Emotions: Five Ways Parents Can Fight Facebook Depression | Therapy Soup

Five Ways Parents Can Fight Facebook Depression | Therapy Soup: (pls click site for more info)

"The solution to Facebook depression (as well as online safety issues for kids) isn’t rocket-science. We identify five simple things parents can do.

1. Spend more time—a lot more time—with your kids. Don’t feel you have to plan something special: just spending time together, one on one, and showing them that you are willing to talk about what’s important to them is what counts. Even activities like baking cookies, playing a sport, or going for a walk are fine. Even doing chores together is something you can do.

Some research shows that the quantity of time you spend with your kids can be more important than the quality. Half an hour a week of one-on-one bonding is nice, but spending several hours each evening together as a family can have an even greater impact.

In traditional cultures and even in some Western families today, children are taught that their relationship with their parents is the most important relationship in their lives (at least until they become adults, and form new primary relationships). This takes effort on the part of parents."

2. Create a family tech-room. Computers are the new TV. Remember playrooms and family rooms? All computers, cell-phones, Ipods must be used in a public family space, just like the televisions of what I guess now is yesteryear. You can have a homework quiet time rule if necessary. If you have the room, this is a truly amazing preventative (we know a family who does this). You will not only be able to keep an eye out for your kids’ safety, you’ll send the subtle message that being together is what’s really important and that family comes first. Parents: Your kids do NOT need privacy online. You can help them establish safe privacy and safe personal boundaries in other areas of their lives.

3. Get a strong Internet safety filter. Parental controlled Internet filters can help you do your job. You’re the parent so you get to make the decisions that will keep your kids safe. Can kids bypass filters? Some of them, yes. Comparison shop.

4. Set curfews and time-limits. Just like bedtimes (hey, even adults need bedtimes), setting curfews and time-limits for non-school related computer use is essential. If you aren’t ready for solution number 5, below start by limiting social media use. For example, no non-school related computer use after 7:00 for younger pre-teens and 9:00 for teens is one way to go. Plus, limit non-school related computer use to 30 minutes. That might seem draconian from your teen’s standpoint, but if your kids have after-school lessons, sports, homework, chores, and are spending time with family and friends, there won’t be much time left over for social media.

5. Rethink and restructure your family culture. Ban social media!Don’t worry, you’re not the only parent doing this—there are many local groups of parents doing this. Schools are asking parents to ban social media, too. Get together with your kids’ friends’ parents. Many of them feel exactly the same way you do.

Banning it will be difficult. But will it be worth it? Do a cost-benefit analysis of the use of social media.What are the benefits? What are the problems (and potential dangers)? Is it time well spent?

It’s best to begin building values obviously, when children are young. We love the idea of showing children what’s wonderful about life, but we also believe that it’s good to openly tell children (at an appropriate age), the things that are dangerous or not consistent with your values. We know this goes against the conventional wisdom, and we know it’s important for your children to have friendships, however, if the medium in which those friendships take place is social media, safety should be your number one priority. How to prevent the problems of social media’s impact on your preteens and teens is up to you.

*Diagram of social media by Khalid Albaih.

Richard Zwolinski, LMHC, CASAC is the author of Therapy Revolution: Find Help, Get Better, and Move On Without Wasting Time or Money and is an internationally licensed psychotherapist and addiction specialist with over 25 years experience as well as a consultant to organizations and companies in the fields of mental health and addiction. Learn more about Richard here.

Emotions: 5 Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic | World of Psychology

5 Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic | World of Psychology:

"1. Monitor your thoughts.

Jotting down your self-critical judgments — I’m a loser, I’m stupid, I’m ugly — in a journal or a personal-digital assistant is the first step to mastering them: That process alone may decrease the intensity and frequency. Also note the situations in which these feelings occur and see if you can spot patterns.

2. Evaluate your judgments.

Define your terms and examine whether your standards are arbitrary or fair. If you think you’re a “bad person,” are you a bad person all the time? Are there times when you are adequate? Dr. Muller says patients often find that their views are internally inconsistent. “I’ll ask, ‘What does a loser look like to you?’ The patient is picturing a guy in sweatpants sitting around the house drinking beer. I say, ‘Is that what you did yesterday?’ And he’ll say, ‘Well, no.’ ”"

3. Collect objective data.

Challenge negative thoughts with hard facts. Keep a short list of your achievements on a note card and pull it out when your self-criticism threatens to overwhelm you. Or look back at your own CV and review what you’ve accomplished. “Focus on the fact that you made it as a scholarship student — not that nobody asked you to dance for two years,” says Dr. Legato.

