Christel Maritz Blog - Page 18 of 30

Support groups who share a common disorder

Support groups are organizations of people who share a common disorder, like depression or anxiety, and who meet together to discuss their experiences, share ideas, and provide emotional support for one another. Usually a support group is led by a member who has had some training in facilitating group discussions and if you lucky formal training as a Psychologist. For some types of problems, such as bereavement after the death of a loved one, or coping with a chronic medical condition like cancer, hospitals or community agencies often provide support groups led by a social worker or other counselor. Are you part of a formal or informal support group?

Probably the biggest advantage of support groups is helping a patient realize that he or she is not alone — that there are other people who have the same problems. This is often a revelation and a huge relief to the person.

Being part of support groups can also help you develop new skills to relate to others. In addition, the members of the group who have the same problems can support each other and may suggest new ways of dealing with a particular problem.

Finding support is the first step towards healing. Join my support group and together we can work towards your emotional well being.

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http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/anxiety-support-grouphttp://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/anxiety-support-group

6 Antidepressant Side Effects I Didn’t See Coming

To say it’s a game-changer would be the understatement of the year.

In recent years, depression had become more widely understood. This has been, in many ways, fantastic for those of us who suffer from what is sometimes referred to as “the black dog.” At other times, it can be frustrating, because there’s more to depression that people outside it first suppose.

Everyone is familiar with the numbness, the crying and the suicidal thoughts — the head stuff, if you like. Those of us stuck with it also know there’s more to it than that, but it’s difficult to know exactly what.

No Orgasms For Me: Antidepressants Totally Killed My Libido

I’ve had depression all my life and I had no idea some of these things were so strongly related to my condition, until, well… my meds started working. It makes it a lot easier to like yourself when you find out that you aren’t as lazy, scatty, or clingy as you may appear.

So, for all those people with a vested interest in depression and those of us who suffer from it, here are the things I couldn’t do until my meds started working.

1. I Was Able to Finish Reading a Book in Less Than Six Weeks

Depression messes with your concentration. It never occurred to me that the reason I couldn’t read more than a page or so at a time of any given novel had more to do with my depression than my dyslexia. I thought I was just too slow at reading, then my meds worked.

2. I Was Finally Able to Sleep With the Lights Off

I couldn’t shake the feeling of the world closing in. If I couldn’t see anything at all, I would start to hyperventilate. I hated the isolation. At my lowest point, I suffered auditory hallucinations. On top of that, my chemicals were so out of whack that I didn’t need darkness to sleep anyway, I just needed opportunity — not even comfortable opportunity.

I’ve slept in lecture theaters, face down on computer keyboards, and even once in a supermarket. Now, it’s a different story. I have to have low light and take my time to drop off. Being able to read more than a page or so really helps. I thought I was a champion sleeper, then my meds worked.

3. I Kept My Bedroom Tidy

It’s incredible how easy it is to make a mess when you’re severely depressed. My room was so often under a foot of laundry that my partner used to joke I didn’t need carpets. I knew it was ridiculous, but I just couldn’t seem to stretch the extra inches to drop my dirty laundry into the washing basket.

My partner would round it up and wash it. I know what you’re thinking: how spoiled, I wouldn’t do that for my kids, but honestly, I’m too old to cover up smells with body spray, and that’s what I had started doing.

Then, my incredibly patient partner would put my clean clothes in a pile on my bed. All I had to do was pick up the piles, turn ninety degrees and put them in the drawers. That was too much. My clean clothes would end up on the floor, mixing with the dirty ones, and the mugs, plates, empty drinks cans, and other crap that would pile up because it was too much to take anything downstairs.

It was horrid. I thought I was just a slob, then my meds worked.

4. I Could Leave My Phone at Home Without Panicking

I’ll be the first to admit I’m hooked on the internet. Most people have a somewhat unhealthy connection with their phone these days, either because of Facebook, Twitter, eBay or whatever. This wasn’t that. This was an honest to goodness terror of being disconnected.

I was totally afraid of being alone, not being able to contact friends, even if only briefly. Quick texts became a mainstay of my coping mechanisms. Just the ability to reach out and make human contact with someone, if only to receive a smiley in return.

It helped a lot, on the odd occasion it actually got me through a dark thought or two. Knowing that is probably why I was so scared of being without it. I couldn’t go about more than 15 minutes without checking my phone, then my meds worked.

How To Still Be A GREAT Parent When You’re Depressed

5. I Drank Enough Water

I actually quite like really cold water. We have it freely accessible at work. All I had to do was fill my bottle, then fill my face. This was too much for me. Sometimes, I’d get to supper time having drunk nothing. I’d just about manage some soda at dinner time, or maybe some fruit juice.

