Leslie Glass's Blog, page 251

Inspiration of the day. Celebrate the positive and beautiful.

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Happiness is so many things, but one important facet is letting go of what didn't work.

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Why You Have The Sadness Habit Will Surprise You

Guess what? There’s a reason some people have the sadness
habit. Do you worry a lot? Do you feel awful when there’s no immediate reason
for it? Do you consistently wake up with a feeling of unease? The sadness habit
is different from depression. It’s a set of negative feelings that come up over
and over and follow you around no matter what good things may be happening in
your life. The sadness habit affects your mood, your productivity, and even
your health.

Why do some people have the sadness habit

Believe it or not, you get something for it. Your brain is activated. When you feel sad around something. You think about it. You’re engaged around it. That sadness fuels you and…keeps you stuck. It all starts in the brain’s reward system. You wouldn’t think sadness, grief, shame, guilt would be brain rewards, but they release dopamine in the same way that healthy emotions and activities do.

Our brain reward system tells us what to do

You know the drama person who’s always looking for conflict?
Feeling outraged by everything activates chemicals in the brain that give the person
who loves to fight the bursts of energy that fuel their behavior. They may say
they hate drama, but really they crave it and keep it happening.

Worrying is addictive in the same way. It signals your brain that you’re doing something about whatever causes you stress. Your brain releases chemicals that act as if you’re engaged in problem solving, but in fact you’re just worrying.  

Your sadness habit is dopamine release

Brain reward works the same with other emotions. With sad feelings, your brain is activated along a negative track, just the way it is with any addiction.  All the systems of the brain work together to influence our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. And memory plays an important part, so the most powerful memories tend to dominate our thinking.

For those of us with trauma, we tend to remember and relive the things we feel guilty about, events that wounded our pride like bullying, verbal or emotional abuse, and shame about things that happened to us. We may hate our sadness, shame, guilt, grief, wounded pride, worry, but they are releasing dopamine nonetheless.

Brain activity doesn’t have a happy filter

Your brain is like nature, which is neutral to catastrophic events and beautiful rainbows. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between healthy release of dopamine that makes you happy, and unhealthy release of dopamine that keeps you unhappy.

The cause of the sadness habit is the brain’s reward pathways not knowing the difference between unhealthy release of dopamine and healthy release of dopamine. But you know the difference. To recover from sadness, guilt, shame, worrying, grief, you can cultivate the healthy release of dopamine.

The post Why You Have The Sadness Habit Will Surprise You appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

My Sober Birthday And Not Missing Out

It’s my sober birthday this month, and you’re invited to the party. After eleven years of passing on the martinis, sobriety is my norm. It’s also the norm for my family. That means no martinis, wine, or beer in our homes or at our gatherings. We’re not against alcohol. Alcohol is fine in moderation. Since not everyone can control the amount they imbibe, however, we have to make the world comfortable for those who want the recovery lifestyle. Did you know that sober curious is now a thing? And sober bars are also a thing. Let’s just say in our family we walk the recovery walk ourselves, and we’re not missing out. At home, we actually talk, play games, enjoy our communications in a way we couldn’t when alcohol was part of our lives. There are more benefits, of course, but too many to mention here.

Why My 11th Sober Birthday Matters

We live in a truly boozy world where there has been the universal belief that no end-of-work day, sports event, party, family reunion, celebration, or moment of depression is complete without having a couple of drinks. The result has not been good for our children, workplaces, schools, or family environment.  That may slowly be changing, and there are some easy changes we can make to help the next generation.

Children do what their parents do, what their friends do, and what they see on TV and in the movies. So, parents need to think about the messages they send with their own habits. Not drinking (or smoking dope) at home in front of children will remove the tease factor, and the temptation to steal from parents’ stash. Face it, your kids will steal your alcohol, cigarettes, pain pills, whatever you use. It’s a fact of life. They will lie about doing it, and you will believe them. Sending a different message at home makes a difference.