4. Conviction or condemnation?

Recognize the difference between thoughts that are critical and those that are constructive, suggests Therese J. Borchard, whose Beyond Blue blog on Beliefnet.com often deals with such issues. If you overeat at a picnic, thinking “I am a fat pig” is a condemnation, she says, whereas thinking “I’ll try to start eating better tomorrow” is a conviction. Dr. Leahy agrees: “Your goal should be improvement, rather than putting yourself down.”

5. Re-evaluate your values.

Make sure that whatever you are beating yourself up about is worth striving for. Some goals, like kindness, integrity, and being self-disciplined, enhance the meaning and quality of life, whereas others only feed into your sense of defectiveness, Dr. Leahy says. “Some people think, ‘I can get Botox and then I’ll be lovable.’ But the way to be lovable is to do lovable things,” he adds.

Therese J. Borchard is Associate Editor at Psych Central, where she regularly contributes to World of Psychology. She also writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. Therese is the author ofBeyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. Subscribe to her RSS feed on Psych Central or Beliefnet. Visit her website or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.

Emotions: Postural Problems a Sign of Bipolar Illness? | Psych Central News

Postural Problems a Sign of Bipolar Illness? | Psych Central News: "

Areas of the brain that are critical for motor control, mainly the cerebellum, basal ganglia and brain stem, also aid in mood regulation and are areas where abnormalities often are found in people with bipolar disorder.

Postural sway — a measure of the endless adjustments people make in an attempt to stand still — is considered a sensitive gauge of motor control that likely is affected by these abnormalities.

In the study, participants who had bipolar disorder displayed more postural sway, particularly when their eyes were closed, than study participants who had no psychological disorders. The troubles, which involved the study participants’ proprioception, or ability to process non-visual sensory information related to balance, were not affected by their mood or the severity of their disorder.

“It appears that people with bipolar disorder process sensory information differently and this is seen in their inability to adapt their movement patterns to different conditions, such as eyes open vs. eyes closed or feet together vs. feet apart,” said Hong, whose research focuses on how humans control motion. “The different conditions will cause people to use the information their senses provide differently, in order to allow them to maintain their balance.”"

Healthy Mind: Your Brain, Mindful Presence and Five Practices to Energize Love In Your Relationship, 2 of 2 | Neuroscience and Relationships

Your Brain, Mindful Presence and Five Practices to Energize Love In Your Relationship, 2 of 2 | Neuroscience and Relationships: By ATHENA STAIK, PH.D.

"Emotions of love and compassion give meaning and purpose to life. The brain is wired with circuitry for caring and empathic connection.

It is “a relationship organ,” as described by researcher Dr. Daniel Siegel. It can be said that all experience in life is relational. Your experience of self is always in relation to self, other persons, to life itself, for example.

Your deepest strivings are for love and meaningful connection to life within and around you. This explains why responses that convey love enhance your sense of security – and why some of your greatest fears, as rejection or abandonment, have to do with a sense of loss of love or connection."

The link between your health and key relationships?

It’s not surprising to learn, therefore, to learn that when your key relationships are off balance so are many other aspects of life. In other words, your physical, mental and emotional health are affected by the quality of your relationship.

Without question, one of the relationships we are most deeply concerned with is our love relationship.

Whether married or dating, divorced or single, we seem to spend (nearly) a lifetime concerned with how to resolve the intense mixture of feelings we feel with regard to our ability to find the happiness and love we seek in our relationship with a special person.

You want happiness? The best option is to grow your ability to empathically connect to your self and partner, in present moments of awareness. It’s a way of knowing, understand your self, and life around you that is connected to your compassion, and that allows you to best understand and empathically connect to your partner.

The good news?

• The brain has incredible plasticity from what the latest findings tell us, capable of changing and healing, restructuring and reorganizing faster than ever imagined, according to neuroscientist Dr. V. S. Ramachandran.
• The brain not only generates experience, every experience changes the structure of your brain. Thus, your day-to-day life experience wires and re-wires your brain.
• Also notable, according to Dr. Siegel, is that change takes place in the context of new experience in relationship contexts.

Thus, healthy relationship patterns are potentially healing in nature, literally, ones that allow the brain to rewire itself for more flexibility, permitting new associations of neural networks, the growth of new neurons, the expansion of existing ones, changes in existing connections, and so on.

Got presence?

