Down To Earth Newsletter
Volume 5 – Issue 10 – December, 2006
Train with the Masters – Dorothy & Mort Satten – Dorothy Satten, winner of the 2006 J. L. Moreno Award from the ASGPP, is a master psychodramatist, author, and a loving mother, grandmother, and wife. With husband, Mort, she has been bringing psychodrama to students around the world for 30 years. Having accumulated three quarters of a century of experience, she will be focusing on staying closer to her Arizona home in the next few years, continuing to impart her wisdom to her students. The time to train with the Sattens is NOW. Click here for a list of Phoenix & Tucson training dates, or call Phoenix Registrar Grayce Gusmano at 602-380-6180 or Tucson Registrar Westwood Institute at 520-299-6315
Debunking Myths – Catch-Up Sleep, Does it Work?
Myth: I frequently hear people talking about “catch-up sleep,” which is sleeping very late one morning in an effort to catch up for sleep that was missed throughout the week. I have even heard of extreme cases where someone might sleep for a whole day or 36 hours, or even almost 48 hours to make up for exhausting weeks or months. Many people believe wholeheartedly in the body’s ability to use catch-up sleep to get back into balance. The question is, does it actually work, or is it more of a placebo effect?
Fact: The short answer is that it does not work. Catch-up sleep is a myth.
To go into more detail… the body, although sturdy, has some simple daily requirements that include sleep, food, water, and activity.
Of course, you can live for a day or two without any of those daily requirements, but those days won’t be very pleasant. You won’t starve to death without food for 3-4 days. People have been known to go without food for various reasons for 10-12 days or even a month, but it’s not a terribly good idea. You can go without water for a much shorter time, maybe up to 3 days before systems start shutting down. And, as most ‘couch potatoes’ know, you can probably go for years, or even decades without any strenuous activity before disease sets in. But how long can you go without sleep?
International travelers miss 6-20 hours of sleep at a time, here and there, creating jet lag, an annoying, but not fatal, condition. Rotating shift workers have their sleep disrupted several times a week, indefinitely, often resulting in conditions directly related to sleep deprivation. People in extremely dangerous situations like natural disasters, combat, or who are kidnapped or taken hostage have been known to go sleepless for days upon days or even for weeks, but eventually that takes a serious toll on not only the body, but also on the mind. Extreme sleep deprivation can turn normal, average humans into psychotic lunatics in as little as 3 weeks.
So, although the body needs daily sleep, food, water, and activity, one can go for periods of time without these necessities, but there is always a price to be paid.
People often think that they can repay their body for lost sleep by getting extra sleep on other days, but that is simply not how the body works. If you were to go without food for 3-4 days, you could not just chow down on the 5th day and eat 15 meals at one sitting to make up for the skipped meals. Sure, you’d be hungry enough to want to try, but your body simply wouldn’t let you. The same is true for sleep. When you deprive yourself of sleep day after day, you sure want to sleep all of the weekend away, and you may even manage to do that, but the body isn’t able to truly benefit from all that laying around. The damage has already been done during the week and you can only repair a little bit over the weekend.
Sleep is something that is only restorative and healthy when it is given to the body consistently. Catch-up sleep may ‘feel good,’ but that’s really just in your head. If you are craving catch-up sleep, go ahead and take an extra hour or two, but then use the rest of your day to figure out how to make your weekly schedule more manageable and include more sleep on a regular basis.
November Discussion Question: Who do you wish you could have at your Thanksgiving table this year?
Three readers responded this month – Rachel R. and Bobbie R. from AZ, and Oscar L from OK, but they all had the SAME ANSWER! They each wanted for their fathers to be present at their Thanksgiving table. Two of the fathers are no longer with us, and the third is estranged from his child. That was amazing. Dads, take notice of how important you are to your children!
Thanks to each of our contributors. Your Dr. Marlo prizes are on their way!
December Discussion Question: What is something that you really want to avoid in 2007?
E-mail answers to: discussion@drmarlo.com and answers will appear next month. Your state of residence, your first name and last initial will be used unless you tell us not to use them. Anyone who responds and also includes a mailing address will receive one of the “Return to Wellness” Roomarangs as well as temporary tattoos until supplies are exhausted.
Thought For The Day: Taking the blame for someone else is not doing them a favor.
ONGOING FEATURE – PERSONAL GROWTH EXERCISE
To spotlight our E-Coaching services, our newsletter includes a personal growth exercise each month. These exercises illustrate the kinds of activities our clients are asked to complete when they are using our E-Coaching services. The exercises printed here are quite general in nature, but the exercises sent to our E-Coaching clients are individualized to meet each client’s specific needs. We are currently offering 10 E-Coaching Sessions at the Introductory price of $100 total. FINAL MONTH FOR THIS OFFER!