My Sober Birthday

I remember my sober birthday date: August 25, 2008. Sober birthdays are very meaningful. Just as many “alcoholics” can remember their first drink, I clearly remember the two events that caused me to eliminate the booze from my life. One night a drunken and scary fight between close friends made me want to be safe from the behavior changes that occur with drinking. I didn’t want to be part of it. I was on vacation with them and had to leave. Drinking was toxic to them and to me. But sobriety was already on my mind. Some of own family members were finally ready to take the sobriety step and I wanted to walk with them into what we then thought was the Missing Out Sea of Misery.

Recovery Changes You Can Make

The first thing that happens when you stop drinking is that friends and family members who do drink are dismayed and suspicious, you may need counseling or help to deal with it.. They try to argue you out of your choice to abstain, and keep trying to give you a drink, “just one” even years later. People who know you well and even love you a lot will still want you to drink with them. That is their business. It has nothing to do with you, but can hurt if you’re not expecting it.

In my decade of sobriety, the world outside of recovery has changed. There are many signs of hope. The recovery lifestyle is gaining acceptance. And happily, many people now celebrating sober birthdays are parents just like me.

Even if you’re not ready for full sobriety, you can make a difference by not drinking in front of your children.

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7 Tips To Turn Off Your Monkey Brain

Want to restore your wasted energy? Start by refocusing your monkey brain. Monkey brain is a term for repetitive thinking that uses up energy or fuels negative feelings without solution. There’s a difference between compulsive thinking devoted to problem solving and brooding without a purpose. At its least destructive, monkey brain wastes time precious time and energy. At its worst monkey brain prevents you from taking care of yourself when you’re in danger, feeling joy, solving problems, restoring relationships, even having success at work. Here are 7  monkey brain traps and  tips for escape.

Indecisive Monkey Brain

Say you’re ecstatic about getting married next year but brood about the details so much that even your fiancé is exasperated. Monkey brain is the difference between getting all your choices together and deciding and… well, not deciding, but rather having an endless debate about the same things. You could write a book, plant a garden, save the world in the time you let tiny details take up residence in your head. People who have trouble making decisions often have monkey brain. They think about the pros and cons of everything not just once, but endlessly. What do do about indecisive monkey brain:

Set a timeline for every decision you have to make
Gather your information
Seek the advice of loved ones
Divert your attention by giving yourself something new to decide on once this decision is made
Make your decision and move on to the new project

Procrastination

Procrastination is so common. We all do it. Some things we just don’t like to do and put them off. We do the things we have to do first, and sometimes not even them. What about those things we don’t like to do, think about endlessly, get nagged about, but still do nothing? Dwelling on unfinished tasks is monkey brain that keeps you feeling bad about yourself. You can’t check items off your to-do list and say, “done.”  What can you do about procrastination monkey brain?

A lot of practice is needed to stop procrastinating and just set a deadline. If you’re procrastinating because it’s a lifetime habit, writing down a date for completion might help to get it done. But setting a date might not help. If your secret intention is simply not to do it, therapy might be needed to move you along.

Annoying

This is related to procrastination but has a slightly different outcome because you’re telegraphing your monkey brain to others. It’s not task-oriented in terms of things you need to do and think about but can’t get done. When your monkey brain is attached to unrealized goals and you talk about them endlessly, it can be irritating to others. You think obsessively about wanting to lose weight, exercise more, make better food choices, resolve relationships, get the leaves raked, or just accomplish something. You think about both the wish and failure to act, both of which make you feel horrible. And then you talk endlessly about both the want to do it, should do it, and don’t do. What to do about your annoying monkey brain:

Give yourself goals you can accomplish: read a book, do the laundry, do something for a friend. Go to a movie. Distract yourself in a good way. You won’t lose weight by obsessing about it, so do something else. Really. Get in the habit of giving yourself goals you can fulfill.
Find new topics to talk about with your friends and family.

System Justifying

When someone develops negative thinking, say in the political arena, monkey brain can fuel passion and prevent people from finding common ground. No examples needed here. We know how what systems justifying is. It means your system of belief is the only one and you will do anything to make others feel as you do. Facts don’t matter, and core issues don’t matter. You can listen to and think only about you system. Monkey brain in the political arena is a deeply distressing daily challenge because there is no unity, compassion, kindness. Only winning. Take deep breathes every day, and do something productive. On both sides of the equation monkey brain is a problem. What can you do about it.

