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dovelikeexistence · 4 years

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Schools need to make mental health a priority for students.

This story is my personal experience in high school but I have witnessed and heard the stories of many others who were in the same boat as I. Junior year for me was quite possibly the most grueling and painful time period of my life, overall it was a shitstorm of a year. This year was the first time I had ever experienced suicidal thoughts, I have battled with depression and anxiety since 8th grade but this was different I had never seriously contemplated suicide up until this point in my life nor had I self harmed until then. Being such a terribly anxious individual along with having a mother who was extremely reluctant to get me the counseling I so desperately needed, reaching out for help seemed unattainable at the time...so I didn’t. I isolated my self, hardly spoke to anyone at school, and cut my calories severely to feel some sense of control over the chaos that was my life. My current boyfriend who was my main motivation to wake up each morning for class had been taken out of school and put in a psychiatric hospital where he was kept for a week and a half. This worried me to no end and I felt so lost without him there with me. I was taking AP classes and loosing so much sleep over just trying to pass. I had never felt so devoid of all feeling, school had become a blur, I wasn’t able to stay focused on anything for longer than a minute before my mind became clouded with some anxious notion or forboding thought. I felt so much emptiness one day while on the way to class I dug my fingernails into the underside of my forearm until there were little red bleeding crescents left behind...that night I had decided to cut for the first time. I didn’t know what to do anymore I had asked my counselor for help but she made me feel like I was a freak for coming to her... I remember how much courage it took for me to finally let someone know I needed help..my voice and body had shook as I desperately tried to ask for her help just to receive a cold and halfhearted response. My voice had failed me so I wrote a letter to my English teacher hoping she would have some sympathy and would possibly be able to help, but instead she had turned away my letter and told me: “I dont have time to deal with emotions right now.” Thankfully I finally got the counseling I needed by myself since my high school failed to. All in all i just want high schools to make it a point to their students that nothing is more important than your own wellbeing... not even grades...I wish somebody could have been there to tell me that then or at least someone to reassure me that I wasn’t a freak or a weakling for asking for help

#mental heath support #mental health #mental health awareness #high school #depression #anxienty #ana #skinnny

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thetaboochristian · 4 years

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Anger: The Double Edged Sword That Can Save Or Destroy Your Life (Sometimes Simultaneously)

When I was a little kid, I used to get angrier than most of the other kids I knew in school. I didn’t know why necessarily, but it seemed reasonable because people kept messing with me, picking on me, people kept doing things that I told them made me made and they never even cared or tried to stop. When I was a kid, I just figured that my anger was a normal, natural result of what happens when people keep on and on and on with some crazy BS until someone reaches their breaking point. Or, somebody does something that seems to pose an immediate, serious threat to the wellbeing of the person who’s getting angry.

I discovered as I got older though that my dad had these characteristics, but worse. Then when I had my son, I noticed that he had an extra bad temper compared to most other kids… he would get super upset about 100 tiny things every single day that no one else would think are such a big deal, like toys not working the way he wants or me missing one of the 100000000000000000000 things that he points at randomly throughout the day and asks “what’s that”? He is especially prone to do this while I’m driving and can’t stop or look at whatever it is. He even had to be given morphine in the hospital when he was born because he was so upset and wouldn’t stop crying for so long. Don’t even get me started on what happened regarding the hospital, his mom, and his birth... that’s going to be included in my “Taboo Christian” book when it comes out.

It was not long after my son began doing this that I finally discovered that the anger issue and emotional oversensitivity was something genetic that had come from my dad’s side of the family. The thing is, I seemed to have less frequent expression of it and higher stress tolerance than my dad or son. I believe that the anger thing came from my dad’s mom, but her husband was pretty angry too so maybe my dad got a double dose. I guess I got a half dose because my mom almost never gets angry, even to the point where it’s problematic, where she doesn’t get angry about things that she should get angry about!