New Years’ Resolutions
Every year at about this time, people get to thinking about what sorts of exciting opportunities the upcoming year will offer. There is something magical about the changing of the year that makes us think everything could be different if we simply believe strongly enough. The fact is, that’s largely true. We create our own lives and what we tell ourselves about what is possible or impossible is responsible for shaping that creation.
As the New Year approaches, take a few minutes and decide what you’d like to see change in 2007. What relationships would you like to improve? Begin? End? What responsibilities have soured and need to be refreshed? Eliminated? Focused upon? What belongings have fallen into a state of disrepair? The house? The car? Your body? What is it that needs to be new and different in 2007? Allow yourself to consider new options for yourself in the upcoming year. There’s no harm in just considering new things. Just considering them doesn’t make them so, but it does bring you closer to thinking you could make them so. And, once you believe you could make them so, then you can decide if you want to or not. That’s the point you want to get to, the point at which you can freely decide if you want for things to be different or not.
The next steps are much easier. Once you believe you can do it and you have decided that you will do it, then all that’s left is the actual doing and that is often much easier than the considering and the deciding. So, spend some time before the new year arrives and ask yourself what you can consider for 2007 and ask yourself what you can decide for 2007 and build yourself a few dreams with which to enter the new year.
Then, blow your horns at midnight. Hoot and holler and shout. Next year will be great and you will already know how great it can be and you will be ready to achieve that greatness!
For a FREE 10-Session Trial of E-Coaching, send us a report of how this activity worked for you! Send to FreeSessions@drmarlo.com. (Offer Expires 1-16-07)
E-Coaching! FINAL MONTH FOR THE INTRODUCTORY PRICE – $100 for 10 Sessions
Not every problem is a mental illness. Not every issue is a trauma. Not every botherment is an emotional disorder. For life’s daily issues and for personal growth, now there is E-Coaching! Dr. Marlo Archer offers a 10-session consultation package for people who are not diagnosed with any mental illness who would just like some coaching, some guidance, or some personal growth. We are offering the 10-Session package for the introductory price of $100 for a final month. Begin by using PayPal to send a $100 payment to DrMarlo@drmarlo.com, then send an e-mail to that same e-mail address, expressing your specific area of concern to begin!
Dr. Marlo’s Movie Madness – Entertainment and Education
Each month we show a free movie with a mental health theme. Interested parties can stay after the movie for a discussion about the movie. One credit informal CE awarded for a $10 fee. Networking 7:15-7:30pm, Movie at 7:30pm, Discussion until 10pm. Upcoming Features: Thursday, January 18th – Fearless (Suggested by Pat Stacy), Thursday, February 15th – Derailed (Suggested by Dr. Marilyn Stromsness). Suggest movies for March 22, April 19th, or May 17th. Sign up for Movie Madness updates by sending a blank e-mail with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line to MovieMadness@drmarlo.com.
Publish Your Work – Promote your Practice – Two ways to publish – for free as a semi-anonymous author (your state of residence, your first name and last initial will be used), or, for $10, as a professional promoting a mental health practice (your full name, with credentials, address, phone number, and e-mail address will be included). We reserve the right to decline to publish any submissions. Current subscribers = 2360. Send creative contributions to: articles@drmarlo.com.
Dr. Marlo in the Media – Raising Arizona Kids magazine writer, Vicki Louk Balint, interviewed Dr. Marlo for an article about teenagers dating and how to accommodate boyfriends and girlfriends throughout the Holidays.
We write a monthly column about teenagers for Arizona Together Newspaper, Arizona’s Good News “Newspaper,” Established 1991. Read December’s article, “I Don’t Know, I Don’t Care, Whatever!” Arizona Together currently reaches 50,000 readers monthly who are interested in recovery from addictions of all kinds.
We also write a monthly article for www.EVLiving.com, Your Guide to the East Valley. Read November’s article, “Regret, Resent – REGIFT” in the Everyday Solutions section.
The Psychology Session – Internet Radio Show – Season Two – Season Two is in full swing, complete with the addition of new sounds, courtesy of broadcasting intern, Ryan. We regularly upload new shows for podcatching and for download, so just go to our archives and download any of our shows. We welcome show suggestions and advertising sales. E-mail suggestions or inquiries to PsychologySession@drmarlo.com. Order SEASON ONE ON CD! Only $10. Send requests to PsychologySession@drmarlo.com.
Make 2007 your best year ever! –Marlo J. Archer, Ph.D.
