Leslie Glass's Blog, page 306

Overwhelmed? How To Take A Break

Panic. You know that feeling of mounting overwhelm? When too much is on your plate, is your tendency to panic? Is your go-to response to believe that you are all alone? Do you forget about those eager to lend a helping hand? Too often, when we need help the most, our panic spirals out of control.

We Turn Away Outside Help

Often, we allow panic to drive our lives into isolation. We decide we’re strong. We don’t need anyone else’s help. Instead, we roll up our sleeves and go it alone. Maybe we secretly want help, but we don’t allow ourselves to take. We end up shutting out the people who want to help to us.

We Keep On Caregiving And Refuse To Do Care-taking

Because we call ourselves generous, and our efforts in caregiving are enormous. Care-taking, however, is another story. “Taking” just sounds self-centered and greedy, while “giving” sounds thoughtful and kind.

We convince ourselves that we shouldn’t take care of anything for ourselves while we eagerly and freely give our time to others.

Adding more and more to our already overcrowded lives, it’s no surprise that panic is a result.

Freeze Your Spiral Of Over-Giving

Instead, in that moment of overwhelm, what if we realized that without taking there can be no giving? That taking help offered by another is also an act of generosity? That life just doesn’t flow if everyone gave and no one took.

Practice Taking

Be curious as to how this shows up in your life by observing how you take a compliment. Does “I love your sneakers” elicit a response from you of self-depreciation – “Oh, these old things?” Or do you reciprocate – “They’re nothing special. But I looooove your dress!” Or maybe you deflect it entirely – “Nonsense, they’re just sneakers.” Do you ever just take the compliment and simply say “thank you”? Try it. See how it feels to take care of yourself by letting others contribute to you. People who feel healed want to heal others. Let them.

The post Overwhelmed? How To Take A Break appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

How To Regulate In Recovery

We joke around about HALT, the acronym for hungry, angry, lonely, tired, but it was created as a reminder for a reason. 100% of my recovery is 100% affected by how I regulate myself. Let me explain, one of the things that became crystal clear as the years passed in recovery was that when I followed a healthy lifestyle, my life/recovery was easier to manage.

What Does Regulate For Recovery Mean

When I am well exercised, rested, nourished and cared for, I don’t feel restless, irritable, and discontented. No, this didn’t come easy. Yes, it took years of practice, but I’m pretty disciplined now. I don’t want to feel crummy because I’m eating poorly and feel bloated. I hate feeling anxious because I’ve had nothing to eat but coffee all day, and I do my very best to stay away from feelings of anger, or resentment, whenever possible. So, great, Yay for me. It’s nice that I have some tools and knowledge about how to care for myself today, but there’s more to it.

Reality Challenges Discipline and Tools

Reality is always going to enter the picture. No matter how careful I am, bad things are going to happen, and good things are going to happen. Professional successes come up and steal the spotlight creating heightened emotions. Professional mistakes or failures occur that get me all shook up. Romance happens, heartbreak happens. For me, sometimes quarterly! I seem always to have lots of change in my life, so if I’m not vigilant about regulation, I’m screwed.

Wishful Thinking Challenges Discipline And Tools

Here’s another challenge: my thinking. I regularly get caught up in thinking someone, or something is going to complete my life. I have to regulate my thinking as well as my physical habits. It’s easy to remember to eat when you realize you’re hungry, or to take a nap when you realize you need one. It’s much harder to know what to do when you feel lonely, or angry.

How To Know What You’re Thinking

Personally, I’ve spent some time figuring out how to understand what I’m feeling. This required the help of people who people who know like therapists and other experts, even being in groups. But internalizing what I heard was only part of it. Reading up on recovery and behaviors and writing about the past and my emotions keeps me centered.

Writing is part of recovery for many people. Writing (or journaling)  helps clarify what’s going on for me. Once I’m clear, I usually have a better answer of what to do next. A dear friend once told me, when you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything. The answer will eventually come clear. With a little practice, I now know when to do what. For example, don’t do nothing when someone is expecting an answer.

I challenge you to think about how you regulate yourself. What do you do when you feel dreaded feelings? What’s your care-level these days? Sometimes, we get too busy doing life we forget how to take a moment and make sure we’re covered.

If you love our content,

The post How To Regulate In Recovery appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

3 Reasons Why You Need Self-Care

From Elizabeth Scott, MS @ Very Well Mind: Many of us have so many responsibilities in life that we forget to take care of our personal needs. This is particularly true for mothers, who have many caregiving responsibilities, but moms certainly don’t have a monopoly on letting life get in the way of taking care of themselves. And while it’s hard to prioritize something like taking a bath when you have so many other items on your to-do list, self-care is an important aspect of stress management.

