The reason that I have posted this article is that so many people suffer
from annxiety. Anxiety,unless you understand it can be debilitating and terrifying, but believe me you are going to be fine. Often Anxiety is attached to trauma and subsequent phobias. I hope this article can make you feel a little better about this condition-Robert Heard.

What Is Anxiety? | Anxiety BC

What Is Anxiety?

Most people do not recognize their anxiety for what it is, and instead think there is something “wrong” with them. Some people are preoccupied with the symptoms of anxiety (e.g. stomach aches, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, etc.). Others think they are weird, weak, or even going crazy! Unfortunately, these thoughts only make people feel even more anxious and self-conscious.

Therefore, the first step to successfully managing anxiety is to learn to understand and recognize it. Self-awareness is essential!
Be sure to watch our video below for more information…press the play button to start

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The Facts!
Myth:Reading, thinking, and learning about anxiety will make you even MORE anxious.
Fact: If you do not know what you are dealing with, how do you manage it? Having accurate information about anxiety can reduce confusion, fear, and shame. Anxiety is a common and normal experience, and it CAN be managed successfully!

Learning the Facts about Anxiety

1. Anxiety is normal. Everyone experiences anxiety at times. For example, it is normal to feel anxious when on a rollercoaster, or before a job interview.

2. Anxiety is adaptive. It is a system in our body that helps us to deal with real danger (for example, anxiety allows us to jump out of the way of a speeding car) or to perform at our best (for example, it motivates us to prepare for a big presentation). When you experience anxiety, your body’s “fight-flight-freeze” response (also called the “adrenaline response”) is triggered. This prepares your body to defend itself.

More on Flight-Flight-Freeze
Our body’s natural alarm system (the fight-flight-freeze response) can be activated when there is a real danger, such as coming across a bear when hiking in the woods. In this case, you may flee (e.g., run away from the bear), freeze (e.g., stay still until the bear passes), or fight (e.g., yell and wave your arms to appear big and scary).

But this response can also happen when something simply feels dangerous, but really isn’t, such as being interviewed for a job. For example, you may feel jittery, on edge, or uncomfortable. You may snap at people (fight) or have a hard time thinking clearly (freeze). These feelings can become overwhelming enough that make you want to avoid doing the interview (flight). Many people stop doing things or going places that make them feel anxious.

Can you think some ways you may fight, flight, or freeze because of your anxiety?

3. Anxiety is not dangerous. Although anxiety may feel uncomfortable, it is not dangerous or harmful to you. Remember, all the sensations you feel when you are anxious are there to protect you from danger, not hurt you!

4. Anxiety does not last forever. When you are anxious, you may feel like the anxiety is going to last forever. But, anxiety is temporary and it will eventually decrease!

5. Anxiety is mostly anonymous. Most people (except those close to you) cannot tell when you are anxious because it does not show on your face.

6. Anxiety can become a problem. Anxiety is a problem when our body reacts as if there is danger when there is no real danger. It’s like having an overly senstive smoke alarm system in your body!

7. Anxiety problems are common. One-in-ten adults suffer from anxiety problems.

Anxiety is like a smoke alarm system:
A smoke alarm can help to protect us when there is an actual fire, but when a smoke alarm is too sensitive and goes off when there isn’t really a fire (e.g., burning toast in toaster), it is rather annoying.

Like a smoke alarm, anxiety is helpful and adaptive when it works right. But, if it goes off when there is no real danger, it is not only scary, it is also very exhausting.

However, we DO NOT want to get rid of the alarm (or eliminate anxiety) because it protects us from danger. We want to fix it (i.e., bring the anxiety down to a more manageable level) so it works properly for us!

What Happens to your Body when you are Anxious?

Anxiety can cause many sensations in your body as it prepares for danger. These sensations are called the “alarm reaction”, which takes place when the body’s natural Alarm System (that is, the “fight-flight-freeze” response) has been activated.