Obsessing to justify your position or to stoke your rage simply hurts everyone
Do something practical. Volunteer and help whatever cause you believe in
Find another subject or hobby for discussion with friends

Need 100 Tips for Growing Up Get It Here
Grieving

It’s one thing in that first year after a divorce or death of a loved one to feel the feelings and think about them every day. Grieving is important. You need to feel the feelings. Humans have feelings, so it’s all right to mourn a loved one, a relationship, employment, and so many other things that may have gone wrong in your life. Some people watch the same movie over and over to help them grieve. But if, five years later you’re still thinking the same thoughts and can’t move on, you have the grieving monkey brain. Help is called for. If you have monkey brain about a loved one or someone whom you can’t help you are on a treadmill that goes nowhere. You’re traveling on a train that’s stuck in a tunnel and you can’t see the light of day.

Get some help. Find a therapist
Help someone in need. Reach out and focus your mind on something outside of you
Do something to improve the lives of others
Read a book
Return to the things you used to love and get involved with them again

There’s a Reason For The Sadness Habit
Can’t Let Go

Ever hear someone tell you to let it go, but you keep raging, hurting, worrying about the same thing? Say you’re angry at a sibling and dwell on an event from the past in such a way that rage bubbles up frequently, keeping you in a state of constant hyper reactivity. You keep remembering the words, the way it happened, the humiliation or rage you felt. You build a case against that person and embellish on it until you live in a city of grievances and angry thoughts. What do do about letting go:

When you volunteer or help others, you will find positive experiences and friendships that can replace and lessen the disappointments from the past
Imagine yourself without the grievances, would it make you a happier person
Awareness of the issues inside of you (not the other person) may help you move on

Abuse Relationship

If someone is hurting you, either physically or emotionally, or hurting your children you need to take action. If someone in your life is a substance user or has other behavioral disorders, you need to do more than think about it and wonder if you’re crazy. Monkey brain only makes the abuse cycle worse. You need to get help, even if it’s just to accept what’s happening and to make a plan. It’s difficult to accept that someone you love is hurting you. It’s difficult to make the decision to get away. It’s even harder to actually take the step.

Tell your family and friends
Get a therapist
If you’re in immediate danger call the domestic violence hotline

Monkey brain is dwelling with no purpose. Remember broken records, when the needle was caught on a scratch? Now, we might think of monkey brain as a road to nowhere, or something like a gif that plays the same thing over and over. Most people don’t have monkey brain about accomplishments,  gratitude, wonderful relationships with others, and successes at work. Instead, on a more negative track, focus and thought repetitions tend to reinforce feelings of insecurity, poor self esteem, helplessness or anger. What I do to stop obsessing about things I can’t control:

About politics: I hit the pause button on social media and watching the news
About work: I give myself timeouts. After 6PM On Weekends, I do something I like that makes me feel good. I admit I do like TV
Refocusing the brain—I learn new things. I read a lot. I cook something every day. I walk outside. I will get back to playing the piano again soon. I promise.

The post 7 Tips To Turn Off Your Monkey Brain appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Quiz! What Are The Types of Anxiety?

1
What Is The First Type of Anxiety Disorder? 












Cardiac





Generalized





Bipolar





Addictive







Correct!


Wrong!



You are correct!

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is the first type of Anxiety disorder!

2
What’s the second type of Anxiety Disorder? 












Genetic





Anorexia





Obsessive-Compulsive





Chronic







Correct!


Wrong!



You are correct!







3
What’s the third type of Anxiety Disorder?












Panic Disorder





Depression





Epileptic





Vertigo







Correct!


Wrong!



You are correct!







4
What’s the fourth type of Anxiety Disorder?












Insomnia





Post-Traumatic Stress





Anemic





Irritable







Correct!


Wrong!



You are correct!







