Possibilities Through Difficult Times

I was telling a client recently about possibilities through difficult times. My client liked the story so much they asked me to post the story. I tell this story often when I am speaking in public or I am at events. I tell it not because I feel sorry for myself rather I am empowered by the events that convinced me that there is always possibilities through difficult times.

It was Thanksgiving 2015. I had just had double foot surgery and it was a few days after Thanksgiving when our landlords who were close friends came to our door and proceeded to tell us they wanted us to move out from the place we have lived for the past 6 years. We were never late for rent and paid often 6 months in advance. 

We were needless to say devastated that close friends, would kick us out over the holidays and while laid up so their new friends could move in. We were angry, hurt and frightened. My partner just recently completed radiation and we had no money as we had to pay for many medical bills. There was no talking to them and we had no choice but over the holidays be prepared to look for a place and move.

We qualified for a home loan, and was able to purchase a home on Christmas Eve. Not just a house, but a beautiful home well taken care of and everything we wanted. One that was big and light and all in working order. It was a huge step from where we were living. Our community pitched in and raised thousands of dollars to help us with some of the costs and got together to helped us pack and move. Some even pitched in for the movers and plenty people were there to help this all happen.

It has been about 8 months since we were kicked out and in my 58 years of life, I do not think I have ever been so happy in a home. We have friendly neighbors, our household appliances work, we stay warm in the winter, we have a beautiful yard and all of our friends say they love coming to visit us now. Because I work at home, my business picked up and our mortgage was cheaper than the rent we were paying out so we were able to catch up on medical bills.

We sit each day on our wonderful porch and thank the universe for giving us such a warm and wonderful home in a kind neighborhood. What I learned from this was even in the most difficult times, we discovered the possibilities. Had the landlords not kicked us out over the Thanksgiving weekend, our community would not have found a cause to reach out, we would be stuck in unfavorable living conditions and we would never be this happy in our life. It was z ripple effect of happiness and possibilities for many.

It is true that life deals everyone difficult times and working hard and cultivating positive emotions on a daily basis helps people cope. When we look back at this difficult time, it strengthened our spirituality, gave us new friends, we learned to appreciate life much more, and we gained a great deal of strength. We kept a daily gratitude list, we meditated more, and we learned that it is these difficult times that give us so many gifts.

Next time something horrible happens always know there is a flip side.  I love to tell this story because it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. It is a good reminder to share with people that you too can overcome anything. For great freedom of anxiety when bad things happen, remember that there is always possibilities through difficult times. 

Minute Meditation for Mental Health

Welcome to today's blog.  One thing I try to tell people is that even if you meditate everyday just for a minute or two, after eight weeks, there can be a shift in the way you feel. A study from Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital can back up my statement as they have found that meditating for only 8 weeks actually significantly changed the brain’s grey matter. So what that means is that meditation has wonderful evidence of improving memory, empathy, sense of self, and stress relief.

Science seems to constantly be validating the claims about meditation being good for mental health especially for depression, anxiety, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). please do not take my word, there are over 600 research studies meditation.

Meditation does not mean you need to sit with your knees crossed and say OM. You can sit in a chair, lay on your bed and I have even meditated standing in a long line. The practice involves sitting comfortably, (sometimes standing) focusing on your breathing, and bringing your mind’s attention to the now without drifting into what is going on or the past or future.

Sometimes to stay focused I say mantra's such as "right here right now" or " I am love and light". If things wonder in my mind, I do not freak out, I just gently try to push it out using my mantra and focusing on counting my breath. Counting helps me stay focused. So if you want to try this exercise for a minute a day, it would be a great start to start your path into feeling mentally healthy naturally.

Find a place to sit or lay comfortably. Sit straight so your lungs can get deep breaths in.  Either close your eyes or look down.

Breathe in for 6 seconds

Hold your breath for 6 seconds

Release for 6 seconds

Hold for 6 seconds

Breathe in for 6 seconds

Hold your breath for 6 seconds

Release for 6 seconds

Hold for 6 seconds

Practice this for one minute several times a day.

What is Holistic Mental Health Care?

The first time I wondered about holistic mental health I was sent to a naturopath doctor who wanted to do hundreds of dollars of testing on me. It would cost me a fortune. They first wanted a long three hour session for about 350.00. I had depression, Part of my depression at the time was caused by financial distress. I was in college and just wanted to get through it.   They also said be prepared to have their testing and they were going to give me “their” products to buy. All in all it would have costed me over 800.00 -1,000.00 just for a visit. Truth is, any blood work I could get done by my insurance and Amazon and local health food stores have great prices on supplements. So why would I pay that much? That is not holistic mental health.

