Leslie Glass's Blog, page 332

How to Help a Child With an Anxiety Disorder

From The New York Times:

When worrying gets in the way of a child’s functioning, parents need to get help rather than arranging the child’s life to avoid the occasions of anxiety.

Anxiety disorders, the most common mental health problems in children and adolescents, often go untreated while children suffer, even though there are effective treatments available, according to a new report on anxiety in children and adolescents from the Child Mind Institute in New York. Anxiety may be missed because it doesn’t necessarily declare itself with attention-getting disruptive behaviors; in fact, symptoms may keep some children quiet and inhibited, though in other children, alternatively, anxiety may be misunderstood as oppositional behavior.

Adults may also assume that anxiety in a child is just a phase to be outgrown. A certain amount of anxiety is a normal aspect of development for young children — consider separation anxiety, for example — and it can even be protective, since children need to learn to keep themselves safe and anticipate certain kinds of dangers. But when worrying or avoiding possible threats gets in the way of a child’s functioning or a child’s enjoyment, it should be a signal to parents that help is needed, not just watching and waiting, not arranging the child’s life to avoid the occasions of anxiety.

Kathleen Merikangas, the senior investigator and chief of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health, said, “To me, anxiety is one of the most underrecognized or under-treated conditions of childhood and adolescence.” These children can get missed, she said, because they may seem to be functioning well; many don’t have the kinds of developmental problems or attention issues that draw attention in school, though they may be suffering.

Consider the child whose anxiety about speaking in public gets in the way of participating in class. The child may be silent out of a fear of being laughed at or otherwise rejected, Dr. Merikangas said, but to the teacher, it may look like the child is just not interested. Environmental modifications can really help these children thrive in school, she said; for example, working in small groups with children they know.

The new report, released in September, summarizes the evidence that early temperament in children predicts their later behavior patterns around anxiety; toddlers who show what are called “behaviorally inhibited” behaviors, which parents are likely to perceive as extreme shyness, or anxiety around new people, are more likely to develop social anxiety later on. That doesn’t mean that shyness is pathological (as with all varieties of temperament, there’s a wide range of function), but it does suggest how important it is to help a child with this temperament who develops difficulties.

The tendency toward anxiety — and toward some specific forms of anxiety, like phobias — may persist throughout childhood and adolescence and into adulthood. And anxiety is closely tied to depression, Dr. Merikangas said. Although there have been reports that anxiety rates among American teenagers have soared, she cited evidence that the international rates of the underlying disorders had stayed consistent from 1998 to 2013; there is no global “epidemic” of clinical anxiety disorders, she said.

But with rates of suicide and suicidal ideation on the rise, it’s particularly important to provide information to schools and to parents about recognizing anxiety and getting children help.

Dr. Harold Koplewicz, the president of the Child Mind Institute, said that when anxiety disorders in children are left untreated, anxiety can inhibit their lives, making standard daily activities difficult, from attending school to sleeping in their own beds, and lead to many extra visits to the school nurse or the pediatrician.

But beyond that, he said, “people underestimate that this is a gateway disorder.” If children don’t get help with these disorders, they may be at risk to develop other mental health problems; the child with severe separation anxiety may develop panic disorder, he said; the child with untreated general anxiety may be at greater risk for depression.

Dr. Merikangas was a co-investigator on a national study of mental disorders in adolescents, which has shown both that anxiety disorders were the most common mental health problems in adolescents in the United States, and also the problems that showed up earliest in those children’s lives — the mean age of onset for anxiety disorders was 6. But many adolescents had never received treatment. That makes it essential to get the word out, Dr. Merikangas said, that anxiety is “one of the most treatable symptoms and syndromes, we can really change their lives with minimal intervention.”

“All these disorders are remarkably treatable,” Dr. Koplewicz said. There are highly effective behavioral and psychosocial therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapies, to help children cope with the demands of daily life. For children who don’t respond to psychosocial therapies, he said, medications can be added.

But perhaps because anxiety is a normal response, parents often believe that even severe and disabling anxiety symptoms are just a phase, and on average, there is a two-year lag between the time children develop anxiety and the time they get help. “It’s bad for these children’s brains,” he said. “Having your brain’s thermostat miss-set is not good for your brain.”

“Anxiety can manifest itself along a continuum,” said Rachel Busman, the senior director of the anxiety disorders center at the Child Mind Institute. The report shows that there is some overlap with physical illnesses, such as chronic headaches or stomach aches, often coordinated with school. “That could be a kid’s way of saying, ‘I’m anxious,’” she said.

And when a child who is having a lot of difficulty with separation gets into the classroom, Dr. Busman said, that child may start throwing things, or running and hiding, and that “bad behavior” may represent the fight or flight response of anxiety. “We’ve also seen kids who have intense social anxiety and their way of managing it is to be class clown,” she said.

Treating children with anxiety always means working with their parents. Jerry Bubrick, senior clinical psychologist at the anxiety disorders center of the Child Mind Institute, said that when children are little, it’s normal for parents to operate in “fix-it mode,” blocking the staircase so a toddler doesn’t tumble down, averting problems before they happen.

As children get older, parents normally pull back, helping children find solutions of their own. “But anxious parents of anxious children remain in fix-it mode,” he said, helping their children avoid the situations that make them anxious. Therapy involves exposing children to those situations and helping them develop strategies to manage them; with treatment, Dr. Bubrick said, parents can “let the child experience the anxiety and learn to tolerate and overcome it on their own.”

“If you see things you’re not sure about, talk to the preschool, talk to the pediatrician, be open to the idea that maybe there is anxiety,” even in a young child, Dr. Busman said. Separation anxiety can be a problem even in children who are able to go to school, she said. Parents should pay attention if a child can’t be left with a babysitter, a child can’t sleep alone at home. “These are the kids, they go into the bathroom, and they’re like, are you still there?” she said. “We do see really young anxious children.”