5
What’s the fifth type of Anxiety Disorder?












Social Anxiety





Psychosis





Reactive





Detachment







Correct!


Wrong!



You are correct!







Quiz! What Are The Types of Anxiety?
Created on 02 Aug 2019




Quiz result
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Correct!



Share Your Result


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My Whole Identity Was Health and Wellness. My Reality Was Disordered Eating

From Self:

Here’s how I learned that my rigid commitment to being “healthy” was making me anything but.

In the winter of 2003, right after I graduated from college, I was struggling with a series of symptoms that seem increasingly common these days: fatigue, brain fog, digestive troubles, abnormal liver tests, and a period that had been missing for about a year.

None of the medical doctors I visited could figure out what was going on. Blood tests, physical exams, and even a brain scan all came back normal. Although I had recently been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, my symptoms continued even after I’d started on a medication that brought my thyroid levels back into the normal range. The digestive issues got diagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but that didn’t explain the missing period or the other non-gut-related ailments.

Clearly something was going on beyond my thyroid, but no one could tell me what.

The quest for answers wore on for years, through a tangled forest of false diagnoses (gluten sensitivity, polycystic ovarian syndrome, insulinresistance). I was understandably frustrated, but I also became fascinated by the science—or lack thereof—on the conditions I thought I had. Around 2005, I started to focus my career as a journalist on food and nutrition, largely in an attempt to master my own unexplained health issues. I believed that food was medicine, and that I needed to learn how to use it in order to heal myself—and to help others in the same boat.

These mysterious health problems weren’t the only reason for my sudden interest in food and nutrition. Looking back now, I realize that my relationship to food and eating had changed dramatically ever since my junior year of college, when I became intensely focused on losing weight. I can trace it back to the summer of 2002 (a year and a half before those mysterious symptoms landed me in several doctor’s offices). Since then I’d been restricting my calorie and carb intake and overexercising in a never-ending effort to shrink my body. But pretty soon my daily calorie counting, obligatory workouts, and “sensible” portions of “healthy” low-carb food led to nightly binges on all the things I’d been denying myself—cookies, chips, bread, candy.

At my most desperate, when I’d banished nearly all carbs and gluten from the house, I would binge on raw gluten-free pancake batter and maple syrup straight from the bottle. The following day I’d resolve to eat “better” and exercise harder, and the cycle would repeat.

At the time it never occurred to me that this pattern itself was the problem. Although I desperately wanted the binges to stop, I couldn’t see how my weight-loss efforts were triggering them in the first place. I thought the restrictive eating and overexercise were just what it meant to have a “healthy lifestyle,” and that I had to compensate for my “failures” to adhere to that lifestyle by dieting and exercising even harder. In my life up until that point, all I’d ever known of nutrition and fitness was what I’d picked up from the diet culture we live in: that “being healthy” means depriving yourself of the foods you want, taking a no-pain-no-gain approach to physical activity, and keeping a close watch on the scale. I equated these dieting behaviors with taking my health seriously. I truly didn’t see my lifestyle as problematic—and it seemed no one else did, either.

I was so wedded to these behaviors that friends and family began to take notice and compliment my dietary discipline. Increasingly, people were interested in my opinion on nutrition—both because I covered those topics as a journalist and because I seemed like such a healthy eater. And so I started giving advice to family and friends about how to eat. I never mentioned my nightly binges, of course; my nutrition advice was aspirational, based on the “clean” way I ate when I wasn’t bingeing.

Meanwhile my health issues continued. Even though I was getting examined and tested routinely, none of my doctors suspected that my relationship with food could be the issue because I never looked emaciated, the way people with eating disorders are almost always portrayed in popular culture. Although my weight was lower than my body can comfortably sustain, I was still in the “normal” body-mass index (BMI) category, and so my health care providers never saw anything wrong (which is just one of the many problems with using BMI as a measure of health).

In all that time, while my doctors were asking me about my stress levels and alcohol consumption and bowel habits and whether or not I was eating gluten, none of them ever asked me about how I was eating—and in reality I was incredibly disordered about food.