Even when I figured out that there was a genetic cause, I never knew the biological mechanism behind it, but now I’m really close to understanding it. It seems that our bodies either release an unreasonably high level of norepinephrine and epinephrine during certain stressful events, or our bodies cause these neurotransmitters to stay in our system and not be broken down nearly as fast as they should be. It’s also a possibility that DHT levels are abnormally high or that our bodies turn testosterone into DHT at an abnormally high rate. Also, above average levels of acetylcholine or glutamate could also play a role in the emotional sensitivity… it could be a mixture of more than one of these things that’s really responsible.

Even though there have been times where our anger caused problems, problems can occur when anyone gets angry, and that happens to everyone. There have been instances however where I can look back and see how my anger helped save my life! It caused me to no longer tolerate some things that were seriously destroying my life, increasingly quickly as time went on. I believe that when someone or multiple people in your life are causing you serious problems and they are preventable/avoidable, and the person continually refuses to acknowledge how they are hurting you or refuses to try to fix the problem, then an a short moment of loudly chewing them out may be the only way to get the point across or stand your ground when more calm and tame methods of problem resolution have failed to work with that person who’s doing you wrong.

Obviously, if you can avoid conflict or resolve it peacefully then that is almost always best, but if calm methods fail, and the continuing problem is destroying your health, finances, sanity, etc, then continuing to sit by and passively let yourself get ruined by someone else’s evil or ignorance is ludicrous! Absolutely ludicrous!

If someone in your family thinks they know better than you and really doesn’t, and if they keep terrorizing you with constant bombardment of their well intentioned but destructive opinions of what they think you should do with your life, sometimes there’s no other choice but to cut them out of your life for a while until things settle down and you are able to figure out a way to interact with them peaceably… if it’s possible at all. Some people just don’t want to admit when they are wrong, no matter what.

This happened recently with my dad. We used to have a good relationship, but it’s come up and down over the years with some lengthy periods of us not talking because it’s impossible to talk to him without him trying to force his wrong ideas upon your life and then getting angry if you don’t agree with him and won’t do what he says. He thinks he knows what’s best. He has a master’s degree. He has made $60-90K a year for the majority of his career. However, though he affirms to hold the basic beliefs of a Christian as far as Jesus being the son of God and dying for our sins and being the only way to heaven, my dad doesn’t really have much of a spiritual view or concept of life beyond that. My dad is absolutely consumed by “worldly thinking” and “man’s way of reasoning” and he has no concept of God’s Will for my life or anyone else’s life.

Many Christians know all too well that God’s ways are not always our ways and that His reasoning does not always follow our reasoning. My dad cannot seem to grasp this. He cannot seem to grasp that there are certain circumstances that occurred over the years that were beyond my control that are partly responsible for where I am today in life, financially, socially, health wise, etc. My dad cannot seem to grasp that it’s most likely that it was God’s Will that am where I am right now, doing what I’m doing right now, and planning what I’m planning for the future. My dad just can’t seem to understand that if God wants something to happen in my life with 100% definite certainty, He is going to intervene and shape my circumstances in whatever was He needs to in order to make His Will come to pass in my life, IF I’m open to it and willing to do my part to cooperate with Him in bringing it to pass. That means working when and where He knows is best, it means putting forth my standards and expectations to those around me and not caving in or compromising on them just because they don’t fit or match what the people around me think is best or reasonable, or whatever. Sure, I’m realistic in my expectations and what I ask from God, but I also know that God has taken people from rags to riches very quickly in many cases, and God has done miracles in people’s lives in modern times that are almost as awesome as what He did in the Bible.