“If your child is suffering distress and dysfunction, reach out to your pediatrician,” Dr. Koplewicz said. When you get to a mental health professional, “make sure you ask the right questions,” he said, including asking whether that person has specific experience with treating anxiety and how long the treatment is expected to take.

“You want a professional who understands what they’re doing and can explain to you what they’re doing.”

The post How to Help a Child With an Anxiety Disorder appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Lying For Best Buddy Beer Worship

Best Buddy Beer worship is shaking the nation. As the mother of two former teens, I can attest that kids who drink too much do bad things. Hello darkness, my old friend. Are you a parent or spouse who waited up, or a teen who drank too much?  Here’s a truth that can’t be denied: Drunk kids do things they wouldn’t do when they’re sober. And adults, too. Kids also feel shame and lie about it because they know what they are doing is wrong. They just don’t want to stop because it’s fun and it feels good. Or maybe not so good, depending on whether you are a girl or boy.  Sad fact: Teens and risky behavior go together in every generation. It’s what happens afterward that matters. When adults do bad things, they may not want to be accountable, and when bad things happen to them, they are all too often afraid tell anyone.

Best Buddy Beer Makes It All Okay

Some people cling to the belief that what they do when they’re drunk is just plain okay. That risky behavior is high school, college, and culture sanctioned. When drunk, they are out of mind, they are someone else. Teens and college students who drink and drug want to believe they are never anything other than the grade A student, the star athlete, the choir boy, the good little girl. They are not that Other: the sloppy, hurtful, raging belligerent drunk, or girl who gets assaulted.

A Secret That Must Be Kept

For many people drinking and drugging doesn’t feel or look so good as they get older and have more responsibilities. In other words, when their brains mature and they grow up, some people stop. When they stop drinking they can reflect and remember and feel remorse and move on as better more responsible and caring people. Awareness of the impact of alcohol on their behavior helps people stop loving and defending what I will call Best Buddy Beer so much. I’m going to call alcohol a He. Alcohol is after all the king of addictions. Some people drink to forget.

When People Don’t Give Up Best Buddy Beer

On the other hand, some people don’t stop drinking, about 1 in 7 adults has a drinking problem. And about 15% of high school students are already addicted to substances and alcohol when they arrive at  college, thus affecting the environment of everyone.

Best Buddy Beer Worship

Those continue to worship Best Buddy Beer through the adult years, don’t have the opportunity to evaluate His negative influence on their lives. They can’t see how Best Buddy Beer makes them sound or look. And they can’t admit the part that Best Buddy Beer may have played in their earlier life. The insistence on holding on to a friend like Him will always be the reason for a basic lack of understanding and the inability to reflect and accept one’s own behavior. If you accept that your Best Buddy Beer has been no friend to you, then you have to reevaluate both Him and yourself.

Three Reasons To Lie About Drinking

You can’t admit you have a drinking problem. People with drinking problems yell, scream, cry, gaslight, play the victim, and get really scary when people confront them about their drinking and/or behavior. Have you ever experienced that with someone? People who don’t have an issue with alcohol don’t need to behave that way.
You can’t let anything threaten your image as a good person. It means so much to you to be a high achieving, smart, caring, kind, good person, you will not only lie your head off you will literally try to destroy anyone who says you might have done something wrong. This has nothing to do with alcohol. It is a personality, or character issue.
You can’t accept responsibility. People who lie about Best Buddy Beer cannot accept or take responsibility for things they have done. Once they say none of it ever happened, not the drinking, not the meanness, not the hurting of girls one way or another, they don’t have to take responsibility. This lying and not taking responsibility will recur in other areas of life. If you were a heavy drinker in high school and college, why not just admit it?

As long as Best Buddy Beer is the one to whom your loyalty is owed there can be no other reality for that person. There is no truth, no consequences, no shame, no remorse or caring. Just anger, rage, blame on others. That is alcohol speaking, my friends. Alcohol.

Are you teaching your teens that drinking is okay? It’s not a rite of passage owed to all. It can be the path to lasting damage and pain.

 

Follow our recovery lifestyle on Instagram!

The post Lying For Best Buddy Beer Worship appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Lying To Protect Best Buddy Beer Worship

Best Buddy Beer worship is shaking the nation. As the mother of two former teens, I can attest that kids who drink too much do bad things. Hello darkness, my old friend. Are you a parent or spouse who waited up, or a teen who drank too much?  Here’s a truth that can’t be denied: Drunk kids do things they wouldn’t do when they’re sober. And adults, too. Kids also feel shame and lie about it because they know what they are doing is wrong. They just don’t want to stop because it’s fun and it feels good. Or maybe not so good, depending on whether you are a girl or boy.  Sad fact: Teens and risky behavior go together in every generation. It’s what happens afterward that matters. When adults do bad things, they may not want to be accountable, and when bad things happen to them, they are all too often afraid tell anyone.

Best Buddy Beer Makes It All Okay

Some people cling to the belief that what they do when they’re drunk is just plain okay. That risky behavior is high school, college, and culture sanctioned. When drunk, they are out of mind, they are someone else. Teens and college students who drink and drug want to believe they are never anything other than the grade A student, the star athlete, the choir boy, the good little girl. They are not that Other: the sloppy, hurtful, raging belligerent drunk, or girl who gets assaulted.

A Secret That Must Be Kept

For many people drinking and drugging doesn’t feel or look so good as they get older and have more responsibilities. In other words, when their brains mature and they grow up, some people stop. When they stop drinking they can reflect and remember and feel remorse and move on as better more responsible and caring people. Awareness of the impact of alcohol on their behavior helps people stop loving and defending what I will call Best Buddy Beer so much. I’m going to call alcohol a He. Alcohol is after all the king of addictions. Some people drink to forget.