It is shocking to consider that, for pretty much the whole time that I was struggling with disordered eating, I was working in jobs where I wrote and spoke about food from positions of relative authority. First it was as a journalist covering food and nutrition for national magazines and respected websites. Then as a nutritionist in community-health settings while I finished my graduate degree in public health nutrition and went through the many steps to get my registered dietitian’s license.

By day, as a journalist and nutritionist, I extolled the virtues of whole and unprocessed foods, spread the gospel of the gluten-free diet, and taught people how to read nutrition labels and cut back on calories and fat. By night I binged uncontrollably on forbidden processed foods, tumbled down internet rabbit holes researching my ongoing health issues, and spent hours in the health-food store agonizing over whether to get the local or the organic kale, the industrial vegan milk or the sustainable cow’s milk. I was consumed by thoughts of food, weight, and health.

I knew the bingeing was a problem, but I still wasn’t connecting it to my restrictive and obsessive behaviors with food. I didn’t see that the out-of-control eating episodes were a direct result of the “healthy” (restrictive) behaviors I was engaging in the rest of the time, and I thought the way to stop the bingeing was to exert more control over my eating and exercise. I still saw those controlling behaviors as completely normal, rational parts of a healthy lifestyle. They felt like part of my job—because in a way they were. Especially at the time—in the aughts and early 2010s—it felt to me, a journalist and nutritionist, as though the fields of media and nutrition rewarded rigid, strict thinking about food and health. And yet all that attention to food politics and the minutiae of nutrition science undoubtedly worsened my relationship with food and my overall well-being—just as it did for dozens of other dietitians and nutrition journalists I know.

Of course, not everyone in the field of nutrition media and dietetics can relate to having had a disordered relationship with food, but among the professionals in my orbit—many of whom now advocate intuitive eating and speak out about diet culture—it’s a pretty common experience.

Laura Thomas, now a registered nutritionist in the U.K., started a wellness blog after finishing her Ph.D. in nutrition science, and it triggered many of the same disordered eating patterns for her as the ones I experienced. As she told me on my podcast, Food Psych, “I would spend all day meticulously making and photographing all these wellness-y foods that didn’t have oil and didn’t have this and didn’t have that and blah blah blah blah. And then I’d binge my face off in the evening, and I would wonder why. I was projecting this illusion of control and wellness, and it was just pure illusion.”

In another Food Psych interview, Virginia Sole-Smith, author of The Eating Instinct and a fellow journalist who covered food politics and nutrition in the years when I was struggling, said she didn’t realize until much later that what she thought of as wellness was actually just dieting. “We had this idea that if you just switch out and eat whole grains, or make these other changes, it’s going to change everything,” she said of herself and her fellow journalists. “But we were all still…trying to make [people’s] bodies smaller.’”

Dietitian Emily Fonnesbeck, who now practices from a non-diet perspective but struggled with restrictive eating and overexercise early in her career, told me in her Food Psych episode, “I stayed in [a] functionally dysfunctional relationship with food and exercise for probably five or six years. It was super easy for me to fly under the radar, especially because I was a dietitian. Like, I could be anal about food, right? And just be one of those [people] that was super into fitness and eating really ‘clean.’”

Many years later, when I started working as a dietitian in the eating-disorders field, I came to realize it was never the gluten (or the carbs, or the processed food) causing my health issues—it was the disordered eating. The pursuit of wellness had made me extremely unwell, both physically and mentally.

Indeed, symptoms like fatigue, difficulty concentrating, missing periods, IBS, bloating, and other digestive troubles are all common reactions to disordered eating. And if the cause of those issues is actually disordered eating behaviors, then addressing those behaviors is often the first step in feeling better.

Fortunately that’s what ended up happening for me. I ultimately was able to recover via a long and winding path that involved some great therapy (which I was privileged enough to be able to afford) and a lot of self-help (hello, Intuitive Eating), and I went on to build my career around helping people heal from disordered eating. Today it’s been about six years since I’ve binged, overexercised, or restricted my eating in any way, and my period is regular; my liver enzymes are normal; my IBS only flares up in times of extreme stress; and I’m no longer fatigued or brain-foggy, as long as I get enough sleep and take my thyroid meds consistently.

