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Tag: depression

A Circular Life in the Time of Pandemic

August 29, 2021
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| Categories: Anxiety, Life Stress, Personal Growth

I'm sitting here wondering how to write a blog about hope without sounding like I'm preaching, how to express empathy and make it meaningful, what to suggest you can do to make your life more enjoyable, upbeat, happy, and I'm drawing a blank. Our country has gone through months, years of great unhappiness. We have many different political opinions, religious preferences, and so on. Acts of nature are beyond our control. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and mudslides where thousands and thousands of people are left dead or wounded, happen more frequently. California is on fire and running out of water. One percent of the citizens in this country hold over ninety percent of the wealth. The middle class has all but disappeared. Health care, including dental and vision, is becoming harder for individuals and families to afford. Even co-pays can be impossible to pay since the minimum wage comes nowhere close to parity for healthcare, medication, or dental work. Daycare costs have caused many families that would like to be a two-income family to become a one-income family even though the family could use two incomes to pay the bills and raise the kids. Many people go without the basic things...

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THE NATION IS GRIEVING

October 10, 2020
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| Categories: Anxiety, Depression, Life Stress, Trauma

I happened to see Deepak Chopra on a news show this morning. He was bring interviewed about COVID and said that he believes the nation is grieving. So startled, I stopped walking to listen to the rest of what he had to say about that. I know about grief and grieving, have had my fair share, but it never occurred to me that the nation is grieving. I thought, dissolving, having a collective nervous breakdown, using violence as a coping mechanism, and being submissive trying to survive fear itself, but not grieving. Yes, I thought, that’s right, the nation is grieving. It is going through all of the stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In other dire situations, the stages of grief aren’t linear, and they can overlap. The nation is grieving for itself, no matter what you believe, no one is getting what they want, no one. Before I saw that news clip, I was going to write about despair, and how difficult it is and has been these past months, how in the beginning, we thought it would be over maybe not sooner but for sure later. No one could imagine being quarantined for six...

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DURING THE TIME OF CORONA VIRUS

June 30, 2020
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| Categories: Depression, Life Stress, Trauma

People are scared, anxious, depressed, feel helpless, feel hopeless. It’s all true. Most of us have been on some type of quarantine for months. We’ve learned to wear masks and talk, to stay six feet away from everyone we’re not living with, and to use tubs of hand sanitizer along with washing our hands frequently. We scour stores looking for toilet paper and paper towels, a box of Kleenex is a real score. We didn’t sign up for this, nor did wet see this coming. We couldn’t have imagined the nightmare we’re living through, but like all nightmares, no matter how horrible they are, eventually they are over, we put them away and try not to look back. We go on, shaken up, having learned a new way to live, learning things about ourselves we didn’t know before we were called to courage, hope, faith, and a whole lot of grit to get from the first announcement of a world pandemic to where we are today. Instead of reading a Steven King novel that scares us witless, we feel like we’re inside of a Steven King novel, unable to find our way back out of those pages of life that...

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Ever Wonder if You’re Losing Your Mind?

April 13, 2019
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| Categories: Anxiety, Depression, Personal Growth

Most people do from time to time or feel some version of the same. Another version is believing you have an undiagnosed condition that's killing you but no doctor can figure out what it is. Chances are that's because it's psychological and not physical. That's because some counseling could help you, with getting some support and empathy, with having someone on your team, getting good suggestions and ideas for areas of your life you're finding are a struggle right now. Check out this article. You'll enjoy reading about what the differences are between insanity and other forms of distress. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/am-i-crazy#2

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HOLIDAY BLUES OR SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER?

January 6, 2015
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| Categories: Anxiety, Depression, Life Stress

This is the time of year when it gets dark earlier and the skies are gray and it's raining or snowing or it's freezing outside or any combination of these. During and after the holidays many people feel depressed and overwhelmed. Sometimes it's because they're lonely and wish they had people to spend the holidays with and sometimes it's because people are trying to accomplish a lot while they continue to tend to their already busy schedule, trying to buy presents on a budget for everyone they would like to give a gift to or because, in their enthusiasm, they put way too much on their credit cards and now they're trying to figure out how to get them paid along with the bills. So there there are factors like weather, holidays, and money that do create stress and sometimes depression. However, there is another type of depression that occurs during winter months. It's caused by having fewer daylight hours and fewer sunny hours. This condition is referred to as SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. I'm going to put a paragraph in this article that I've quoted from a Medscape article about this type of depression and also give credit...

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