How to Fight Depression and Anxiety

What's the best way to deal with depressiona and anxiety? Quickly and definitively. Whatever kicks them off, depression and anxiety both are maintained by styles of thinking that magnify the initial insult and alter the workings of the brain in such a way that the longer an episode exists, the less it takes to set off future episodes.

Anxiety and depression are probably two faces of the same coin. Surveys have long shown that 60 to 70 percent of people with major depression also have an anxiety disorder, while half of those suffering anxiety also have symptoms of clinical depression.

The stress response system is overactive in both disorders. Excess activity of the stress response system sends emotional centers of the brain into overdrive so that negative events make a disproportionate impact and hijack rational response systems. You literally can't think straight. You ruminate over and over about the difficulties and disappointments you encounter until that's all you can focus on.

Researchers believe that some people react with anxiety to stressful life events, seeing danger lurking ahead everywhere—in applying for a job, asking for a favor, asking for a date. And some go beyond anxiety to become depressed, a kind of shutdown in response to anticipated danger.

People who have either condition typically overestimate the risk in a situation and underestimate their own resources for coping. Sufferers avoid what they fear instead of developing the skills to handle the kinds of situations that make them uncomfortable. Often enough, a lack of social skills is at the root. Some types of anxiety—obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and social phobia—are particularly associated with depression.

The fact that anxiety usually precedes the development of depression presents a huge opportunity for the prevention of depression. Young people especially are not likely to outgrow anxiety on their own; they need to be taught specific mental skills.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) gets at response patterns central to both conditions. And the drugs most commonly used against depression have also been proved effective against an array of anxiety disorders.

Although medication and CBT are equally effective in reducing anxiety/depression, CBT is better at preventing return of the disorder. Patients like it better, too, because it allows them to feel responsible for their own success. What's more, the active coping that CBT encourages creates new brain circuits that circumvent the dysfunctional response pathways.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches people to monitor the environment for the troubling emotional landmines that seem to set them off. That actually changes metabolic activity in the cortex, the thinking brain, to modulate mood states. It works from the top down. Drugs, by contrast, work from the bottom up, modulating neurotransmitters in the brainstem, which drive basic emotional behaviors.

Treatment with CBT averages 12 to 15 weeks, and patients can expect to see significant improvement by six weeks. Drug therapy is typically recommended for months, if not years.

Exercise is an important adjunct to any therapy. Exercise directly alters levels of neurohormones involved in circuits of emotion. It calms the hyperactivity of the nervous system and improves function of the brain's emotion-sensing network. It also improves the ability of the body to tolerate stress. What's more, it changes people's perception of themselves, providing a sense of personal mastery and positive self-regard. It also reduces negative thinking.

However, just telling a distressed person to exercise is futile, as depression destroys initiative. The best thing a loved one can do is to simply announce: "Let's go for a walk." Then accompany the person out the door.

Source: Click Here
Copyright Sussex Publishers, LLC. 2006. 

If there was ever a time to dare,
to make a difference,
to embark on something worth doing,

IT IS NOW.

Not for any grand cause, necessarily...
but for something that tugs at your heart,

something that's your inspiration,



something that's your dream.


You owe it to yourself
to make your days here count.

HAVE FUN.
DIG DEEP.

STRETCH.

DREAM BIG.

Know, though, that things worth doing seldom come easy.
There will be good days.
And there will be bad days.

There will be times when you want to turn around,
pack it up,
and call it quits.

Those times tell you
that you are pushing yourself,
that you are not afraid to learn by trying.

PERSIST.


Because with an idea,
determination,
and the right tools,
you can do great things.

Let your instincts,
your intellect,
and your heart,
guide you.

TRUST.

Believe in the incredible power of the human mind.
Of doing something that makes a difference.
Of working hard.
Of laughing and hoping.
Of lazy afternoons.
Of lasting friends.
Of all the things that will cross your path this year.

The start of something new
brings the hope of something great,

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

Source: Click Here

Freedom and Islam

Recently, I read an article, “Women in Islam” describing the liberation of women by Islam and Prophet (s). In reality women cannot travel alone to Hujj or visit Mecca (the safest place for any one), and women cannot drive a car in Saudi Arabia. It is not a secret that Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular in the world are the least free and least educated. So, I wonder: Oh Islam! You are a great theory but no practical value, unless you live in the West.