When People Don’t Give Up Best Buddy Beer

On the other hand, some people don’t stop drinking, about 1 in 7 adults has a drinking problem. And about 15% of high school students are already addicted to substances and alcohol when they arrive at  college, thus affecting the environment of everyone.

Best Buddy Beer Worship

Those continue to worship Best Buddy Beer through the adult years, don’t have the opportunity to evaluate His negative influence on their lives. They can’t see how Best Buddy Beer makes them sound or look. And they can’t admit the part that Best Buddy Beer may have played in their earlier life. The insistence on holding on to a friend like Him will always be the reason for a basic lack of understanding and the inability to reflect and accept one’s own behavior. If you accept that your Best Buddy Beer has been no friend to you, then you have to reevaluate both Him and yourself.

Three Reasons To Lie About Drinking

You can’t admit you have a drinking problem. People with drinking problems yell, scream, cry, gaslight, play the victim, and get really scary when people confront them about their drinking and/or behavior. Have you ever experienced that with someone? People who don’t have an issue with alcohol don’t need to behave that way.
You can’t let anything threaten your image as a good person. It means so much to you to be a high achieving, smart, caring, kind, good person, you will not only lie your head off you will literally try to destroy anyone who says you might have done something wrong. This has nothing to do with alcohol. It is a personality, or character issue.
You can’t accept responsibility. People who lie about Best Buddy Beer cannot accept or take responsibility for things they have done. Once they say none of it ever happened, not the drinking, not the meanness, not the hurting of girls one way or another, they don’t have to take responsibility. This lying and not taking responsibility will recur in other areas of life. If you were a heavy drinker in high school and college, why not just admit it?

As long as Best Buddy Beer is the one to whom your loyalty is owed there can be no other reality for that person. There is no truth, no consequences, no shame, no remorse or caring. Just anger, rage, blame on others. That is alcohol speaking, my friends. Alcohol.

Are you teaching your teens that drinking is okay? It’s not a rite of passage owed to all. It can be the path to lasting damage and pain.

The post Lying To Protect Best Buddy Beer Worship appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Nutrition Studies Don’t Always Add Up

From The NY Times A Cornell food scientist’s downfall could reveal a bigger problem in nutrition research.

ImageDr. Brian Wansink at the 2013 Discovery Vitality Summit in Johannesburg.CreditCreditLefty Shivambu/Gallo Images

Not too long ago, Brian Wansink was one of the most respected food researchers in America.

He founded the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, where he won attention for studies that showed that small behavioral changes could influence eating patterns. He found that large plates lead people to eat more food because they make portions look smaller and that children eat more vegetables when they have colorful names like “power peas.” Dr. Wansink wrote best-selling books and published hundreds of studies. For over a year, he served in a top nutrition policy role at the Department of Agriculture under George W. Bush, where he helped shape the government’s influential Dietary Guidelines. His research even led the government to spend almost $20 million redesigning school cafeterias, an initiative known as the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement.

But this month, Dr. Wansink’s career at Cornell came to an unceremonious end. On Sept. 20, the university announced that a yearlong investigation had found that he committed “academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting of research data,” and that he had tendered his resignation. The announcement came one day after the prestigious medical journal JAMA retracted six of Dr. Wansink’s studies because of questions about their “scientific validity.” Seven of his other papers had previously been retracted for similar reasons.

“I think the extent of misconduct that has occurred with this author is unique,” Dr. Howard Bauchner, JAMA’s editor in chief, said in an interview. “There are literally millions of authors, and there’s very few who have had numerous papers retracted.”

For more than a year, Dr. Wansink had been dogged by accusationsthat many of his studies were riddled with errors, data inconsistencies and evidence of fraud. In a statement, Dr. Wansink admitted to making “typos, transposition errors and some statistical mistakes” in his papers. But he defended his work and said that none of his mistakes “changed the substantive conclusions” of any of his papers. “I’m very proud of all of these papers,” he said, “and I’m confident they will be replicated by other groups.”

But as news of the scandal reverberated through academic circles, some experts said they feared it was symptomatic of a broader problem in food and health research. While very few scientists are accused of misconduct or misreporting data, critics have long contended that nutrition research is plagued by a credibility problem. They argue that an alarming number of food studies are misleading, unscientific or manipulated to draw dubious conclusions.

Dr. Wansink’s lab was known for data dredging, or p-hacking, the process of running exhaustive analyses on data sets to tease out subtle signals that might otherwise be unremarkable. Critics say it is tantamount to casting a wide net and then creating a hypothesis to support whatever cherry-picked findings seem interesting — the opposite of the scientific method. For example, emails obtained by BuzzFeed News showed that Dr. Wansink prodded researchers in his lab to mine their data sets for results that would “go virally big time.”

“P-hacking is a really serious problem,” said Dr. Ivan Oransky, a co-founder of Retraction Watch, who teaches medical journalism at New York University. “Not to be overly dramatic, but in some ways it throws into question the very statistical basis of what we’re reading as science journalists and as the public.”

Data dredging is fairly common in health research, and especially in studies involving food. It is one reason contradictory nutrition headlines seem to be the norm: One week coffee, cheese and red wine are found to be protective against heart disease and cancer, and the next week a new crop of studies pronounce that they cause it. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said that many researchers are under enormous pressure to churn out papers. One recent analysis found that thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days.

“You can’t get a job if you don’t have papers,” she said. “I see this at my university. We expect assistant professors to be hired with already a record of scholarship.”