* Rapid heart beat and rapid breathing – When your body is preparing itself for action, it makes sure enough blood and oxygen is being circulated to your major muscle groups and essential organs, allowing you to run away or fight off danger.
* Sweating – Sweating cools the body. It also makes the skin more slippery and difficult for an attacking animal or person to grab hold of you.
* Nausea and stomach upset – When faced with danger, the body shuts down systems/processes that are not needed for survival; that way, it can direct energy to functions that are critical for survival. Digestion is one of the processes that is not needed at times of danger. Because of this, anxiety might lead to feelings of stomach upset, nausea, or diarrhea.
* Feeling dizzy or lightheaded – Because our blood and oxygen goes to major muscle groups when we are in danger, this means that we will breathe much faster in order to move oxygen toward those muscles. However, this can cause hyperventilation (too much oxygen from breathing very rapidly to prepare the body for action), which can makes you feel dizzy or lightheaded. Also, since most of your blood and oxygen is going to your arms and legs (for “fight or flight”), there is a slight decrease of blood to the brain, which can also make you dizzy. Don’t worry though: the slight decrease in blood flow to the brain is not dangerous at all!
* Tight or painful chest – Your muscles tense up as your body prepares for danger. So your chest may feel tight or painful when you take in large breaths while those chest muscles are tense.
* Numbness and tingling sensations – Hyperventilation (taking in too much oxygen) can also cause numbness and tingling sensations. The tingling sensations is also be related to the fact that the hairs on our bodies often stand up when faced with danger to increase our sensitivity to touch or movement. Finally, fingers and toes may also feel numb/tingly as blood flows away from places where it is not needed (like our fingers) and towards major muscle groups that are needed (like our arms).
* Unreality or bright vision – When responding to danger, our pupils dilate to let in more light and to make sure that we can see clearly enough. This reaction makes our environment look brighter or fuzzier, and sometimes less real.
* Heavy legs – As the legs prepare for action (fight or flight), increased muscle tension, as well as increased blood flow to those muscles, can cause the sensation of heavy legs.

More About How Anxiety Works

Anxiety does not only affect your body, but it also affects your thoughts and behaviours. Therefore, there are three parts to anxiety: physical symptoms (how our body responds), thoughts (what we say to ourselves), and behaviours (what we do or our actions). Learning to recognize these signs of anxiety can help you to be less afraid of it.

* Thoughts e.g., What if I forget what I want to say during the presentation?
* Behaviours e.g. find an excuse to get out of it
* Physical Symptoms e.g., stomach ache, cold sweat, heart racing

Recognizing physical symptoms of anxiety

You can learn to identify the physical signs of anxiety by asking yourself: “What happens when I’m anxious? Where do I feel the anxiety in my body?” For example, when you feel anxious, you may get butterflies in your stomach, sweat a lot, breathe heavily, and feel dizzy or lightheaded.

REMEMBER: If you often experience many uncomfortable physical symptoms, but doctors cannot find anything wrong with you physically, you may have problems with anxiety. You are definitely not “going crazy”! Although these symptoms may be uncomfortable, they are not harmful!
Recognizing anxious thoughts

Anxiety also affects how we think. Anxious thoughts typically involve a fear of something bad happening.

See Realistic Thinking for helpful tips on how to identify and challenge your anxious thoughts.
Recognizing anxious behaviours

Anxiety can make us feel very uncomfortable, and it can make us believe that we are in danger, so it is no wonder that you may feel a strong urge to escape or avoid situations/activities/people that make you anxious. For example, if you are scared of dogs, you would probably avoid going to places where you may encounter a dog (e.g., dog park).

To help you identify situations that you avoid, try to come up with as many answers as possible to the following:

* If you wake up tomorrow morning and all your anxiety had magically disappeared, what would you do?
* How would you act?
* How would someone close to you know you weren’t anxious?

Finish the following sentences:

* My anxiety stops me from .
* When I am not anxious, I will be able to.

Once you are able to understand and recognize anxiety, you will be better prepared to move on to the next stage – learning how to manage anxiety!

Technorati Tags: trauma, anxiety, phobias,

The Myth of depression by Robert Heard

Why do so many people get depressed or what they think is depression? The medical community uses the DSM IV to guide them through diagnosis that has absolutely no basis in terms of research evidence. We use terms like Bipolar,Manic Depression. These are simply myths and relate to ones emotional state and as far as we know there is no chemical cure. And, chemical cures do not work at all, such is the case with anti-depressants. Latest studies in the U.K. strongly indicate that anti-depressants are of no use to anyone as they do not work. They cause side effects such as suicidal thoughts, sexual dysfunction and are highly addictive.

So what is the answer to life’s down side in terms of how we may feel if something goes wrong in our life such as trauma, loss, abuse, domestic violence. Psychotherapy has prevailed as the only option to help people with so-called depression. It is a lot if work, but has shown many excellent results in a relatively short time. This is done with out medication or chemicals of any sort.

The pressures of big pharma are enormous as well as the medical profession. If you feel like you may be depressed and your Doctors gives you a prescription for anti-depressants you know this will not help you and get someone to refer you to a good therapist, something that doctors know nothing about.

