Craving Stabililty

Bachelor Hatchings, Episode 5: What the Hell is the Meaning of Life?

Time- and Stress-Management Tips

Mistakes in Managing Your Stress

Gardening as Respite

An Ode to Seeds

What This Morning's Client Says He Learned From Me

How A Worry-Wart Manages His Stress

The Ear Worm: A mood stabilizer without side effects

An ear worm is a melody that stays stuck in your head. My Psychology Today article today argues that it's usually wise to savor rather than banish it. I explain why and offer 18 beloved loved melodies that are ripe ear worm material.

Address-and-Distract: An underappreciated tool for coping

COVID and the political and racial roiling can make an already stressed modern life cross the line into overwhelm.

For example, even if COVID hasn’t touched you, the fear fanned by the media and your seeing everyone in masks racing away from you if within 10 feet contributes to the discombobulation.

A perhaps under-discussed antidote to stress and overwhelm is something my clients and, okay, I, have found helpful: address and distract. I describe it in my Psychology Today article today.

Tough Problems: Big-Time Stress

This is the latest in the Tough Problems series. In each installment, I present two composite questions that my clients face and my response to each.

The first is from a stressed-out teenager wants to get into a "good" college. The second is from a member of the "sandwich generation:" having to take care of teenage kids and aging parents.

Stress Management for the Stress-Prone

Stress rolls off my wife's back. Not mine. The tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today, which are derived in part from my new book, Careers for Dummies, have helped me and some of my stress-prone clients. Perhaps one or more will help you.

Seven Pleasures They've Wrested From Us

Life is not easy. More may be expected from us at work. In relationships, we may be expected to do it all, as the jingle went, “Bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan....”  We’re told we’re not saving the zillion dollars we’ll need for the ever more absurd cost of college, let alone for retirement.

We’re hamsters on an ever faster-spinning wheel, like when the faster Lucy boxed the chocolates, the faster the conveyer belt went until she just couldn't do it all.

Indeed that’s what’s happening. Many people are breaking. Some drop out and become homeless while others anesthetize with alcohol or drugs. I believe that’s part of the national impetus to legalize marijuana despite it being more dangerous, physically and mentally than the Big Tobacco-driven messaging would have us believe.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. suicide rate is at a 30-year high  And it’s epidemic among middle-aged white men: NBC News cites the Centers for Disease Control findings: “Victims of death by suicide are overwhelmingly white (7 out of 10), male, and between the ages of 45 and 65. “

At the same time, many of life’s soothers have been wrested from us. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers seven examples. It argues that their loss is an underdiscussed cause of modern-day stress.

The Most Emotional Events of 2016

Life brings enough emotional challenges. But in 2016, society added mightily to our emotional burdens.

 

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I remind us of 2016's most emotional events and offer a suggestion for coping with 2017's.

Reducing Stress in a High-Stress Occupation

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers a buffet of tactics for preventing and coping with stress. 

12 Ways to Reduce Your Stress

In these seemingly ever more stressed times, we all, in and out of work, could benefit from less stress. 

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I’ll share the stress reducers that have worked best for my clients and, okay, for me.

Driving While Relaxed: Eight techniques for replacing road rage with commute calm.

A key way that government is trying to force us out of our cars and into mass transit is to build no more freeways despite the population increase. So our commutes are ever longer and more stressful. My PsychologyToday.com article offers eight ways to reduce the stress of driving. HERE is the link. 

A Dog: A Not Standard Tool for Reducing Stress...and Increasing It

When the standard stress reducers don't work well, have you ever considered getting a dog?

My doggie, Einstein, is my best stress reducer...and stress increaser. He is the topic of my PsychologyToday.com article today. HERE is the link.

Dealing with Holiday Stress in a Harsh World

When I asked readers what they'd like me to write about, Doug Skinner sent me the following email. (He has given me permission to reprint it.)

What's on my mind, Marty, is handling stress from the holidays. I'd love to find a place of peace and joy in a world that's pretty harsh.

Okay, Doug, here are my thoughts.