‘I Have No Idea How to Tell This Horror Story’

In 2012, Dr. John Ioannidis, the chairman of disease prevention at Stanford, published a study titled “Is Everything We Eat Associated With Cancer?” He and a co-author randomly selected 50 recipes from a cookbook and discovered that 80 percent of the ingredients — mushrooms, peppers, olives, lobster, mustard, lemons — had been linked to either an increased or a decreased risk of cancer in numerous studies. In many cases a single ingredient was found to be the subject of questionable cancer claims in more than 10 studies, a vast majority of which “were based on weak statistical evidence,” the paper concluded.

Nutrition epidemiology is notorious for this. Scientists routinely scour data sets on large populations looking for links between specific foods or diets and health outcomes like chronic disease and life span. These studies can generate important findings and hypotheses. But they also have serious limitations. They cannot prove cause and effect, for example, and collecting dietary data from people is like trying to catch a moving target: Many people cannot recall precisely what they ate last month, last week or even in the past 48 hours. Plenty of other factors that influence health can also blur the impact of diet, such as exercise, socioeconomic status, sleep, genetics and environment. All of this makes the most popular food and health studies problematic and frequently contradictory.

In one recent example, an observational study of thousands of people published in The Lancet last year made headlines with its findings that high-carb diets were linked to increased mortality rates and that eating saturated fat and meat was protective. Then in August, a separate team of researchers published an observational study of thousands of people in a related journal, The Lancet Public Health, with contrasting findings: Low-carb diets that were high in meat increased mortality rates.

“You can analyze observational studies in very different ways and, depending on what your belief is — and there are very strong nutrition beliefs out there — you can get some very dramatic patterns,” Dr. Ioannidis said.

He and other experts have called for reform in nutrition science. They say that researchers should publicly register their study protocols beforehand to eliminate data dredging, share their raw data to increase transparency, focus on large randomized controlled trials to produce better results, and refrain from slicing and dicing large observational data sets into multiple papers that magnify weak findings.

Experts say that the problem extends to science journalists as well: Many reporters are encouraged to produce articles that get lots of clicks. That is another reason researchers and universities feel pressure to put out studies and news releases with exaggerated findings.

“I would say that we’re all drinking from the same well, and we’re all contributing to poisoning the water,” said Ted Kyle, an obesity expert who runs a health site called ConscienHealth. “At every step along the way there are folks who are culpable. I would suspect that we’re all complicit.”

Dr. Oransky said that while Dr. Wansink’s behavior was egregious, it is not something that is isolated to nutrition. Dr. Wansink would not even make Retraction Watch’s list of the top 30 scientists with the most retracted papers. One person on the list, an anesthesiologist, has had 183 retracted papers. Others on the list include a social psychologist, cancer researchers and an accounting professor. Dr. Oransky estimated that every year roughly 1,400 scientific papers are retracted out of the two million to three million that are published. What made this case stand out, he said, is that a media darling was at the center of it.

(I personally have never interviewed Dr. Wansink in my 15 years as a health journalist. But that puts me in a small minority — he has been cited or quoted in more than 60 different Times articles dating from 1993 to late 2016.)

Indeed, the unique part of this scandal is how prominent he was. “I don’t know too many reporters who’ve covered health and nutrition who’ve never quoted him,” said Dr. Oransky.

Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics for Science Times and the Well blog. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 30, 2018, on Page SR10 of the New York edition with the headline: No, Chocolate Probably Isn’t a Superfood.

The post Nutrition Studies Don’t Always Add Up appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

When Neglected Children Become Adolescents

From Science Daily:

Many migrant children separated from their parents at the U.S. border, some of them very young, have landed in shelters where they often experience stress, neglect and minimal social and cognitive stimulation. The latest findings of the long-running Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), involving children in Romanian orphanages, tells a cautionary tale about the psychiatric and social risks of long-term deprivation and separation from parents.

BEIP has shown that children reared in very stark institutional settings, with severe social deprivation and neglect, are at risk for cognitive problems, depression, anxiety, disruptive behavior and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But BEIP has also shown that placing children with quality foster families can mitigate some of these effects, if it’s done early.

The latest BEIP study, published this week by JAMA Psychiatry, asked what happens to the mental health of institutionalized children as they transition to adolescence. Outcomes at ages 8, 12 and 16 suggest diverging trajectories between children who remained in institutions versus those randomly chosen for placement with carefully vetted foster families.

Researchers led by Mark Wade, PhD, and Charles Nelson, PhD, of the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, studied 220 children of whom 119 had spent at least some time in institutions. Of the 119, half had been placed in foster care.

Over the years, teachers and caregivers completed the MacArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire, which includes subscales on depression, overanxious, social anxiety/withdrawal, oppositional defiant behavior, conduct problems, overt aggression, relational aggression and ADHD. The surveys revealed that children who were placed early in quality foster care, compared with those who remained in institutions, had less psychopathology, and in particular fewer externalizing behaviors such as rule-breaking, excessive arguing with authority figures, stealing or assaulting peers. Differences began to emerge at 12 years and became significant at 16 years.

While conditions at Romanian orphanages aren’t the same as those in U.S. immigration detention systems, the researchers think the findings underscore the importance of keeping families together.

“Our results add to a growing literature on what might happen to a child’s long-term psychological development when they experience separation from a primary caregiver early in development,” says Wade. “Although this picture is very complex, we now know that many children who experience early neglect are at risk for an array of mental health problems later on. The good news is that if they are placed in high-quality homes with good caregiving, this risk is reduced. Yet they still tend to have more difficulties than their peers who never experienced this form of deprivation. So what we really need is policies and social programs prevent separation from primary caregivers in the first place.”