Marriage is the foundation upon which your entire family is structured. If your marriage is strong, your whole family will be strong; your life will be more peaceful, you’ll be a better parent, and you’ll, quite simply, have more fun in your life.

Make a Commitment
To create and maintain a strong marriage you will have to take the first critical step: You must be willing to put time, effort, and thought into your marriage. When I made this statement during a lecture, one woman spoke up. She had a quiet voice, but she spoke with determination, “Elizabeth, I hear you, and I know what you say is right. But I have three preschoolers! I work part-time, do all my own housework, cooking, and laundry. I just don’t have any more energy at the end of the day to ‘work’ on my marriage.”

I noticed that several other women in the room were nodding their heads as she spoke and they waited for my response. “I certainly understand! I have four children and my own business, I know how busy life can be. But let me ask you one vital question: how would you like to have three preschoolers, work part-time, do your own housework, cooking, and laundry, and do it all as a single mother? Because if you take care of everything else, and neglect your marriage, that’s what could happen.”

Suddenly every mother who nodded a minute ago was looking at me with wide eyes. The thought that their marriage, which was at the very bottom of their priority list, could be in jeopardy, hit them very hard. I noticed that I now had the complete attention of several of the fathers who earlier seemed lost in their own thoughts.

Let’s take another look at the commitment statement mentioned earlier. You must be willing to put time, effort, and thought into your marriage. The ideas that follow will help you follow through on this commitment and will put new life and meaning into your marriage. A wonderful thing may happen. You may fall in love with your spouse all over again. In addition, your children will greatly benefit from your stronger relationship. Children feel secure when they know that Mom and Dad love each other—particularly in today’s world, where 50 percent of marriages end in divorce; half of your children’s friends have gone, or are going through a divorce; or maybe it’s your kids who have survived a divorce and are now living in a new family arrangement. Your children need daily proof that their family life is stable and predictable. When you make a commitment to your marriage, your children will feel the difference. No, they won’t suffer from neglect! They’ll blossom when your marriage—and their homelife—is thriving.

Look For the Good
You married this person for many good reasons. Your partner has many wonderful qualities. Your first step in adding sizzle to your marriage is to look for the good and overlook the bad.

Make it a habit to ignore the little annoying things—dirty socks on the floor, a day-old coffee cup on the counter, worn-out flannel pajamas, an inelegant burp at the dinner table—and choose instead to search for those things that make you smile: the way he rolls on the floor with the baby; the fact that she made your favorite cookies, the peace in knowing someone so well that you can wear your worn-out flannels or burp at the table.

Give Two Compliments Every Day
Now that you’ve committed to seeing the good in your partner, it’s time to say it! This is a golden key to your mate’s heart. Our world is so full of negative input, and we so rarely get compliments from other people. When we do get a compliment, it not only makes us feel great about ourselves, it actually makes us feel great about the person giving the compliment! Think about it! When your honey says, “You’re the best. I’m so glad I married you,” it not only makes you feel loved, it makes you feel more loving.

Compliments are easy to give and they’re free. Compliments are powerful; you just have to make the effort to say them. Anything works: “Dinner was great, you make my favorite sauce.” “Thanks for picking up the cleaning. It was very thoughtful, you saved me a trip.” “That sweater looks great on you.”

Play Nice
That may sound funny to you, but think about it. How many times do you see—or experience—partners treating each other in impolite, harsh ways that they’d never even treat a friend? Sometimes we take our partners for granted and unintentionally display rudeness. As the saying goes, if you have a choice between being right and being nice, just choose to be nice. Or to put this in the wise words of Bambi’s friend Thumper, the bunny rabbit, “If you can’t say somethin’ nice don’t say nothin’ at all.”

Pick Your Battles
How often have you heard this advice in relation to parenting? This is great advice for child-rearing—and it’s great advice to follow in your marriage as well. In any human relationship there will be disagreement and conflict. The key here is to decide which issues are worth pursuing and which are better off ignored. By doing this, you’ll find much less negative energy between you. From now on, anytime you feel annoyed, take a minute to examine the issue at hand, and ask yourself a few questions. “How important is this?” “Is this worth picking a fight over?” “What would be the benefit of choosing this battle versus letting it go?”

The 60-Second Cuddle
You can often identify a newly married couple just by how much they touch each other—holding hands, sitting close, touching arms, kissing—just as you can spot an “old-married” couple by how little they touch. Mothers, in particular, often have less need for physical contact with their partners because their babies and young children provide so much opportunity for touch and cuddling that day’s end finds them “touched fulfilled”. So here’s a simple reminder: make the effort to touch your spouse more often. A pat, a hug, a kiss, a shoulder massage—the good feeling it produces for both of you far outweighs the effort.

