1. Four Easy Steps To Put A Tourniquet On Your Teen’s Depression

    March 5, 2013

    Depression and sadness

    Image Credit: Mike Bailey-Gates

    by Jennifer Mathis

    Seeing Depression as a Serious Injury

    Without broken bones, a high fever, or profuse bleeding, it can be difficult to determine how severe your teen’s depression really is. Depression stripped of any scientific or medical terminology is, put simply, a severe brain injury.

    It’s not like your teen face planted in a skateboard stunt; it’s not that kind of brain injury. It is usually a slow, relentless assault on your child’s psyche, which drains vital hormones from their brain. It may be their love life’s gone bad, or lack of friends, or being the victim of bullies, or even their reaction to your divorce, or contentions at home that rob their brain of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.

    How important are these hormones? Well, imagine trying to drive your brand new car while it is dangerously low on oil, anti-freeze, transmission fluid, and brake fluid. Everything looks fine. It may even have that new-car smell, but it doesn’t seem to work right. Maybe your car just has a bad attitude.

    Similarly, when your teen is low on serotonin, it is difficult for them to feel happy or good about anything. Low norepinephrine robs your child of motivation to achieve or even get out of bed, and low dopamine can affect your teen’s grasp of reality.

    When your child is in this weakened condition, dealing with ordinary problems and stress can feel overwhelming and further tax their body’s remaining supply of these vital hormones, sending them into a full clinical depression.

    When your teen is grappling with depression they won’t appear to be broken, injured, or in pain. In reality, they are bleeding to death in front of your eyes. Hopefully you will see it in time.

    Does depression sound serious to you yet? If you are convinced, here are the four steps you need to take now for your teen.

    Step 1 – See Your Doctor

    Yes, you will need to see a doctor. Depression is a medical condition. It isn’t a “bad attitude.”

    Under most insurance plans, your teen will need to see your primary care physician first. Be sure you attend this visit. Most primary care physicians know when a condition requires a mental health specialist. He or she will most likely recommend a good child psychologist or psychiatrist, depending on the severity of your teen’s condition.

    Step 2 – See the Psychologist

    Based on your doctor’s recommendation, a health care professional which has the proper training and experience to deal with your child’s condition will be able to help determine the underlying causes and ongoing circumstances that exacerbate your child’s depression.

    He or she will also know the proper treatment such as psychotherapy. Severe depression usually requires both a psychotherapy provided by a licensed child psychologist or psychotherapist as well as medication prescribed by a psychiatrist.

    Step 3 – Follow Your Doctor’s Treatment

    The Internet isn’t a good repository of medical information, mainly because much of it is inflammatory, misguided, or trying to sell something. You will surely find several sites that disagree with your doctor. Paying attention to this misinformation is a bad strategy.

    Those who foster a non-medical approach don’t have a vested interest in your child’s welfare. They are most likely trying to sell you an herbal, vitamin concoction that is the equivalent of a band-aid on a broken leg.

    Depression, like any other serious injury, can’t just be walked off, it needs medical intervention. The psychotherapy and medication your doctor prescribed will help your teen to heal.

    Step 4 – Provide a Healing Environment

    Even though medication for depression exists, it isn’t like aspirin for a headache. It only helps your child to cope enough to follow strategies and regimens that allow for gradual healing.

    Based on this reality, it is impractical to think that your teen could heal in the very environment that helped create the problem in the first place. The competitive, negative, and often toxic atmosphere of school can nullify the effects of their medication and therapy.

    Many parents have found the success they are looking for in boarding schools specifically created as places of healing. Severe depression often requires this type of intensive care for the psyche, allowing your teen to learn to deal with life and achieve academically without the negative stimuli that could reopen wounds and prevent proper healing.

    As in cases of severe bleeding, doctors will eventually remove a tourniquet in order to repair tissue and allow the patient to fully recover. Similarly, drastic measures to save your teen from depression can eventually lead to full integration of your teen back into your life as well as society.

    If you like this article please share and save a life.

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  2. Kick Teen Depression and Invite Love: How Dance Helps Depressed Teenagers

    February 26, 2013

    kick teen depression

    by Denny Dew

    A dance to raise awareness about teenage depression

    Kick Teen Depression is a group of teenagers. They think that depression in teenagers is a problem deserving much more attention. They gently ask us to get around our reluctance to care about psychological problems and to give these latter some consideration.

    They danced this call for attention last 9th of February 2013. It took place in Conshohocken. It’s a town in the state of Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

    Does it matter that they are American? No, it doesn’t because depression is a psychological problem and human psychology is the same in the USA, in the UK, in Australia and in Brazil. There is only one mankind, as too often we forget.