The post When Neglected Children Become Adolescents appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Sarah Platt-Finger’s Self-Care Practice For Survivors Of Sexual Assault

From Yoga Journal:

If this week’s news cycle was just too much, you are definitely not alone. Here, Sarah Platt-Finger shares her own empowering path toward healing and a grounding sequence to help you get back in the present moment.

“No matter what arises, I have the capacity to hold space for it. It is in tolerance of our feelings that creates our ability to heal,” says yoga teacher, ISHTA Yoga co-founder, and trauma survivor Sarah Platt-Finger. As a member of Exhale to Inhale’s board, she helps survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence access yoga and meditation practices for healing.

In yoga we say that we can’t always control our external circumstances, but we can control our reactions to them. That is true—unless you are a survivor of sexual assault.

If you are a yoga practitioner like I am and a trauma survivor (like I am), you are still susceptible to retraumatization in triggering situations. Activities like watching the news—especially this week, as allegations of sexual assault against a Supreme Court nominee are dissected on a national stage and shared on screens everywhere—can induce familiar feelings of fear, panic, rage, insecurity, and anxiety.

It has brought up all of that, and more, for me.

During my senior year of college, I was sexually assaulted. I was 21 years old. The perpetrator was technically my boss, who was married with children, and for years I blamed myself for it. I coped with the trauma through self-destructive behavior and did everything I could to abandon myself.

Now, nearly 20 years later, I am still in the process of healing.

It is important to know that the body stores trauma. That’s why the sympathetic nervous system responds to triggering situations as though the traumatic event is happening all over again. Physiologically, your heart rate speeds up, cortisol rushes your body, blood surges to your extremities, and your breath becomes short and erratic.

You may be feeling these fight-or-flight symptoms this week. It does not mean there is something wrong with you, or that you are not a seasoned yogi. It means that you have fought the fight, and you are surviving it. And you are doing the work you need to do in order to show up fully in the world.

Although there is still an element of shame that comes with sharing my story, now I know that I don’t have to run away from it. I have gained a sense of resilience from this experience. Through my personal yoga and meditation practice, I have learned how to live in, respond to, and honor the sensations of my body. No matter what arises, I have the capacity to hold space for it. It is in tolerance of our feelings that creates our ability to heal.

I return to my practice every day on my own mat, and I am fortunate enough to share the transformative tools of the ISHTA Yoga lineage to help others reclaim their sense of self, regardless of whether they have experienced trauma.

In addition, my service on the board of Exhale to Inhale has also given me the ability to help other survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault access the healing power of trauma-informed yoga. It has also empowered me with the language to put words to my experience, and to work through and process it as part of a safe, supported community.

Finally, I have learned that allowing yourself time for self-care helps you create a safe space in your body that brings you back to your true source, which is infinite and untethered.

A Self-Care Practice for Survivors of Sexual Assault

I created the following self-care sequence for survivors of trauma to help get through this week’s challenging news cycle with ease, self-compassion, and peace of mind. Through standing postures, you’ll establish your connection to the Earth, which enables a sense of steadiness and security in the present moment. The most important thing is that you feel safe and strong in your body.

As you move through the sequence, do what feels right for you in your body. These are all suggested postures, and you can modify them in any way to suit you.

Constructive Rest, variation

Begin on your back with your knees bent. Take slow, full, even breaths, paying particular attention to the exhalation as you relax the jaw, face, eyes, and eyebrows. Stay for 5 breaths.

Bridge Pose, moving with the breath

On your inhale, ground down evenly through your feet as you lift your hips up and your arms overhead. Pay particular attention to the connection between your feet and the earth. On your exhale, lower your hips to the floor as your arms float down alongside the body. Do this pose 4-6 times.

Supta Padangusthasana (Reclining Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose) with a strap

Remaining on your back, set your right foot on the floor with your knee bent or extend your leg straight. Place a strap around the sole of your left foot. Press through the ball of the foot, and peel the toes back. Engage through the left quadricep, so the leg remains steady. This posture is a great way to experience a sense of steadiness and ease at the same time. Relax the top of the shoulders, soften your jaw, and notice the areas of your body that tense up out of habit. Holding the pose helps show you where you feel sensation, along with your reaction to the sensation. Hold for 5-7 breaths, then switch sides.

Seated Shoulder Rolls and Neck Release

Roll up to a seated cross-legged position. There are accessory muscles that aid breath function in the neck, so neck and shoulder tension can contribute to the feeling of being unable to breathe. When this happens, it helps to relieve the muscles in your neck and shoulders. Inhale as you bring your shoulders forward and up to the ears; as you exhale, allow your shoulders to release back and down. Do this 3 times. Then, drop right ear to right shoulder, hold, and come back to center; then drop the left ear to the left shoulder, hold, and come back to center.

Marjaryasana and Bitilasana (Cat-Cow Poses)

Come forward on all fours. Inhale and lift the center of the chest as your face looks up and sitting bones lift. On the exhale, draw your navel up to the spine as you round your spine and release your heart toward the floor. Do each set 4-6 times in concert with the breath, making sure that the length of the inhale and exhale is the same.

Balasana (Child’s Pose)

From all fours, sit back onto your heels with your arms extended in front of you. Relax your forehead on a block or on the mat. Resting in this pose opens the back body, which relates to our ability to quiet the internal. Hold for 3-5 breaths.

Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog)

From Child’s Pose, pay particular attention to your hands and feet, which connect you to the earth, and feel a sense of grounding as you tuck your toes and lift your hips into the pose. Stay here for 3-5 breaths.

Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend)

Walk your feet all the way to your hands and soften your knees. Take hold of opposite elbows with your hands, and allow your head to hang. This pose helps release the diaphragm and encourages the exhalation, which helps us move away from anxiety and restlessness into relaxation. Stay for 3-5 breaths; halfway through, switch the crossing of your arms, and place the opposite arm on top. Come up to stand, with your lumbar spine supporting your abdominals.