Here’s the deal: Whenever you’ve been apart, make it a rule that you will take just 60 seconds to cuddle, touch, and connect. This can be addictive! If you follow this advice, soon you’ll find yourselves touching each other more often, and increasing the romantic aspect of your relationship.

Spend More Time Talking and Listening
I don’t mean, “Remember to pick up Jimmy’s soccer uniform.” Or “I have a PTA meeting tonight.” Rather, get into the habit of sharing your thoughts about what you read in the paper, what you watch on TV, your hopes, your dreams, your concerns. Take a special interest in those things that your spouse is interested in and ask questions. And then listen to the answers.

Enjoy Couple Time
It can be very difficult for your marriage to thrive if you spend all your time being “Mommy” and “Daddy.” You need to spend regular time as “Husband” and “Wife.” This doesn’t mean you have to take a two-week vacation in Hawaii. (Although that might be nice, too!) Just take small daily snippets of time when you can enjoy uninterrupted conversation, or even just quiet companionship, without a baby on your hip, a child tugging your shirtsleeve, or a teenager begging for the car keys. A daily morning walk around the block or a shared cup of tea after all the children are in bed might work wonders to reconnect you to each other. And yes, it’s quite fine to talk about your children when you’re spending your time together, because, after all, your children are one of the most important connections you have in your relationship.

When you and your spouse regularly connect in a way that nurtures your relationship, you may find a renewed love between you, as well as a refreshed vigor that will allow you to be a better, more loving parent. You owe it to yourself—and to your kids—to nurture your relationship.

So take my challenge and use these ideas for the next 30 days. And watch your marriage take on a whole new glow.

To read on please click here

Answer

Ourselves.. Because we look for a magic pill to solve our problems. The understanding of the problems lies it’s dissolution..

Answer

You. Never blame others for your own problems. I believe people have bad luck sometimes, but it is always up to you to change the outcome.

Answer

Man always leaned upon their own understandings instead of looking at how the out come my affect others. Each action we do, plays a huge part in our life and it’s up to us if we are willing to make the right changes.

answer

there can be more than one answer here. Satan, you, and God. Satan always wants to hurt you, especially if you don’t belong to him, You can make bad decisions and hurt yourself, God allows things to come your way to build your character. If you invite Jesus to be Lord of yur life, nothing will ever happen to you without it getting by God first, and if it does, you can be sure some how, some way , it is for your good.

Another Perspective

Asking who is to blame is the wrong question. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what you are going to do about the problems in your life… how you are going to face them and overcome them. Problems come to everyone… some we can avoid and some we can’t, but the point is, we need to face those problems, learn from them, and improve our lives because of them. If we stand around arguing about whose fault it is, we are letting them control us, rather than the other way around.

Yet Another Prospective…
Blame is like trying to back out of an accident after it happens. You cannot change the past. You CAN choose the future. You can spend your time after the accident making things worse by ruminating and trying to recreate the past. Or you can spend the time trying to make what happens next…better. You do this by replacing blame with taking responsibility. Unless you are trying to win a court lawsuit, blame is not constructive, it is really just drama and ego defense in action.

My philosophy is this: “Everything that happens to me in my life is the result of some decision (big or small) that Imade at some point along the way, that ultimately affected the outcome.” Think about it…

Answer

Sometimes you just have to let go .. and look up , and see that the order of things in this world is still growing like a little child.

Another Answer

I think you should be asking yourself that because sooner or later you’re going to come to the conclusion that everybody fears to hear and learn… It’s all your fault. you choose the path you take (of course unless you live with your demanding parents. but even then you can choose your path). People ask this question to try to relieve themselves of the responsibility because they cant handle it…. but rarely there is someone else that is at fault, but if you let them continue then it will only be your own fault. As i see it people may think God or The Devil have something to do with this… but they don’t. God watches over you and is there when you need to talk. the devil eggs you on but doesn’t force you to do anything, he lies and tells you things to TRY to make you go to the bad path. but you make the decisions and if you let the devil control you it means you’re weak and need time. Just think about it somewhat like the poem “the road not taken” by Robert Frost:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

And you can make a difference… a difference for good. and not committing anything bad so you wont have to blame anyone else for things you choose and remember: “Don’t regret something that once made you laugh” …. or smile, love, etc, etc

To read on please click here

When you have problems in your relationship, it is easy to start placing blame. However, it is not healthy, especially not if you want the relationship to last very long. It does not matter why you are placing blame, it is not a good idea.

