Join A Group You Care About

A sense of loneliness tends to precede the development of depression.

And depression often includes the symptom of loneliness along with isolation.

Since my early days as a counselor, my mentors instructed me to encourage depressed clients to get out and around people. At the very least, a friendly interaction with someone might occur and lift their mood.

It turns out that being part of a group helps to ward off depression, but it must be a group to which the person identifies and feels connected.

Multiple studies have shown that higher levels of group identification were related to lower levels of depressive symptoms.

Group membership can be a treatment intervention for depression.

In a 2013 study of over 4000 adults over the age of 50, those who were depressed and joined one group reduced their risk of depression relapse from 41 percent to 31 percent. Joining two groups reduced the risk to 21 percent. And with three groups, the risk dropped to 15 percent.

For group membership to be effective at decreasing depression, people have to closely identify with the group and feel connected to it, not just physically be around a group of people.

Groups help by offering support and a sense of purpose.

Some groups, however, do not protect. Groups that revolve around a destructive focus such as self-harm, substance abuse or a sense of victimization are groups to break away from.

Currently in my life, I am part of a group of people who work together as a team with the purpose of helping people get through emotional crises. I also am a part of online groups of handmade artists which actively support and encourage each other.

Go ahead and find your favorite group(s) and know you are contributing to your own and others’ well-being.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressed-try-the-social-cure/

Becoming Enlightened By Hanging a Light

I hung up a shop light today. I had purchased it months ago. It was often on my mind that it needed to be put up. But my luck with simple little household projects has not been very good. Usually, it is the attaching to a wall that just doesn’t work out. So I wanted the shop light installed, but I dreaded the possibility of a botched job. I doubted my ability to do that basic work.

It could be a quick project of possibly half an hour, but not in my case. First, I had to move piles of stuff that had landed in front of and on the table that I wanted the light to be above. Then I pulled the table out from the wall so a ladder could be set up. While I had things pulled out, it was time to sweep up the dirt. Then, it turned out I did not have all of the hardware I needed. As I drove to two different stores to find ceiling hooks, I countered my negativity about wasting time with thoughts of this being part of the fun. I will frequently make a run to the craft store without thoughts of wasting time. Why not enjoy a trip to the hardware store?

I climbed up the ladder with the new drill I had obtained at Christmas and still had not tried out five months later. I felt awkward balancing on a ladder. I felt awkward using a drill. I felt uncertain I was anchoring the screw enough that it would hold. I had to get reading glasses to see well enough to attach a pull chain to the light. I wondered if pulling that chain over time would be enough to cause the hanging screws to come loose. It all went into place and, for the time being, seemed secure enough.

This little project took three hours to complete. I got some space organized in the garage. I enjoyed the fresh spring air with the garage door open while I worked. I browsed through hardware stores and had new ideas. I practiced my handyman skills once more and seemed to do a little better than the last time I tried. I felt satisfied with my work space which will allow me to try out some electric wood working tools and learn a new craft. It always amazes me how a simple little project provides so much personal growth. It seems odd that to most observers there would be little understanding of the negative self-assessments which were overcome in order to complete it. And once again, it is a marker of my independence and self-sufficiency I keep proving while being single and managing on my own. I am tentative and anxious, but little by little, I gain some confidence. Definitely time well spent!

Seven Habits to Increase Resiliency (The Ability to Cope)

Resiliency is being able to go through a tough or even devastating experience and recover from it. The recovery is both mental/emotional and physical. Making it through a challenging experience creates a positive expectation of being able to handle other situations which may arise. Regularly attending to personal mental and physical health helps to build resiliency.

Mentally:

Moderate thoughts so that they are realistic and not exaggerating the problem.

Noticing what can be learned or gained from an experience, even a painful one, increases the ability to manage it.

Gaining strength from the experience increases a sense of purpose and wisdom.

Stay in the moment without making it worse by bringing in past negative experiences or adding on future worries. Accept the way it is without judgement and labeling. Face it. Make a plan for getting through it.

Being positive isn’t simply thinking happy thoughts. It is more about faith that one is capable of making it and realistically managing the current situation.

Physically:

Aerobic exercise has been shown to increase dopamine and serotonin in the brain which helps to elevate mood. Exercise also helps to counteract the stress hormone cortisol. The saying, “sweat it out” is good advice.

The aspect of competing against oneself during exercise and in physical activities helps to build resilience. Gradually asking more of yourself than what you did before is a healthy challenge which leads to improved confidence and awareness of ability. Going a little further, adding on time, increasing the difficulty all improve physical health and one’s appreciation of personal progress and strength - both physical and mental.