Tadasana (Mountain Pose)

Reconnect to your breath. Align your heels behind the widest part of your feet. In order to feel grounded, supported, and steady, imagine you are receiving the energy of the earth through the soles of your feet. Broaden your collarbones; relax your head and shoulders. Experience the power of standing and feeling present, without needing to move or run away. Stay for 3 breaths.

Utkatasana (Chair Pose) with the breath

As you inhale, bend your knees, reach your seat back, and stretch your arms out in front of you. As you exhale, straighten your legs and float your arms alongside the body. Do each flow 3-5 times.

Prasarita Padottanasana I (Wide-Legged Forward Bend)

Step your feet wide, about a leg’s-width apart, with your feet parallel. Bring your hands to your hips. As you inhale, lift your heart and gaze, and as you exhale, fold forward and take your hands to the floor, or to blocks, below your shoulders. Let go of your head and neck, and as you hold, continue to relax those muscles so they truly release. Stay for 5 breaths.

Vrksasana (Tree Pose)

Come halfway up into a flat back, slightly bend your knees, bring your hands to your hips, and slowly lift up with a flat back as you inhale. (You may also jump your feet back together.) Shift your weight to the left foot, bring the right foot off the floor, rotate your right thigh open, and place the right foot either above or below the knee joint. Focus your eyes on one point. Press your foot into your thigh as your thigh presses into your foot, creating a lift through your spine. Look at a point in front of you; Tree Pose helps you feel rooted so you can focus your mind. Bring your palms to touch in the center of your chest, or if it feels good for you, stretch the arms overhead. Stay up to 5 breaths. To come out of the pose, bring your hands to your hips, draw your right knee back in, and lower the foot down. Wiggle your feet, and switch sides.

Salabhasana (Locust Pose)

Come to the floor on your hands and knees, and then lower onto your belly. Bring your arms alongside your body with your palms facing down. As you breathe in, lift your head, neck, chest, and arms off the floor. Inhale and exhale here for 3-5 breaths. When you’re ready, lower yourself to the floor. With your palms face up, relax your cheek to one side. Feel the support of the earth underneath you. Allow the breath to move into your back body. Switch the cheek resting on the floor.

Supported Bridge

Roll onto your back, and bend your knees. Lift your hips, and slide a block on its lowest height underneath your sacrum. If you are comfortable doing so, close your eyes. Let your arms float alongside your body, either palms up or down. Feel the support of the block underneath your sacrum. Soften your belly; relax your shoulders, your jaw, your eyes, and your eyebrows. Stay for up to 10 breaths, or as long as it feels good for you. To come out of the pose, lift the hips, slide the block out from underneath you, and slowly lower down, one vertebrae at a time.

Reclined Ankle-to-Knee Pose

Still on your back with your knees bent, cross the right ankle on top of your left thigh. Lift your left foot off the floor and interlace your fingers behind your left thigh. Breathe into the area where you feel sensation in your body. Stay here for 5-8 breaths. When you’re ready, release the left foot, uncross the right ankle, and switch sides.

Savasana

Release both legs out in front of you. Adjust your body so you feel supported, and pay close attention to the areas of the body that are in contact with the floor. Rest here, softening the muscles of your face, feeling the support of the earth holding you up. Stay in Savasana as long as you would like. When you are ready to come out, roll to one side and slowly come up into a seated cross-legged position. Feel your seat rooting down into the floor, and your spine held tall from inside, like a rod. Your outer body is soft; your head and neck are easeful. Close your practice in this position.

 

The post Sarah Platt-Finger’s Self-Care Practice For Survivors Of Sexual Assault appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Codependency Relapse: Step 2, Victim No More

I’m in the middle of a codependency relapse. Over the last few months, I completely lost my serenity. To find it, I had to go back to Step One without passing GO or collecting $200. This week, I regained my serenity by turning my victim mentality over to my Higher Power.

A Quick Review Of The Steps

I love the 12 Steps. For years, I tried counseling and several medications to help alleviate my depression and anxiety, but nothing worked. When I finally started attending Al-anon meetings, everything clicked. They follow AA’s same 12-steps, and the logical order of this practice really works for me.

Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism (or other family dysfunction), that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step 2 – We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Winning The Award For Best Lead Victim In A Drama, Real Or Imagined

Now, back to my crisis at hand…I have been the victim in a number of circumstances. For instance, I:

Grew up in an alcoholic home
As a teenager, I basically raised my younger brother Ricky
Witnessed a fatal car accident
Survived physical and emotional abuse
Witnessed an armed robbery

I’ve also been the victim in countless other minor dramas like:

That jack-wagon just cut me off on the interstate
A woman at Target yelled at me
My son lied to me
My cat is suffering from a very normal urinary tract infection

I can turn any situation into a drama, which of course, needs a victim to play the lead role. Who better to play it than me?

Surviving Trauma & Addiction: 10 Years Later

I am alive and thriving today because no matter what happened, I was determined to stay the course of my recovery and do more than just survive.

It wasn’t easy. I have now been in and out of recovery for half my life. If you want to get technical, I’ve been working on recovery my entire adult life. I entered an addiction recovery treatment program at the tender age of 21, but it didn’t stick the first time. Or the second. Or the third. I’m not a one-chip wonder, meaning I didn’t get sober once and stay clean the entire time. I did, however, make a serious decision to change my life ten years ago, and while it hasn’t been all smooth seas since, I have not strayed from that mindset. I am now 40 and healthy. I repeat, it wasn’t easy.