One of the reasons I got into the field was to make it affordable to people. Holistic mental health care stands for treating people outside the realm of traditional care. When I was working as a clinician, my first task was to assess people and then send them to a psychiatrist for medication. It is pretty much the standard. Grieving? Get put on drugs. Going through a divorce? Drugs will take care of that. Feeling insecure and not lots of self-esteem? Apparently there are drugs for that as well. Depressed? Seems like the ONLY option for that is a series of drugs. None of this is true.

I cannot say in my years of working mainstream counseling that pills helped grief, divorces, anger or mild to moderate depression. What I found really worked was spending time focused on health and wellbeing and look at thing such as diet, lifestyle habits, supplements, sleep, and exercise. The key factor here was spending time with the person. Listening, being in the person’s energy, looking for solutions not just ways to mask their symptoms, which is what medication does.

Holistic mental health understands that traditional medicine or psychology has a limited understanding and knowledge about the role of body chemistry in mental health and the impact of diet, nutrition, and chemicals in the environment on the brain. Mental health is extremely affected by issues such as food allergies, nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, hypoglycemia- low blood sugar, and thyroid.

Traditional medicine also overlooks the powerful roles that spirituality plays on the emotional body and aspect of soul, our connection to spirit should be taken into consideration in the process of healing. A good sense of spirituality promotes healthy self-esteem, better motivation, and helps people come to terms with powerful inner experiences. Medical studies indicate that spiritual people exhibit fewer self-destructive behaviors such as drugs, alcohol, gambling and risk taking behaviors. 

Addressing mental health issues holistically means being able to look at the system as a whole. Clients have an array of options in holistic mental health and are empowered with the fact that they have a choice in their treatment option. The client as well as the holistic health care provider work together as a team to make sure the body the mind and the spirit is being treated as a whole.

Laughter Heals

A funny thing happened to me on the way out of 2016; I laughed. It has been a difficult year for many people and we have to remember Plato’s remark, "Even the Gods love jokes." People underestimate the power of laughter. The physical effects of laughter on the body include increased breathing, increased oxygen use, short-term changes in hormones and certain neurotransmitters, and increased heart rate.

Laughter can be a powerful antidote to depression and anxiety – without a prescription and without side effects. Laughter relieves tension, improves our sense of well-being, serves as an outlet for anger and provides a healthy escape from reality.

William Fry, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical School and expert on health and laughter, reports the average kindergarten student laughs 300 times a day. Yet, adults average just 17 laughs a day. Why the difference? Are we too uptight, too tense? Do we take life too seriously? Isn’t it time we learned how to relax? We don’t stop laughing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop laughing. So, if we want to fly like the angels and share in their happiness, we’ll have to follow their example and take ourselves lightly.

Did you know that laughter strengthens the immune system, lowers blood pressure, triggers the release of endorphin's which give you a sense of well-being, reduces stress and anxiety because it naturally relaxes you? Keep in mind humor isn’t about merely telling jokes; it’s the way we view the world. We can be sincere about life without taking it so seriously. We can laugh about our mistakes and pain. So lighten up! You need to laugh more. Look for the humor in your everyday problems. You can worry yourself sick, or laugh till you wee yourself.

This is Tyler Woods laughing in peace.

Children and Mental Health

It is a topic we so rarely talk about; mental health and children. In all reality, who wants to look it? Not the children and parents, why they seems to think that it is their fault a society blames them so not the parents, so who looks at it? Yet children being diagnosed with psychiatric conditions at an alarming rate and rarely do we want to look at that fact little long talk about it.

There are many issues children need to deal with growing up. In today’s world we have a divorce rate of over 50%, our unemployment is astounding, people are losing their homes, parents are worried, teachers are distracted, and young children feel this. How could they not? To top that off, school bullying has increased and so has cyber bullying, and kids are getting it from every direction.

Is being bullied or worried about your family a Prozac deficiency or is it a natural response? Do the trying threes really require an antidepressant? Some doctors and pharmaceutical companies would say yes. In fact, the number of school children prescribed anti-depressants and mind-altering drugs has more than quadrupled in the last decade. New figures show general practitioners are prescribing pills in record numbers to combat stress, violent behavior and even tiredness.

Child drugging has been a huge profitable market with earnings of about $4.8 billion dollars a year. Pharmaceutical companies have done everything in their power to convince the press, legislators and especially parents why children need to be put on drugs.

There are 20 million children in the United States who have been diagnosed with some kind of psychiatric disorder and drugged for it. It has become an epidemic. Innocent children are being turned into patients for simply acting like kids. As we know, there have been a number of serious and deadly results from young people taking medications for depression. Many if not all the recent school shootings have shown us a picture of a disturbed young person who is on some type of antidepressant. But that is not is as disturbing as three and four-year olds on antidepressants.