3 Reasons Why You Need Self-Care

We are all less able to handle the stresses that come our way when we’re already depleted by physical and emotional exhaustion. Or, put in a more positive way, we are more resilient and more able to handle life’s stress when we are feeling our best both physically and emotionally. A massage, soak in the tub or other forms of pampering revitalize you inside and out. Taking time out to maintain self-care has several benefits:

1. It Affects Your Physical Health

While self-pampering doesn’t always lead to major improvements in overall health the way healthy diet and exercise do, the relaxation you get from it can trigger the relaxation response, which can prevent chronic stress from damaging your health, so in a sense, self-care is good for you inside and out.

2. It Affects Your Emotional Health

Taking time out to care for yourself can remind you and others that you and your needs are important, too.

Having a well-cared-for body can make you feel good about yourself and your life, and conveys to others that you value yourself. This can contribute to long-term feelings of wellbeing.

1. Self-Care Makes You a Better Caregiver

People who neglect their own needs and forget to nurture themselves are at danger of deeper levels of unhappiness, low self-esteem, and feelings of resentment.

Also, sometimes people who spend their time only taking care of others can be at risk for getting burned out on all the giving, which makes it more difficult to care for others or themselves. Taking time to care for yourself regularly can make you a better caretaker for others.

What You Get In Return

There are several different ways to focus on self-care, many of which involve making time to get enough sleep, prioritizing healthy meals, ensuring a balance of leisure time in your schedule, and making time for friends. A simple but often overlooked form of self-care is having a self-pampering experience on a regular basis in your own home.

Taking a few hours for a ​spa experience and some much-deserved self-care is also an effective way to manage stress for the following reasons:

It Gives You a Break from Stress

Taking a break amidst a tub of warm bubbles or under the warm hands of an experienced masseuse can help you feel like you’re escaping a stressful reality and taking a mental and emotional vacation.

As previously mentioned, it triggers the relaxation response and allows you to come back to the reality of your life feeling refreshed and relaxed.

It Gives You Time Alone

While different people have varying degrees of introversion and extroversion, having some time alone is important for most people’s functioning.

When you’re relaxing by yourself, it’s much easier to slip into a state of quiet meditation, enjoy some self-reflection, or let your problems work themselves out in the back of your mind, without taking all of your focused concentration.

It Offers Soothing Feelings

Giving your body some special treatment is a natural way to relieve stress. Other than keeping your skin soft and your body in good repair, spa-related activities like massage and warm baths have been known to soothe even small colicky babies like nothing else.

Such activities continue to be effective tools for relaxation as we get older, but we sometimes forget to utilize them.

Self-Care Strategies That Work

Once you’ve decided it’s time to start nurturing yourself and your body, be sure to block off some time for this. Try to schedule a block where you won’t be interrupted. You need only to have a bathroom to give yourself a home-spa experience; you can put on some soothing music, and try some or all of the following self-care strategies.

Take a Bath: Get out the bubbles, oils, and scented soaps, and soak until you’re wrinkled.
Deep-Condition Your Hair: While you’re in the tub, put on a deep-conditioning treatment for your hair, and let it work as you relax.
Deep-Clean Your Pores: With a nice clay masque, you can draw impurities out of your skin and stress out of your system.
Care For Your Feet: After you soak your feet to soften calloused skin, use a pumice stone to slough off dead skin, and finish with a rich foot cream, and perhaps polish.
Nourish Your Skin: Rich, luxurious creams smell wonderful and feel smooth, especially if you exfoliate your skin in the tub before putting them on.
Tend to Your Nails: Correct the beating your nails probably take from your busy life (especially for those of you who bite your nails!) by filing and buffing. A coat of polish on can make you feel like a princess for days afterward. (This is probably more for my female readers.)
Get a Massage: This one can be especially nice. If your budget doesn’t allow for regular massages with a professional, see if you can trade with a friend or your spouse, or use an electronic massager.

In addition to pampering yourself, more substantial forms of self-care involving healthy lifestyle choices are important, too. Consuming a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and being sure you get enough sleep are all important for long-term health and stress management as well.

The post 3 Reasons Why You Need Self-Care appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Child Abuse Linked To Risk Of Suicide In Later Life

From Science Daily: Children who experience physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or neglect are at least two to three times more likely to attempt suicide in later life, according to the largest research review carried out of the topic.

