There is a new way of managing stress and it’s called “don’t worry, be happy!” Yes, I know the Bobby McFerrin song that hit #1 on the charts before the French Revolution, that is, way back in 1988. This is 2010, however, and it’s way more than just a popular song. It is the new…
Tips and coaching for making sense of stress.
Monthly Archives: May 2010
Screening for Depression and Suicide Using Email
For the first time, email has been used to screen college students for clinical depression at 4 major US universities, as a feasible and inexpensive way to detect the disorder. The findings were presented at the American Psychiatric Association 2010 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Undergraduate and graduate students at 4 colleges were invited through…
The #1 Reason Stress Is My Friend
Stress has been my friend for years. Not always a pleasant friend, and often an uncomfortable one—even downright painful, occasionally. Many times stress has come around with bad news, many times with good news, and always when something new, unexpected, or different was happening or about to happen. Nowadays, stress and I know each other…
Is Love Apart As Good As Love Nearby?
Being apart is not as satisfying as being together. Certainly true, common sense would say. Well, not so fast. New, more recent research suggests that long-distance relationships can be, and often are, at least as emotionally satisfying as geographically close ones. The new research comes from Purdue University(i), where researchers studied attachment patterns of individuals…
eClass 4: Best and Worst Food For Stress
How, when, and what we eat tells a lot about who we are. It also says a lot about how well we handle our stress reaction. Food can help or hurt our coping abilities and thus make a difference in how well we respond to stressors. Food intake is one of the critical factors ensuring…
Learning From Stress: The Locus of Control
When it comes to handling stressors and managing the stress reaction, are you an internal or an external? Our response to a stressor can be classified in many ways, but when it comes to our interpretation of its impact on our capabilities and resources we fall along a continuum from internal (“I feel I can…
How Do I Feel About It? Emotion As Information
Emotion is information. Almost without exception, humans use their feelings to make judgments and decisions. Decisions are often made simply by asking ourselves, “How do I feel about it?” Most individuals do this feeling-based evaluation of significant aspects of their environment almost automatically. It is not infrequent that someone will rely almost entirely on emotion…
12 Ways to Make Use of Stress
Stress has a bad reputation it does not deserve. As I discussed in the posts, I React Therefore I Am and The Misunderstood Messenger, its function is primary to our well being and it has been a competitive advantage of the human race since the beginning. Here are 12 ways to turn stress into an…
Generalized Anxiety: The Logic of Unending Gloom
I am sure there is a reason why things keep going the wrong way. Once my grandmother told me that I looked like someone who would never be happy. I still remember her saying that, her tone of voice was so… matter of fact. All I have to do to believe her is to look…
Aroma Therapy to Ease Combat Stress?
The U.S. military is experimenting with aroma therapy, acupuncture and other unorthodox methods to treat soldiers traumatized by combat experiences, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday. He said the experiments showed promise. Gates touted possible treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during a meeting with the wives of servicemen at Fort Riley, Kansas, when…
eClass 3: Acute and Chronic Stress
Stress can affect us immediately (acute stress) and over time (chronic stress). Acute (short-term) stress is the body’s immediate reaction to any situation that seems demanding or dangerous, as an instinctive reaction that goes beyond a normal state of alertness and wakefulness. Tension is often the first signal of acute stress. Tense muscles are tight…
Stress and the Flow of Time
Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. – Henry Van Dyke The passage of time’s objective and subjective dimensions are probably one of the most difficult dichotomies to…
Stress: The Misunderstood Messenger
Stress has a bad reputation. It is largely undeserved. Stress itself is not the problem. The stressor (of which stress reaction is the messenger) is the problem. Moreover, there is more than one kind of stress: the good stress that motivates and the unmanaged stress that damages. Unmanaged stress is generally understood as a bad…
Runaway Stress Attacks Financial Markets
High anxiety produced the equivalent of a panic attack in the world’s financial markets last Thursday. It was a day reminiscent of the high anxiety, high stress situation in the fall of 2008 when the markets lost almost half of their value in a few weeks. On Thursday, from the Hang Seng to the Tadawul,…
Talk Therapy Said To Relieve IBS Symptoms
Nearly 30% of patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) reported considerable relief after 4 weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and the vast majority sustained these improvements for 3 months, according to a study published in the April issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health – May 5, 2010 Talking about…