So, next time you find yourself thinking any of the following, stop yourself and follow the steps for how to stop placing blame:

I did so much to try and make her/him happy, but she/he refuses to acknowledge that.
I have sacrificed so much for them and they do not even notice.
If they would not be stubborn our relationship would be ideal.

If, if, if, they, they, they.The game of blame.

Blame kills beautiful relationships, and creates hatred between lovers. So, if you find that you start going from “our” to “me and you” you can know you are falling into the balme game, so try to following to put a stop to it:

1. Stop and reflect. You need to say to yourself that you are in a rut, you are placing blame when you should be moving on, so it is time to ask yourself if the relationship has gone beyond repair. Is the relationship giving more pain than pleasure? If so, it would be wise to see help, such as a therapist or counselor, or separate.
2. Recognize your reasons. Why do we blame somebody else for problems in OUR relationship? It does not matter if it their kids, your mother, a friend, or the other person in the relationship, blame is unhealthy. Blaming others is an easy way out. Occasionally another person is responsible for what might have gone wrong, but how we react to it and handle it is our own responsibility, and placing blame does not help anything.
3. Change your ways. If you want a healthy relationship, whether new or previously established you need to realize that even if one partner has blundered, the other should support him/her. Rather than taking the accusing tone, it will be a tone of understanding and being together to work through a problem. If you become accusatory you need to change how you are acting. Ask yourself if the same blame would have been put in the beginning of the relationship.

If you want to stop placing blame in your relationship you need to recognize what makes a relationship healthy so you can avoid behaviors that are unhealthy. In relationships, you are not supposed to punish the other person in any way for whatever fault, you are supposed to help them be better, love them despite their faults. Then, if you partner keeps making the same mistake, or keeps repeating destructive behavior, you have the freedom to leave. Blame and tearing someone down is abuse. It should not be done. So, either move away or come together again and leave the blame behind, it is up to you.

Blaming someone is an indication of deeper relationship problems, so to stop the blame, fix the relationship. Regain your love, respect, and desire to uplift, not drag down, the person you are with.

If both of you are placing blame on external things, such as “Our second marriage would work if neither one of us had kids coming in.” Then it is time to put a stop to it, own up to your responsibility and stop placing blame, instead fix the issues, or move on. If you never learn to stop placing blame, you will never have a successful and fulfilling relationship because instead of fixing issues, you will ignore them and blame someone else.

To read on please click here

‘It’s all in your head” isn’t something a chronically depressed person likes to hear. In the age of Prozac, when adjusting your serotonin level is as normal as checking the oil in your car, it seems unhelpful to suggest that someone might think their way into – or out of – a disease of the mind.

And yet depression is all in our heads. Where else would it be? The real question, still hotly debated in the scientific community, is whether its cause is chemical and ultimately curable (good news for Big Pharma) or something far more complex (good news for poets and pot-smoking students of existential philosophy).

There is no doubt that depression exists. Inexplicable sadness – or “melancholia,” as it was historically known – has been with us since Hippocrates conceived his famous oath. But a groundbreaking new study has found that not only is depression affected by the way we think about it, so too is its cure.

Last week Irving Kirsch, a professor at the University of Hull in the U.K., presented a study that found Prozac and its ilk are no more effective than placebos in treating depression. In his view, there is no substantial link between serotonin – the brain chemical that antidepressants are supposed to regulate – and chronic depression.

It’s a controversial study – one that many members of the psychiatric community reject out of hand – but it also raises a nagging question about depression: How did it come to be recognized as a disease in the first place?

Like Hirsch, psychologist and writer Gary Greenberg is part of a growing number of psychiatric professionals who have begun to publicly question the underpinnings of popular thinking on depression.

His recent book, Manufacturing Depression, debunks the prevailing notion that depression is a disease and anti-depressants the long-awaited cure.

In his view, the game is rigged. As he told me in a phone interview, “the disease was invented to justify the cure.”

Greenberg sums up the history of modern depression like this: In the 1950s, doctors researching drugs for unrelated illnesses discovered that certain substances made people feel high. They didn’t know why or how, just that they’d struck oil. These psychoactive drugs were marketed as mood enhancers and by the 1960s minor tranquilizers like Valium and Librium were routinely prescribed to people who these days would likely be classified as clinically depressed. Once the market was established, the race was on to develop the perfect mood-elevating pill. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies began to search for a way to increase the market share. An executive at the U.S. drug company Merck had a brilliant idea – why not broaden the diagnostic criteria for depression in order to sell more people the drugs? They recruited a doctor to write a book entitled Recognizing the Depressed Patient, which was then distributed to some 50,000 doctors around the country. The strategy was a resounding success and stands as an early triumph of viral marketing. And the script in that book is the same criteria doctors today use to determine whether a patient qualifies for anti-depressants and is, by extension, “chemically imbalanced.”