Let’s look at ADHD and children. At this very moment at least 6,000,000 U.S. school children are being administered Ritalin or other addictive, mind-altering, psychiatric drugs. A pediatric psychologist became concerned when she was suddenly inundated with ADHD referrals. She worried that the disorder was being over diagnosed and began a study of 30,000 grade school students in two school districts in Virginia. The study raises many questions about ADHD diagnosis but provides few answers. Were previous estimates too low Is ADHD being over diagnosed, or are doctors now doing a better job of diagnosing it.

In the U.S. and many of those are being prescribed medication because the parent, daycare worker or school teacher feels that the child might be ADHD.

Did I say that right? A person working in day care who has no medical or psychology background are telling parents their child has ADHD? That is about as scary as it gets! It is almost as scary as parents are not being informed about all the potential risks to their child when they agree to a psychiatric drug prescription.

According to testimony given in the fall of 2004 to the Congressional Energy and Commerce Committee insignificant results were found in two thirds of the studies in which children were given anti-depressants and compared to children given a placebo.

About 1.5 million children ages 5 on up take Ritalin for relief from attention and hyperactivity disorders, researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics. The drug’s popularity is growing. Ritalin use is up 250% since 1990, according to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

How do we help? Did you know that the vast majority of medical doctors consider ADHD to be of unknown causes? What we do know is that the elimination of food additives and refined sugar produces dramatic improvements not just for children with ADHD but for children who show signs of depression.

One thing I have noticed when I work with children with ADHD or depression and anxiety is their diet. I ask the parents to keep a food diary for their kids for two weeks. Some parents are honest some are not.

After reading all the food diaries I began to look at how we send our children to school. Let’s say we give them a nice bowl of Frosted Mini Wheat’s which have 10 sugars and a whopping 41 grams of cards which turns to sugar. Now add milk, non-fat or low fat milk is pact with sugar on the average 12-15 grams. Now let me tell you that 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar equals 4 grams of sugar. Now 3.75 grams of carbs equal 1 gram of sugar. So a small bowl of frosted mini Wheats with a cup of milk equals about 14 teaspoon of sugar.

Feeding our children fresh fruits and a good protein source offers good brain health. Carbohydrate loaded breakfasts of frozen waffles, pancakes, pastry rolls and cold cereal do nothing to feed the brain. Instead, eat an omelet with low-fat cheese and a lean meat to activate neurotransmitters in the brain. If you are in a time crunch, have them drink a protein shake for breakfast.

Foods That Are Good For You

• Vegetables (except corn, potatoes and squash).

• Beans and peas

• Fruit

• Nuts and seeds

• Fish oils, Flaxseed oil, Olive oil, Primrose oil

• Leans meats

• Eggs

• Low-fat cheeses

• Protein powder

Foods To Avoid or Decrease

• Breads and pasta from processed white flour

• White rice white potatoes

• Desserts, ice cream, candy, chocolate, cookies, doughnuts

• Powdered or refined sugar

• Soda, sports drinks, tea, coffee and alcohol

• Fast foods, burgers, pizza, hotdogs, milkshakes

• Processed foods-Hotdogs, lunchmeat

• Junk food, chips, soda

• Fruit juices

• Artificial colors flavors and preservatives

• Artificial sweeteners (aspartame, saccharin, sucralose).

Folate is one of the B vitamins and helps aid in depression. Foods high in folates include: orange juice, strawberries, citrus fruits and juices, leafy green vegetables, whole grain breads, and pinto, navy and kidney beans. Foods rich in protein are rich in an amino acid called tyrosine. Tyrosine may help boost levels of the brain chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which can help treat depression as well as ADHD. Foods include turkey, tuna, salmon or chicken beans and peas, lean beef, low-fat cheese, almonds, milk, poultry, soy products, yogurt.

Natural PTSD Treatment

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a lasting consequence of traumatic ordeals that cause intense fear, helplessness, or horror and people are treating PTSD naturally. Everyone reacts to traumatic events differently and people are unique in their ability to manage fear and stress which is why it is important to have a variety of options to treat PTSD.

PTSD is a condition that people develop after they experience a traumatic event. It is estimated that 8% of Americans will experience PTSD at some point in their lives. The traumatic events associated with PTSD are combat exposure, childhood abuse, rape, physical attack, being threatened with a weapon, car or plane crash, and witnessing a violent crime or incident. About 30% of the men and women who have spent time in war zones experience PTSD.

Symptoms of PTSD

* Flashbacks which is acting or feeling like the event is happening again

* Nightmares of either of the event or of other frightening things

* Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma

* Difficulty falling or staying asleep

* Irritability or outbursts of anger

* Difficulty concentrating

* Hypervigilance and feeling jumpy and easily startled

* Anger and irritability

* Guilt, shame, or self-blame

* Depression and hopelessness

* Suicidal thoughts and feelings

* Headaches, stomach problems, chest pain

Natural Ways of PTSD Treatment

It is strongly suggested that people who experience PTSD symptoms avoid stimulants, such as caffeine from chocolate, coffee, black tea, colas as well as alcohol. Maintaining balanced blood sugar levels helps stabilize moods. People will need to smaller and frequent meals and try to avoid processed, refined, and simple sugars.