It didn’t matter how much my partner nagged. She would hand me glasses of water, I’d take two sips, put them down, and they’d sit untouched. They still do some nights, but that’s because I’m no fan of our village water supply. My constant dehydration probably added to the problems I was having with my mental health. I just couldn’t see it. I thought the whole benefit of hydration was a myth, then my meds worked.

6. I Actually Enjoyed Silence

There’s a lot of white noise in your head, and when you’re depressed it hates you. It goes on and on about things that it knows will upset you. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I found that if I blocked the noises with music, films, anything at all, then I wasn’t likely to have a meltdown over some bullsh*t thing my head was banging on about now.

It takes its toll, constantly having noise is exhausting of the senses. Silence is restful, it’s good for the soul. I wanted to love it but I couldn’t stand it, then my meds worked.

I still have bad days, and sometimes these things come back and bite me on the proverbial, but now I know what causes them I can deal with them.

I didn’t write this article to crow about my meds… well, not just that anyway. Hopefully, it’ll shine a bit of a light for other people stuck with the same subtle, yet pervading physical symptoms of the dreaded depression.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: 6 VERY Unexpected Side Effects Of Finally Going On Antidepressants.

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5 Times to Embrace the Power of Negative Thinking

Yes, REALLY.

My whole life I have been told to embrace the power of positive thinking. This was something a lot of adults said to me, a negative, nervous little girl, riddled with anxiety.

Well, that and “stop worrying or you’ll give yourself an ulcer.”

Thanks, Mrs. Nicholson! Ulcers don’t work that way! Anxiety is more than something other than an annoyance for you to deal with from 9 to 3! Fourth grade was a living nightmare and also I hate you!

19 Quotes For When Anxiety Feels Completely Overwhelming

The truth of the matter is this, our negative emotions are just as important in our lives as our positive emotions.

I know that I, for one, used to view my negative emotions as things that were “bad”, that I needed to change. But in his new book, The Power Of Negative Thinking, Dr. Tim Lomas shows what he’s learned over the course of his career thus far — and a big part of that is how our understanding our negative emotions and letting them be can actually make us much more happier in the long run.

Here are some examples of the physical and mental benefits of our negative emotions. Now if you will excuse me, while you read I will go have a good cry.

1. Pulling Away When You’re Sad

When you go through something like a big break up, or you’re mourning the loss of a loved one, it’s totally normal to retreat from the world, wrap yourself up in a blanket and lay in your bed with only Netflix and the delivery guy for company and comfort. It’s just as normal for your friends to try and break you out of your funk.

But here’s the thing, neuroscientists have found that when you retreat this way your brain is telling your body to go into its own very necessary form of hibernation. It’s doing what it needs to do to let you heal and to help you feel stronger than ever. Let the streets know!

2. Crying Your Eyes Out

I cry at the drop of the hat. Happy, sad, angry, I am prone to cry. I used to get frustrated about this because as a working woman it’s a tough enough struggle as it is already without adding an ocean of tears into the equation. Plus, crying when you’re say, having a fight with a partner, completely undermines you leaving both parties frustrated.

Luckily there’s science behind our weeping. Tears remove toxins (including stress hormones), kill bacteria, and keep our mucus membranes moist and lubricated, making our sight better than ever. You know that great feeling of calm after a bout of weeping? There’s biology behind it! Crying clears up your perspective in more ways than one.

3. Feeling Incredibly Bored

When I was kid I was constantly complaining to my parents about being bored. My dad would cryptically respond to my complaints with “talk to me in twenty years.” I know what he means now, and I miss those days where I had even an extra to waste on a feeling like boredom.

It turns out I’m pining with good reason. A scientist discovered a strange pattern in our brain activity when we aren’t engaged in a specific task. He called this pattern the Default Mode Network (DMN). Today neuroscientists believe that the DMN plays a critical role in our artistic ideas, new thoughts, and sense of self. In short, when you think you’re bored you are probably right on track to be struck with a brilliant idea.

TERRIFYING: This Is What Happens To Your Body When You’re Stressed

4. When You’re Lonely

There is a real difference between feeling lonely and enjoy solitude. In the fuss of our constantly connected age, now more than ever we need to remember not just how to disconnect, but how to be alone, enjoying or solitude without feeling “lonely.”

Enjoying solitude can allow for your brain to “reboot,” helps bolster productivity, and solve problems with greater ease. There’s more to enjoying a night to yourself than eating a pint of ice cream and watching Mean Girls, science says so.

