Category Archives: Basic & General

Words can change everything

Basic & General,

Try this simple exercise below:

  1. Firstly, think about a snack that you love eating. Write it down. Make sure the words that you use do describe the taste and scent of the snack.
  2. Spend some time to imagine how it feels like when you are salivating, pay attention to how the saliva tastes like, the smoothness at the back of the teeth. Now, think about what happens to the saliva when you eat this snack and digest it. Please write down your feelings and thoughts during salivating.
  3. Now, imagine there is a clean drinking glass in front of you, you split the saliva into the glass. Now, imagine you are drinking the saliva. Please write down your thoughts and feelings.
  4. Finally, imagine your favourite snack is right in front of you now, you are ready to eat it. But before you eat it, you spit some saliva on the snack. Do you still want to eat the snack? When you imagine eating this snack (with saliva spat), please write down your thoughts and feelings.

This is one of the famous ACT exercises, most people get the “effects” when they did this for the first time. Do you realize how words and language can change your feelings? And at any time, most of your thoughts are constructed by words, how often our experience are affected and changed by those words in our daily lives? Can you imagine if there isn’t languages? What happens to our thoughts and our struggle with thoughts if there weren’t any words and languages? Can you see a way of gaining some distance from your thoughts (from those words) instead of being fused in them, believing them 100%?

Statistics: Mental Health in Malaysia

Basic & General
  • Every 3 in 10 adults aged 16 years and above have some sorts of mental health problems (29.2%).
  • The prevalence of mental health problems among adults increased from 10.7% in 1996, to 11.2% in 2006, to 29.2% in 2015.
  • The prevalence in Kuala Lumpur is 39.8%!
  • The prevalence in females was slightly higher than in males but the difference was not significant (30.8% vs 27.6%).
  • Risk factors (adults): females, younger adults, other Bumiputras, and adults from low income families.
  • By occupation, the prevalence was lowest among government/semi-government employees (2.6%) (?!).
  • The overall prevalence of mental health problem among children was 12.1% (children = 5 to 15 years old).
  • Risk factors (children): boys, younger age group and from rural areas.
  • Prevalence of mental health problems in children:  peer problem (32.5%), conduct problems (16.7%), emotional problems (e.g. anxiety, depression, 15.7%), pro-social skill (11.2%) and hyperactivity (4.6%).
  • There are 360 registered psychiatrists registered in the public and private sectors. The ratio of psychiatrists to the Malaysian population is 1:200,000 (1:10,000 is recommended by WHO).
  • Mental illness is expected to be the second biggest health problem affecting Malaysians after heart diseases by 2020.

Retrieved from the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2015 (available here) or here.

泛自闭症障碍 (Autism Spectrum Disorder)

Basic & General, Developmental Disorder

一个蛮常出现的情况，就是大人要是有些什么心理问题，就会被说成“抑郁症”（或“忧郁”），不管他的症状是闷闷不乐，竭斯底里，情绪高昂，自杀念头，出现幻觉，嫉妒心强，时好时坏…… 所以很多时候问当事人或其家属他有什么问题的时候，最常出现的答案，就是“抑郁症”（往往仔细问过症状后，其与“抑郁症”风马牛不相及！）

而孩子呢？这种情况也是有的，只是一般他们会被标签的是“自闭”（或“过动”，其次），不管他的症状是安静，闷闷不乐，不爱社交，过动，不听话，无法沟通，爱说谎，智力偏低，生活无法自理… 情况不严重的时候，就被称为“有点自闭”…

根据DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, 美国精神协会的精神障碍与统计手册，第五版），自闭症（现在已改称Autism Spectrum Disorder, 泛自闭症障碍*，本文继续简称自闭症）从孩提早期，与他人的接触在一定程度上影响了患者几乎每个方面的功能。 社会关系从轻度损害到几乎完全缺乏互动。 有些可能只是减少分享，而一些患者则完全不能主动接触他人或回应他人。 他们说话的时候，倾向于不用一些大多数人常用的身体信号，比如 眼神接触，手势，微笑和点头。 自闭症患者难以在各种不同的社交情景中调整他们的行为; 他们可能缺乏对其他人的兴趣，并且几乎没有朋友。

重复和狭小的专注点是他们的活动和兴趣的特征。 他们不喜欢/抵抗日常微小的变化（比如每天午饭点一样的菜，或不停地重复已经回答的问题。）他们可能被一些动态（如旋转）或微小物体所着迷。 对刺激（疼痛，巨响，极端温度）的反应可能过于微弱或过度。 一些非常专注于感官体验：他们对特定的视觉动态或特定气味着迷，有些或者恐惧或拒绝特定的声音或特定物体表面的触觉。 他们可能使用怪异的言语或表现出刻板的行为，例如拍手，身体摇摆或像回音般重复他人的话（echolalia）。

自闭症最主要是从沟通、社交、机体行为这三方面来判断，有可能伴随或不伴随智力缺陷，伴随或不伴随语言缺陷。

*Autism Spectrum Disorder, 泛自闭症障碍，或自闭症系列障碍，表达了自闭症的多元性。

马来西亚自闭障碍的干预训练中心

Eating & Anxiety

Anxiety Disorder, Basic & General

Substances that may raise your anxiety level and foods they are found in:

Caffeine: coffee, tea, chocolate, soda

Refined white sugar: nondiet soda, candy, cookies, cakes, ice cream, other desserts, sugar-coated cereals

Refined white flour: white bread and rolls, hamburger buns, spaghetti and other white pasta, pretzels

Alcohol: beer, wine, hard liquor

Artificial sweeteners: diet soda, most foods labeled “diet,” many sugar-free products, cereals

Substances that may lower your anxiety level and foods they are found in:

Niacin: chicken, turkey, wheat, brown rice, tuna

Thiamin: oats, wheat, pork, tuna, asparagus, sunflower seeds, white rice

Riboflavin: milk, yogurt, pork, avocados, mushrooms

Vitamin B-6: turkey, bananas, mangoes, sunflower seeds, sweet potatoes, tuna, pork

Vitamin B-12: beef, yogurt, tuna, crab, clams

Biotin: eggs, cheese, peanuts, cauliflower

Pantothenic acid: yogurt, avocados, salmon, sunflower seeds, mushrooms

Folic acid: turkey, oranges, peas, avocados, cabbage, broccoli, soybeans

Calcium: milk, yogurt, cheese, broccoli, spinach Magnesium: spinach, almonds, avocados, sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts

Omega-3 fatty acids: tuna, salmon, sardines, walnuts, dark green leafy vegetables, soybeans

Complex carbohydrates: whole-grain breads, whole-grain cereals, whole-grain pasta, brown rice

Everyone’s body is a little different from everyone else’s. This is just a general guide. To be fully aware of everything you are putting into your body, you may have to read the labels on the packages of the foods you eat. To learn more about their chemical makeup, you can also look up individual foods in an encyclopedia or a book on nutrition, or on the Internet. Sometimes people’s favorite foods are those that raise anxiety. It can be hard to give those up completely, but even cutting back on anxiety-raising substances can be helpful.

How is your Psychological Health?

Basic & General

The above are some statements measuring level of emotional distress. They can serve as a guideline that something might start to go wrong in life.

It is a difficult time for almost everyone, whether it is the economy globally, crime rates in the country, personal financial issues or major life events, or day to day stress from work, family, relationships etc. We might not be able to change all these challenging situations, but we are able to change our perceptions to them, and improve our coping abilities and psychological resilience.

I am a psychologist specialised in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I am also trained in Problem Solving Therapy and Hypnotherapy. I help people to pick up the role of therapist for their own problems.

Feel free to leave a comment below, or contact me via hello@huibee.com or 017-2757813.

Let it go or Chuck it away?

Basic & General, Issues & Debates,

I was looking at some psychotherapy worksheets and came across some exercises on “learning to let go“. Here are some of the exercises:

Exercise 1

On a separate sheet of paper, describe a problem that has been making you feel depressed lately. Write about it in as much detail as you can. Choose one of the methods below to physically let go of what you have written, and then do it. As you destroy your problem, tell yourself, “I am letting go of this. I will not let it depress me anymore.”

  • Rip up your paper into tiny pieces and throw it into the garbage.
  • Put your paper through a shredder.
  • Read what you have written to someone else and then give that person the paper and ask him or her to rip it up in front of you.
  • With permission and in the presence of an adult, burn your paper in a fireplace.
  • Write your problem on bathroom tissue instead of regular paper and flush it down the toilet.

Exercise 2

Sit quietly and comfortably where you will not be disturbed. Close your eyes and picture yourself in vivid detail doing one of the following:
You wrap your problem in a box and seal it very securely with strong tape and rope. Then you attach the box to a very powerful rocket. You take the rocket to an outdoor area where there are no houses, trees, or other obstructions. You light the rocket and stand back. You watch as the rocket blasts off into the sky with great speed and force. You watch it carry your problem quickly and powerfully away from you. You watch until it is completely out of sight, far off beyond the pull of Earth’s gravity, continuing to travel farther into space. As you watch it go, you say to yourself, “I am letting go of this. I will not let it depress me anymore.”

What do you think about these exercises?

According to thefreedictionary.com, to let (something) go has the meaning of

  1. to stop having something
  2. to stop trying to control something
  3. to not take action

Whereas to chuck (something) away has the meaning of

  1. to push or shove something out of the way quickly and roughly
  2. to throw something away
  3. to dispose of something

I think the person designing the exercises of “learning to let go” wasn’t quite able to differentiate between letting go and chucking away. By letting go, you don’t push things away, sometimes the thing that upsets you might even still be there, with you in the same room, but you just let go of the struggle, stopping the control… Because pushing it away, throwing it away involve a lot of control too. And most people do find that the more they try to get rid of something off their mind, the more likely the thing returns (have you tried the “try not to think of a pink elephant” exercise?).

In other words, let’s say you were holding on to your problems, if you want to let go, you open up your palm, whether or not the problems leave you, it’s not up to you, but at least you stop the struggle of holding on to it. So no, I don’t think the above exercises are helping people to let go, even if they succeed, the upsetting events are likely to bounce back (still, it works for the short terms, sometimes for the long terms). A good way of practicing letting go is being mindful, being in the here and now (you may learn how by reading this book). You may also try leaves on the stream (remember not to chuck your problems into the stream, but just let them go, let them flow down gently).