After all, only one thing matters in Islam. Faith is a matter of exclusively personal and private experience. We embrace faith individually just as we confront our death individually. An Iranian Muslim philosopher, Souroush, correctly said it that we have communal actions and but not communal faiths. We can express faith in public but the core of the faith is mysteriously private. The preeminence of Islamic faith is for the hereafter where people are judged individually: "Everyone of them will come before Him all alone on the Day of Resurrection. Surely A-Rahman will show love for those who believe and do right." [19:95-96]. There is no Original Sin that transcends over the goodness of whole mankind in Islam. Therefore, the only things that matter on the Day of Judgment are actions at the individual level. Community actions are useless.

Similarly, the Qur’an states: “Say (Muhammad it is) truth from the Lord of you all. Whosoever will, let him believe and whosoever will, let him disbelieve" (Koran 18: 29) “And so, [O Prophet,] exhort them; thy task is only to exhort: thou cannot compel them to believe.” (Koran: 21-22). “O Prophet.!…Thy duty is not more than to deliver the message; and the reckoning is Ours.” (Koran 13:40). These verses teach that a roof made out safety and liberty is an absolute necessity to develop faith in the hearts. These verses demand Muslims to guarantee freedom and safety for all. Therefore, if governments, Imams, enforced Fatwas, demand any public or outward obedience and submission, such outward appearance is not faith. When law, power, force, and tyranny enforce religion, they are taking control of the body not the soul. Unfortunately, many Muslims want to make reign over body the most important tenet of Islam even though the Qur’an rejects their craving for power over body: “It is not your meat or blood that reach God: It is fealty of your heart that reaches Him” (22:37).

In Muslim-majority nations, people are forced to confess Islamic faith and behave in one voice in religion; but they forget that the rulers cannot fill the heart with genuine faith. I believe that faith chosen freely at the individual level without coercion and without forced conformity is the genuine faith. In a world where the hearts with freely chosen faith, not by forced compliance, pervade, the true religious spirit come alive to establish an ideal society by free choice of the people. This is proven by Muslim history in the first 6 centuries. Muslims helped Jews to create their Golden Age and liberate Christians from tyranny of Roman church. Muslims philosophy and science promoted the Enlightenment and Renaissance of the Europe. We also created the experimental science. In those days, we educated anyone who came our way without force-feeding our faith. Now we have governments that have taken control of our body claiming to send our “meat and blood” to God while Muslims have to beg from non-Muslim societies for their daily bread to keep their body alive.

Prophet Mohammed struggled to establish a free society. Similarly, Muslims must struggle hard peacefully to establish a free society where no totalitarian government, no Imams, no predominant group control us or decide for us. Everyone is equal. If any one wants to be a believer, let him/her be. If anyone wants to be an apostate let him/her be safe to live the life of an apostate. So-called Islamic government is myth created by power-hungry people to control Muslim mind and body. There was no such thing as Islamic government. Government is only a means to execute the will of people. The individual members of the government can have Islamic values and faith. Prophet Mohammed ruled as a democratically elected ruler following the invitation by the people of Medina. He never forced a decision upon his community even when he believed that majority decision on a particular secular matter was a mistake as happened in the case of the disaster of Uhud war. A minority including him wanted to fortify the Medina and fight the Meccan forces. But he agreed to go along with the wishes of the majority to fight the Koreish in the open instead of from fortified Medina even though the strategy of the majority was wrong in his opinion. So, Islam demands Democracy, not tyranny by ullamahs, kings, self-appointed presidents, and military generals.