    Their call for attention is gentle. It’s about inviting love. We all need kindness in a world that attracts our attention so brusquely.

    We also need to listen carefully to their call because it’s about a society deteriorating fast towards an inhuman way of life.

    Why I like this event

    I like to see teens helping each other. It gives hope. Schools set teens against each other, a needlessly competitive society creates conflict. Money and power makes enemies of people who could be friends.

    Helping each other, instead, is healing. It breaks barriers and makes people happy. We all want to be happy despite all the efforts made to divide us.

    I like dance. Dance is life in a culture of death. I like life. We all do. Even if we feel suicidal we actually love life. Suicide is an extreme cry for help that deep down one would like to be heard. One would like to hear that one has a right to live no questions asked, no judgments inflicted. Man has been dancing life for thousands of years.

    I like dance because it’s a very old and powerful way to tell the story of our feelings. It reminds us that our feelings aren’t there to be dissected and judged, but to be lived.

    Dance heals depression. Let’s see how. But first let’s see how teens can help their depressed friends.

    But, can teens help?

    “There is no need of faith in the robot, since there is no life in it either.” This is Erich Fromm speaking loudly about the robotisation of modern life in his book The Art of Loving.

    Adults are deeply conditioned by the pressures of social conformity, and to them robotisation is just routine. It’s like taking coffee in the morning.

    They accept being manipulated by advertising, mass media, companies, ideologies, political parties.

    Teens have a sensibility for authentic human feelings that will be destroyed when they adopt adult insincerity. But, until then, they are still sincere and human. Robotisation happens later. The production-and-consumption machine will make robots of them and replace their true feelings with the ones required for the smooth working of the machine.

    It’s a child who shouts that the emperor has no clothes. Adults don’t dare and even if they dared, they wouldn’t see the naked emperor. They accept the absurdity of modern life as a given.

    Teens have a message and they would like to be listened to, but who really wants to listen to teens knowing that their social role is to become robots? Robots are to be programmed. They aren’t supposed to have something useful to say.

    To tell them what to do, what to learn and what to feel is easy, and there is no need of faith to do it. Just that all humanity is lost in the process.

    How dance helps

    Dance is a therapy for depression because it creates an oasis where teenagers can rest from the pressure to become well-functioning robots.

    When dancing their feelings, teens are in control. They can express themselves freely and their interpretation of rhythm and music is personal and no correction needs to be made.

    While in their daily life teens have to suffer the humiliation of character moulding, in a session of dance therapy they are allowed to live their personality without needing to fake it.

    Dance gives the opportunity to express problematic feelings like fear. When fear is depicted through a dance routine, it becomes less of a problem.

    Dance reminds depressed teens that they are human and can create. Something they can forget at other times because they are carefully and continuously prepared to be used.

    Industrialization wants to control everything, even creativity. In dance therapy depressed teens are reminded that human creativity is an animal that can’t live in captivity.

    A therapy for depression based on dance has an advantage over talking therapy because teens might associate the latter with judgments. Judgments are delivered by talking, not by dancing.

    Every therapy for depression needs a therapist who has trained himself to be non-judgmental. This is important for dance therapy too.

    Dance is a form of art. One of the main elements that are present in every form of art is a truly genuine interest.

    Modern life requires us to fake our interests and have them manipulated or simply ignored. If we have a genuine interest, it will be used by someone else for his own purposes, in which we have no say. This is very depressing. Dance reminds us that the best way to disperse the clouds of depression is to bring into our life the creative inspiration that makes us human. This is how we invite love into our lives.

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  3. 11 Myths About Anxiety Symptoms

    February 23, 2013

    anxiety and depressionMyth #1: One has to learn to live with this condition.
    TRUTH: One does NOT have to “learn to live” with this condition because there is a complete process, tools and methods to remove this from your life once and for all. Yes,  there is a sure way past this and it works! But it requires you to work on it, not only your psychologist or therapist.

    Myth #2: These feelings will always return…setbacks are inevitable.

    TRUTH: This is NOT true! Once you begin moving forward the symptoms will shrink down to manageable size until they no longer matter and dissipate all together. There are always “bumps in the road” in life, but when you slow down, remember your skills and tools, you will be able to negotiate anything. Remember, slowing down, keep going forward and moving ahead. You can never turn back!

    Myth #3: “I am worse than anyone else!”

    TRUTH: This is a normal feeling when looking at your anxiety symptoms and most people go through a period of thinking this thought. The truth of the matter is that no matter how you became to be in this condition, most people have remarkably similar symptoms. All these symptoms are adrenaline based and, therefore, limited and there’s a set way of moving past them. You may think you feel worse than others, but this is not true. When you go through this, the “right way” you will move past this is a relatively easy and quick fashion.