In his own book, Greenberg participates in a clinical trial himself, signing up first as a minor depressive (for which he believes himself qualified) and later getting upgraded to major depressive simply by answering the questions honestly.

As a clinician he takes issue with the methodology used to determine depression. He points out that answering “yes” to questions like “Have you been feeling depressed lately?” and “Do you ever wonder if life is worth living?” may be evidence that you are a Prozac candidate or simply a natural response to watching the latest news on the BP oil spill.

“With clinical depression, the symptoms justify the disease,” he says. “There’s an infinite regress and no bottom. Don’t forget they used to be able to scientifically ‘diagnose’ homosexuality the same way.”

As a practising psychologist, Greenberg knows the dirty truth about anti-depressants – that the theory on which their effectiveness is based is just that: a theory. The notion of chemical imbalance has never been proven and remains highly controversial. It is, according to Greenberg, “a myth, which, like all great myths, gathers together the central beliefs and ethos of a society.” In this case, it’s the belief in magic-bullet medicine combined with the prevalence of materialism (i.e. the belief that psychological truths can be located in the physical brain).

And of course, it’s all very convenient for Big Pharma, which makes billions curing people of a disease that may not exist. Last year in Canada alone, almost 35-million prescriptions were filled for anti-depressants, at a total cost of over $1.5-billion.

This is not to say that Greenberg agrees with Kirsch. “His interpretation of the effects of consciousness-altering drugs doesn’t really add up. Frankly I don’t think he’s taken many of them.”

While Greenberg believes depression is over-diagnosed and anti-depressants are over-prescribed, he sees nothing wrong with experimenting with pharmaceuticals in order to alleviate sadness or mental suffering, which are of course as old as human consciousness itself. He just wishes we would understand that that’s what we’re doing, rather than convincing ourselves we’re suffering from a mental illness and in need of a cure. Such behaviour brings to mind my temperance worker grandmother who used to allow herself a thimble of whisky every night on the grounds that her doctor had prescribed it as “medicine.”

“When we call a form of suffering an illness, we are saying it deserves recognition and resources. In this case, unfortunately, the kind of resources it commands are money for drugs. What if we could use those resources for other things – say, to figure out ways to make our society less isolating, less individualistic?”

There’s no question where Greenberg lands on the scale between Big Pharma and the poets.

As for me, I’d rather get on with life. And by that I mean staring at the wall and contemplating whether it’s actually worth living.

To read on please click here

“You make me so angry.” “My life is ruined because of the things he’s done to me.” “If it weren’t for those jerks I’d be fine.”

When we let blame control our thinking, we waste precious time and energy mulling over angry thoughts against others. We dull our awareness of our own choices, robbing ourselves of opportunities to gain deeper insight and choose better options. Worrying about the faults of other people, or as Stephen Covey puts it, “confessing their sins” is a waste of time and energy and pulls us down. Blaming and complaining get us no where, and actually make us feel worse, and add to the stress of those around us

Victims
By blaming others we transfer power to “them”, and paralyze ourselves while we wait for “them” to change or release their hold on us. By remaining locked into our victimized explanations, we become helpless to change a situation or attitude, while we pour our energy into complaining and anger, and other misdirected activities that can’t resolve our issues. Helpless thoughts lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, and chronic anger.

As victims, instead of taking steps to help ourselves, we lobby against others, looking for supporters to help justify our anger and blame. We harden our hearts against others, making our world more antagonistic and combative. We may also believe that we’ll be better off if bad things happen to the ones we are blaming, as if their misfortune will relieve our anxiety.

Since our problems are caused by other people, we hope they’ll be resolved by other people. We passively wait for a rescuer, in the form of a parent, a lottery ticket, a perfect lover or a discoverer of some kind, who will pull us out of our circumstances and place us in a position where we can get what we deserve. Since we have no control over the rescuer, we remain trapped in our situation, firmly entrenched as helpless victims.