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TO PODCATCH THE PSYCHOLOGY SESSION:
This is an introduction to the podcatching process, by Techie Jon Archer, translated into English (but very poorly understood) by Dr. Marlo Archer.
Podcasting is the process of broadcasting over the internet and Podcatching is the process of receiving, or subscribing to, such broadcasts. Although these procedures were popularized by the Apple iPod devices, you do not need to own an iPod to have fun with Podcasting and Podcatching.
Devin Jones, M.Ed. and Dr. Marlo have been Podcasting an internet show called The Psychology Session for almost a year now. Now you can learn how to Podcatch it.
However, if you do already own and regularly use an iPod to subscribe to Podcasts, all you need to do is add the following link to your subscriptions to begin receiving our show:
http://www.drmarlo.com/currentevents/index2.php?option=com_podcast&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1
The rest of you will first need to download a Podcatcher. That is software and we recommend one called, “Juice,” which is free. To download and install Juice:
Go to http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php. Download the version of Juice that will work with your machine – either Windows, or Mac, or Linux. You will be asked to ‘select a mirror.’ All that means is that you’re selecting a website from which to download the free software. There are ‘mirrors’ all over the world. Find one that is close to your location and click the “Download” link. When a window opens to ask what you want to do with the program, select “save to disk,” then hit, ‘okay.’
When the program file is done downloading, go to where the file is and open it. That is, go to where your computer puts new downloads and open the program. It will be called something like: JuiceSetup.exe. It will probably have numbers between the words Juice and Setup (e.g. Juice22Setup.exe.), but those numbers may change between today and when you try this process, so I am not going to put exact numbers in there right now. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter, you probably don’t have anything else in your download folder that looks like JuiceSetup anyhow. It will be an ‘executable’ file and your computer may have some concerns about that, but that’s okay and you should reassure your machine that it will be alright.
The Juice Setup Wizard will then take over and help you install the program. For most common folk, all the default settings are fine, just agree with everything and keep hitting, ‘okay’ or ‘next.’ until you get through all the screens. The only thing you may want to change is that you may want for Juice to be installed into your start-up folder, meaning that it would automatically check for new broadcasts every time you power up your machine. If you specifically want that, you have to select that during the installation process. The default is to only put an icon on your desktop. For those of you who are intimidated by this process, the desktop icon alone will be fine, so don’t worry about anything I just said, just let the Wizard install Juice the way it wants to.
You may have a firewall that informs you that Juice is trying to access the internet. You should let it. You then must agree with the licensing agreement to begin using the program.
Then you can follow the ITunes Setup Assistant to configure it for your machine. It will probably inform you that Juice is not set to handle some file types and ask you if you want to set them now. You can hit ‘yes.’ and then hit ‘save’ when it goes to the ‘one-click subscription’ options. The items: .rss and podcast should already be checked, and that’s fine.
Now, to subscribe to our show, The Psychology Session, click on the little green plus sign, to add a subscription. When the window opens, cut and paste this into the URL space:
http://www.drmarlo.com/currentevents/index2.php?option=com_podcast&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1
and then hit ‘save.’
It will instantly catalog all our past shows for you and only the most recent one will be selected to download. You can download as many or as few as you want. Select the shows you want to download by checking the little box to the left of the show titles. Then, when you are ready to download them, click on the green square button that has two yellow arrows on it. (Hovering over the button reveals the words, “Check for new podcasts”)
Once your selected shows are downloaded, a green ‘play’ button will appear next to each show you downloaded. Click on that ‘play’ button to play the show.
When you’re ready to quit listening and close the Juice program, it will ask you if you want to just leave Juice running in the background. If you do that, it will automatically download new episodes of The Psychology Session if any come out while your computer is still on. To have Juice running constantly, you would have had to let it install itself into your start-up directory during the installation process.
When you return to your computer on another day and you want to check if you have any new podcasts, click on the Juice icon (a yellow lemon) to open the Juice program.
This whole process will create a new directory in the “My Documents” directory, called “My Received Podcasts.” It will even organize each of your subscriptions into it’s own folder. There should be a folder there for The Psychology Session, if you installed it correctly and downloaded at least one show.
There may also be some sort of Adam Curry iPodder Test Channel there, and you can just ignore that. Deleting it probably won’t actually make it go away. If you really don’t want it there, then you have to go into the Juice program and unsubscribe from the Adam Curry iPodder Test Channel, then go delete the folder. Otherwise, it will just keep downloading the welcome message for you. You will also be automatically subscribed to “Juice News” which doesn’t currently have any messages in it. You can unsubscribe from that or ignore it, whichever you prefer.
That’s it. You’d be subscribed to our show and ready to Podcatch!
