Health Guidance

Each year, almost 44 million Americans experience or suffer from health problems. In fact, health problems are among the most common conditions affecting health today. It’s been said that most serious health problems are caused by complex imbalances in the brain’s chemical activity. They also believe environmental factors can play a part in triggering, or softening against, the beginning of mental illness.

Stress is simply a fact of nature forces from the outside world affecting the individual. The individual responds to stress in ways that affect the individual as well as their environment. Stress is a normal physical response to actions that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. When you sense danger whether it’s real or imagined the body’s defenses kick into high rapid gear, or the stress response.

The stress responses you receive are the body’s way of defending you. When it’s working the right way, it helps you pay attention by staying focused, energetic, and alert. In other emergency situations, stress can save your life giving you extra strength to defend yourself, such as like slamming on your brakes to avoid a car accident.

Continue reading ‘Ways to Keeping Yourself Stress Free’ »

People with a drinking problem take the substance to get a comfortable feeling. Alcohol might help them deal with issues of trauma, stress, or physical pain. By drinking alcohol they might be getting temporary relief of the loneliness they feel, depression, or stress in their life.

Commonly people have know that alcohol can cause serious problem and even dangerous or life-threatening. There are some term that linked to alcohol abuse such as binge drinking, and alcoholism. Binge drinking means having five or more drinks in one session for men and four or more for women. It also means simply drinking to get drunk. Commonly, It is the drinking problem for young people, under age 21.

In fact, people who abuse alcohol have fewer consequences than the others that have alcohol dependence . It means drink too much and suffer social and health consequences, but never completely lose your control over the drinking like in alcohol addiction.

Continue reading ‘Stay Away From Alcohol Abuse and Get Healthy’ »

There are defense mechanisms that one may unconsciously use in dealing with stress or unpleasant and unacceptable social circumstances or behaviors. They tend to help one make emotional adjustments in their everyday situations. However , habitual use has been known to cause one to become some what out of touch with reality.

The most common defense is repression. This is the forcing of an unacceptable or painful idea; feeling; impulse into one’s unconscious mind without one being aware of it. Often one may find that they wish something bad would happen to another out of anger or stress. These feelings won’t vanish. They are placed in one’s unconscious and have a tendency of reoccurring in one’s dreams. Repression tends to protect one from unwanted messages about oneself.

Continue reading ‘Stress Has Defense Mechanisms’ »

We all know about stress at work. Do these examples look familiar?

1. Your boss has moved the deadline for your report up a few days
2. you have an annoying co-worker
3. you have an in-basket that reaches the ceiling
4. your paycheck is too small to cover your needed expenses

Work stress comes in all flavors (people, events, deadlines, environment)–coping with them can be a real juggling act. There are ways to minimize work stress, here are a few things you can do right now.

Continue reading ‘Stress at Work – How to Deal with It’ »

Four years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancerous tumor could not be felt by me or my gynecologist or the surgeon who performed my mastectomy. My film mammogram and my ultra sound were inconclusive, but I had a radiologist that wouldn’t stop. The tumor finally showed up on a diagnostic mammogram. It was difficult to see and impossible to feel because the tumor was in the back of my breast close to the chest wall. I am one of those very fortunate women who have not become a statistic. Over 40,000 women die every year from breast cancer. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths of women in the United States. (Lung cancer is first.) While there are no guarantees in life, there are measures to take to give you an edge.

There are two types of screening mammograms: digital and film. Get a yearly digital mammogram. They are more definitive than a film mammogram. A digital mammogram takes an electronic image of the breast and stores it on a computer. Images can be enhanced and brightened for a clearer reading by a radiologist. Digital mammograms use less radiation than a film mammogram. A film mammogram takes a picture of the breast on film, like a picture. It can’t be altered, magnified, or brightened. Continue reading ‘October is Breast Cancer Month’ »

Hans Eysenck, a Brit born in Germany in 1916, may not be one of the more widely known personality theorists; however, he was one of the finest. And his work is important to panic attack sufferers.