The concept of so-called Islamic government is an oxymoron unless it means a government with Islamic values that the community has accepted, not by the opinion or fatawa of an Imam but by totally free discussion in a free press, without coercion and intimidation. Some of the so-called Islamic values that exist in contemporary Muslim society are the values of some Imams that had never grinded through and experienced a free press. The self-righteous terrorists, and oppressive governments among Muslims want to control the “meat and blood” with the aid of the values of Imams that were not debated in the free society with a free press. However, they neglect the soul that sustains the body. Let democracy rule our bodies with a free press and let the free choice build our faith. Let us get rid of from our thoughts the enforced forms of outward Islam that demand the conformity and control from our “meat and blood”

The verse 33:5 states: “There is no sin upon you for what mistakes you commit unintentionally, but there is sin what your hearts have intended.” Unintentional mistakes happen much less if mind is exposed to free press, public opinion, and dialogue with reason as guiding principle. A hadith states "God has not created any thing better than reason." So, any Muslims who oppose a free press and reasoning are committing a sin knowingly because he/she refuses to listen to the merit or demerit of opposing points of view. The Koreish of Mecca rejected Prophet Mohammed because they refused to listen to reasoning. Muslims must reject the Jahilliyah paradigm that pervades in our community and in our mind.

Let Imams and scholars issue fatwas freely without power to enforce over the community. Reject any conformity by force. Reject totalitarianism and kingdoms that want to rule our body. Let the heart and mind fly free to see what is out there. Democracy draws inspiration from the Qur’anic axiom that human being are free. The American constitution reflects it as it states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.”

This is candidly stated in verse: “We sent down the Torah which contains guidance and light…Later, in the train of prophets We sent Jesus, son of Mary, confirming the Torah which has been send down before him, and gave him the Gospel containing guidance and light. …Unto to you [O Muhammad] this writ (Koran) and a way and a pattern of life, confirming what were revealed before…Unto everyone of you have We appointed a different law and way of life. And if God had so willed He could surely have you all made one single community professing one faith. But He wished to try you and test you. So try to excel in good deeds” (Koran: 5:44-48).

The existence of different kinds of faith and religion competing each other doing good work is the will of God. So, freedom without the enforcement of conformity in religious matters is Islamic. The so-called Islamic governments of the self-righteous violate Qur’anic principles and tyrannize people of all faith including Muslims. Islam will always remain a dream and an excellent theory with no practical value until faith rules the hearts and liberal democracy with a free press rules the bodies. Finally, I thank God for creating America where I do not fear about government taking control of my body and at same time my heart can fly freely to choose my faith.

Source: Click Here

DEVELOPMENT OF EGO AND PERSONALITY

From childhood onwards we accumulate experiences which affect us in our thoughts, feelings and actions so that we develop a specific personality. It may be an orderly, comfortable personality or it may be the opposite. The personality is formed by the interplay between our attempts to protect, satisfy and express ourselves and the world in which it finds itself. It is never independent of the social, cultural conditions under which one grows up and lives. Thus, personalities may harmonise more or less well with the surrounding world and people vary as to the degree of inward harmony and fruitful outward relationships. Persons whose characters are formed in one society can therefore have major problems adjusting to having to live in another, while a relative misfit at home may thrive abroad.

Much investigation on the growth of the ego has been done in modern times, even to the virtual exclusion of any higher aspects of personality. The very extensive and diverse results and viewpoints in psychological research can hardly be summarised here, but some salient features of the ego can be noted, as seen from the viewpoint of the higher psychology.

The origin of the ego is sought in identifications made in very early development and in how these have taken part in forming the particular personality and character. The ego-feeling arises with the first assertion of 'I want', of possessiveness, and its growth is closely connected with the need to feel pleasure and avoid pain.

The normal human identity is developed in part precisely through perceiving and learning distinctions between 'I' and 'the other', between 'mine' and 'not mine'. The sense of 'me, mine and I' are obviously unavoidable in the growth of the normal human person, though personal growth eventually stops if these identifications are not later transformed. Conditions of extreme psychic unbalance - from alienation, identity crisis, intense withdrawal to certain states of depression and amnesia - usually involve a self-negating disruption of normal processes of ego-affirmation, especially in early life.

A basic thesis of modern developmental psychology is that "some sense of self does exist long prior to self-awareness and language. These include the senses of agency, of physical cohesion, of continuity in time, of having intentions in mind and other such experiences..."1

Controllable experiments combined with well-grounded inferences have shown, contrary to most previous psychological opinion, that a subjective sense of self is present at least from birth onwards as the infant gradually relates to its body, its surroundings and to persons as being other than itself. That is to say, the infant is not a passive object of external stimuli that gradually generate a sense of self and experiences connectedness of things, events and actions so as slowly to form the ego or personality, but is from the start an active participant in the organisation of the personality.