Making a point of regularly practicing healthy mental and physical habits will help you to be prepared for those significant difficult times that life presents.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/enhance-your-resillience-stress/

Value the Quiet

Silence. Many people cannot stand even a moment of quiet. They turn the TV on before the quiet can be noticed by their minds. Some have nonstop involvement with the computer or the game console. Some will say that they hate the quiet. But it is so good and healthy for the brain to have times when outside noise isn’t bombarding it.

The brain needs time to process the stimuli it has absorbed for hours in a day. Often this processing occurs at night while sleeping. It also takes place during daytime moments of quiet involving loose wanderings of thought. I grew up in a manner which allowed such moments to occur naturally. I lived in a rural setting. During the summer, I could find myself sitting at the edge of the man-made stream running through our property for irrigation of the farming land all around. There, I might pick up a stick to scratch and dig at small rocks in the dirt. I would watch ants busily making their way. My cat would wander up, brush against me, and receive my petting. A breeze would go through our Aspen trees causing the leaves to make a sort of light, waterfall type of sound. My parents did not worry that I was spending too much time on some electronic device. We didn’t have anything but a TV which we watched in the evening. Sometimes I would lie on the couch or on the floor in the living room just soaking up the sun coming through the window.

Quiet is often a comfort for me. So it puzzles me when I encounter people who are bothered by it; they seem even to be afraid of it. For health of mind and body, it would be a benefit for people to learn to enjoy times of quiet. The body needs regular relaxation to counter the effects of daily stress. The brain needs time to rejuvenate, sort information, store it into memory, and to physically repair. Problem solving and creative ideas come out of a brain that is allowed to process without focus or pressure. When we make ourselves think, we use known information in standard ways we have learned or been taught. When we let the brain percolate and make connections on its own, unique ideas can spring up.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201305/the-enemies-invention

These days, mindfulness has become a process encouraged for a number of benefits. It certainly is a way to fully attend to the moment, taking in sensations we might miss due to constant busyness and non-stop evaluative thinking. Mindfulness lets us experience a moment such as the sound of a bumblebee on a flower nearby. We can choose to set aside time for practicing mindfulness. But the randomness of a wandering mind is also healthy. We can choose to allow for unstructured time in which we allow our mind to do what it will. This is the kind of time in which people complain of boredom. Instead of fearing and avoiding boredom, learn to enjoy one’s own mind playing with a daydream or remembering an amusing moment or curiously wondering about something in the world. Put down the phone, step away from the game, and just be. Try it for just five minutes. Or enjoy a walk for physical health with the added benefit of free thinking. These days, we have to make the decision to give ourselves unstructured time. In order to do that, we need to see the value in it.

http://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-than-thought

Expectation Affects Physical Relief

It pays to work on your attitude. Personality and outlook contribute to changes in brain activity which supports relief of physical symptoms. Personality traits such as being resilient, straightforward, or altruistic assist the brain’s ability to reduce pain and other physical symptoms. Also, having an expectation of a positive outcome boosts the experience of relief. The brain actually produces more of its natural painkillers (opioids, endorphins), and brain activity increases in the prefrontal cortex and is dampened in the emotional regions of the brain.

Understanding how attitude relates to improvement helps in treatment. A commonly used coping method, distraction, did not show a reduction in pain during experiments. However, a focus on pain reduces pain intensity. Approaches such as accepting a situation and tolerating it, which improve resiliency, are proven effective in experiments on attending to pain and rating its intensity. Self-reported reductions in symptoms are found when altering expectation in conditions of pain, insomnia, fatigue, nausea, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), urinary and sexual function. An expectation of improvement contributes significantly to the effectiveness of antidepressants to reduce symptoms.

Research is building evidence that cultivating a positive outlook makes a significant difference in brain function which results in relief of many distressing symptoms. So make your daily list of gratitude, appreciate the little things, get the most out of good moments with mindfulness, and develop that ‘glass is half full’ attitude.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/placebos-work-better-for-nice-peopl/?responsive=false

http://www.nature.com/scientificamericanmind/journal/v24/n1/full/scientificamericanmind0313-34.html