The analysis of 68 studies by psychologists at the University of Manchester and University of South Wales revealed that suicide attempts were:

Three times more likely for people who experienced sexual abuse as a child
Two and a half times more likely for people who experienced physical abuse as a child
Two and a half times more likely for people who experienced emotional abuse or neglect as a child

Also from the research published in Psychological Medicine today, children who experienced multiple abuse are as much as five times higher to attempt suicide.

And as those people who experienced abuse as children get older, the risk of suicide attempts increases.

People not in contact with mental health clinicians were found to be at the highest level of risk.

The sixty-eight studies were carried out across the world, producing about 262 thousand adults aged 18 years or older, who were exposed to childhood abuse and neglect.

Dr Maria Panagioti, from The University of Manchester, also based at the NIHR Greater Manchester patient safety translational research, led the research team.

She said: “Around one adult in every three has experienced abuse as a child.”

“This study conclusively gives us solid evidence that childhood abuse and neglect is associated with increased likelihood that they will be at risk of suicide as adults.

“And that has important implications on healthcare. Other studies have shown that in the US, for example, the economic burden of childhood maltreatment is estimated to be around $124 billion.”

“Current treatment for people with suicidal behaviour usually centres around Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

“But that assumes people will seek help themselves. This research identifies that people who are not under the care of clinicians are at risk.

“So, we need a new approach to identify these people and to focus our efforts on effective community intervention.

Dr Ioannis Angelakis from the University of South Wales said: “These findings not only provided a clear picture of the connection between abuse or neglect in childhood and suicide attempts later on in life, but also recognised that efficient interventions should take a broader community-based approach.”

Story Source: Materials provided by University of Manchester. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

This exercise helps us detach from our problems. Perhaps for the first time ever, we can see what actually happening. Once we see what we are really facing, it’s time to break the cardinal rule of family dysfunction. It’s time to trust others for help. We do this by going to an Al-Anon, CoDA (Codependents Anonymous), DA (Debtors Anonymous), ACoA (Adult Chilren of Alcoholics) or Celebrate Recovery. Or perhaps we talk to a therapist or a trusted friend. Breaking the silence breaks the shackles of unmanageable dysfunction and begins our recovery journey, which truly is a gift.

The post Child Abuse Linked To Risk Of Suicide In Later Life appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Unmanageable: The Gift Of Chaos, Clutter & Exhaustion

Frustrated? Exhausted? Anxious or afraid? Does doing more never seem to be quite enough? Chaos, clutter, debt, and fatigue can be signs that your suffering from a deeper issue. Many of us fight superficial battles for years because we simply can’t see the root cause. Fortunately, the unmanageableness of chaos, clutter, and exhaustion leaves a trail of breadcrumbs we can use to find the gift of recovery.

How Do Things Become Unmanageable?

The three rules of family dysfunction are: Don’t trust; don’t talk, and don’t feel. Probably, no one in the family remembers who set these rules, and it’s even more probable that they’ve NEVER been spelled out, but everyone knows. These three rules perpetuate the cycle of abuse and addiction that keeps us oppressed. Following these three rules makes our lives unmanageable. Here are three steps to break out of this unmanageableness.

1. Find Real Life Examples Of Unmanageableness

First we have to break rule #2. We have to talk to other people and see how they live. Because we haven’t talked to anyone about real issues for years, our idea of “normal” mutates. Here are some real life examples of unmanageable behaviors families have grown to accept as “normal.”

Amiee is 11 years old. Her Mom Julie died three years ago. Now it’s just her and her dad Evan. Evan has PTSD from his tour in Afghanistan. He’s traumatized from losing Julie, so he refuses to let Amiee see any of Julie’s family EVER. No phone calls, no visits, no stories of what her mom was like when she was Amiee’s age. It’s like they never existed.

Don and his wife Lola have nothing in common. In fact, they’re often bitterly angry with each other. They have separate checking accounts, bedrooms, vacations, churches, and lives. Lola is still punishing Don for his addiction and abuse. Don quit drinking 40 years ago. They never speak kindly to each other but stay married because divorce is sinful.

Steve never gets fair shake in life. He’s incredibly smart, but every where Steve goes, he has an altercation. This often happens at work. As a result, Steve never keeps a job for more than a month. Steve’s Mom Bessie spends hours a day praying Steve will finally find a good job where they appreciate his leadership skills.