Improve our opportunities
When we begin to see how our habit of blaming has reduced our chances for success and made our world a harsher place to live, we look for more positive options. When we want to create our best opportunities, and live most harmoniously with the people in our world, we need to unlearn the habit of blaming. By giving up blame we make available a range of options: grow, negotiate, move on, or rethink our communication or attitude. We reclaim the power over our own choices, improving our opportunities for change by focusing on our own responsibility, and withdrawing our attention from situations over which we have no control.

Deep Roots, Persistent habits
Unfortunately, these habits of assigning responsibility run deep in our mental model of the world. We rarely can stop blaming just because we want to. What gives our blame so much energy, erupting into antagonism against a perceived enemy? Blame often makes us feel like small children, and it is in the behavior and thoughts of small children that we can find the origins of our habits.

When we were little children, breaking the rules unleashed our parent’s anger. If our parents convinced us they loved us anyway, we were able to tolerate their accusations. On the other hand, if we believed they would no longer love us because of something we did, we became desperate to defend ourselves against the terror that we might lose their love. Sometimes we tried to change the past by simply lying that we didn’t do the thing we were being accused of. When that didn’t work we tried shifting out from under the burden of responsibility by accusing our siblings or playmates. When our parents let us get away with blaming others as an excuse for our behavior we learned to use blame to temporarily relieve the anxiety of the deep terror of losing our parents’ love.

Children also develop ideas about personal responsibility by listening to the way our parents interpret the world. When they blamed others, we soaked up the information that adults, too, may avoid their own responsibility by assigning it to someone else. We may have even heard them relieve themselves of responsibility by angrily attacking a whole group of people, unwittingly planting the seeds of bigotry and hate within us.

When we’ve been blaming others in the world since we were children, we grow up with the belief system that some people cause other people’s problems. Given these beliefs, when we try to understand the cause of events, especially things that happen to us, we automatically look for the person to blame. These habits are built so deeply into the way we understand the world, a world without a culprit seems unfamiliar and strange, and changing our outlook can take persistent hard work.

Flexible approach to cause and effect
One reason blame is so attractive is because we can usually find a kernel of truth in it. This moral justification makes it difficult to let go. We need to see that there is more than one way to look at the same truth. When we look for more effective ways to explain events, we begin to see that the other person’s responsibility in the matter is only a partial picture of reality. When we take in the whole picture, there are many other factors to consider. We learn that the world we want to create for ourselves and our family includes other truths, such as forgiveness, acceptance of others, and choosing to look within ourselves at the “beam in our own eye” rather than focusing too much energy on the “mote” in someone else’s.

Forgiving
Forgiveness was important enough to attract attention from the founders of the world’s great religions. “Love thy neighbor, as thyself.” “Be kind to them that abuse you.” “Put not out the mote in thy neighbor’s eye, when you have yet to put out the beam in thine own.” While we often think of religious teachings as limited to the ethical and moral realms, when we look at the results of forgiveness we recognize its value for personal growth, as well. As we stop blaming and start forgiving, we realize how much we were using blame to protect ourselves from fully embracing our own responsibility. By stopping our habit of blame, we learn more about ourselves, and discover more opportunities to grow and stay mentally and socially healthy.

Some people become confused about forgiveness because it sounds like we’re letting go of all responsibility and allowing others to discard the rules of society. But forgiveness can complement personal responsibility. Forgiveness allows us to let go of the past, while we continue to maintain our best effort and clear thinking about personal responsibility in the present.

Untying the anxiety knot
When we feel vulnerable or fearful, we naturally want to relieve our anxiety. If we use blame to relieve anxiety, we turn against others, or against ourselves, and undermine our own growth and awareness. Rather than using blame to distract us from our fears and anxieties, we can face our feelings directly. We can learn to identify our agitated feelings, and learn how to soothe ourselves, using tools such as muscle relaxation, breathing, prayer, exercise, positive visualization, and positive self-talk.

Learning the value of our choices
Our habit of blaming is part of a vicious circle. We blame others because we feel they have power and we don’t. And yet, we fail to act, keeping ourselves in a position of helplessness, that further justifies our blaming. To break out of this circle, we need to understand all the parts of it, including learning about and healing from the obstacles that block us from choice and action, and learning how to become more active, responsible participants in our own life.

We may fail to act responsibly because of low self-esteem, assuming that others have the power and authority, while we are mere bystanders. When we examine our attitude carefully, we realize that our assumptions about our own ineffectiveness are trapping us into inaction. By improving our sense of empowerment, we can become slower to blame, and quicker to take personal responsibility for resolving the issues that bother us.

