that we can feel inside our bodies. If we start engaging the brain and think about what we are feeling, then that feeling can turn into anxiety, and then our thinking evolves into obsessing and ruminating. When this happens we are not staying in the present moment. It is important to find a safe way to feel your ambiguous grief. You can plan this in many ways, such as with a friend, with a sponsor, with a counselor, in a support group, or by writing in a journal, during meditation, or by creating a personal ritual that represents you moving through your ambiguous grief.
So, yes we can feel thankful even if we are feeling ambiguous grief. In short, we can do this by focusing on the present moment and noticing the small gifts we have, even while acknowledging the grief we may still feel.
The holidays are upon us, which means time for entertaining and gatherings with family, friends, coworkers, and loved ones. If you are looking for a delicious and healthy appetizer or entree, try these organic meatballs. Pair them with whole-wheat pasta for a meal, or serve alone for a healthy snack.
Juicy Organic Meatballs
Ingredients: Meatballs: ½ cup homemade grass fed chicken bone broth 4 oz. grated organic Parmigiano-Reggiano plus a little for serving 1 ½ large onions, minced 1 cup fresh parsley, minced 4 tsp. dried oregano 8 garlic cloves, minced 2 tsp. ground fennel seed 4 large egg yolks 1 ½ lbs. ground pastured pork 1 ½ lbs. grass fed beef 85% 4 tbs. ghee or raw butter, melted 4 tbsp. sea salt Freshly ground black pepper 2 tbsp. fresh basil chopped ¼ cup gluten free panko ¼ cup grass fed whole buttermilk (optional)
Tomato Sauce: ½ cup organic extra virgin olive oil 1 onion, chopped 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 stalk celery, chopped 2 carrots, minced Sea salt Freshly ground pepper (to taste) 2 cans (32 oz. each) organic crushed tomatoes 6 basil leaves 2 dried bay leaves 4 tbsp. raw butter
Directions: Meatballs 1. In a bowl combine gluten free panko with buttermilk tossing to coat until completely moist. 2. Add onion, garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano, oregano, basil, fennel, parsley, sea salt, pepper egg yolks add to bread mixture. 3. Combine pastured pork and grass fed beef together then add all the other mixture in a processor or mixer until completely blended. 4. Pour the cooled raw butter over the mixture. 5. Preheat broiler and set oven rack in mid position. Line a rimmed baking sheet with Parchment paper. Form the meatball mixture into even 2 inch balls and arrange on baking sheet. Broil meatballs until browned on top about 7 min. depending on broiler strength. 6. Heat tomato sauce in a medium pot until simmering and add in meatballs. Simmer until meatballs are cooked through about 10 min.
Tomato Sauce 7. In a large sauté pot over medium heat add onion, garlic and sauté until translucent. 8. Add celery and carrots, sea salt and pepper. Sauté until the vegetables are soft, about 5 min. 9. Add tomatoes, basil, bay leaves and simmer for 1 hour until thick. Remove the bay leaves. Add raw butter 1 tbsp. at a time depending on acidity.
Kim is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified GAPS and Restorative Wellness Practitioner. She develops bio individual nutrition and supplementation protocols to support optimal health, weight loss and deficiencies that create symptoms, imbalances, and disease. She utilizes a natural foundational approach to rebuilding health, which includes high-performance foods and resources to fuel a sustainable shift in your life for permanent results.
If you would like to schedule an appointment with Kim, please call her cell phone at 919-427-5946 or Bull City Psychotherapy at 919-382-0288. Or you can e-mail her at kim@bullcitypsychotherapy.com
What if everything you have heard for years of your life was very incomplete information and counting calories, decreasing them and relying on will-power, “the eat less, workout more advice” has just truly increased our obesity rate by triple since 1960!!! The misinformation surrounding fats, has been detrimental to our physical and mental health. Fats are necessary for proper cell functioning, metabolism, and are the building blocks to cell membranes and every hormone in your body. Our focus on calories has missed the mark completely and our fat free life has created physical and mental conditions while making us fat……now what?
It is imperative to know which fats should be a daily staple and are helping you to become a “fat burner” and which ones are inflammatory and should be avoided. The gut microbiome is also a huge factor in mental health, weight gain and every condition. Having too many pathogenic bacteria and not enough beneficial can seriously damage your health. You are 10 x the amount of bacteria as your own human cells so it is important to understand how a dysbiosis plays a key role in dysregulation of your metabolism, increased inflammation and appetite.