    Myth #4: “I’m too “young” “old” “busy” “scared” or “whatever” to get past this.”

    TRUTH: Age has no significance to getting past this condition. It is not a factor. Neither is anything else as long as you follow the formula…the process. There is a way out and anyone can do it. There is a “right way” to go through this and if a person uses these skills, being in total control again is perfectly attainable…..and in a relatively short time!

    Myth #5: “I need a “safe” person with me for support.”
    TRUTH: Psychological support is a marvelous thing to have and it feels fantastic, especially if this is a support from a psychologist or therapist, BUT it feels more sensational to rely on YOURSELF! Once you learn how to move past the symptoms and go forward with strength and control you will understand the feeling of depending on YOU. It is the greatest feeling on earth, and nothing else can compare! You are all you need to move past this. You are the only one who can grab the reins with this condition and give yourself the real comfort you need. Once you feel the strength of going through this with your own power you see extremely clearly that you are your own comfort zone.

    Myth #6: “The places I want to go are too “noisy”, “smoky”, “bright” or “crowded” for me to feel comfortable.”
    TRUTH: it is not the places………..It is what you are saying to yourself in these places. That is why you feel safe when you get home……you reassure yourself that you are safe and your body responds favorably. It does not matter if you are in the middle of Times Square on New Year’s Eve if you know what to do. It is all in how you define where you are and the way you think……your body reactions just naturally follow.

    Myth #7: “Making it harder for me is the fact that family and friends simply don’t understand what I am going through!”
    TRUTH: This has to do with regaining your life and it doesn’t matter who else is on the peripheral. This is between you and yourself. Once you start gaining control, you will see things that USED to bother you will now roll off your back. When you are less vulnerable, things won’t stick any more. You’ll be treated differently because you will be acting differently.      You will see relationships improve because you won’t let “minor” incidents bother you and, you’ll feel better about yourself. It follows suit that everything else around you will naturally improve!

    Myth #8: “Maybe there’s something seriously wrong with me, that’s been overlooked!”
    TRUTH: Naturally after you’ve been checked by your psychiatrist or/and clinical psychologist and been diagnosed with the anxiety condition you will feel some relief. You know it’s anxiety symptoms, and you feel relieved it’s nothing physical. Then why do you still feel those symptoms? The reason is that your body is still hugely sensitized from weeks, months or years of fueling the feelings by thinking the wrong way. Once you begin to do it the right way and the symptoms stop mattering, you will realize even though the “first fear” flares from time to time that it will dissipate if you just stop feeding it and fueling it with your fears. These symptoms are the effects of adrenaline, and although they feel uncomfortable, they are merely trivial. Nothing to worry about.

    Myth #9: “I must do ANYTHING to avoid these feelings, they could hurt me!”
    TRUTH: Avoiding is what built up the fear that keeps you sensitized and in this condition.  I would also   rather see you go through it the “right way” than spend your whole life in fear and avoiding these anxiety symptoms. The way out of this, past this once in for all is going through it the RIGHT WAY!

    Myth #10: Drugs are the only answer. Sometimes you need a quick fix. NOT!!!
    TRUTH: Some medications do take the edge off; there’s no denying that. Some drugs also sedate and have side effects too. This is purely a personal choice between you and your health care provider. It is a choice though we work with people taking medications and those without medications too. Clinical psychologist or therapist could be a great help in case of anxiety or depression. We have seen people, with their physicians approval SLOWLY go off their medications after just a few months of psychotherapy sessions. We also feel whether you’re on medications or not; it’s invaluable to know how to go through this with skills, methods and tools you have learned and can carry along with you wherever you go!

    Myth #11: You’ve tried everything and Nothing works…..you’re stuck for life.
    TRUTH: You have not truly gone through it the “right way”…..You have given in to your fears and ignored your power. You own strength to go through this the correct way. No more avoiding. It’s time to embrace this and go through it correctly. You owe it to yourself to do it the right way, the only way, and conquer this condition once and for all!

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  4. What Is A Phobia?

    February 16, 2013

    phobia anxiety

    Image credit: Matt & Nicole Cummings @Flickr

    A phobia is an irrational fear, an aversion, a hatred, or acute anxiety over something, or someone, an activity or a situation; which is a trigger that releases fear in that person. These fearful feelings can be generated by anything that normally does not pose a threat to life, they are usually a response to a mental image of a previous experience encountered, where an incident generated some anxiety and the mind was unable to rationalize the situation.
    At what point does a reasonable amount of anxiety and avoidance become a phobia? Increasing anxiety over apparently safe items indicates a phobia. If the level of anxiety is high and bears no relevance to the degree of danger involved, it is a phobia.
    Many people feel slightly apprehensive when boarding an aircraft, or facing a new situation, or meeting new people, but not to the point of being panic stricken, that avoidance is the only relief.
    The greater the anxiety, the stronger the desire is to avoid what is feared, and the greater the avoidance the more disruption is caused to the person’s life.