Chris is a single Mom who spends all of her free time caring for her adult daughter Jill and Jill’s young sons. Jill has been temporarily living with Chris for two years so she can get back on her feet. Jill hides her drinking from Chris by mixing her rum with cola. Chris balances Jill’s checkbook and makes sure she never comes up short. She also does Jill’s laundry and fixes all of the meals. Chris is always on hand with tons of activities to keep Jill’s sons busy and quiet. She doesn’t want one of the boys to set Jill off.

Judy cleans all the time yet her house is always a mess. She turns down visits with her grandkids and coffee dates with friends because she has too much cleaning to do. She lives alone and has 8 sets of fine China. All of the closets in her two-bedroom home are packed with clothes that she’ll fit back into some day. End tables store decades of magazines, and her filing cabinets are filled with bills and receipts. Stacks of mail cover both of her dining room tables. When cleaning doesn’t help, Judy rearranges the furniture or buys more.

2. Recognize Your Feelings

Thanks to rule #3, freezing our feelings becomes second nature. We deflect, minimize, justify, or rationalize what’s really happening with these statements:

It’s not that bad.It could be worse.At least it’s not __________________.It will get better.

The beauty of unmanageableness is we already know thousands of things that won’t work, and they’re clues about what really bothers us. We thaw our emotions by asking what:

Makes us angry?Embarrasses us the most?Secret do we protect the most?Feelings do we minimize with, “It doesn’t matter.” Or “It’s no big deal.”Advice do we give to friends that we secretly wish we could follow?Do we swear we’ll never do again?Makes us absolutely lose it?



3. Process Your Pain In The Third Person

Writing our story as a fictional tale is powerful. We can change the names to protect the innocent. Maybe we’ll switch genders, dates, and settings, but we must keep the crimes. We have permission to use all of the gory details because we don’t have to share the story with anyone. If necessary, we’ll burn it after reading.

This exercise helps us detach from our problems. Perhaps for the first time ever, we can see what actually happening. Once we see what we are really facing, it’s time to break the cardinal rule of family dysfunction. It’s time to trust others for help. We do this by going to an Al-Anon, CoDA (Codependents Anonymous), DA (Debtors Anonymous), ACoA (Adult Chilren of Alcoholics) or Celebrate Recovery. Or perhaps we talk to a therapist or a trusted friend. Breaking the silence breaks the shackles of unmanageable dysfunction and begins our recovery journey, which truly is a gift.

The post Unmanageable: The Gift Of Chaos, Clutter & Exhaustion appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

What Is Celebrate Recovery?

Mary’s husband Sean had a problem with drinking too much. After years of pleading, he finally went to church with her, only to be turned away by the pastor. Sean’s habit preceded him. Many people like Sean find themselves in a catch-22. They want a faith-based solution to their problems, but because of their problems they are not welcome at faith-based meetings. Celebrate Recovery is a faith-based 12 Step program for anyone with a hurt, habit or hang up.

How The Stigma Hurts

Stigma actually means a mark of disgrace or reproach; a stain or blemish. Christianity believes that all people are born with a stain or blemish. They believe Jesus Christ came to save all people from their sins, these marks of disgrace. They believe that accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior is the only way to be delivered from sin. Sometimes, some denominations get hyper-focused on the sins component, making it almost impossible for less than perfect people to find help out of addictions or other less than perfect situations. This was the case for John Baker.

John had a dark secret. Most knew him as the coach of his son’s little league team, or the leader in his church’s youth ministry. Many knew he loved to stop off and have a beer after the game, but no one, not even his wife, knew he was a functional alcoholic. As he began his recovery journey, John found himself at odds with both his faith-based community and his AA peers.

At my AA meetings I was mocked when I talked about my Higher Power – the only true Higher Power – Jesus Christ. And at church I couldn’t find a place where individuals could openly relate to my struggle with alcoholism. I knew they were there because in a church of then 6000, I couldn’t be the only one struggling with a hurt, hang up, or addictive habit.

In the fall of 1991, John outlined a faith-based program that combined AA’s 12 Steps and their Biblical comparisons. The program was open to anyone suffering from a hurt, habit or hang up. Since then, Celebrate Recovery has grown outside of it’s original home at Saddleback Church in California. More than 35,000 churches have a Celebrate Recovery ministry.