It is also possible for everyone that there are some things that are such a concrete part of God’s Will that they will happen no matter what a person does. Where I’m saying that anger can save and destroy at the same time is like with my relationship with my dad. Because of the characteristics I described above about him, he kept on and kept on and kept on until I finally snapped and said some really hurtful things to him, one of which I didn’t really mean to say but it just slipped out in anger. This made him leave and we haven’t spoken in almost 2 months now because of it. Though I regret that one thing I said to him, and I regret having cussed a few times, the majority of what I said to him while in my anger was stuff that he NEEDED to hear. It was me putting my foot down to protect my son and my life, my livelihood and plan for the future, and to show my dad that he had violated major boundaries. My dad has worldly, humanistic reasons why he thinks my current choices and past ones regarding my job and schooling are bad, but I know that they are part of God’s plan and I can clearly see how and why God crafted my life the way He has thus far. While I acknowledge that I’ve made some bad decisions, I can see how and why God allowed me to make them and how God chose to use them to pave a way forward for me that’s better than I probably could have had without making those mistakes.

Seriously though, I get angry a lot less often than most people. It takes a lot more BS to make me mad than the average person, but I’m like a quick burst of intense flame when major boundary lines have been crossed or something major is threatening to harm me or my loved ones and has a considerable chance of succeeding if I don’t step in and do something. I can admit though that in the moment, I’m usually completely absent minded about the thought of God supernaturally protecting me with Angels, intervening on my behalf to fix problems, etc. In the moment I am just thinking that it’s up to me or it’s not going to get resolved at all. I am working on strengthening myself so that I can think more about the realities of the spirit world before I tackle a problem while steaming, but it’s something that will take time. However, there’s a certain amount of fierceness that needs to be available and kept locked away inside for use in the right time and place, so that my loved ones can see for themselves just how serious I am about protecting them with all my might.

I do still plan to try to reconcile with my dad, but right now, with all the difficult circumstances I’m in the midst of overcoming at this moment, trying to talk to my dad would only make my days more difficult and drain me of the focus and energy I need to fix all the current problems in my life surrounding my divorce from “Rebecca”, things regarding my son “Aaron”, and other major life changes. My dad just has this “my way or the highway” view, and there’s no reasoning with him. It just wouldn’t be a smart idea to try to work things out with him until these major issues in my life are resolved, because the process of reconciliation with him will likely be long, stressful, painful and emotional. Despite the current stresses, I know that I’m in the process of overcoming, and slowly but surely (and sometimes quickly) God is bringing about a future for me that’s growing more beautiful with every passing week, month and year.

Thanks for reading, God Bless! “Luke Davidson” - The Taboo Christian

#God #god's will #anger #boundaries #family #genetic #inherited #double edged sword #money #health #problems

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panicattackhelp-blog1 · 7 years

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START HERE: A Natural Approach to Panic Attacks

New Post has been published on http://keyofprosperity.com/start-here-a-natural-approach-to-panic-attacks/

START HERE: A Natural Approach to Panic Attacks

If you’ve already read my story, you know that I suffered from serious panic attacks. I’ve learned quite a bit about them. The most important thing that I can tell you is this: You are having a battle in your mind. Your mind is the most powerful thing you have. I never believed in the “Law of Attraction” until I fought with panic attacks. In a nutshell, the Law of Attraction boils down to this; What you think is what comes your way. Once you get into the pattern of thinking…

• “I’m going to have a panic attack” • “When am I going to have another panic attack” • “What if I have another panic attack”

You’ve created a monster in your thoughts. That one-off panic attack that you had while at the grocery store is NOT the norm, but you’ve decided to make it that way. Let’s look at it the other way. When if you went to the grocery store and everybody was extremely kind to you. You would like that grocery store because people were kind to you. You probably wouldn’t have put much thought into it, you’d just naturally like the place. You were conditioned!

So, now you are in a habit of having panic attacks because you conditioned your mind to utilize panic attacks as a coping mechanism. Of course, you didn’t mean to do it, it just happened. Here’s the good news, you CAN recondition yourself. It’s not that hard to do, it just takes repetition and sticking with it. It boils down to meditation, cognitive behavioral training and mindfulness. That’s the technical terminology, however you will ultimately be changing your lifestyle in a positive way.

Let’s get started!