But I’ll never forget how easy it was for my disorder to disguise itself as wellness, or how the same nutrition advice I was giving out for a living had secretly turned my own relationship with food into a nightmare. Of course, not everyone who espouses certain wellness beliefs necessarily has an unhealthy relationship with food or their body. But disordered eating (including eating disorders) is far more common than it might seem in wellness culture: In the U.S. alone, 30 million adults of all ages and genders have eating disorders.

I’m incredibly grateful that I somehow managed to make it into the 25 percent who don’t struggle with those issues, and I work hard to keep it that way. I’ve learned that for me, trying to follow the rules of wellness ends up doing far more harm than good. Instead, I’ve found that my best guide when it comes to eating isn’t some outside source; it’s connection with my own hunger, satisfaction, needs, and desires—an innate wisdom that we’re all born with but that sadly gets stripped away from too many of us through diet culture and that we often have to fight valiantly to reclaim.

In my professional life, I no longer give prescriptive advice about what to eat, or write articles that stoke fear around particular kinds of food. Instead I’ve learned how to guide people in breaking down internalized diet-culture beliefs and exploring for themselves what foods they find satisfying and sustaining. And when I help people recover from disordered eating, I highlight the cultural roots of their issues and let them know they’re not alone—because back when I was struggling, that’s what I wish someone had told me.

The post My Whole Identity Was Health and Wellness. My Reality Was Disordered Eating appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

A New Law Will Help Students Take Mental Health Days

From i-d.com:

Teen activists in Oregon were behind the state legislation that will help end the stigma around mental illness.

As suicide rates hit a 50-year high, it has become increasingly clear that we need to take mental health seriously. According to the World Health Organization mental health issues will be the leading cause of death among young people by 2020.

In order to address this growing crisis, a group of teen activists in Oregon have helped pass a law that will allow students in their state to take excused days off of school for mental health reasons. The students hope this law will help breakdown the stigma around mental health.

“I took on this cause for a personal reason first off because so many of my close friends in high school struggled with depression, and there were times when I saw them at school when they really shouldn’t have been there, would have been much better for them to take a day off,” Hailey Hardcastle, a recent high school graduate and one of the activists who helped lobby for the new law, told TODAY.

The law, which will go into effect this fall will allow students five mental health days every three months. Currently, suicide is the second leading cause of death among 10- to 34-year-olds in Oregon, outpacing the national average. According to the Associated Press this is believed to be the first law in the country to make mental health as important as physical health.

“We were inspired by Parkland in the sense that it showed us that young people can totally change the political conversation,” Hardcastle told AP. “Just like those movements, this bill is something completely coming from the youth.”

This law also adds to the growing movement to recognize the importance of young people’s mental health around the country. Utah passed a similar law last year to increase mental health services and Florida now requires schools to offer mental health classes at their schools starting in sixth grade.

The post A New Law Will Help Students Take Mental Health Days appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Healthy Boundaries 101

We read so much about boundaries and how important they are, but what exactly are healthy boundaries? A boundary is a setting that you place on yourself and others to keep you safe and healthy. Boundaries exist in all relationships including personal boundaries regarding what you see as right and wrong, boundaries with others including family and friends, and boundaries at work.

What Are Healthy Boundaries?

With healthy boundaries, we know where we begin and end and where another person begins and ends. With our boundaries, yes means yes and no means no. If we violate our boundaries, we feel it in a negative sense, such as being overwhelmed, angry, resentful, and distraught. When we set healthy boundaries we also feel it but in a positive way such as feeling strong, competent, and perhaps even pleased and happy.

I Am Allowed To:

Feel what I feel. Feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just ‘are.’
Think what I think
Make mistakes
Change my mind
Let go of others’ expectations of me
Feel happiness and joy as well as sadness and hurt
Say ‘no’ and stick with this boundary
Set boundaries with others. They might not like these boundaries, but they’re my right to set.