The natural and healthy development of the ego-feeling from early childhood, attendant on the growing discovery of self as 'me/mine', relates identity to body, possessions, abilities and thought (mind) in a progressive discovery of selfhood ('I'). Early on the ego-identity becomes related to the body, yet whether the sense of 'I' as subject is or can be present prior to these body-identifications cannot be tested definitively, not least due to the child's lack of language at that time.

Unbalanced parental reactions to a baby's burgeoning desires to control its environment - when to feed, sleep, move etc. - can stunt the growth of a healthy ego-personality. The mean between over-indulgence and unreasonable discipline has to be found. The process of allowing babies to learn self-regulation and to behave within a reasonable sphere of autonomy furthers the establishment of a more harmonious ego. The drives on which the ego is founded can be wrongly diverted into unusual channels, giving rise both to feelings of inadequacy, and compensatory egotism. Undue frustration or regulation of these drives leads to destructive tendencies and/or undue passivity and can lay the ground for complex inferiority and superiority feelings.

One is not born with the sense of me and mine, but with the capacity for developing it, along with the mind and the ego. Even the reflexive idea 'my body' does not arise until the child is many months old.

The ego is the worldly identity resulting from three main desires: the urges to be, to know and to experience pleasure (joy).2 The desires are (presumably) not personally articulated at birth, but receive specific form and structure from the growing person's interaction with the environment, physical, social and spiritual. This does not mean, however, that one is not born with predetermined tendencies of a psychic nature. Vedantic thought insists that we are born with 'tendencies' (vasanas), karmic inheritances from the previous existence of our souls. This accounts for the controlled observations showing marked differences between individual children at very early ages indeed, differences that are not explainable by any known environmental influences. Whether or not these are formed by genetic means, as for example in the case of genes which are shown to predispose some people to impulsivness, and whether underlying karmic conditions are also at work cannot be demonstrated.

The genetic hypothesis that traits are exclusively the result of biochemical mechanisms has a sound physical basis, yet it has so far been unable to account for the specific qualitative differences in very early personality characteristics between babies that both experienced parents and child psychologists recognise. The Vedantic view is that these are 'carried over' from the end of the preceding existence in the form of the life principle (prana). Symbolised as the breath, the life principle or subtle pranic energy bears our karmic tendencies. The 'last breath' at death allegedly contains the cumulative effects of the actions (karma) of the individual (jiva), which in turn are the determinants of forthcoming tendencies in the next birth(vasanas). There exists a wide range of evidence to support the rebirth thesis.3

The sense of identity and patterns of behaviour that sustain and protect it can be said to form an 'ego-structure', which may for example be more or less weak/strong, rigid/flexible and so on. How a person reacts to whatever opposes the satisfaction of desires or to what hinders straightforward personal development will influence the particular kind of ego-structure. This raises issues like whether there is a need for so-called 'defence mechanisms' to protect the ego when (felt to be) threatened. This again leads to the question of the origin of personality disturbances and pathological states caused by irregular ego-development.

Many studies have been carried out on the role of the environment in the development of specific patterns of personality, including the ego. It is likely that the more harmonious and less prone to conflict the family, local environment and society in which one grows up, the less likely that strong self-defensive and dominating ego traits will be required and hence developed. Also, the earlier in life that difficult emotional and social burdens have to be borne, the less likely a well-balanced ego pattern with good self-control can be developed.

An ego-structure refers to those personal characteristics by which the individual's identity is established, known and asserted through words and actions, whereby this structure becomes indirectly accessible to empirical study. The ego comes to expression in and through the social environment, where it can be studied through reconstruction. For example, an ego-structure can include strong possessive attachments to certain persons and properties, negative and fearful feelings about other persons, difficulties in expressing positive feelings verbally and a tendency to criticism, back-bite and slander. Many fine distinctions between differing ego-structures can be made according to one's purpose.