We may be averse to acting because we fear failure. If we believe that choices and actions are risky, we’ll naturally prefer that someone else take the action. While we are waiting for others to make the choice, we are doomed to become victims, feeling that our only option is to blame those people who have not yet acted.

To break this cycle, we need to become comfortable with our own choices and accept that risk is part of life. We may tend to avoid risk because we were trained as children to fear rather than trust our choices. Perhaps our parents didn’t give us enough encouragement, or they let us know that they felt their own range of action was small and discouraging. From their training, we may have formed a belief that the universe is a dangerous place, with few second chances. As adults, we can turn these attitudes around, and look at choices not as an opportunity for disaster, but as an opportunity to either achieve our goals or learn about the methods that don’t work. Many successful people look at mistakes as a step along the road to success.

As we explore our actions and their results, we realize that everything we do or don’t do affects the people around us. Once we face the fact that our actions affect the people in our world, we begin to realize that we have personal responsibility to do our best. This sense of responsibility energizes us, and we find ourselves at the opposite extreme from victimization, feeling that our actions have true value in the world.

In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey teaches empowering ways to approach life. By taking responsibility for the things over which we have control, and learning to spend less time worrying about things outside our control, we use our valuable time in the most effective way.

Passing healthy explanations along to our children
Another way to help unravel the cycle of blame is to pass along to our children a sense of forgiveness and love. Many of us feel that when our children make a mistake, we must drive home the lesson that they’ve done the wrong thing. If our message conveys the possibility that they might lose our love, they learn to shy away from risks, or even from taking responsibility for their own actions. When we let our children know we understand their faults and love them anyway, they can feel more confident that they’ll keep our love even if they make a mistake and they’ll be better equipped to face responsibility throughout life.

Conclusion
Exploring the dimension of blame offers us a life-changing opportunity to determine the guiding principle around which we want to orient our lives. If we focus on blame, we are doomed to seeing ourselves as helpless victims. When we organize our lives around the choices within our circle of influence, the beam in our own eye, the things we can influence, including emotions such as forgiveness, we empower ourselves to solve problems and create success and health.

See also: Anger, Anxiety, Assertiveness, Beliefs, Child within, Decisions, Depression, Faith, Leadership, Self-esteem, Soothing

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I think unhappiness is an emotion and depression is a state of mind, the opposite is happiness or euphoria. I don’t understand why people take medications when they are going through hardships in their life, as if they have a disease. Life contains the full spectrum of emotions, including happiness, anger, sadness, etc. Do people have to always be happy, saying “I’m good” when people ask “How are you?”, smiling with shining white teeth? Why do you always have to be a happy, positive go-lucky type of person who pops pills whenever they are feeling less than fabulous? Isn’t depression natural?

I have been very depressed before, so I’m not marginalizing people who have serious depression. It was a dark period in my life and I got over it. My doctor tried to give me antidepressants but I point blank questioned him and asked why I should take them. He tried to explain the “chemical imbalance” crap to me and I asked him to do a test to show that I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. He didn’t have anything to say to that. I refused to take the medication. I wasn’t going to take MORE chemicals to fix a “chemical imbalance” that doctors thought I had, without doing any tests.

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Can people just fall out of love?

No. Love is an intense emotion that is strengthened over time. It is not something that is there one day and gone the next. Love is not the same as physical attraction and it is not the same as neediness. Love is a feeling of unconditional acceptance of and appreciation for another’s talents, personality, thoughts and beliefs.

One of the main causes for the breakdown in marriages is that people don’t spend enough time together. They take their marriages and their spouses for granted. The breakdown happens slowly, almost invisibly as each person begins to rearrange their priorities, taking more and more time away from each other. They allow work, the kids, soccer games, community activities, extended family obligations, and hobbies to becomes more important than spending time together. When this happens, people grow apart. They become two strangers passing in the night. They’re no longer a team. And, because they’re distant, the little time they do spend together is unfulfilling and void of intimacy.

This distance and alienation sometimes fools people into thinking they’ve fallen out of love. They feel numb. They can’t imagine ever re-igniting those loving feelings. But the truth is, the love hasn’t been destroyed, it’s just camouflaged beneath the numbness. By acknowledging the mistakes and re-doing the family priorities to include more quality time together, the feelings of warmth, connection, friendship and intimacy can be restored.

Divorce is the lazy way to deal with a marriage that has become unfulfilling. Divorce in most cases is simply a way to escape looking at how each has contaminated the relationship and let it spin out of control. But the truth is that most marriages can not only be saved, they can be transformed into a welcome and nurturing part of life. It just requires a commitment to each other and to spending more time together.

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