Eysenck believed temperament, a characteristic mode of emotional response, is the featured component of personality. And he believed it was up and running at birth. Now, that isn’t to say he didn’t believe in the influence of environment, it’s just that he reasoned nature, as opposed to nurture, merited top billing with regard to how we think, feel, and behave.

Now, in his PEN (Psychoticism, Extraversion, Neuroticism) model, Eysenck submitted there are three dimensions of temperament; what he called “superfactors.” Within the context of panic, I’d like to limit our chat to neuroticism and extraversion.

Neuroticism
People that fall into this dimension are generally fairly calm to very nervous. According to Eysenck, these folks are prone to what he called “neurotic” problems, issues of a mental or emotional nature that result in stress. Interestingly enough, Uncle Hans focused upon the sympathetic nervous system. Well, panic sufferers know this system well, as under the direction of our fear and emotion circuitry, the sympathetic nervous system launches our physical fight/flight response. According to Eysenck, neuroticism involves, shall we say, a “hyperactive” sympathetic nervous system.

Continue reading ‘Panic Attacks, Temperament, and Uncle Hans: It's a Matter of Engineering?’ »

So often, my working relationship with a panic sufferer begins with an initial email of all-consuming pain, fear, bewilderment, and desperation. The writer has visited my website, identified with the content, felt a glimmer of possibility, saw my invitation to write, and did exactly that. But as this person wrote, just what were they really looking for? And what do they really need to receive at this most vulnerable, yet opportunistic, time? Those are hugely important questions because their answers hold the very keys to lifelong recovery and growth.

If you’ve been in the panic attack or panic disorder saddle, you know it’s a rough ride; especially when the symptoms first appear. I mean, seemingly out of nowhere you’re being pounded by sledge-hammers of panic, anxiety, agoraphobia, derealization, depersonalization, avoidance, phobias, depression, substance abuse, and crushed self-esteem and confidence. And you may not even know what some of these phenomena are, much less that you’re suffering from them. The one and only thing you know for sure is, “I want to be the way I used to be.” And you’re mentally, emotionally, and physically flailing wildly to establish that sense of identity and comfort.

Continue reading ‘Panic Attacks Acute Care: Gentle expressions of hope’ »

Stress in school is a big topic these days. Are you a student suffering from stress? If this is the case, then this article is for you.

As students are being asked to do more, there is a pressure to handle more and more tasks. That pressure can lead to undue stress. Just as their parents suffer from stress in the workplace and at home, students also suffer stress from work, social contacts and family strife. What can students do in order to reduce the deleterious effects of stress in their daily lives?

Continue reading ‘Dealing with School Stress’ »

Mistake 1: I’m Just Naturally Worried, Anxious or Stressed
The truth is, no one is born naturally worried, anxious or stressed. In fact our bodies are marvelous things, created to operate at optimum performance and stress is part of it’s performance. The feeling we describe as stress is a natural feeling which is intended to lay dormant until some form of a threat presents itself to us. When this happens we are alerted to the danger by this uneasy feeling, worry, stress or anxiety, and hopefully we become more attentive to it and thus more capable to handle the threat.

Mistake 2: Expecting Stress To Go Away By Thinking ‘Positive Thoughts’
Stress is an emotion; and, as most therapists will tell you, ‘it is impossible to logic ones own way out of an emotion. Logic responds to logic; and, emotions respond to emotions. No one is capable to  ’just snap out of it’ or ‘be logical’ and know there is really very little to worry about. Continue reading ‘Worry And Stress? – Four Critical Mistakes When Trying To Control Worry And Stress’ »

If you find yourself in a very stressful situation , you may find it necessary to seek outside professional help. There is no sense in feeling shame if you have to go outside of yourself and ask for professional help. It is a sin to keep things held up inside of you and not seek the necessary help to help you live a healthy and successful life.

It is normal to experience a feeling of stress in your everyday life. This is due to the many changes and challenges one must encounter. No one responds to stress alike. It has often been said that what causes stress for one , may not cause stress for another. Humans seem to see stress as a perception . You will learn that often the way one views a situation, might as well determine the amount of stress one will encounter. It is best to find a way to evaluate your stress in your life and figure out a way to handle it.

Continue reading ‘Evaluating One's Stress’ »