One can distinguish a continuum between the strong, assertive ego and the weak, self-denigrating ego. The types of ego at these extremes are generally less suited to positive developments than those types in between, according to psychological researches. The overbearing ego, with its sense of possessive attachment, often disturbs learning and its related processes such as perception, judgement, memory, capacity to abstract and symbolise etc. Extremely egocentric behaviour includes manipulative psychopathic tendencies and other mental derangements. The ego is also the main cause of most kinds of projection onto others of one's own emotions and thoughts or distorted variants of these.

The alternative to ego-centered living with 'defences' against whatever is perceived as a threat to the fulfilment of desires, is self-experience without defences, that is 'being oneself'. What being oneself implies depends in each case upon the individual and the stage of self-fulfilment reached.

How we best may control or transform a (developed) egocentric tendency and its likely motivations includes questions of self-discipline, social control, self-knowledge, self-transformation and eventual self-mastery through transcending the ego-feeling.


Source: Click Here

If one thing can be said to be common among all people, it is the desire to be loved. No other desire is shared by all people the world over. Some people want to change the world while others don’t care. Some want to make it onto a basketball team, and others hate sports. Some strive for acetic purity in fasting, others are forever consuming food in gluttonous delight. But the desire to be loved is the one common thread, and even the hermit cannot ignore his wish to be a meaningful component in some scheme beyond himself.

So it would seem that humans would have figured out the secrets of love long ago. But when we go and read the ancient texts, the correspondences of the ages, the longings, the ever painful searching quests for true loves, we often see that the goal of eternal bliss in the arms of love are so rare. For every king who built a palace for his true love, there were a thousand kings with thousands of women of no importance to their hearts. For every knight who saved his damsel and rode off into the sunset of happiness, there were countless tyrants who stole away women and committed them to unhappy slavery.

Now, in an age where the dominance of man over woman has diminished markedly, it might seem that love would be more common. Such is not the case, as we find that our literature is still just as filled with longing, with a sorrowful cry for that mystical enchantment called love. Our music still reminds us that we are alone too often, that we have failed to make that lasting friendship that is the goal of life. Our art almost focuses on the erotic as a way to remind us of a piece of love, but the heart of our art is often meaninglessly hollow: it has little anchored in the actual experience of our nightly dreams.

Wherein lies our tormented inability to find love? Is this world so truly harsh that a dream in us all is but a mocking phantom sent to haunt us and cause agony? Do we desire, above all things, something that is not real? Or is it just that we have striven to find love before we knew where to look?

Realism states that love has been missing from the lives of the masses. In this reality it paints a picture drenched in pessimism. It would make the more weak souls ask what purpose is there to live when they cannot have what they want most. For the stronger, it merely gives them a bitter satisfaction in surviving against a foe that is so great as to be timeless; for them, at least they did not fall to the monster of despair, although life lacked fulfillment.

But there have been those cases where love was real. The king who gave away his kingdom for a single woman, the woman who ran away from her world to live with a man. There are times when two people find each other and they are overwhelmed with a chemistry that cannot ever be removed. They find that they are happy just to exist side by side, that suddenly days are filled with laughter and fun. Many people can have fun, and love, but this type of relationship where the fun does not stop, where the sparkle in the eye and the smirk of frolicking joy never fades, is so immensely rare. Precious, it does occur.

This love is not impossible. This love is available to all of us, I say. But it is not something that can just happen—it is something that occurs only after given requirements are met. Why so many people cannot find the love of their life is because they have failed to find love for themselves. Those people bitter, those people with a sorrowful heart, depressed about existence, cannot ever give life to another person. The woman forever sad about all things does not fill the heart of a man with joyous excitement, and a man bitter at the world cannot make a woman feel special. They can walk a while and share their suffering, but they have nothing to add to one another. If they do not love themselves, they have nothing to radiate, nothing they want to share about themselves.

You will find that those happiest in life are those same people who love themselves. You will find that the most beautiful woman is she with the quick smile that is a response to her inner understanding that she should be happy to live. You will find that the man most charismatic is he who feels that he has something about himself that is intrinsically valuable. These people will be happy, and they will find love.

By Shawn Olson