What To Expect At Celebrate Recovery (CR)

First, expect to be loved and welcomed. No one is turned away. No one has to be perfect, and the meetings are anonymous. Second, be prepared to work the steps. Celebrate Recovery is a 12-step program. Third, expect a clearly defined Higher Power. Celebrate Recovery recognizes Jesus Christ as the true Higher Power. Finally, expect to celebrate! Celebrate Recovery meetings begin with an upbeat worship service and include a chip ceremony to track recovery success with a chip system.

For Mary, it was impossible to see the affects of addiction and family dysfunction in her life. She knew she was hurting and knew about Al-Anon, but she was also very controlled by a strict religious upbringing. Even though Mary wanted help dealing with her husband’s addiction, she didn’t feel comfortable at Al-Anon. She was willing to attend a Celebrate Recovery meeting only because of its strong statement of faith.

Once in the program, Mary learned about healthy boundaries and how addiction is a family disease that affects generations. Most importantly, she learned critical thinking skills and how to stand on her own. Finally, Mary became strong enough to do what’s best for her, which eventually included attending Al-Anon.

Mary says she’s forever grateful to Celebrate Recovery for introducing her to the healing journey of recovery. Today, faith is still an integral part of her life and she regularly attends both CR and Al-Anon. Even better, sometimes her husband Sean attends Celebrate Recovery meetings with her.

The post What Is Celebrate Recovery? appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

A True Picture Of Addiction In Small Town Middle America

From Laura Ungr @ USA Today: A hard rain had just ended. Austin Indiana’s streets were still wet as I walked alongside residents marching to protest the drugs that overwhelmed their tiny rural city.

Some held hands. Some draped arms around each other. Some pushed strollers. All walked with purpose past Morgan Foods, the ice cream cone-shaped sign for the Dairy Queen and the “recovery wall” of names outside H2O Church on Mann Avenue.

I knew many of the 200 marchers from more than three years of covering their town of just over 4,000 people, epicenter of rural America’s worst HIV outbreak caused by IV drug use. I met some during their struggles with addiction. But on the late-August evening of the Fed Up! march, everyone was celebrating recovery.

In a larger sense, I thought, all of Austin is recovering, helped along by its angels, people working to heal the community and themselves. Among them are a mother, a preacher and a teacher.

My tears fell as I felt Austin’s hope rising.

Almost on cue, a faint rainbow appeared in the still-threatening sky. The woman next to me, Sabina Adams, looked up and said: “That’s God’s promise.”

Never again, it seemed to portend, would their world be devastated like it was in 2015.

An Unexpected, Deadly Outbreak

Back then, Laura Nowling, a respected second-grade teacher and mother of three, hid a secret meth addiction. Pastor Jacob Howell roamed the streets of his hometown high on heroin. And choir director Kathy Risk-Sego helped her students cope with other kids’ unfounded concerns that they had AIDS.

That’s when I first visited Austin. In February of that year, I learned that Indiana state health officials were alarmed about tests showing 26 confirmed and four “preliminary positive” cases of HIV. Most had been caused by shooting up Opana, an opioid painkiller. Before that, the county had never had more than a handful of cases.

In less than a month, cases more than doubled. Eventually, HIV would sicken 235 people, and Austin’s HIV rate would rival countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers would identify 220 counties nationally that are vulnerable to becoming the next Austin because they contain the same combustible mixture of problems tied to injecting drugs, such as overdose deaths, prescription opioid sales and unemployment. Many are in this region, which has been especially hard hit by drugs. In 2017, federal data shows, drug overdoses killed 1,566 people in Kentucky and 1,852 in Indiana.

In those first few months after the outbreak, despair was palpable. I remember watching haggard-looking young men walking past rundown homes on Rural Street, the most notorious stretch for drugs. Locals told me about women who sold their bodies to get money for drugs, sometimes to truckers who made a quick stop off the I-65 Austin exit.

Longtime residents pined for better days. They described growing up in a close-knit manufacturing town full of salt-of-the-earth people, a safe place where kids could ride their bikes without concern.

I could see the faded remnants of those Norman Rockwell days. Outside of the sketchy areas, this town 37 miles from Louisville was still that picture of rural America, with stubble-filled cornfields and a one-stoplight Main Street lined by churches, shops and sidewalks. There were plenty of tidy, well-kept houses, some not far from dilapidated ones. Lots of people pitched in to help their neighbors. I sensed a deep love among many for their hometown.

I saw a small-town soul trapped in chaos.

