Blog – Page 27 – Dr. Paul Jenkins

Jan 02

Anger Management For Mothers

By DrPaul M-Power

Hey moms, you probably never feel angry at your kids, do you? Of course you do and there is nothing wrong with you. There are ways to understand and manage the anger. Let's put this in a top ten list, it will help us put some organization around it. Number 10 is a basic understanding of anger. What is anger and how does it work inside of the human psyche and in interactions with other people? The quick version is our brain is designed to watch out for and monitor and pick up on threat. Anything that threatens us, kicks us into fight-or-flight mode. Can you see how that relates to anger because usually with anger it's a fight mode of taking on a threat. This is not helpful when we are talking about parenting and being a mom because if you are fighting the problem gets bigger. Understand how…

Dec 31

How To Forgive Yourself For Hurting Someone

By DrPaul M-Power

As a professional psychologist, I work with people all the time on how to forgive others. Today, is a twist on that, how to forgive yourself for hurting someone. I think the first thing that you want to do, get good at forgiveness. In general, I mean. This is a tricky subject especially if we don't fully understand what it is. Forgiveness is not saying that what happened was okay. You know, we kind of learned that as kids, right? "Oh, it's okay." No, it's not. It's not okay to hurt people. So, don't say that it is. This makes it easier to forgive actually because you aren't lying. Forgiveness is not letting someone off the hook for their misdeeds. It's not eliminating the consequences of those misdeeds. Forgiveness is not allowing someone to continue hurting you. So, as I throw out a few of these things that forgiveness is…

Dec 28

How To Handle An Interfering Mother In Law

By DrPaul M-Power

Do you ever wonder where all of the mother-in-law jokes and all the mother-in-law stories come from? It's because people actually have these experiences. You know what, though? Most people don't want to be that person. That's going to be really important as we come back to how to handle it in just a little bit. First, let's review our 5 key relationships. Now, this is Dr. Paul's opinion, okay? Over almost 3 decades of clinical experience working with people just like you I've come to this conclusion about relationships. There are 5 key relationships. In this order: Number 1, your Creator. I'm not here as your spiritual guide or as your ecclesiastical leader. I'm just acknowledging that it's really important for us as human beings to come to some sense of where we came from. Our source. Our Creator. Whatever that is for you, connect with that. That's your…

Dec 27

Ending Nighttime Battles

By DrPaul M-Power

The top 10 ways to stop the bedtime battles - number 10 is lay off the caffeine and the sugar. That seems obvious, doesn't it? It can be really challenging but especially after about noon or 2, you really don’t want to introduce any caffeine into their diets. Really, we want to limit the caffeine intake anyway and kids become very fond of things like sodas and things that might have a high caffeine content. The research of Stanford University suggests that caffeine is one of the top 3 culprits for disturbing sleep. Number 9 on our countdown is blue light, like the kind of light that emanates from electronic screens. Tablets, laptops, and televisions are very high in blue light content and the science behind this is that blue light as opposed to other parts of the spectrum, trigger the arousal sequence of our brain. It's like when the…

Dec 26

My Child Doesn’t Want To Go To School

By DrPaul M-Power

Doc, helped me, my child doesn't want to go to school. I've heard it from other parents too. We want to talk more about principle than specific techniques. I believe if you have the right principles down, that's going to help you come up with the right application or the techniques to support those principles. So, principle number 1 is - diagnosis before treatment. Sounds like an appropriate thing for the doc to say, right? We have to appropriately diagnose what's going on before the treatment makes any sense. What if you were to go to the eye doctor and you said, "Doc, I can't see very well." And he says, "Oh here, try these and he takes his own glasses off and hands them to you. No, that's not going to work because he needs to diagnose what's going on with your eyes and then treat appropriately to that…

Dec 24

Aging or Ageless

By DrPaul M-Power

I just had a conversation with one of my clients that I really wanted to share with you. You know how we make a big deal about exercise and getting enough sleep and eating a balanced diet because we are taking care of our body? Her comment to me today was, “I feel better emotionally when I'm exercising.” It reminded me of an experience I had a couple of years ago with Ron Zeller. Ron is the author of Aging or Ageless. He is a world-class leadership expert. I got a chance to interview Ron just a few months before he passed away from cancer and this wasn't the first time he had cancer. He had lots of experience dealing with the body and health. As I was going into his home to interview him Ron said to me, “Paulie,” and he is the only person on the planet that…

Dec 23

How To Have Patience With My Toddler

By DrPaul M-Power

Hey, Vicki. Cammy wrote in asking, "How do I have more patience with my toddler?" I've got some ideas. Do you? Vicki: Yeah. Let's talk about it. Paul: Cammy, we got your back. Stay calm. We can break that down into a tool. So, let's start with C in calm stands for care. Meaning self-care. Vicki: This is so important with toddlers. Paul: You have got to sometimes just take a step back when you are starting to get frustrated and impatient with your child. Make sure that they are safe and that they are cared for, for a minute, then step aside. Do whatever it takes. Take a bath. Do some reading. Go for a quick walk as long as the child is safe, right? You are just going to get a moment to take care of yourself. Paul: One of the barriers that you'll come up against especially…

Dec 22

How To Cure Wetting the Bed

By Cyndi Baker M-Power

What causes wetting the bed? It comes down to 2 primary causes. A deficiency in antidiuretic hormone which is the hormone that dries us up when we are sleeping. If you don't have enough of that then you're gonna need to get up and go to the bathroom at night. The other cause has to do with deep sleeping. I'll get into that here because that's one that we can really do something about. Both heavy sleeping and a deficiency of antidiuretic hormone have to be present in order for bedwetting to occur. If you generate enough hormone, then you don't have to get up and go at night. If you're not sleeping so deeply then you'll be able to get up and go when you get the signals. Now, that gives us some ideas about how to cure it. Your central nervous system, takes good care of you by…

Dec 20

Five Factors That Determine The Outcome Of Divorce For Children

By Cyndi Baker M-Power

The 5 factors that determine the outcome of divorce for children come from working as a child custody evaluator for the courts for almost 13 years. Honestly, it's yuck work, not fun. When bitter, angry, divorcing people can't figure out how to share their kids, it gets messy but I learned a lot of things in that context. These 5 factors that I'm about to share with you can make the difference for your kids. In fact, they've been shown through the research to be the 5 factors that determine the outcome of divorce for children. The resource for this is Dr. Elizabeth Ellis. She wrote a compiled book called Divorce Wars. Not a fun read. It's pretty academic. She has pulled together all of the research that had been done in this area, and suggests that these are the 5 factors that determine the outcome of divorce for children.…

Dec 19

How to Make a Great First Impression

By Cyndi Baker M-Power

First impressions are really important in a lot of different contexts in our life. You think about things like a job interview for example. Or social interactions or workplace interactions with co-workers or a customer or client. Those first impressions are really crucial. Dr. Ann Demarais did some research years ago that illuminated the important aspects in forming a great first impression. She wrote the book "First Impressions," which I highly recommend. We'll put a link down below. Dr. Demarais found that how we focus makes a big difference. So, let's take a look at how Dr. Demarais has set this up. Imagine a quadrant system and we will pick 2 elements to focus on so you can see exactly how this works. In the first column, our focus is how I feel in first person. So, I'm focused on how I feel as opposed to how you feel. Now,…