Since the pandemic, our mental health has deteriorated at a global level. Some studies estimate an increase in depression by 53 million extra cases and a staggering 76 million extra cases of anxiety. In the United States alone, research shows that 4 in 10 adults suffer from anxiety or depression, whereas before the pandemic it was just 1 in 10.

As a psychotherapist, this troubles me, but we don’t just get to blame the new kid on the block. Even before the pandemic, we saw a decline in our mental health due to the rapid growth in technology (including smartphones). Our need for certainty and the quick fix of an instant answer has taken us further from the wisdom and natural rhythms that we can find within. At a greater rate, we are recycling half-baked ideas that take us further and further from a felt sense of truth.

In my new book Beyond Your Confines, I argue that the coincidence of these two major trends (the pandemic and the growth in technology) has trapped us within an internal (mental) prison of our own creation. Evidence of this is all around, with greater emotion dysregulation and an uptick of unhelpful thought patterns (for example, the over-simplification of black and white thinking that polarizes views).

For survivors of trauma, life during (and since) the pandemic has been particularly challenging, creating an even greater swing on the dialectic of trauma that is a feeling of too much at one moment, and then feeling nothing (or shutdown) at the next moment. In Beyond Your Confines, I pay particular attention to the prevalence of trauma, and how we can learn how to regulate our emotions again. 

One of the hardest groups hit by the pandemic has been parents of school-aged (and younger) children. In recent studies, 27% of parents reported that their own mental health has deteriorated, and 14% reported worsening behavioral health for their children. For those parents who are also survivors of trauma, the growth in technology and the pandemic has created unique challenges. As a result, I dedicate a whole chapter to parenting through, and after, a pandemic.

It is my hope that Beyond Your Confines can help you to understand how you trap yourself within a mental prison, and if you can understand what confines you, this might help you to find the key to free your mind. We can learn a great deal from history, and so I examine other pandemics, and how we have responded to these. For example, in 1980 smallpox was eradicated because of the cooperation and collaboration between countries. In Beyond Your Confines, I explain that we need each other to free our minds and achieve a healthy state of mind. We can co-regulate each other, a concept introduced by Dr Stephen Porges when he explained Polyvagal Theory. As you will find out in Beyond Your Confines, Polyvagal Theory is an important component to mental health.

We can also learn from the 1918 and 2020 pandemics, which showed us that confinement helped to slow the spread of influenza (in 1918) and COVID-19 (in 2020). In Beyond Your Confines, I explain that confinement can sometimes help with your mental health, especially if you translate that to a period of rest or disengagement, whether that is from work, social media, or even the demands of your loved ones. In my new book, I examine the concept of burnout, something that has posed a greater risk since the pandemic and a growth in technology has blurred so many boundaries. Did we see a rebellion against this blurring of boundaries during the Great Resignation of 2021? Was this an example of people reaching beyond their confines, freeing their minds, and reaching for a more authentic way to live? Perhaps. I will leave that to you to decide once you have read the book.

The process of writing Beyond Your Confines has underscored my belief that to tackle any mental health issue, it is impossible to confine one’s focus to the individual. We are all interconnected, and so we are not just looking at an internal prison of distorted thought patterns or emotion dysregulation, we need to understand the societal distortions that confine us; distortions such as structural inequality, societal privilege, and discrimination. Mental health practitioners have a duty to examine these societal influences, and I hope that I have, at least in part, addressed this duty by publishing my new book.

Beyond Your Confines is available from all good book retailers from 1 October 2022.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and Author
www.chriswarrendickins.com
 
Sources

The Lancet - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02143-7/fulltext
Kaiser Family Foundation - https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/
“Brain Health Consequences of Digital Technology Use,” Gary W. Small, Jooyeon Lee, Aaron Kaufman, Jason Jalil, Prabha Siddarth, et al https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366948/
The Polyvagal Theory, Stephen W. Porges
Well-being of parents and children during the pandemic - https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/146/4/e2020016824/79686/Well-being-of-Parents-and-Children-During-the?autologincheck=redirected?nfToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

"Here we are two years later, with restrictions lifted, and we have technically been released from our confines, and yet we stumble and blink into the daylight without a clue how to be. We are still under a lock and key of our own creation. We still lack confidence, we are fighting with each other, and we are overwhelmed by our anxiety. There is no normal to return to; this is a new world which requires a new way of being."  Beyond Your Confines

Join psychotherapist and author Chris Warren-Dickins at the author symposium, hosted by Barnes & Noble (765 NJ-17 Paramus, NJ 07652).

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​

The editorial reviews are flooding in. Check out some of these comments about Beyond Your Confines. Truly touching.

It is my hope that this book can help us all to reach beyond the confines of our mental prisons. With a little more awareness, we can challenge polarized thinking and work towards a safer, healthier society for all.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines 

I am delighted to announce the publication of Beyond Your Confines: A key to free your mind.
 
The pandemic confined you to your home, and now you have emerged, blinking into the daylight of hope. But to what extent has your mind kept you trapped within a prison of your own creation?
 