At The Intersection Of Hope And Despair

Of course some of the things that make small towns so wonderful can make disease outbreaks worse. When everyone knows each other, stigma can fester, discouraging people from getting tested or treated for HIV or seeking help for addiction. Disease can spread quickly when people share needles in close-knit groups. In some Austin families, three generations shared needles — young adults, their parents and their grandparents.

During those years, I described Austin as a place at the intersection of hope and despair.

But the desperate needs of the community — laid bare so starkly by the outbreak — seemed to strengthen others’ generosity, love, and faith. It reminded me of what happens during natural disasters — such as floods or tornadoes — when neighbors share food and electricity and help each other rebuild homes. For many in Austin, saving themselves and the town brought out their best.

Consider Nowling, the second-grade teacher who struggled with meth. In February 2016, police led her out of Austin Elementary School in handcuffs after her arrest for having meth in her classroom and endangering her students. She hung her head, platinum blonde hair falling across her face, as new crews captured her walk to a waiting police car. Less than a year later, she was arrested again for dealing meth.

But she found freedom from addiction while locked in Scott County Jail. She took a faith-based class that tied the 12 steps of addiction recovery to Biblical teachings. She pored over her Celebrate Recovery bible so often it became dog-eared and tattered, and she fastened it together with the label from a VO5 shampoo bottle because there was no tape in the jail.

When she got out, Nowling, 50, fastened her life together in much the same way. She got a job in a factory, went to church whenever she could and became an enthusiastic member of Austin’s growing recovery community. She now runs a Celebrate Recovery meeting, speaks to others struggling with addiction and shares her story within her community. She’s teaching again, in a new way.

“I want people to look at me and see hope,” she said.

Preacher Jacob Howell does, too. Addiction consumed him for nearly half his 35 years. At his lowest point, his constant quest for heroin replaced even things he loved, like fishing trips with his boys. He lost his job and blew through savings. Water and electricity to his trailer were cut off and he couldn’t flush the toilet. Mold grew on the carpets. Bugs crawled on the furniture.

But when Howell surrendered to God, the light of faith and community began pulling him up. He found a new calling as a pastor, then a new wife and family. He learned how to serve at the foot of his mentor, Paul Thomas, whose willingness to befriend, teach and guide a stranger changed both of their lives.

Howell is now a community leader, preaching the gospel and helping feed the hungry, clothe the poor and minister to the troubled at a church known for service. His very life is an example to those still living in desperation — that hope and transformation are real. Howell is now on a mission to save others still caught in that life, by bringing them to God and helping them into recovery. By saving souls and saving lives.

A Community Shares The Burdens And Blessings

And he has. Brian LaFever feels he was reborn when Howell baptized and befriended him. From that day on, LaFever vowed to get sober — and did. “He saved my life,” LaFever said.

Kathy Risk-Sego, a teacher who directs the show choir at Austin High School, is on a mission to nurture young voices at the impressionable cusp of adulthood. She’s a role model who gives hugs, directions and dreams. She applies, in equal measures, silliness, discipline and tenderness.

Her husband calls her “a wellspring of hope.” The kids just call her “mom.”

Many students endure serious hardships along with the usual trials of growing up. Former student Kasey Brandenburg, 19, lost both her parents to overdoses. Her mother was a singer, her father a drummer, and the music inside Brandenburg could have died with them if not for the people who stepped in to keep it alive. Risk-Sego was one. She keeps the music alive in all her kids.

In 2017, Risk-Sego’s choir, Dimensions, competed in a national championship in Chicago. It was the first time they’d ever made it that far. A big-budget California team beat them, but just being in the same league showed the kids what was possible. The theme of the show was overcoming obstacles; the closing number: “Unstoppable.”

“Kids are vulnerable here but I don’t dwell on it. I don’t let them dwell on it,” Risk-Sego said. “If you can’t move beyond that, you’re always going to be stuck.”

Thanks to people like these, Austin is recovering. More kids are graduating high school; graduation rates now exceed 90 percent. Cases of HIV have leveled off and the disease is well-controlled in most people. Needle sharing has plummeted and attendance at recovery meetings has risen tenfold.

People can change communities, one life at a time. When we help one another, we can create a chain of love that, over time, can transform even the most troubled place.

We’re all in this together. If our neighbors suffer, we suffer too.

For Austin, the suffering isn’t over. On the day of that Fed Up! march, the rain started tapping on my windshield as I pulled out of Austin.

Like so many communities, Austin still faces formidable challenges.

There is still addiction.

There are still deaths caused by the scourge of opioids.

There’s still poverty and despair.