Nutritional Supplements, Vitamins, and Herbs

* GABA is an amino acid that is known to play a role in the physiology of anxiety.

*  Amino acids like GABA help very well however,  Taurine, Theanine, Glycine, Glutamine, and 5-hydroxy Tryptophan;(5HTP) work very well.

* B-complex helps reduce anxiety associated with PTSD.

* Kava is an herb that is used widely for nervous anxiety, tension, agitation, and insomnia. Kava works in a similar way to prescription benzodiazepine drugs such as Xanax and Valium.

* Omega-3 fatty acids, can nourish brain cells and reduce inflammation that increase the stress hormone levels. Also helps aid in depression. 

* Valerian is an herbal tranquilizer that is best known as a remedy for insomnia. It calms the nervous system, balances mood swings, and is not habit forming.

* Other calming herbs that are frequently recommended for anxiety include chamomile, hops, lemon balm, passion flower, skullcap, and suma.

* Homeopathy remedies have been shown to have a profound effect on children and adults suffering from PTSD.  Stramonium is effective for nightmares and night terrors, and Staphysagria helps children and adults deal with nightmares after violence. 

Other Alternative PTSD Therapies

* Physical activity such as exercise is perhaps the safest and most effective method of managing stress.

* Biofeedback – Where a person is attached to an EEG machine and, by listening to the kind and amount of brain waves produced, learns to change them in ways that ultimately affect both behavior and feelings.

* Aromatherapy – Essential oils that are used for PTSD can include; bergamot, cypress, geranium, jasmine, lavender, melissa, neroli, rose, sandalwood, ylang-ylang.

* Bodywork – Massage therapy, shiatsu, and other forms of bodywork can relax muscle tension, relieve stress, and improve sleep.

* EFT (emotional freedom techniques) or “tapping” operates on the premise that all negative emotions are a disruption in the body’s energy system and can work well with PTSD.

* Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which requires one to make several sets of side-to-side eye movements while recalling a traumatic incident, seems to help reduce PTSD symptoms.

* Stress-Reduction Techniques – Mind/body breathing exercises, physical exercise, yoga, tai chi, self-hypnosis, massage, meditation, guided imagery, and biofeedback are just some of the stress reduction techniques also used for relieving anxiety.

People who suffer from PTSD have a wide variety of healthy alternative besides harmful medications to deal with this disorder and can begin to see the effects of this disorder dissipate. 

Medical Conditions Not Depression

Most doctors who treat patients suffering from depression use conventional medicines to treat the symptoms which we now know only work about 50% of the time. In today’s world and modern medicine, doctors are quick to diagnose depression, and then medicate.

The use of pharmaceuticals to address depressions and to stabilize moods can lead to significant side effects, and many patients find themselves having to choose between living with these unpleasant effects or discontinuing medications. Others find that despite the exhaustive switching back and forth process involving different combinations of drugs, their depression continues to present major problems for them and are turning to alternative methods to treat their depression.

Alternative methods include treating the body as a whole and looking for the alternate explanations for what psychiatrists may have labeled depression. For example, food allergies may cause severe mood swings, depression and insomnia in some people, and untreated endocrine problems are widely recognized as causing depression Some other causes of depression that could be caused by health reasons includes;

• Nutritional deficiencies

• Lack of exercise

• Hypothyroidism

• Hyperthyroidism

• Poor adrenal function

• Other hormonal disorders

• Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar)

• Hyrperglycemia (high blood sugar)

• Food Allergies

• Heavy metals (such as mercury, lead, aluminum, cadmium, and thallium)

• Premenstrual syndrome

• Sleep disturbances

• Infections

• Influenza

• Menopause

• Certain medications

• Somatic disorders

• Chronic pain

• Heart disease

With so many health factors that can cause depression, people experiencing depression should first consider having a complete physical exam to eliminate any possible health problems. Unfortunately, in our society, many doctors treat depression with medication before performing a full physical evaluation. Part of the reason for doctor’s quick action for medicating a depressed person is insurance protocol. It is far cheaper to medicate the depressed person rather than spend thousands of dollars running a series of tests and procedures.

If you have been diagnosed with depression, be sure to ask your physician about a complete physical, Which includes blood work for a variety of ailments. As a patient, you have the right to a complete physical. Many holistic practitioners now perform a series of tests that can help diagnose food allergies, nutritional deficiencies and a variety of other health related issues that can contribute to depression.