You can’t change the future

First you must get back to the here and now. Anxiety lives in the future, you have absolutely no control over the future. If you think you can change the future, you can’t. People have tried and all have failed. Surrender that thought. Seriously, put the future out of your mind. Even if you KNOW what’s to come, forget about it! Even if you know you can’t pay your bills, you are going to lose your house/job/wife/husband. Don’t worry about dying. Don’t worry about what you need to do tomorrow. Don’t worry about having a surgery or a trip to the dentist. Don’t worry about your big trip tomorrow. FORGET IT! Seriously, it’s not here, it’s not happening. You have absolutely no control over the time between now and the future. You can’t control what’s going to happen 30 seconds from now. Zero control. I’m saying this over and over to really drive the point. This was my biggest struggle. Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Focus on now

To start focusing on now, you can do some mental exercises. The purpose of these exercise is to stop your wandering mind. These exercises will bring you peace of mind and a tranquil feeling. When you first start doing them, you won’t notice much but as time goes on you’ll really start to get the effects of the exercises.

Breath Counting

Take a breath in. Let your breath out. As you exhale, mentally begin counting. As you breathe out the second time, increase a number.

• Breathe in • Breathe out (mentally say 1) • Breathe in • Breath out (mentally say 2)

The goal is to get to 25. If you lose track of your counting, start over as this means that you’ve allowed your mind to wander. Make sure you are breathing slowly while you do this. As you get better, increase you counting. I often would go for a small walk and count to 300. It really helped with my overall mental health.

Dead Arm

This one is kind of weird but it works well. Sit down comfortably. Try to remain still. Pick an arm, I always picked my right. Imagine that you can’t move it. You aren’t allowed to move your arm. All you can think about is not moving your arm and how it no longer moves. The thing about this one is that your arm feels strange, proving that your thoughts are POWERFUL! This exercise causes your mind to focus on what’s going on with your arm and away from racing thoughts. It’s a simple exercise to do and you can do it anywhere, even while you are talking to somebody.

Looking at Stuff

This exercise almost sounds stupid, but I did it all the time. Wherever you are, go for a walk and look closely at everything you see. Really take it in. Is there a crack in the floor? Notice the crack, the size, really take it in. Look at the walls, the colors, the imperfections. Take in the smells that you can smell. Is it warm or cold? Is there a breeze? Touch objects around you. What do they feel like? Are they sharp? Are they dull? Are they cold? Eat or drink something. Really focus on the smell, taste, texture. Is there a bird outside? Watch it. What is it doing? Wonder why it’s doing what it’s doing? Really focus on what’s going on around you. Just spend 5 or 10 minutes going through this exercise. It’s amazing how healing it is to the anxious mind.

Walk

I pace. Constantly. I don’t enjoy sitting still for long periods of time. My background is in computer science. I do computer stuff, but I’ll tell you this…I never sit for any period of time. I bought one of those watches that tracks your steps. I like to get in around 8-12k steps per day. It feels like an accomplishment. It’s tangible and I did it. Moving around is great for your lymphatic system, your heart, your mind, your digestion…literally everything. If you can’t go outside, just walk around your home, it doesn’t have to be some serious exercise thing. The goal is to try to move around.

Plant Something

Two things you really need to help with panic attacks; accomplishment(s) and living in the present. Planting something does both. Get a solo cup or something that you can plant some seeds in. Put some water on them and put them in the window. This year, I planted around 100 maple seeds (about 40 of them lived). It gave me something to do, something to accomplish, I made the earth a little bit better, I could share it with other…It just made me happy and brought me some joy. I got my seeds from my walks. One day I saw a bunch of seeds and thought “I’m going to plant these”. It really did something for my overall stress. It requires almost no time and is just something to do that will make you happy.

Human Contact

Hug somebody. Hold their hand. That physical connection is huge. It doesn’t matter if it’s a kid/mom/wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/friend…just touch somebody. That touching will give you something that you didn’t realize that you needed. It’s almost a warming feeling. Try to apply the items from “Look at Stuff”. Humans thrive on interaction with other humans. A baby will die if nobody touches it. We need to touch people and interact.