But at that intersection of despair and hope, Austin is now taking a different direction.

It is moving down the path of hope.

Laura Ungar is an investigative and enterprise reporter with the Courier Journal, where this column originally appeared.

The post A True Picture Of Addiction In Small Town Middle America appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Pediatricians May Start Discussing Gun Safety In Routine Exams

From Science News Daily: In a recent study exploring the feasibility of introducing gun safety discussions and interventions into routine health care settings, investigators suggest that there is some support for promoting firearm safety in pediatric primary care as a universal suicide prevention strategy for adolescents.

John Zeber, a mental health services researcher and associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with team leader Rinad Beidas at the University of Pennsylvania and other co-investigators, assessed the needs of stakeholders who would implement a new approach to promoting a program the researchers call Firearm Safety Check. This program is designed for physicians to ask families about the presence of firearms in the home, offer information on safe gun storage and provide free gun locks.

As Zeber explains, “We’re not taking a position on gun ownership, but if you have a gun and a child in the home, we believe safe storage will greatly reduce the risk of a tragedy. We’re finding that it would be a new role for many physicians, though we previously found the majority do at least discuss guns with their patients. We’re looking for fairly simple solutions that don’t take a lot of time and that seem feasible. All the stakeholders recognize the problem, they just differ on what to do about it.”

He adds, “Some critics say to those of us in public health, ‘Stay in your lane, don’t get involved,’ but we see this as a major problem to be addressed.” Zeber and co-investigators point out that youth suicide has increased steadily over the past several decades due in part to an increase in suicide by firearm. Their recent paper on the topic is featured in the American Medical Association’s open access online journal JAMA Network Open.

The authors point out, “There is clear consensus that promoting firearm safety in pediatric primary care is essential in reducing youth suicide. Physician groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Academy of Medicine recommend that physicians discuss firearm safety with parents.” However, “physicians can be reluctant to discuss firearm safety in primary care,” and existing strategies “remain underused,” they add.

To explore this, Beidas, Zeber and colleagues conducted qualitative interviews with nearly 60 stakeholders in nine groups such as parents of youth, physicians, nurses, other clinical providers, and health system leaders of pediatric primary care and behavioral health practices. Interviews were conducted over a span of seven months at two large health systems, Henry Ford Hospital in inner city Detroit, and Baylor Scott & White Health in the rural central Texas town of Temple. They also talked with gun owner constituents, third-party payers and members of national credentialing bodies.

In this study, Beidas, Zeber and colleagues found that stakeholders “indicated that firearm safety promotion is a health system priority and reported generally favorable perceptions of the Firearm Safety Check approach for suicide prevention.” Respondents frequently noted the need for patient interactions about firearms to be brief, and that existing infrastructures such as electronic health record systems should be used. They also identified distribution of firearm locks as “likely the most complex and underutilized component to implement.”

Zeber, the site lead co-investigator at the Texas location, says, “We asked how comfortable physicians, for example, would be about counseling patients about gun safety and the danger that a gun in the home may pose. We asked if they’d feel comfortable offering their patients a gun lock, in addition to screening about the presence of a firearm. Each stakeholder group has different perspectives, and doctors understand this, but they also are the ones who see higher risk adolescents in their offices.”

He adds, “There was broad consensus about the importance of the conversation and that some intervention would be welcome and helpful in addressing this public health crisis. Reducing access to guns while promoting safe storage was a central theme that emerged. But the details of what that intervention would look like, and what might be feasible to try, remain to be determined. People across the health care spectrum agree it is important to talk about this topic with patients, but what we do next and best approach is still being discussed.”

Overall, the authors state that their results “support the development of implementation strategies to support clinician and organizational behaviors around firearm safety.” Zeber says their findings will drive an implementation proposal that they are still developing.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The post Pediatricians May Start Discussing Gun Safety In Routine Exams appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

10 Things People With Anxiety Need To Do Every Day

From Psych Central.com

You have anxiety and have probably been living with it your entire life. I completely understand. That’s because I’ve struggled with this condition ever since I can remember.

Here are 10 small things you can do each day to help stay calm. You may think a few of these are silly. That’s OK. Try them anyway. What do you have to lose?

1. When you wake up in the morning and your mind starts rattling off a “to-do” list, take a deep breath. Focus your awareness on the moment. Using your five senses, identify what’s going on around you. This can help soften obsessiveness, and remove the sense of dread you might be feeling.