Recovery Is More Challenging When Other Factors Are Involved

Recovery from addiction is a complicated process when there are no bumps in the road. When you’re dealing with more than one behavioral issue, or have trauma in your story, or a “generalized anxiety” diagnosis, or have ANY family dysfunction whatsoever, it becomes even more complex.

In my experience, I pulled back one layer of the onion only to discover there were more underneath. I had a cellar in my basement where a vault lived, and locked in there hidden away were most of my feelings. This phenomenon made my recovery a long process where sometimes I took a step forward only to take two steps back. The path to success is no straight line, especially when it comes to mental health and health and wellness.

Recovery Is Rewarding At Any Age

Life is bright and shiny at 40. It doesn’t look the way I expected it to, but it feels better than I ever imagined. Since we’re all still learning about what modern recovery looks like, and I’ve been writing about mine since I started, I compiled two lists that help consolidate the way I feel about all this. Here’s the first list of what I’ve learned:

1. There Will Be Good Years And Bad Years In Recovery

That’s just life. I had this sense that if I made it five years, my life would be merry. It doesn’t work that way. Business is up and down, relationships come and go, and then as you get older, you start to lose people. However, if you’re prepared and armed with a toolbox full of tools, you can survive the disappointments and heartbreak.

2. Getting Sober Was Only Step One

I needed enlightenment in many areas. Learning healthy boundaries was an unexpected adventure, as was sober dating. Both caused me as much discomfort as getting sober did. Seriously, detaching from enmeshed relationships felt physically painful to me at times. Learning to use food as fuel, not comfort, and becoming financially responsible was also difficult and stressful. There were years it felt like I was training for a recovery Olympics that I wanted no part in. But, somewhere along the way, I built a well-rounded recovery lifestyle. I’m almost to the point where I have every aspect of my life organized. Almost.

3. Relationships Are Still Hard

I thought I’d master and get relationships sorted out by now. Insert laughter here. While I find they are far less dramatic than they once were, I’m certainly no professional in this matter. I do believe I’ve become aware and considerate of other people’s feelings. It’s no longer all about me. I don’t believe I can change anyone and I would no longer dare to try. I also now know no one can change me. There is no magic pill, and there is no magic person. It’s all hard work. However, with age, I’ve come to enjoy the work and derive great satisfaction from my improvement.

4. Self Care Is Not All Baths and Mani-Pedis

I recently read an article about self-care being really hard. It said self-care is not all baths and mani-pedis. The article is correct. Real self-care is financial responsibility, emotional accountability, impulse control. Basically, adulting really hard. It took a lot of practice for me to intuitively practice self-care and do things like grocery shop and plan out my whole week of meals, pay ALL my bills EVERY month, and stay gainfully employed.

Making sure all areas of your life are organized and well cared for is almost impossible for anyone coming out of addiction. I didn’t open my mail for years. I didn’t understand financial “stuff,” and I had the emotional capacity of a 12-year-old. Caring about those things did not come naturally to me. I had to learn how to do them years into my recovery; then I had to be disciplined in practicing them until they became habit. Trust me, it’s easier to get addicted to drugs than paying your taxes.

5. Patience and Gratitude Are Everything

What I was writing about above – The learning self-care? Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I stopped trying years ago because it all seemed too hard and progress was slow. Trudging from program to program, painfully learning how to manage my emotions and relationships wasn’t fun. But, it was rewarding, and it worked. I can find gratitude daily. I try to live in gratitude most of the time, and it’s a beautiful thing. I’m also patient with myself, and other people. Man, do things go better when you can just calm down and wait.

The moral of the story is, while this may sound like it’s too much work, like it’ll take too long, and the pain along the way will make it impossible to get through—it wasn’t.  The markers along the way become too important, the progress becomes too gratifying, and then when you realize you’re no longer in pain or anxious anymore, it’s all worth it, and you never look back.

What a gift to go into the second half of my life organized, healthy and happy. Who’s ahead of the game now?

The post Surviving Trauma & Addiction: 10 Years Later appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

Why The Addiction Crisis Rages On

More people are aware of the opioid crisis; this is hardly surprising. With people dropping dead in the US at the rate of 112 a day, you’d have to be on Mars not to be aware of this serious public health problem. But this awareness is NOT accompanied with solutions that work.

The Surgeon General’s Answer: Stock Narcan

Imagine 112 people dropping dead a day of say, Legionaires Disease.  The Surgeon General would not suddenly (after decades of escalation) advise the public to carry a nasal spray antibiotic around with them. There would be solutions in place, not twenty years after the onset, but immediately.

Say Mom has a heroin addict in her home. She’s supposed to know how to resuscitate him in the case of an overdose. Unfortunately, no one has taught her how to prevent his disease or how to treat him after resuscitating him. What can a parent, spouse, or loved one do for a chronic relapsing brain disease that tells the sufferer he doesn’t have a disease? He will certainly overdose again.

If you have a deadly disease, and there is an antidote that works only to resuscitate but not to cure, how will that help anyone?

Seriously, where are treatment solutions? Where’s the public education?

Addiction Isn’t New

Seven years ago when ROR was founded, addiction was the number one health issue in America. It was a killer everyone hated. There were plenty of news reports and documentaries showing what addiction looks like, but no education about the benefits of recovery, or how recovery for families, workplaces, and communities might be achieved. There was little to inform parents how to spot problems in teens, or how to deal with substance use as a family, or school system. A few years ago people were dying at lower rate, but still dying. Hundreds in some communities. Young people. Teens.

It wasn’t until the bodies started literally piling up in the streets that the alarm bell was sounded, and solutions like carrying Narcan have been suggested. NIH just pledged $1.3 billion for research, but there’s still no education about prevention or recovery for families suffering right now.