Overcoming Anxiety Triggers

While the above exercises will help you deal with the here and now in a safe environment, you still have triggers. I fought my triggers through brute force, on my “brave” days. I’d test the waters, so to speak. My big anxiety was driving in the car alone. It scared me…BAD. I live in a neighborhood, where I was able to just drive the neighborhood…which gave me anxiety. However, I knew that getting home would only take about 1 minute, even from the most distance part of the neighborhood. I could even just pull my car over and leave it there and walking home if I had to. But slowly, these car rides through the neighborhood became car rides up the road. And eventually I made my way through it.

The biggest thing that I learned about my driving anxiety (and other odd anxieties that I had) was that I feared the unknown. I worried about things that may or may not happen. I worried about things that would never happen. I just plain worried to the point that I conditioned my mind to avoid the task altogether. Writing things down helped. I wrote down the craziness that I was thinking. I looked at it with a clear mind. And thought through my borderline insane fears. Logic helps but panic attacks are illogical. You need to rise above the anxious thinking and not give in to fear.

I hate fear. It’s not real, it stems from worrying. Less intelligent people aren’t fearful, they are ignorantly blissful. Knowledge is great, but not when it ruins your peace. Reading about side-effects of medicines, odd cancers, rare heart problems are going to ruin your wellbeing. I had to stop reading about my symptoms online. I was always having a stroke, heart attack or cancer. Over and over again, I’d have myself all upset. I was dying of one of the big three. I’d even mourn. Mourning my own death, the people I was leaving. How would they get on. They’d be sad without me. What would happen to me? Would it be instantly that I’d die or would it really go on for hours. Would I know I was dying? YIKES! Again, STOP THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE! It’s the most unproductive thing you can do. You want joy, not worry.

My Best Advice on Panic Attacks

PUT DOWN THE CELL PHONE! GET OFF THE COMPUTER! GO OUTSIDE! I sound like your mom? Don’t mentally stimulate your brain more than you already have. In your downtime, don’t use your phone. It’s doing you NO good. Facebook can wait. You’ll get to click like on your friend’s picture of his dinner another day. Go on a technology diet. If you start to feel bored, go with it. Take on the boredom. It’s really, really good for you to get bored. Sit there and stare at the wall for a little bit. You don’t have to always be doing something. Remember your grandparents and how they would just sit there. No TV on, nothing. They’d just sit there in silence. Peaceful and content. They knew something you didn’t. You can be bored. Sit outside. Watch nature. It’s reality, you cell phone isn’t reality.

Pray

Don’t ask God to take away your panic attacks and then get mad at him when they don’t go away. It just might be your cross to bear for a period of time. Pray to God and thank him for what he’s given you. Tell him that you are thankful to be here, alive, healthy. Thank him for the people that are in your life that love you. Thank him for the food that you have, that you don’t go hungry. Thank him for your home. Over and over, thank him. You have a lot to be thankful for. Tell God, he wants to hear it from you.

Thank People

Thank the people in your life for being there. Tell them they are important to you. Do something thoughtful for them. Put them first. Don’t let your anxiety stop you from being a nice person. Put others before yourself. Be a servant to others. Your humility will help you with anxiety. At one point I had a proud mind, I saw myself as an elitist. Anxiety fixed that for me, you can’t be proud and have panic attacks. Do what you can do. Try to push your comfort zone for others. We’re social creatures. You’ll be healing your mind and soul when you put others first.

Take it easy. Move slower. Breathe slower. Life isn’t meant to go in high-speed. Remove yourself from things that speed it up, or use those things in moderation (I’m talking about phones/iPads/TV/Video Games). If weeks are going by really fast, you need to slow down life. You can do it. We all have free-time. Use it wisely. I hope that you got something out of this post. I’m speaking from my heart and telling you what’s worked for me and what I’ve been through. Your anxiety will pass, time is the great healer.

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