    False Beliefs About Phobias

    Madness

    A phobia is not a serious mental illness, nor is it connected to any known physical illness. However painful and distressing your symptoms are, no matter how irrational and inexplicable your phobia and its effects may seem, no matter how dramatic and complete your loss of mental and/or physical control, these are not the first signs of insanity.
    The symptoms do not indicate a ‘nervous breakdown’. The modern view of phobias, which is accepted by the majority of specialists, is supported by a wealth of clinical and research evidence, Phobias are a result of an unfortunate but entirely normal process of learning.

    A Rare and Unique Illness

    Many phobics believe they are suffering from a rare illness, that is little known and nothing can be done, and this belief is endorsed when other people are seen to cope effortlessly with the same things that arouse a phobics’ fears. In fact phobias are very common, studies suggest one person in ten experiences such difficulties at least once in their life. Phobias have been studied for well over a hundred years and a great deal is known about them, effective treatments have been developed, mostly from the field of behavioural psychology.

    A Phobic is Weak-willed Or Stupid

    Sufferers often consider themselves ‘stupid’ or ‘weak’ because they are constantly told that by others. Non-sufferers can be irritable and impatient about the inability of a phobic to do something that most people tackle with ease. Having a phobia has nothing to do with a fault in your character, a weakness or a flaw in your personality. Some of the bravest people are those fighting to free themselves of their fears. People who tell you to ‘pull yourself together’, ‘stop being foolish’ speak with the voice of ignorance about fears and simply do not understand. The distress produced by a phobia can only be understood and appreciated by one who has experienced a phobia.

    Self control and positive thinking

    Telling yourself – or being told to exercise ‘self control’ is not the right kind of positive thinking and will not get rid of the fear. Saying ‘I am not going to feel afraid’ in a situation, without some preparation, is unrealistic positive thinking that will hinder your progress. Positive thinking has to be used in a constructive way and by using simple clear statements that :-

    •     Relate directly to any difficulties you anticipate.
    •     Are realistic about the likely outcome
    •     Must contain practical advice about how the situation can be tackled successfully.

    Example

    I know the situation will be difficult but I will be able to deal with it by concentrating on my breathing.
    The situation may make me feel tense but I shall be able to cope if I practice relaxing my muscles.
    Saying such positive statements and adding your own coping strategy will help :-

    •     I may find this difficult but I shall cope more easily if I remember to….
    •     The situation may be tricky to handle at times, but it will prove less difficult if I….
    •     I might find it slightly harder to cope, but I will keep my anxiety under control, if I study the surroundings in detail.
    •     Carrying out this task might make me nervous, but I will manage if I….

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  5. Stress, Anxiety, Depression And Other Triggers For Relapse

    February 10, 2013

    anxiety showsby Ken Selev

    In this fast paced world, how does one cope?  Some people dive deeper into work, some people bury themselves in familial responsibilities, some pick up new hobbies, others find relief in solitude, still others have life-long defense mechanisms and habits to fall back on. In some cases these may include habitual behaviors that are triggered by stress, anxiety, worry, pressure, depression, grief, and many other emotions. In some cases dealing with emotions can become too much.

    On the spectrum of addiction there are countless factors, reasons and situations that can affect the way a person sees and interacts with the world.  For the well-adjusted person that does not have any addictive tendencies they might be able to brush off a hard day, week, month or even year. In the case of someone slightly more sensitive or at the very least more affected – he or she might not be able to bounce back.  One setback could lead to another and another and all of a sudden things are looking and feeling hopeless.  Instead of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, there is no light, no hope and nothing left to do.

    Here is where an intervention comes in. An intervention is the light at the end of the tunnel. It is hope and it can succeed where all else has failed. A professional intervention uses the expertise of someone with thousands of hours of training and experience and the power of love and compassion from family members and friends in order to help someone that feels like there is no more hope. Family interventions can end up saving someone who has lost their life to addiction. Seeing people who have loved and cared for them for their entire life can help clear an addict’s judgement that has been clouded due to their substance abuse.

    The first step is to call an intervention specialist and learn how an intervention can work for you. After this initial call you will have time to review the possibilities with friends and family and decide where, when and with whom the best possible intervention can take place. Having a solid game plan going into the intervention in conjunction with mentorship from a professionals can make a huge difference. The intervention team works as extra support and sees you all the way through from the initial phone call all the way into aftercare.

     

    Interventionsit Ken Seeley is the founder and creator of Intervention 911 a company offering family interventions, executive interventions and personal interventions

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