It seems you're asking about two separate things: how to handle holiday stress and how to deal with a harsh world. I'll try to address both:

Dealing with holiday stress

We'll feel stressed or sad if the upcoming holiday season is unlikely to live up to the stereotype, for example, a party with the happy extended family laughing and bonding. Here are four ways to address the situation:

• Create Christmas: Gather hand-picked relatives and friends or make new ones by taking out a Craiglist platonic ad or even people you like at work, in an avocation, or even at a bar. Invite them to a Christmas party at your place, the community room at your apartment complex, wherever. Invite a lost soul to spend New Year's Eve with you. 
• Volunteer your butt off. A great way to deflect feeling sorry for yourself is to turn your attention to helping others. 
• Forget the norm and enjoy the holidays in solitude. Music, TV, your favorite foods, a glass of wine, contemplation or writing, can make a Christmas that's more rewarding and less stressful than what many people experience.
• Resolve to make more friends or build family relations so next year's holidays will be better.

Of course, a major source of Christmas stress is gifting. Except for a present I bought on Amazon for my wife and one for my best friend, I've forgone gifting and instead created a musical and storytelling holiday e-card that I sent broadly. If someone likes me less for not buying them a present, I believe it's their failing, not mine. For years, I've been sending only an e-card on which I read or play piano and haven't lost one friend as a result.

The harsh world

True, the world seems to be getting harsher. People don't keep their promises. They don't return phone calls. Job applicants often don't even get the dignity of a rejection letter-- they must wait indefinitely hoping, in vain. Even family members may screw each other, especially for money. As my father said, "Respect but suspect."

But there are many good people plus many more who are good when treated well. Easier said than done but I believe it's worth working hard to be a good person. Also, maximize the amount of time you spend with good people and minimize time with lesser lights. Do those things and your stress will likely diminish and somehow the world won't seem so harsh.

I hope that helps, Doug.

A Very Short Course on Managing Anxiety

In our stressful world, nearly everyone is anxious at times. These techniques should help:

DEVELOPING A RESERVE AGAINST ANXIETY

1. Getting good sleep gives you a reserve, a gas tank of anxiety antidote, to cope with anxiety. These can help:

• Have a comfy pre-sleep ritual. For example, I exercise 2 to 3 hours before bedtime. Right after exercising, I'm energized, but 2 or 3 hours later, the fatigue caused by the exercise sets in.
• Recognize that if you're getting up in the middle of the night, you have the skills to get back to sleep: just take moderate relaxed breaths, thinking, "In with the good air, out with the bad air." until you're back to sleep. Moderate breaths are better than deep ones because the extra oxygen in deep breaths makes you more awake.
• If the above doesn't get you back to sleep, perhaps you've had enough sleep for that night. The next night you'll be more tired, or if you tire during the day, maybe you can take a nap then, even if you have to leave work and hop into your car for a 20-30-minute "power nap."
• For more on getting good sleep, click HERE.

2. Do you excessively use caffeine? Intoxicants? Do you overeat? Avoid those and you protect your reserve, your anti-anxiety "gas tank."

3. So you're prepared with how to respond when you feel anxious, now, when you're calm, list the positive thoughts you want to replace the worrisome ones. On the spot, you may be too anxious to think of them.

WHEN YOU FEEL ANXIOUS
1. As soon as you start to feel anxious, well before it reaches the panic attack level, take three long, deep breaths from the belly (diaphragmatic breathing.) Think of it like filling your belly first with air and then as that's full, you fill your chest.

2. Then turn your attention away from yourself and outward to the external world. For example, study the pretty picture in the room, think about what's good in your life, listen to someone else's problem, take a walk and look for the beauty all around you.

3.  Say an affirmation, for example, "Worrying won't help at all, and I have the skills to calm down."Even if the anxiety worsens into a full-scale panic attack, remind yourself that you have the skills to calm yourself down. Make a list of what you want to do if anxiety or even a full-scale panic attack hits: for example:
      a. Take 3 diaphragmatic breaths.
      b. Transfer your attention outward.

That is your "fire extinguisher" for anxiety.