Weight loss plateaus are a very common and frustrating problem. Nutritional imbalances are the most common issue due to a widespread deficiency of many nutrients that help control inflammation, control blood sugar and balance hormones.
Do you want to turn your body into a lean, energetic, efficient super operating system?
Nutrition protocols can help reset and fine tune your metabolism and detoxification processes, using food as the foundation to work on achieving balance in all systems of the body. Forget the calories, focus on the quality of your diet! This means when you stop eating foods that work against you and your body starts working optimally, weight loss happens as a side effect of that. This eventually means no more cravings!
Instead of continuing to blame yourself for lack of willpower, start empowering yourself by eating real, whole, fresh food that are balanced in nutrients, low in sugar and starch. There is no success in dogma or a single category diet, each individual is uniquely different. While it is important to follow some overall important nutrition guidelines, it is imperative to dial into these concepts while also removing toxins from foods and eating the right foods at the most usable time of the day. Food preparation is another consideration if you are cooking in a way at home that makes a food inflammatory or even carcinogenic.
The goal here is to flood your body with the amazing nutrients that most benefit your genetic predispositions as a bio individual, to figure out what may be compromising your weight loss. What may be extremely supportive for one person may be kryptonite for another.
Your food has the exceptional ability to make you lose weight, look amazing and feel energetic but done wrong it will bring you to a complete state of dysfunction. Your nutrition is 80% of health, it has little to do with aging. Food is information to your cells and fuel for your mitochondria.
After figuring out which mechanisms are effecting the plateau or inability to lose weight, whether through food or support of bio chemical imbalances through supplementation, the goal for each client is to continue to modify their protocol with strategies that are as much sustainable as successful.
The most complex of tasks can become easier and simpler if you take them one step at a time. We are here to simplify the process and decipher the myths of dieting that keep you spinning on that hamster wheel.
Please call me at 919-427-5946 for an appointment or email me questions at kimshack12@yahoo.com.
Eighty million a day. That’s how many visitors Pornhub.com draws. And that’s only one adult site—albeit the largest one. Any teenager with a laptop or smartphone can access a continual stream of adult material, and parental controls usually do not filter all the content. So, how is pornography affecting those who are growing up with it?
Let me say first that my perspective as a therapist is not to laud or condemn adult sexual activity that is consensual and legal, but to provide compassionate help for those who experience an addiction to it. People are not able to grow and change when they feel judged. As a therapist, I also seek to understand what effect porn has on the general population, particularly on children and teens who may be viewing it for the first time.
The number of young adults who come to our office seeking help for a pornography addiction is increasing. It’s difficult to determine the age at which young people are seeing it for the first time, but estimates range between 10 and 14 years old. Some children are exposed as early as 7—usually by accident or by a sibling. That first viewing is often a mixture of captivating, disturbing, and confusing to young children.
Over the years, mental health professionals have noted a “classic” correlation between sex addiction and childhood trauma; however, because of the widespread availability of pornography, a “contemporary” form of addiction to porn has appeared which does not include sexual acting out (Riemersma, J. Sytsma, M. 2013. A New Generation of Sexual Addiction. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 20:306-322).
The porn addict may intend to spend only about 15 minutes looking at porn, but then 2 or 3 hours later, he or she is still transfixed by it. School performance can suffer, as well as relationships, social groups, and other nurturing activities. Watching porn may become a closely guarded secret—out of shame for the types of porn being viewed, out of embarrassment for the frequency of viewing, because of religious injunctions, or any number of other reasons. Over time, porn viewing can become a shameful secret, and the problem with shameful secrets is that they tend to drive us into disconnection—away from healthy, supportive relationships. Many addicts live a life of compartmentalization—a respected image on the outside and a shameful secret on the inside.
For teenagers, but also for some adults, there can be confusion over what “real” sex is like. The women in the videos seem to enjoy or even prefer being slammed against the wall; the men in the videos are well-endowed and seem to be able to perform with total endurance for hours. The young porn viewer may wonder, is this what women want? Is this what is expected of me in bed? Real-life sex can have its own excitement and beauty, but it’s important to realize that, at times, it can be awkward and emotionally complex. The nurturing, caring side of real-life relationships can be discounted or misunderstood because of the virtual world of porn.