Mental Athlete

Everyone writes about health, exercise, and diet in January for those expected New Year’s Resolutions. They write about how to get motivated and how to stick with it. Now it is April. I have had some success at losing a few pounds, but now find myself eating more chocolate and being bored with keeping track of my daily food intake. Luckily, the weather is getting nice. I have gone for a little lunchtime walk for the past three days at work. And yesterday, I happily mowed the lawn for the first time this spring. I have gone to the gym at least a couple of times each week over the winter, but I have noticed an increasing difficulty in getting myself to go. I am doing much reduced workouts since being injured. I have been observing my own mindset since the injury and the very slow recovery from it.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201603/broke-your-new-years-resolution

Actually, I have been observing my mindset about exercise since I was in high school. Back then, I was a complete non-athlete. I hated physical education because I had no skills and no endurance. I was ineffective and frequently felt embarrassment and shame. I actually did have some skills but no one noticed. No one helped me develop them and put them to good use. I could sprint and leave people in the dust. But in PE, we ran laps and I fell way behind and it seemed so hard. Fifteen years ago, I was diagnosed with exercise induced asthma, and currently I use a daily inhaler. In high school, I just thought I was lazy and weak. I had good hand-eye coordination. When I took a summer tennis class, I had a natural, killer overhand serve. But I never improved past beginner at playing the game. I could also throw darts quite well. But I couldn’t catch or throw. I couldn’t dribble a basketball. I could make free throws when I practiced, but not during a game. I lacked confidence. The messages in my head held me back as did the possible opinions of classmates. I had a sense that I was getting in my own way, but I couldn’t get past it. I believed there was something wrong with me.

I was naturally thin, so I didn’t need to exercise. I still was insecure. I was very knock-kneed and my mother had emphasized that along with supposedly having weak ankles. I was very near sighted. It was quite bad by the time I finally got glasses in the fifth grade. I think some of my lack of ability came from not developing my eyesight. I believe I still lack in fully observing my environment compared to the average person even with my eyesight corrected. When I did get glasses, they were very thick and added to my insecurity. Getting contacts a few years later definitely helped me to feel better about myself. As I grew up, I was attractive, so I still didn’t need to exercise. I had no cares about health.

In college, I joined a couple of friends in going to a gym to lift weights. It was an individual activity with no one counting on me to be good at something. I started out light and gradually increased repetitions and very gradually increased the weight I was lifting. I discovered comparing myself to myself and seeing gains in improvement was satisfying. After college when I was married, I had to learn to walk. My husband liked to go hiking. I was terrified of uneven ground and had to learn how to traverse even slight changes in grade. Also, I wanted to begin walking for exercise around my neighborhood. I was terrified to walk around the block. Some of my fear was a social anxiety. I didn’t want people to see me. I didn’t want to approach others and have any contact. I was shy and that embarrassment I felt in childhood still was inside of me. Some of my fear was being female. My mother had cautioned me in all manner of situations. We women could be prey. One of the basic protections was to always have someone with you. It took pure will power and a desire to overcome my fears in a personal growth experiment for me to begin going for walks alone around my neighborhood for exercise. Eventually, I was walking four miles at a fairly brisk pace. My confidence increased.

Several years later and still walking for exercise, I decided I wanted to try jogging. I had had terrible experiences in middle school and high school. I had tripped and fallen with my breath knocked out while jogging around a track. I had overheated and almost passed out. I had tried to jog just a little longer and found trying to increase in endurance was too hard. I believed I just couldn’t do it. But the confidence I had gained from my walking exercise had me ready to try again with jogging. I started with jogging just a little bit. It was my social anxiety that threatened to sideline me. I didn’t want anyone to see me jogging. I hid from cars driving by. I had learned that increasing very gradually worked for me. So to build up my jogging distance, I measured out one-tenth mile increments along my route and increased weekly by that amount. I knew others would find that increase too small and too slow. That is why I didn’t want to share in my activity with others. I still don’t like to make use of a trainer or have anyone coaching me. Having someone pushing me is bad for me.

But I improved. And I did start doing some of the local fun runs and 5Ks with friends and family. I then became competitive with myself and strove to improve my time compared to the year before in these various events. Eventually, entirely on my own, I ran a 10k (6 miles) and then a 10-mile course. Then, at the age of 40, I completed a half-marathon! I continued training for a few races each summer and tried a half-marathon again hoping that my experience and training would result in finishing faster than I did the time before. It didn’t. I finished slower and even “bonked” or “hit the wall” and could barely walk the last mile in. I decided I didn’t need to do half marathons. I had proven my toughness to my satisfaction. I continued doing 5Ks and 10Ks.