I Have The Right To:

Set boundaries for myself regarding my own values, morals, ethics, and beliefs
Set age appropriate boundaries with my children
Not feel guilt or shame for setting healthy boundaries
Be free of physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual neglect or abuse
Use legal actions if abuse has occurred

I Can:

Choose how to respond to others’ – with anger or acceptance, hurt or healing.
Decide what to accept with others and what not to accept.
Celebrate for living a healthy life.
Only ‘fix’ myself, not others, nor am I responsible for ‘fixing’ them.
Choose how to live my life. Even if others’ think I’m living it poorly, it is still my choice to make both good and bad decisions.
Say ‘yes’ when I am ready
Trust my judgement

I Am Responsible For:

My feelings, but not the feelings of others. Setting boundaries may hurt someone, but it is their choice in how to respond to my boundaries.
My own happiness. It is not someone else’s responsibility to make me happy.
Setting boundaries in a compassionate, respectful manner
Being respectful to others when I say ‘no’

I Am Not Responsible For:

Anticipating others’ needs; they are responsible in telling me about this.
Everyone that surrounds me (children being the exception). But even with children, I choose my responsibilities and explore their responsibilities.

Setting Boundaries Is Only The First Step

If someone violates my boundaries, I have the right to confront them, reset the boundaries, and possibly, end the relationship if my boundaries are consistently violated.

Boundaries can be rigid, flexible, or too loose. By examining the above list, we can all see how to utilize flexible boundaries and to decide who and what enters our lives. It is our choice and our responsibility.

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How To Help Your Anxious Partner — And Yourself

From NPR:

Living with anxiety can be tough — your thoughts might race, you might dread tasks others find simple (like driving to work) and your worries might feel inescapable. But loving someone with anxiety can be hard too. You might feel powerless to help or overwhelmed by how your partner’s feelings affect your daily life.

If so, you’re not alone: Multiple studies have shown that anxiety disorders may contribute to marital dissatisfaction.

“We often find that our patients’ … partners are somehow intertwined in their anxiety,” says Sandy Capaldi, associate director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania.

Anxiety is experienced at many different levels and in different forms — from moderate to debilitating, from generalized anxiety to phobias — and its impacts can vary. But psychiatrists and therapists say there are ways to help your partner navigate challenges while you also take care of yourself.

Start by addressing symptoms.

Because an anxiety disorder can be consuming, it can be best to start by talking with your partner about the ways anxiety affects daily life, like sleeplessness, says Jeffrey Borenstein, president and CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation in New York. Something as simple as using the word “stress” instead of clinical labels can help too. “Often people may feel a little more comfortable talking about stress as opposed to … anxiety [disorders],” Borenstein says.

Don’t minimize feelings.

“Even if the perspective of the other person absolutely makes no sense to you logically, you should validate it,” says Carolyn Daitch, a licensed psychologist and director of the Center for the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders in Farmington Hills, Mich. Try to understand your partner’s fears and worries, or at least acknowledge that those fears and worries are real to your partner, before addressing why such things might be irrational.

Anxiety doesn’t have an easy solution, but helping someone starts with compassion. “Too many partners, particularly male partners, want to fix it right away,” Daitch says. “You have to start with empathy and understanding. You can move to logic, but not before the person feels like they’re not being judged and … misunderstood.”

Help your partner seek treatment — and participate when you can.

If your partner is overwhelmed by anxiety, encourage your partner to seek therapy. You can even suggest names of therapists or offices, but don’t call the therapist and set up the appointment yourself, Borenstein says. You want the person to have a certain level of agency over treatment.

Capaldi says she often brings in a patient’s partner to participate in therapy and to bolster the patient’s support system at home. “The three of us — patient, partner, therapist — are a team, and that team is opposed to the anxiety disorder,” she says.

But don’t talk to your partner at home the way a therapist might. For example, don’t suggest your partner try medication or ways of modifying behavior. “Let the recommendations about treatment come from the professional” even if you yourself are in the mental health care field, Borenstein says. “I personally am a professional, and I wouldn’t [prescribe anything] to a loved one.”

