Anxious kids certainly existed before Instagram, but I don’t think teens and parents realize how much relentlessly comparing themselves with their peers contributes to social anxiety.
How to Stop Regretting Your Decisions
How to Help A Child Who is Struggling To Make Friends
Making a friend is a skill. Some kids are going to be better at this than others, but there are things you can do to help your child who is struggling in this area.
RISK and FAILURE
Risk and Failure: What to Know About Measuring Life Risk
It is curious to me that so little has been written about the four-letter word – RISK. Those who do not take sufficient risk in life, whether in pursuit of relationships or achievement, become frustrated and resentful people. We all know those who have stayed too long, whether in a job, in a relationship, or in a neighborhood.
The endless moaning for “the good old days” often shines a mirror on an individual too afraid to change. Young people find this enshrinement of the past difficult to understand because of their confidence in being able to meet any challenge and this confidence is usually undented by the many potholes in life. A balance is necessary, however, between the overconfidence of the young and the frequent resistance and reluctance of the old.
The focus of much of our national attention is presently on the scourge of drug addiction. One wonders if the best description for the last quarter of this century is to describe the United States as the addicted society. Food, alcohol, drugs, sex, or money has become a source of gratification and security that is short-lived and extremely costly.
There is a correlation between the reluctance to grow through exposure to risk and the need to tranquilize the mind and heart from the grimace of opportunity.
We worship winners. In fact, being a fan of a winning team is somehow considered more noble by many than being one of the losing participants.
Here are some things to consider about healthy life risk:
- There is such a thing as information overload. As a culture, we have more access to knowledge than at any time in world history. Such opportunity can spark inertia as much as achievement. If the expectation is that one should not move ahead until one knows everything necessary, productive movement is stopped.
- Collecting opinions on which way to proceed beyond three trusted sources can guarantee gridlock.
- Failure is a teacher, not a judge. The greatest personal cost of failure is in what we think it means to other people and, ultimately, what they think of us. Test out the truth of this by listing your five greatest failures, as you perceive them, and then ask your best friend whether he holds the same perception of you.
Risk sharpens our capacity to adjust. It is our adaptability as a species that has saved our behinds, not our worship of “the way we were” and the “Don’t rock the boat” philosophy.
Read more:
Why Am I So Stressed?
Work/Life Balance – No, you cannot have it all. The Onion jokingly implies that the only way to achieve effective work/life balance is to not have a job.
How to Free Yourself From The Chains of Regret
If you could start your life over, what would you do differently? When it comes to regret, the person you most often must forgive is yourself.
Why Do People Cut Themselves?
It can be hard to understand why people cut themselves on purpose. Cutting is a way some people try to cope with the pain of strong emotions, intense pressure or upsetting relationship problems. They may be dealing with feelings that seem too difficult to bear or bad situations they think can't change.
The Burden of Shame
I saw a woman in her 60s who told me through tears how she had become pregnant at 15 and did not tell her family until she went into labor at home.
Anxiety Help for Fears and Phobias
Anxiety Help for Fears and Phobias: You're Not Alone
Looking for anxiety help? If you struggle with panic attacks, chronic worry, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder, here's help that’s practical and powerful.
Anxiety disorders are generally very treatable, but people who experience them find them hard to overcome. The reason is that while most people have the ability to recover, anxiety literally tricks them into using methods that make their fears worse rather than better.
This is the most natural thing in the world. People think of chronic anxiety as something that invades their lives, something they have to resist and oppose. However, the worst problems come from our efforts to resist and remove anxiety, rather than from the anxiety itself.
People do not get fooled by this trick entirely on their own. All too often well meaning friends, doctors, and therapists get fooled by it as well, and unwittingly suggest methods to their patients that make the situation worse.
For instance, there’s a well publicized technique called “thought stopping”, in which you snap a rubber band against your wrist when you have an anxious thought, and say “stop!” to yourself. It's hard for me to understand why professionals still suggest this idea, because it's very unlikely to be of any help. The more you tell yourself not to think something, the more you’ll think about it.
If you want a quick demonstration right now, take two minutes and don’t think about dancing elephants.
See what I mean? Don’t even think about thought stopping.
When anxiety tricks you, you get fooled into using recovery methods that actually make your fears stronger and more persistent. The more you fight an anxiety disorder, the more it grows. It’s like putting out fires with gasoline.
When your fears and worries and undue anxieties overcome you, give us a call. We can help.
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