The Real Issue Is Bigger Than The Opioid Crisis

Fundamentally, humans are addicted to a wide variety of substances, both legal and illegal. Each year, alcohol, for example, causes more health issues, hospitalizations, lost productivity, destroyed families, and deaths (more than 5 million worldwide according to WHO) than opioids.

Alcohol is overlooked as a killer because it’s a legal, “fun” intoxicant with a powerful lobby and a long, checkered history. After prohibition was lifted, alcohol reigned as party emperor. There’s no widespread information about the family disease of Alcohol Use Disorder (alcoholism) or its impact on children in the home. Meth is still out there; cocaine is still out there; and designer drugs of all kinds are still out there. Even worse, no one  understands how to teach this to children or parents. Why can’t the public be informed?

Nearly every parent coping with addiction in the US today is as clueless, helpless and hopeless as I was twenty years ago.

The fact that we haven’t, as a nation, begun directly teaching people how to cope with substance use is a national scandal of epic proportions. It’s an epidemic that WE literally let it happen.

I don’t know any college president or middle school superintendent who is passionate about dealing with the alcohol and drug problems on their campuses. Students are taught to be silent.

Have Humans Developed An Addiction Gene?

Humans have been using intoxicants to feel better since the beginning of time. Intoxicants include:

Sugar
Caffeine
Nicotine
Alcohol
Naturally occurring opiates (morphine and heroin)
Stimulants (cocaine, Qat, Ephedra)
Hallucinogens (mushrooms, cannabis)
Hundreds of synthetic drugs.

People have used alcohol, opium, tea, coffee, chocolate, cannabis, sugar, and other naturally occurring substances throughout history, but the level of intoxicant use in the last hundred years has turned the love of feeling better into a worldwide epidemic. It feels like everybody is hooked on something. Because addiction is so widespread affecting so many millions of people, we have to ask,

Have humans developed an addiction gene?

Doctors prescribe more drugs for every complaint imaginable, and every day scientists design even more powerful intoxicants. We need a solution that heals the problem, not the symptoms or drug de jour.

Education Is The Only Solution

We are in the dark ages when it comes to dealing with substance use disorder. If you don’t train and teach:

Teens
Parents
Doctors
Nurses
College presidents
Children

…about substances and their impact on the human brain, body, emotions, and relationships, then addiction will continue to proliferate and destroy everyone it touches.

Hanging this easy to follow poster in your break-room is one of the easiest things you can do to introduce workplace safety and recovery to your employees. Your small investment can save you thousands and who knows how many lives. Order yours today.

The post Why The Addiction Crisis Rages On appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

What Are The ISMs?

If you’ve recovered through a 12-step fellowship, you’ll be familiar with the philosophy that alcohol is a symptom of the disease of alcohol use disorder (formerly referred to as alcoholism); once you get sober and remove the alcohol, you’re left with the “isms.” Namely, the reasons why we drank or used drugs. Some people believe that if you don’t deal with the crux of your disease – or the “ism” – then you will return to use.

ISMs Bring Shame

As an acronym, “ism” stands for: “I, self, me,” or “I sponsor myself,” or “Internal Spiritual Malady.” The implication being that the recovering person is self-centered, self-absorbed, and maladjusted. Within this philosophy, this catch-all phrase describes the experiences everyone encounters in this life: anxiety, depression, fear, loneliness, feeling inadequate in some way – but without the anesthesia of drugs and alcohol to quell the pain. It also describes certain childish behavior like:

Blaming others
An inability to deal with conflict
Having poor boundaries
A tendency to treat other substances, or people, the same way as drugs and alcohol.

For example, some people believe that developing a problem with gambling, or getting involved in dysfunctional relationships, is an “ism.”

Recovery Brings Healing

To some extent, I agree that we need to get to the heart of why we were harming ourselves in way that led to substance use disorder. There was nothing healthy about drowning myself in four bottles of wine a day. The core of why I used alcohol and drugs in that way was that I had:

(Undiagnosed) Complex PTSD
Depression
Anxiety, and
Few coping skills for life.

However, I don’t believe these are “isms,” a spiritual malady, or even flaws of my character. Many of us in recovery have been deeply traumatized by something preceding our addiction or during it. Many of us lacked nurture and emotional support in our childhood. Almost all of us have an inability to cope with stress, and while we were using we didn’t fully develop emotionally. So, it’s only natural that when we recover, we discover more about ourselves that we need to nurture.

Recovery has been about recovering my capacity to self-regulate and manage stress. I’ve also learned a host of other lessons around having healthy relationships, setting and maintaining boundaries, learning how to live a healthy life, and how to parent myself. If I focused on the problems that led to these lessons:

Having unhealthy relationships
Forming insecure attachments
Seeking to escape through romantic relationships
Overeating
Under-eating
Exercising
Being depressed

…then I’d have a mindset that I’m broken and defective. I simply don’t see it that way.

Recovery Teaches Life Skills

The way I see recovery is that I needed to stop my harmful behavior, and I needed to grow up. I had to learn how to cope with life as a sober person. I needed to develop enough skills and purpose in life to make sure that my life was bigger than the desire to use drugs and alcohol.

When we are acting out with people, or even with food, our body and minds are telling us something is missing. I dealt with incredible loneliness by developing strong social supports and deepening a spiritual practice. My hunger was a message for irregularities in my body that I needed to see a doctor for, and also to feed my mind and spirit.

It’s taken me over six and a half years to get to a place where I see recovery as a process of rebuilding and relearning. No longer do I punish myself for being defective. Instead, I learned to sit with myself quietly and ask what I really need. That isn’t uncovering “isms.” It’s simply self-compassion and growth.

Did you know the 12 Steps, which have helped millions find recovery, can also help you find peace and serenity? Check out our latest book, Find Your True Colors In 12-Steps.

The post What Are The ISMs? appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.