The quality of the functioning of your brain establishes the quality of the functioning of your mind. This means you need healthy (conscious and subconscious) thinking and emoting patterns.

To love authentically is a conscious act of courage in present moments that allow you to respond with love rather than react with fear. You’re human, which means your deepest fears have to do with inborn strivings to feel loved and valued in life. It takes courage to love with your whole heart and it necessitates a willingness to be vulnerable and face your deepest fears.

This is where practicing mindful presence comes in.

Practicing presence is the fastest and most efficient way to transform your relating patterns in order to deepen your connection and understanding of your self, which is the basis for understanding your partner.

How presence affects your brain?

When you practice mindful presence in your responses to one another, your actions send a message that affirms your commitment to the relationship, and good feelings cause your brain and your partner’s to release Oxytocin, a hormone linked to felt sense of safety, love and connection. Actions that stem from a sense of presence convey a sense of safety and trust.

Happy partners intuitively practice presence in their responses to one another. Regardless where you are in your relationship, however, you can learn new behaviors that allow them to create new experiences and thus transformative changes in their behaviors, changes that stem from actual structural changes in their brains.

When partners make a conscious choice to remain aware of what is happening both inside and around them in the moment – and simultaneously, they own the ability they each have in moments that most challenge and trigger their stress response – to maintain an optimal state of mind, one that best ensures they will respond in a way that promotes their overall happiness.

What does it mean to be present?

For partners in couple relationships, it means:

• They empathically connect with their compassion and understanding for self and their partner in the moment.
• They know how to keep their heart open to courageously face the universal fears (i.e., rejection, inadequacy, etc.) every human being has to contend with on a daily basis.
• They are aware of their fears and have developed belief system that allows them to not only feel their fears, but also use them as teachers and assets.
• They remain curious and genuinely strive to understand and find validity in the other’s perspective, regardless whether they agree or not.
• They convey honor and respect for self and the other as individuals with unique yet both shared and unique dreams and aspirations.
• They consciously act in ways that let the other know of their sincere interest and love, and their commitment to nurturing a healthy relationship.
• They treat self and other with dignity — especially when they are triggered — making no excuses or exceptions should they slip up.

Plasticity is now considered a basic principle of all healthy brains throughout life. If you and your partner have relating patterns you need to change because they are preventing you from feeling the love you have for one another, have you considered the power of practicing presence? It can help you energize more happiness in your personal life and relationship.

Here are five areas to practice growing your presence muscles:

• Be present to your breathing. Observe your breath, and allow your inhale and exhale to be deep and complete. Set an intention to connect to your breathing, in key moments, to ensure you remain and keep returning to the present moment.
• Be present in your listening. When you are present to listen, you are listening with your whole heart to better understand, know your self and your partner. More than anything, life is ever inviting you to learn. From birth, in a natural state, your brain is in learning mode. When your stress response gets activated, your brain is in protective mode. Your brain is always in either love and learning mode, or fear and protective mode. When you consciously remain present in difficult moments, you are actively allowing your brain to remain in learning mode, thus, potentially make new positive neural changes.
• Be present to your thoughts. Notice what you are telling yourself in the moment. This helps you tune into any assumptions or beliefs you hold that are not serving you, for example, if you tell yourself “I always get the short end of the stick,” this is likely to activate intense painful feelings inside. This tells you that you are likely holding a limiting belief (i.e., that your worth as a person depends on others). You will improve your life dramatically by replacing this with a life energizing belief, such as “I no longer need others’ approval to love and accept myself.”
• Be present to your emotions and felt sensations. Feel your feelings with your whole heart. This means to be willing to feel painful emotions. When you love half-heartedly, it means you only love the parts of yourself or your partner that please you. This type of love naturally never satisfies, as it is superficial. It is how we love when we are still wounded, needy and feeling incomplete inside. Painful emotions and fear are great teachers, letting you know where you are at any given time in relation towhere you aspire to be in the future.
• Be present to your five senses. What are your eyes and ears and felt sensations in your body, perhaps even your taste buds and nose, telling you about the present moment? This is about being aware, being a conscious observer of events and actions around you, rather than a harsh judge of self and other. Just noticing and observing permits you to identify and release any rigid, limiting beliefs, judgments, etc., about yourself or the other, your life or relationship.

When you stretch your heart to love consciously, you are making a conscious choice to act in ways that express you care about your relationship, one that stems from inner wisdom and understanding.

This allows your wise self, the part that is connected to your highest purpose in life, to lead the way. This is a gift you can give to yourself and one another at any time, in present moments.