Most pornography addicts come to a place where they realize they can no longer afford to be continuously swept up in another cycle of binging on porn. I provide non-shaming, compassionate help to those whose activities have become out of their control. I do not guilt clients into changing their behavior, but I help them use their own desire for change to move forward to the life they want. I also assist them in seeing their own strengths in the recovery process. It’s important to provide practical resources, not just theories. The client is in control of the speed at which we move through therapy, and if something isn’t working, I’m happy to try a different method.
As you, the client, get more stable in sobriety, we start to peel back the layers of the onion so that you can understand why you have been addicted to pornography or sex. Your life will start to change; you will feel differently about your relationships, your work, and yourself. Your path to healing starts with a phone call or an email. Contact me today to set up your free 20-minute phone consultation. Help is just around the corner; you don’t have to do this alone.
If you would like to schedule an appointment with Tim, please call him at 919-533-7907. Or you can e-mail him at tim@bullcitypsychotherapy.com
Bull City Psychotherapy and Wellness welcomes Dr. Geng Wu, Doctor of Chinese Medicine to their Durham, NC office location in Croasdaile Office Park. Dr. Wu also uses traditional Chinese herbs to help people stay healthy and/or feel less symptoms of pain.
Below is a message from Dr. Wu about what Chinese Medicine is:
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a practical medicine, that has been extracted from millions of experiences cultivated throughout some thousands of years of Chinese history. Only the practices that have been proven effective have been collected and organized.
Chinese thinking regards nature as the standard for judgment. Traditional Chinese Medicine naturally has the same principle in its judgment and practice. Treatment methods such as herbs, acupuncture, and physical therapy, are prescribed to maintain the body’s state of health and increase its self-healing ability rather than treating diseases after they have already occurred. This kind of treatment is particularly effective in cases of chronic diseases. The purpose of TCM is to be preventive and continue optimal health, rather than letting people get sick and then treating symptoms.
Even if tests to determine diagnoses show negative results, according to TCM, having subjective symptoms and recognizable changes, in many cases, are signs of early stages of diseases. If no treatments are given until a patient’s test date arises, the disease will have progressed in the interim. In other words, TCM targets diseases in early stages to prevent chronic symptoms. Thus, as a Doctor of Chinese Medicine, my biggest concern is the prevention of patient suffering.
Dr. Geng Wu, with a Diploma of Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), is licensed by the state to practice in North Carolina. M.D. (China). Dr. Wu graduated from Beijing University of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the best six-year full-time TCM program in China. She practiced and taught as a chief doctor in the affiliated hospital of Beijing University of TCM. As a counselor and instructor, Dr. Wu practiced and taught TCM for nearly 16 years in Japan. Providing treatment and relief for specialties such as, pain management, sport injuries, GYN diseases, infertility, menopause symptoms and problems, weight loss, auto-immune and endocrine system disorders, stroke rehabilitation, hypertension, gastrointestinal disorders, low energy, fatigue, respiratory diseases, allergies, neurological and stress-related disorders, insomnia, addictions and skin problems
Dr. Wu published more than 50 professional articles. She is a member of China Association of
Acupuncture and Moxibustion, and a member of the Chinese Medical Association.
If you would like to schedule an appointment with Geng, please call her at Bull City Psychotherapy at 919-382-0288.Or you can e-mail her at geng@bullcitypsychotherapy.com
The result of not sleeping is much more serious than you think. Yes, you can wake up overtired, moody, mentally foggy, having poor energy levels without the alertness to handle tasks as you should. There are alarming things that happen when you do not sleep consistently. Chronic sleep deprivation can lead to depression, weight gain, premature aging by a major reduction in growth hormone which is released during sleep, increased inflammation, decreased immune function and many dysfunctions in the body. More importantly, if you do not get good quality sleep or enough sleep it can take years off your life. It is important as a goal to get a minimum of 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. There is a study by the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that showed a 400% increase in cancer for those who sleep less than 6 hours a night. Lack of sleep actually triples your chance of these conditions. It seems to be one of the first things people decide they can disregard in terms of health. People think if they work out and eat somewhat healthy that is the end all. Your sleep cycle is so important for your long-term health.Read more Why Getting Enough Sleep is Critical to Your Health ›
In my current exploratory research into ambiguous grief, it has become very clear, very quickly, that there is another type of grief that is just as important as the four previously identified types of ambiguous grief: Divorce, Disclosure, Diagnosis, and Death of a Relationship. This 5th ‘Big D’ is Disappointment.