5. Those Times Anxiety Strikes

Anxiety is something we all experience in one form or another. Unless you are suffering from an anxiety disorder, daily anxiety can be helpful in encouraging you to test your boundaries, push yourself, and to be better prepared to face adversity.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield calls this embracing the power of negative thinking, and he’s right. Rather than looking at any of these negative feelings as hindrances, we should start seeing all the ways in which these natural and normal emotions help us in very real ways every day.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: 5 Scientific Reasons Anxious, Negative People Are Actually HEALTHIER.Save

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Single parent and the holiday season

The holiday season for a single parent can be an insanely stressful time. Looking for presents, wrapping them, cooking, getting the house ready for visitors, cleaning before and after. Nothing like a normal Saturday night on the couch in front of the TV or with a couple of close friends. The holidays demand perfection. You see it all around you, friends are talking about how stressed out they are, how much they still have to do in just a couple of days. Hyper-decorated stores are talking in their own way. As you approach the 25th of December you still haven’t bought half the gifts you need to rack up for family members, the house looks like a bomb crater and you occasionally wish yourself back in the office with piles of work on your desk waiting to be completed. There are even times when you would exchange a chilly Monday morning and an 8 o’clock meeting for this nerve-racking time that’s supposed to be happy, fun and merry.

What many rattled folks forget in the midst of buying last-minute bequests for loved ones or checking on the unhappy-looking beast in the oven minutes before guests arrive, wishing themselves far away, is that as many as half of the population faces a holiday season without their dearest family members. There are people who have lost their loved ones, even recently and in gruesome ways. I can’t even begin to imagine how they must feel, as they approach the coming holiday season. There are people who have lost their parents to old age, people who have gone through heartbreaking divorces, separations and breakups and people who are overseas defending their country because they have no other choice. The holidays will not be what they once were for any of them. And then there are the single parents, parents many of which have decent custody agreements that are “in the best interest of the children.” According to the US Census Bureau, there are more than 10 million single parents in the United States today. Each year millions among them can look forward to days of loneliness because the little ones they really want to spend time with are with the other parent.

When sane parents separate, many judges, thankfully, divide custody equally. Each parent gets his or her fair share of custody, if at all possible. Even when it’s not possible to share the time with the children equally, judges will usually attempt to divide up the holidays evenly. The kids spend every other holiday with mom and every other holiday with dad. It certainly is in the children’s best interest to get to spend some time with each parent. Most kids, with decent moms and dads, would prefer to spend every holiday with both parents. The precious little ones secretly hope for the impossible: That their divorced or separated parents will get back together. But despite their wishes, they adjust to the situation. They have no other choice.

Nor do the parents. As we face the holidays many single parents face a very lonely time. They may be with dear family members: parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles. Yet they may nonetheless feel a profound pain in their hearts, even as they watch close relatives savor the pecan pie or scream in delight when they rip open their Christmas presents. Their own children are far away. In most cases the youngsters are in a safe place elsewhere, stuffing their faces with goodies or breaking out laughing when the other grandpa makes a funny face. In most cases single parents know that their children are enjoying themselves in the company of the other caregiver and his or her extended family.

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Yet the children are missing from the scenery. Their absence is felt. “It hurts. It hurts every other Christmas when my kids are with their dad during the holidays,” says Wendy Thomas, a St. Louis, Missouri single mother of two girls ages 8 and 5. Thomas shares custody with the girls’ father, who lives in Illinois. “The first year was the hardest but I don’t think I will ever get used to it. Shopping malls and Silent Night make me shiver,” says the 38-year-old entrepreneur. This is her third Christmas and New Year’s without her children.

Each holiday a single parent truly misses his or her children on that one day that is supposed to bring delight to everyone. “It’s going to be a lonely, lonely Christmas without you” may just be tedious background music for the families that didn’t break apart. Each year, however, the oldie is causing a tiny tear to run quietly down the cheek of some single caregiver.

But could some of the reported agony over absent children during the holidays be the result of what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, a psychological mechanism we use to justify our choices and conflicting belief sets? For example, you choose to volunteer three hours a week at the local children’s hospital. It’s killing you. You can barely fit in everything else you have to do. But you tell everyone, including yourself, that volunteer work is truly rewarding and every (wo)man’s duty. Making irrational decisions seem rational is a way to preserve your sense of self worth.

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Studies show that the hardship involved in raising children makes us idealize parenthood and consider it an enormously rewarding enterprise. In a study published in the January 2011 issue of the journal Psychological Science researchers primed 80 parents with at least one child in two different ways. One group was asked to read a document reporting the costs of raising a child. The other parents read the same document as well as a script reporting on the benefits of having raised children when you reach old age. The participants were then given a psychological test assessing their beliefs about parenting. The team found what they expected. Parents who had only read about the financial costs of parenthood initially felt more discomfort than the other group. But they went onto idealize parenthood much more than the other participants and when interviewed later their negative feelings were gone.

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