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Category: Anxiety

LEAVING THE DREAM

March 31, 2014
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| Categories: Anxiety, Depression, Life Stress, Personal Growth

When you wake up in the morning do you wish you didn't have to get out of bed, that you could just close your eyes and sleep because what's in front of you is less than pleasant, like getting ready for work, commuting, working, going home, eating, falling back into bed, to sleep and wake up to the same grind again? If so, it's important that you establish some kind of morning ritual that grounds you in the real world, nature, an animal, fresh air. Try leaving sweats and tennis shoes right next to your bed and taking a quick, fast walk around your block before you do anything else, roll out, throw on the sweats and go, it's fifteen minutes, or put a flower that has a scent, like a rose, in a vase in the room but away from the bed so you can stand up and put your nose into the alive aroma of nature, inhale deeply and exhale, thinking three positive thoughts to counteract the negative. Or make sure you have something you really like ready to eat and waiting for you in the kitchen so you'll be inspired to get up and move to the...

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INTUITION AND ABUSE

March 26, 2014
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| Categories: Anxiety, Depression, Personal Growth, Relationships

Most people experience times when they believe they know what another person is thinking or feeling. Sometimes, you're doing what is called, "projecting." That is you are projecting what you think or feel onto the other person. And sometimes your intuition about a situation is accurate. If what you're attributing to the other person is important, IE. "You're mad at me," it's important to find a way to inquire about it without sounding confrontational or defensive. You can't have good communication skills if you walk around in the world believing you know when, in fact, you might or you might not. An interesting thing about adults who were abused as children, whether emotional or physical, is that they tend to be more intuitive than the general population. That doesn't mean they shouldn't check it out with the other person because it could still be projection or just plain false. It does mean that very often an adult abused as a child can walk into a room and accurately report who is having a good time, who is pretending to have a good time, who is angry, sad, and so on. Adults abused as children are better at "reading" other people...

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GETTING UP OR NOT

March 26, 2014
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| Categories: Aging, Anxiety, Depression, Life Stress, Personal Growth, Relationships

O.K. It's Saturday morning. You wake up the sun is shining or not, it's raining or not, but you're warm, safe, and there isn't anything you have to do in the next two hours so you don't have to jump up and start hustling toward a work day like most of you do during the week. One would think it would be a time of relaxation, contemplation, or to make plans to do something enjoyable, and it is for some of you. For others, it's the time when depression, despair and confusion reign. To those people: If you're in a relationship, you wonder why you stay and if you're not, you're wondering if you ever will find that special person. If you work forty or more hours a week, you wonder if there's an end to this toiling away just to pay the rent, or maybe you don't have a job and haven't been able to find one. Maybe you have a job but your partner doesn't and you're tired of carrying the load, maybe it's reversed and your partner is tired of carrying the load. Maybe you're old and facing the unbearably sad truth that this culture doesn't value...

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POSITIVE EMOTIONS

March 26, 2014
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| Categories: Aging, Anxiety, Depression, Life Stress, Personal Growth, Seniors

Positive emotions in early life and longevity: findings from the nun study. Danner DD, Snowdon DA, Friesen WV. Source: Department of Preventive Medicine and Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40536-0230, USA. [email protected] Abstract Handwritten autobiographies from 180 Catholic nuns, composed when participants were a mean age of 22 years, were scored for emotional content and related to survival during ages 75 to 95. A strong inverse association was found between positive emotional content in these writings and risk of mortality in late life (p < .001). As the quartile ranking of positive emotion in early life increased, there was a stepwise decrease in risk of mortality resulting in a 2.5-fold difference between the lowest and highest quartiles. Positive emotional content in early-life autobiographies was strongly associated with longevity 6 decades later. Underlying mechanisms of balanced emotional states are discussed. PMID: 11374751 OK, now that you've finished with all the nun jokes and/or Catholic jokes, think about this: It means you could live longer, literally, by having a positive attitude about your life. I've never ascribed to the "airy fairy" approach to living so I don't sweep negative energy out of my office by burning...

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Change Your Experiences by Changing The Way You Think

March 26, 2014
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| Categories: Aging, Anxiety, Depression, Life Stress, Personal Growth, Relationships, Seniors

What’s different about those two scenarios? In the first one you created what you anticipated would happen by your behavior and attitude. In the second one you didn’t create a negative self-fulfilling prophecy, rather you created a positive experience and you’re happy that you didn’t waste time on negativity.             This description of an experience is just an example. You can apply the same principles to any situation you’re in. Notice yourself and whether or not you’re experiencing cognitive distortions like “He/she is never any fun so I won’t have fun tonight.” You won’t have fun because you don’t expect to and your energy, attitude, and behavior will reflect that and you’ll create what you already thought would happen before it even happened. 2.  What you believe about something is what will cause the consequence not the action.             This is part of Albert Ellis’ theory of rational emotive therapy. He called it the A B Cs of Rational Emotive Therapy.             He believed that it wasn’t the action (having to change your shirt before you went out) that caused the consequence. He said it’s what you believe about the action that will cause the consequence. In other words, if...

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MARRIAGE IS NOT A SOLUTION

March 26, 2014
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| Categories: Anxiety, Life Stress, Personal Growth, Relationships

You’re in a relationship; mostly it’s good, even great but about once a month or more the two of you have screaming, “I hate you,” fights. And the fights are often about the same things although each couple has their favorite: “Why don’t you tell your mother to stop calling all of the time?,” “Why didn’t you pay the bill before it was 30 days late?,” How come you never initiate sex?,” I can’t stand it when you get drunk and act like an ass,” “You have more fun with your friends than you do with me,” “We never go out anymore,” “Why didn’t you answer your phone/text?” You get the drift. In between those fights you get along and makeup sex is great, almost worth the fight, almost. Then one of you has a really bad idea, “Let’s get married.” Yes, a really bad idea because once you have that piece of paper between you that says no one is going anywhere without a big legal and financial hassle, there is a kind of guarantee so it’s easier to fight, say what you think, pull out all the stops. He/she isn’t going to just leave me so I’ll tell...

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