Stress Center Peer Support

Look back at your life...
You are stronger for everything you have been through. You have never experienced anything so far that you can't deal with. Life may be difficult at times, but you made it this far. How did you cope in the past? Friends? Family? Throwing yourself into work? Exercise? Baking? Try to allow yourself time to grieve for the situation but don't stay there forever.

There is a big difference in worrying about bad things and dealing with bad things once they arrive. It becomes "real" only once it has happened, not in the months of worry before. Certainly if you spend a lot of time worrying about things, eventually one of those things is bound to become "real". The more you worry, the higher your odds are of something becoming real. However, it is a waste of your energy to worry about all the potential "real" problems.
Try to focus on all the amazing things in your daily life - like good food, exercise, social time - maximize your friendships by confiding in friends and allowing others to help you.

Don't spend the calm days when nothing is ACTUALLY happening worrying about the what ifs.
Enjoy the time you have with your husband every day - if bad things happen you will be capable of dealing with them.

Love and light

Heather

Good posts, fightback76 and Teasha. Thanks.

A lot of people, including myself before the program, have a mistaken idea that we can only be stable and function normally when circumstances and life give us what we want and expect. That is a fallacy of thought. Carolyn Dickman of StressCenter is a good present example of continuing to function inspite of very adverse circumstances. Also, Jackie on the tapes had leukemia. It doesn't get much worse than that.

The program is effective for both imaginary and real life problems. It's not the acutal events but our perceptions of those events, how we interpret them, which causes our negative thoughts and changes in mood. While it's normal to be sad with some life circumstances, it's not normal to be clinically depressed or very anxious/panicky.

In my opinion, thinking that real life events can not be viewed in the same way as imaginary events is a fallacy in thinking also. Both impact us through our perceptions, how we think. Events don't hit us in the head physically, jump into our emotions and cause us problems. We have to think about the events and give them meaning before they can have adverse effects on us.

Real life events or worry and imaginary things, both impact us through our thinking and our perceptions. The program is effective for both. It's based on cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT. CBT has been proven as effective as meds in clinical trials. The links below are for your information.



<A HREF="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 051702.php" TARGET=_blank>http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 702.php</A>

<A HREF="http://www.clinicalanswers.nhs.uk/index ... estion=359" TARGET=_blank>http://www.clinicalanswers.nhs.uk/index ... ion=359</A>

<A HREF="http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/23/1663_53120.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/23/ ... 120.htm</A>

<A HREF="http://www.academyofct.org/Library/Info ... derID=1126" TARGET=_blank>http://www.academyofct.org/Library/Info ... ID=1126</A>