It can also be helpful to do some research on whatever form of anxiety your partner might be living with, Capaldi says (The National Alliance on Mental Illness’ guide to anxiety disorders is a great starting point). “Many times, people with anxiety feel as if they’re misunderstood,” she says. “If the partner takes the time to research it a little bit, that can go a long way.”

For tips on how to help your partner pick the right type of therapy, check out this guide from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

Encourage — don’t push.

When your partner suffers from debilitating anxiety and you don’t, your partner’s behavior can be frustrating, says Cory Newman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. But you should never patronize or diminish your partner’s fears. Comments such as “Why can’t you do this? What’s your problem?” will probably be ineffective.

Instead, try to encourage your partner to overcome the anxiety. “Channel your encouragement in a positive direction,” Newman says. “Say something like ‘Here’s how it will benefit you if you can face [this] discomfort.’ “

Daitch cites the example of someone with an immense fear of flying: “Start off saying, ‘I really understand how scared you are of flying. It makes sense you’d be scared. You can’t get off the plane if you have a panic attack, [you’re] afraid you might embarrass yourself … or it feels like you’re out of control when there’s turbulence.’ See things from their perspective.”

Then you can try to gently push your partner to overcome those fears.

Cultivate a life outside your partner’s anxiety.

To maintain your own mental health, it’s important to cultivate habits and relationships that are for you alone, such as a regular exercise regimen or weekly hangouts with friends. Have your own support network, like a best friend or a therapist (or both), for when your partner’s anxiety overwhelms you.

Partners definitely need support of their own, Capaldi says, “whether that means their own therapeutic relationship or just friends, family [and] other interests or activities that set them apart from the world of anxiety they might be living in.”

And don’t let your partner’s anxiety run your family’s life. For example, someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is closely linked to anxiety disorders, might want family members to keep everything very clean or organized in arbitrary ways. Newman says it’s important to restrict how much you will organize your household around your partner’s anxiety — and not to indulge every request or mandate.

“Try to be respectful, but also set limits,” he says.

Help your partner remember that the goal is to manage anxiety — not to get rid of it.

“A lot of people with anxiety disorders understandably view anxiety as the enemy,” Newman says. “Actually, it’s not. The real enemy is avoidance. Anxiety causes [people] to avoid things — like applying to schools, flying to a cousin’s wedding — [that can lead to] an enriched life. … And that causes depression.”

It can also reduce the number of life experiences you and your partner share.

“You can have an anxious life, but if you do things — you’re doing that job interview, you’re saying yes to social invitations, you’re getting in that car and driving to the ocean even though … you don’t want to drive 10 miles — you’re doing those things still,” Newman says. “OK, you might need [medication] or therapy, but you’re still living life.”

The post How To Help Your Anxious Partner — And Yourself appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Elton John Just Celebrated 29 Years Of Sobriety

From CNN:

Elton John already has a list of accomplishments to be proud of. On Monday, he hit another major milestone. The Grammy winner celebrated 29 years of being sober by looking back at a time he said he was a “broken man.” I finally summoned up the courage to say 3 words that would change my life: ‘I need help,'” he said, speaking of the day he decided to get sober in 1990. “Thank you to all the selfless people who have helped me on my journey through sobriety,” he said on Instagram.

The 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 15.1 million adults in the United States had Alcohol Use Disorder — including 9.8 million men and 5.3 million women. And according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about 88,000 people die across the country from alcohol-related causes each year. It’s the third leading preventable cause of death in the US, the institute says.”I am eternally grateful,” the musician said in his post. Last month, “Diamonds,” a compilation of John’s greatest hits reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200, making it the artist’s 20th top 10 album on the list. John became the 10th musician to achieve the distinction. In May, the film “Rocketman,” which depicts John’s rise to fame and stars British actor Taron Egerton, debuted at the US box office. John, who was a producer for the movie, said it took nearly two decades to get it done because many producers didn’t want the version which offered an honest portrayal of the artist’s sex and cocaine-fueled days.

The post Elton John Just Celebrated 29 Years Of Sobriety appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.