In 2014, I completed a 10K in September and was ready to back off and rest from training for runs. By the end of October, my foot was hurting after I had tried Pilates and doing a plank pose had really hurt while being on my toes. My foot swelled and redness appeared. In November, an x-ray didn’t show anything but it was assumed I had a stress fracture. I was placed into a walking boot. Healing was not quick, linear, or efficient. I was in and out of the boot as the foot did not heal completely. In January 2015, I had an MRI of the foot which showed evidence of healing around a stress fracture. I spent more time in the boot. This was throwing off my alignment and causing hip and back pain. Finally, at the end of October 2015, I was cleared to be out of the boot. Things didn’t suddenly improve. The hip and back pain continued and was severe enough to make it impossible to roll over in bed most nights and was disrupting my sleep. I am still recovering.

My mindset has had to change again. I have to be ok with lesser, mild exercise without having a goal such as a race for which to train. My pride is hurt. It doesn’t feel the same, not as satisfying. I am trying to find my new niche. I am trying to choose a personal goal that fits my physical condition. I am uncertain what activities I will be able to do for enjoyment. I am waylaid and have felt a lack of motivation. This makes me anxious. It is coming too close to how I felt as a non-athlete. I don’t want to give up, but what will encourage me to continue striving. The warm spring weather and being able to go for 20-30 minute walks, because of improved weather and because my foot can handle it, is giving me hope and helping me to feel better. The mind, with its perspective and self-evaluations, is behind everything we do. The kind of shape it is in determines what we actually do. It is the basis for how far we are able to go.

The Inevitable Fire

                                            (Photo from Bayview Idaho Historical Society www.bayviewhs.com)

The lands have been hot and dry. The weekend before the Fourth of July, our area had temperatures of 105 degrees which broke the record high from when temperatures first began being recorded. The week continued in the upper 90’s. Along came the holiday of fireworks and camping. I chose to not buy any fireworks for personal entertainment. I just didn’t think it would be wise or responsible to participate in lighting things on fire during this terribly dry time. I watched the news but local government did not declare fireworks off limits. Firework stands were forward and center with numerous customers. I did think, “People won’t restrain themselves.” However, the night of the Fourth, I did enjoy the several shows of clearly illegal shoot-up-into-the-sky explosions coming from a few locations around my home. It truly was a thrill to see and made me grin with joy and say, “Ooh!” and “Wow!” It was a satisfying Fourth of July experience. As I returned inside, I hoped a fire had not been sparked in any fields or on the roofs of any homes.

In the morning, I noticed a strong wind blowing and thought, “That could flame a fire if there were one.” It took me awhile to realize the sky was muted and dusty. I dismissed it as early morning. It impressed upon me only after it didn’t clear by later in the morning. Then came a post on Facebook from someone I knew who mentioned ‘evacuating’. Next, came a post from the local news saying they were headed out to see what was happening. Then came the posted photo of a small town facing a huge dark smoke cloud seeming to come forward onto a neighborhood street.

                                                  (Photo from KXLY4, published July 6, 2015, www.kxly.com)

A fire did start and those continuing winds were fanning it. I felt sorry for the firefighters and for the people having their homes and town threatened. Then I had my cynical assessment of human nature, “Of course we can’t delay personal gratification during a clearly high risk time. We want our fun and our traditions.”

The fire burned on through the night spreading up over the hill and down the other side. Before I went to bed, it was said to be over 600 acres burning. It was 2000 acres in the morning. One news report suggested the fire had started from a waterside campfire getting loose and quickly spreading up the hill. Another report said the fire had two separate starting points. Several homes already were lost. Vivid photos from the night showed the huge glowing fire with the photographer describing the difficulty of capturing the photos in the wind gusts which pushed him and his tripod. The sky outside my window is still filled with a tan blanket of smoke-clouds. I had envisioned a morning at the lake on my paddleboard with beautiful scenery and clear blue sky. I took some days off of work this week specifically for that on-the-lake experience of beauty. Not so pretty now on my precious days off.

                                      (Photo by Ted Curphey, July 5, 2015, published by KHQ6. www.khq.com)

I wondered why the local governments hadn’t officially banned campfires and fireworks. Certainly, people would have been outraged and some would have gone ahead with their fiery traditions. But maybe it would have lessened the risk. Did the officials not want to have to manage the peoples’ outrage? Or in America, is it too much of an overreach to tell people to not do something for general protection during a high risk time? Maybe it is a sign of our trends of permissiveness and reluctance to disappoint. In any case, nature set up the perfect scene of hot, dry lands and forceful, persistent winds for us to demonstrate human nature in a dramatic show. As a result, people, land, sky, anything living within this broad area, all must suffer while firefighters work to bring down the show.