Anxiety and you

Have you felt anxious at some point in your life?

Frequent worrier?

Have illness, being fired, feeling discriminated, unemployment, job searching, new job, moving to a new city— made you feel stressed and overloaded?

Have you had full blown panic attacks – chest pain, palpitations, sweating, shortness of breath and dizziness?

Is your anxiety becoming part of a cycle of doubt, worry, fear, inaction, paralysis, depression?

“You need some anxiety in your life and it’s there for a reason. It’s what motivates us to work and keeps us out of trouble,” says Dr. Tom Rebori, medical director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Center at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Illinois.

If anxiety is interfering with your daily life – disrupting sleep or concentration – it could mean that you have an anxiety disorder. New treatments and research offer good news: anxiety disorders are highly treatable.

Here are the four main anxiety disorders, plus tips and techniques to cope with them and learn to deal with them.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

In the last six months, have you spent half of the days worrying?

Excessive worrying — which interferes with daily life — also causes physical symptoms like low energy, sleep disturbances, muscle tension, sweating, nausea and difficulty concentrating.

Here are two ways of coping.

Keep a worry log so you see patterns and learn to replace negative thinking with another thought until you gradually change your inner dialogue.

Set up “worry periods.” Dr. Dave Carbonell at Anxiety Treatment Center in New York tells patients to set up two 10-minute worry periods every day where they can isolate themselves. By giving their full attention to the worry, it becomes boring because there’s not that much content to it.

Panic Disorder

Scared of losing control, that you’re dying or fearful that you’re going crazy?

Panic attacks occur in certain settings—a crowded mall, elevators. You can associate a situation with that reaction and start avoiding certain situations. Just because you’ve had a panic attack doesn’t mean you have panic disorder, though, unless you’ve had at least two unexpected panic attacks, followed by at least one month of concern about experiencing another attack.

Getting to understand what’s happening is key to treating the disorder: facing (not avoiding certain situations), accepting (not fighting the panic attack, but welcoming it), floating (relaxing through the anxiety without resistance, like floating through water) and letting time pass (knowing that the attack will pass).

Phobia

Social phobias involve an intense fear of situations – usually social or performance-related settings – for fear of having a panic attack.

Specific phobias involve an excessive fear of an object or situation that causes anxious symptoms similar to a panic attack.

Social phobias are treated the same as panic disorders. For specific phobias, the common treatment is gradual exposure.

The first step is to talk about the fear to begin to understand that you won’t die or go crazy when in contact with object or situation.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Whereas GAD patients worry about the future, PTSD involves worrying about something that happened.

PTSD is a condition where sufferers have been through some kind of traumatic experience. The symptoms are a heightened degree of arousal, nightmares or recurring thoughts, feelings of detachment, sleep problems, high startle response or jumpiness, flashbacks and depression.

Treatment is learning how to live in the present through relaxation.

Anxiety disorder symptoms can come and go. Yet it makes common sense to ease stress, eat healthier and exercise – lifetime habits that will help in the long run.

Set aside time every day for relaxing – use aPrayer, meditate, go for a mindful walk, enjoy a hot or naked yoga session, listen to music, soak in a hot bath – anything where you’re just being you.

For more information:

Edmund J. Bourne, The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, New Harbinger Publications: 2000.

Anxiety Disorders Association of America
http://www.adaa.org

National Institute of Mental Health
http://www.nimh.nih.gov

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408133020.htm

Men’s boundaries and thresholds

When do men face thresholds?

Between land and water.
Between land and air.
Between land above and land below.
Between each other.

Each threshold, though, is a new opportunity to grow, a challenge to defy or an obstacle to overcome.

Trinity West Fine Art Gallery in the Dallas Design District recently announced painter Robert Dye’s new body of work, “At the Threshold,”
that will be featured at a solo show at the gallery.

Dye, known for his water-filled landscapes, blurs the distinction between landscape and pure abstract imagery. Painterly yet precise.

After beginning his career at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibiting in numerous group and solo shows in the Philadelphia area, the painter now lives and creates his art in Dallas.

Dye declared that Texas, “with its big skies and wide-open landscapes, has brought more atmosphere” to his paintings.

The opening reception will be Saturday September 21, 2013, from 6-9pm at the gallery, a new addition to the Dallas Design District focusing on North Texas art and artists.

Trinity West Fine Art

2335 Valdina Street, Dallas, Texas

Hours 10:00 to 5:00 pm
Tuesday through Friday
Saturday by appointment.

Tel. 214-688-0288

gallery@trinitywestfineart.com

Act today and look toward tomorrow

Tolerance may be a good thing. Complacency may deter you from your goals.

Tolerating something – an aggressive coworker, a runny toilet or a squeaky wheel – continually drains your energy, like filing a cup upon which someone has made little holes.

Does continuous tolerance or complacency keep you from being yourself and evolving quickly as a human being?

How often do you distinguish between your activities that are incomplete, unresolved and require resolution or those that are unfinished, still needing work and require action?

In your life, how many things are unresolved or infinished?

Here are two simple exercises to help you break those negative reinforcing loops of tolerance and complacency.

List five unresolved issues or situations (large or small) that are draining your energy. Circle one that you can complete today.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

List five things (small or large) you’re putting up with or tolerating. Circle the one that you can eliminate TODAY.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

What’s the one big change that would make the most difference in your life?

What’s the first step you will take in the direction of that change?

When will you do this?

How do you love?

What is the bond?

What do you feel toward family and friends?

Do you feel affection, loyalty and strength?

Is the relationship essential to your well being?

Philia.

How do you love?

Is your love unconditional love?

Is your love altruistic love?

How does your love as a spiritual man challenge you to “love your enemies,” or to “love without thought of return?”

How does your love flow out to others?

Is your love filled with compassion, kindness, tenderness and charitable giving?

Agape.

Passion back in fashion

What is your passion?

Start defining your passions in life by thinking about other things first! Ask yourself these questions. It’s a good practice to take stock from year to year as there are likely changes of which you must become aware.

What’s my mission?

Have you defined your mission to help you choose a course of action?

What are my strengths, values and skills?

How can I bring my purpose to life?

How do I define the contribution I want to make?

How can I bring that contribution I want to make to life?

How will my purpose be meaningful to others?

What is the solution specific to your skill set that will bring the purpose that is meaningful enough to generate the passion I will need to sustain it?

How will I amplify it?

What will I share and how much?

What do I listen for to be truly engaged, genuine and meaningful?

Feelings and things

“Many historians are grounded in the belief that objects are not supposed to cause you to have feelings. When it comes to this stuff, though, each thing has its own little human story. How can you not feel a personal connection?”

William Bird, author, Souvenir Nation (2013).

Pronounscape

On a blank piece of paper, as best as you can, draw yourself as a figure. On your drawing, mark or put an arrow:

Where do you feel when you hear your actual name?

Where do you feel when you hear your nickname?

Where do you feel when you hear your birth name?

Where do you feel when you hear You?

Where do you feel when you hear I?

Where do you feel when you hear Me?

Where do you feel when you hear Myself?

Feelings and things

Many historians are grounded in the belief that objects are not supposed to cause you to have feelings. When it comes to this stuff, though, each thing has its own little human story. How can you not feel a personal connection?

William Bird, author, Souvenir Nation (2013).

Keys to personal improvement and development

As you learn how adapt to your capacities, you literally move into a new way of being.

You are a human being learning to benefit from your hour of focus.

Learn how to play with time in such a way as to develop a skill or move a project forward. Set backs can only propel you forward. The bruise will heal. Let go of the past and move on.

Learn to navigate the complexity of life with elegance and confidence.