2. Find some quick humor by visiting a funny meme page on Facebook or checking out a comic strip from a newspaper. There are even apps you can download to get your funny on. The idea is to laugh and get out of your head.

3. Practice gratitude by finding something to be grateful for. It could be a friendship, your health or simply having an extra can of soup in the cupboard. This will help to focus your mind on the positive instead of the negative.

4. Do one task at a time. Don’t allow yourself to play the game of multi-tasking. Not only will it make your anxiety worse, research tells us most of us aren’t good at it.

5. Lean into your anxiety by doing something productive. This could be scrubbing out the sink or mopping the floor. Trying to pretend you aren’t feeling anxious only makes things worse. Do something constructive with that energy that benefits you in the long run.

6. Carry apples with you. The hard truth about living with anxiety is nervous eating. In many cases, this means reaching for whatever is in front of us (even when it’s unhealthy). If you are going to snack, why not consume something healthy? Apples are great because they give your mouth something crunchy to munch on while delivering fiber and vitamin C to your body.

7. Put money in your piggy bank each day. This can help you feel like you are doing something about financial stress; a common source of anxiety. It could be $1.00 or $10.00. The amount doesn’t matter. What does matter is the peace of mind you will gain by knowing you are saving.

8. Move your body. This could be something simple, such as a walk around the block or doing some quick jumping jacks. You don’t have to start a gym routine (although that doesn’t hurt). By becoming more physically active, you give all that energy you are carrying a place to discharge.

9. If you drink coffee, try having just one cup. Better yet, switch to 50/50. Sure, you could move over to decaf but that could feel like punishment. The point is to reduce the number of stimulants you put into your body. Think about it. You are already wound up – do you really need to amplify that?

10. Don’t be ashamed of your anxiety – instead, learn to accept it. Shame does nothing but makes you feel worse. Additionally, it makes anxiety stronger. By accepting that this is something you live with, anxiety’s grip lessens.

Wrap Up

Yes, it’s difficult living with anxiety. I understand this all too well. That’s why you need to find the joy in your day, and do what you can to manage in healthy ways. Hopefully, one or more of the tips will help you on your journey.

The post 10 Things People With Anxiety Need To Do Every Day appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Do You Need to Give Up Coffee If You Have Anxiety?

From Men’s Health

Sometimes, after your cold brew, you may have noticed that you become jittery, your mind jumps from one thought to the next, or your heart beats like you’re in HIIT class. In other words: Coffee can give you the same symptoms as people with anxiety experience. Coincidence? Of course not.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in America, and may be growing. In an annual poll by the American Psychiatry Association, 39 percent of respondents said they’re more anxious than they were last year. And our love affair with coffee-on average 3.3 cups a day for people who regularly drink it-may be making it worse.

“Caffeine is an adenosine receptor antagonist,” explains Mary Margaret Sweeney, Ph.D., instructor at the Johns Hopkins Medicine Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit. Let’s break that down: Adenosine is a chemical that helps regulate arousal. When it binds to adenosine receptors, it makes us drowsy. But when something-like caffeine-antagonizes adenosine, we feel buzzed instead.

“This is why caffeine is stimulating,” Sweeney says. “It can be hard for someone to tell whether the effects are due to caffeine or if the caffeine is contributing to the effects of anxiety.”

Although you can develop some tolerance for caffeine (depending on the dose, frequency, and your elimination rate), you’re never completely tolerant. So caffeine can contribute to anxiety symptoms some days even if you start every morning by heating up your Keurig, Sweeney says. However, caffeine does have a greater effect on people who don’t consume it regularly.

Research suggests that doses of more than 250 milligrams (the amount in 21 ounces of coffee or about 2.5 cups) and certainly those over 500 milligrams are more likely to trigger anxiety (and other side effects such as insomnia, GI distress, and cardiac arrhythmia). Everyone has their own tolerance level, but people with anxiety do appear to be more sensitive to the anxiogenic effects of caffeine.

So could you keep up your coffee habit but just eat something like a huge pancake breakfast to take the edge off?

Not so fast. “Caffeine is highly bioavailable and almost 100 percent absorbed by the body,” Sweeney says. So food won’t change what you’re feeling. Only reducing the amount might.

You might not have to abandon caffeinated java altogether: different brands of coffee have different caffeine contents, so you might be able to find a brew that contains less. Whatever you do, cut back gradually-quitting coffee cold-turkey can cause withdrawal symptoms such as headache, fatigue, and even depressed mood.

The post Do You Need to Give Up Coffee If You Have Anxiety? appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.