We have always constructed labyrinthian prisons of fears and assumptions, but the evolution of technology has taken us further from the wisdom and natural rhythms that we can find within. The less aware you are of your internal (mental) state, the more you become a prisoner of it, and this blindness can lead to challenges to your mental health, your ability to parent, and it can even threaten your career. Learning how to free your mind from an internal prison should be a high priority.
 
However, Beyond Your Confines is not just an exercise in individual growth. Your mind does not exist in a vacuum.  We live in a world of polarized views, discrimination, and privilege, and so no mind can be free without an assessment of the part we play in all of this. We are, after all, as interconnected to each other as we are to the environment we pollute.
 
Beyond Your Confines helps you find the key to free your imprisoned mind and discover your wisdom and natural rhythms from without and from within.
 
Thank you to the wonderful (and patient) Anabeth Bostrup for her cover design.
 
Beyond Your Confines is available now at all good book retailers.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines 

Time for my next non-fiction!

The editor has finished, and the cover designer is working away.

Would you like to win a free copy of a first edition? If so, use the link below to sign up for alerts.

http://eepurl.com/gD41jr

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​

As a psychotherapist, I can get pushback when I suggest mindfulness and meditation. This is especially so when I suggest breathing exercises to my clients. 'Is that it?' they would say to me. 'I have been breathing my whole life, why do I need to set aside time to do more breathing?'. I must admit, when my own therapist suggested mindfulness and meditation, almost twenty years ago (before I became a therapist), I had the same reaction.

The good news is that we now have the research to support what might once have seemed like smoke and mirrors. Studies show that levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) reduce after a course of mindfulness and meditation (including breathing exercises). It only takes a handful of minutes to do, so why not make this part of your morning ritual, so you can wake up to better mental health. I have some free mindfulness and meditation exercises on my website, so why not start with these? I hope you find this useful.

According to Stanford Neuroscientist Dr Andrew Huberman, meditation and breathing exercises can help people to teach their nervous systems "to be comfortable in uncomfortable states" (Dr Andrew Huberman), putting their brain in an optimal state to function. The trouble is, so many say they don't have time to do this. However, research shows that the recommended 'dose' for meditation/breathing exercises is just 13 minutes a day. Check out Dr Huberman's fascinating video here.
 
Too often we find an excuse to avoid making any changes, and the most common excuse is ‘I don’t have the time’. Stop procrastinating and use the new day for a new way of being. You can do this by getting up 10 minutes earlier than usual, and using that extra time to follow these ten steps -

1. Find a quiet corner of your home (even the bathroom!)
2. Use that quiet corner to settle your attention to each breath as it comes in through your nose, and out through your lips
3. Adopt a sense of curiosity to each breath, and just notice it.
4. Don’t feel you need to change the natural rhythm, you are simply using each breath as an anchor to the present moment
5. If your mind starts to wander, that is okay, just bring it back to your breathing.
6. If you notice strong emotions rising up, just acknowledge them, and return your focus to your breathing.
7. The more you can gain a sense of distance from your thoughts and emotions, the more choice you will have over how to respond to them
8. As you notice each breath you will start to calm your mind and body, and thus helps to reduce the cortisol levels in your body (the stress hormone).
9. Studies show that the long-term build up of cortisol is responsible for heart disease, weight gain, high blood pressure, and a greater risk of a stroke.
10. Repeat this process as many times as you need, so you fill the whole of that extra 10 minutes you have given yourself.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​

We register trauma in our body before we find the words to express it. In the words of Bessel van der Kolk, we understand trauma to be a “speechless horror”.

If we can register trauma in our body, we can learn to heal through the use of our body. We can learn to sense safety, and we can distinguish the past trauma from present reality. At first, this might seem scary. Our body might once have been a place of danger, shame, or bewilderment. But in time, with the help of an experienced therapist, we can learn to trust those internal cues that help us to become regulated again.

When a therapist helps us to learn about our body, we learn about our triune brain. We learn that we have the neocortex (cognitive), mammalian (emotional), and reptilian (sensorimotor or body) brain, and this can help us to learn why we think, feel and act as we do. With this deeper level of knowledge, we can learn to regulate our responses to triggers in our environment, whether that is the sound of a slammed door or the face of an angry colleague.

When we learn about our body with a therapist, we also understand that our responses are a matter of survival or protection, not a matter of dysfunction or weakness. Shame or pathology has no part in a trauma-informed approach.

With the right help, it is possible to get Beyond the Blue of your trauma.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​

Psychotherapist and author Chris Warren-Dickins takes you Beyond the Blue of the male label, and beyond the blue of depression, anxiety, relationship conflict, and trauma.

For a healthier society for all.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​

Three years ago today, at the United Nations discussing gender-affirming healthcare.

​We still have work to do #healthcare #unitednations 🏳️‍⚧️

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​

I had the honor of being invited by the Mayor to speak at Ridgewood's Pride.

In case you didn't get a chance to hear my speech, here it is.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist and author of Beyond the Blue and Beyond Your Confines
#BeyondYourConfines ​