In my work, I call this conscious-love, an intention to supercharge your life by embracing your feelings of vulnerability at deep levels, so that you can heal and transform them into joy and meaningful connection in relating contexts. It is an experience of balancing your giving and receiving, your love for self and other, your attunement to your mind and body, your heart and logic.

You can learn to harness amazing inner resources, among them, your brain’s capacity for neuroplasticity, on behalf of your own personal and relational well-being and growth. It is through a set of skills that connect to resources you have inside to regulate your emotions, make effect repairs, release fear patterns of coping with stress, and consciously rewire your brain to be more consistently receptive to create, integrate, shift to the most optimal states possible.

Practicing presence allows you to love consciously, a practice that is to the human heart what swimming is to the entire body.

RESOURCES:

Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. (2011). The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. NY: W.W. Norton and company.

Siegel, Daniel J. (1999). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. NY: Guilford Press.

Relationship consultant, author, licensed marriage and family therapist, Dr. Athena Staik shows clients how to break free of anxiety, addictions, and other emotional blocks, to awaken radiantly healthy lives and relationships. Dr. Staik is currently in private practice in Northern VA, and writing her book, Safe Enough to Love™: Breaking Free of Addictive Love in Couple Relationships. To contact Dr. Staik for information, an appointment or workshop, visitwww.drstaik.com, or visit on her Facebook fan page DrAthenaStaik

Healthy Food: Organic food keeps you healthy and slim - The Times of India

Organic food keeps you healthy and slim - The Times of India: "Fruit and vegetables grown without artificial fertilizers have significantly more key nutrients, including vitamin C.

As a result, going organic can extend average lifespan, typically by 25 days for men and 17 days for women.

'But a lucky few could live for many months longer and some for up to five years more,' suggest the researchers.

The University of Newcastle study argues it is on a par with the benefit for the country from the national breast cancer-screening programme, reports the Daily Mail.

It also suggests eating organic is likely to improve general health, highlighting the higher levels of compounds which encourage the body to burn fat. This can help devotees shed the pounds.

The conclusion challenges the Food Standards Agency, which has long dismissed the health gains of organic food.

Lead researcher Dr Kirsten Brandt, a senior lecturer in food quality and health, said, 'The figures represent a 'best guess' based on all available information. She suggested most people probably would not live any longer but a lucky few could add many months, and even up to five years, to their lives.'"

Climate Change Update: CC not a priority in Tallahassee - Florida - MiamiHerald.com

Climate change not a priority in Tallahassee - Florida - MiamiHerald.com: "Four hundred scientists gathered in Copenhagen recently to talk about the warming temperatures in the Arctic. Their conclusion: The Arctic’s glaciers are melting faster than anyone expected due to man-made climate change.

As a result, the world’s sea level will rise faster than previously projected, rising at least two feet 11 inches and perhaps as high as five feet three inches by 2100, they said.

In low-lying Florida, where 95 percent of the population lives within 35 miles of its 1,200 miles of coastline, a swelling of the tides could cause serious problems. So what is Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection doing about dealing with climate change?

“DEP is not pursuing any programs or projects regarding climate change,” an agency spokeswoman said in an email to the Times earlier this month.

“That’s a crying shame,” said former Gov. Charlie Crist.

But it shows how fast popular causes can come and go in Florida politics — even ones that are put into state law. Yet even when causes lose favor in Tallahassee, that’s not necessarily the end of them."

Wellness Update: Africa: key to improving the tenuous state of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is to train and retain more doctors and other medical

UMB News: "Professor George Magoha, vice chancellor of the University of Nairobi (UoN), understands that the key to improving the tenuous state of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is to train and retain more doctors and other medical professionals.

Last week, Magoha led a 12-member UoN delegation, including the deans of its schools of dental sciences, medicine, and pharmacy, and directors of its schools of nursing and public health, on a fact-finding trip to the University of Maryland's (UM) Baltimore campus. 'We came to strengthen our partnerships with the University of Maryland by visiting firsthand to our contemporaries in each of your schools, because this is one of the premier universities in the U.S.,' said Magoha.

According to World Health Organization records, Africa has only 2.3 health care workers per 1,000 people, compared with the Americas, where there are 24.8 health care workers per 1,000 people. There is an estimated shortage of 817,992 health care workers in Africa.

The Kenyans' visit is part of a five-year, National Institutes of Health-funded Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to the UoN in partnership with UM and the University of Washington."