excerpt from The Turbulent Twenties Survival Guide

“The major stress I experienced after college involved this feeling of, ‘Oh my God, now I’m actually supposed to do something with my life! What the hell do I want to do?’” says Ricardo, a twenty-six-year old from Los Angeles. “I continue to feel scared because of an overwhelming need to come up with some sort of plan for affecting the world. I enjoy my job, make a fair amount of money, and have a lot of friends in the city, but there’s a constant pressure that I should be doing more, doing a better job of living up to the promise of my college education. I feel I should be leading mass social movements, changing the world, or at least using my mind to push forward truth, beauty, and happiness. There’s a sense that a nine-to-five job is a bit of a disappointment. To whom? My parents? College? Myself, I guess. I think the major stress after college for the highly educated is that we feel like we’re suddenly done with the dress rehearsal. Now we’re supposed to use everything we’ve learned and do ‘amazing’ things. It’s often hard to figure out even how to begin.”

Excerpt from Peaceful Mind

Meditation starts with simply observing the mind and body without necessarily trying to change what is seen or the seer. Most people come to meditation with the hope of changing their sense of self, but the inherent framework of a meditation practice is actually not geared towards self-improvement. Rather, meditation is more radically geared towards accepting life as it is.

by guest blogger Lara Honos-Webb, Ph.D., author of Listening to Depression

If you have been depressed for a long time, you may encounter the obstacle that you forgot what it feels like to be not depressed. Paradoxically, healing from depression may be uncomfortable to you because it may represent new territory for you. In this way, depression becomes like a habit, and may be hard to break. One way to prepare for this obstacle is to remind yourself that you deserve to be free from this habit and that you would rather be afraid than depressed. As in the fear of losing control, even positive changes will bring with them fear and a sense of losing control. As you bring awareness to the threat of changing your life, the choice you would make between comfortable depression and the unknown will be obvious.

Patty James, MS, co-author of More Vegetables, Please!, shows how to make a delicious zuchinni pizza.

excerpt from Is He Depressed or What?

One method to use when you want to communicate your feelings, meanings, and intentions in the most direct and respectful way possible is by using the “Asking for Change” model. The use of I messages in this approach is specific, nonjudgmental, and focused on the speaker.

from Psych Central founder John M. Grohol, Psy.D.:

I’m pleased to announce the introduction of a new Psych Central blog, Healing Together for Couples. This blog will explore helping couples in a committed relationship learn how to heal from their hurts and past trauma, and is based in part on the book, Healing Together, by Suzanne Phillips and Dianne Kane.

read the rest of his piece "Introducing Healing Together for Couples Blog" here

visit "Healing Together for Couples" here

excerpt from Wise Mind, Open Mind

When dramatic shifts occur in our lives, we can become nearly paralyzed with fear, anger, grief, and resentment. We enter a state of shock and forget that with loss comes rebirth. On some level, we understand that we must design a new life, a new mandala, but we struggle between trying to figure out what we want to do next and being overwhelmed by the intense emotions associated with loss. Clinging to the past, we resist the opportunity to embrace the creative process that requires us to let go of the mind’s limited way of thinking about ourselves and the situation at hand. But if we can find the courage to enter this process, to experience the state of consciousness Buddhists call “open mind,” accessing our deepest, or core, creativity, we can begin to tune in to what we most want for ourselves. You can ensure that your new life is in sync with your deepest values. You can let go of your attachments to what was and what you thought would be. You can choose to let go of fear and trust that a palette of many colors, some of which you may never have seen before, will be available for creating a new mandala: a new life of beauty that’s in harmony with the song of the soul.

excerpt from Overcoming Night Eating Syndrome

As a night eater, this pattern of eating may seem foreign to you. You probably wake up in the morning with little or no appetite. Some night eaters force themselves to eat a little something to try to stay on some type of normal eating schedule. But even if you skip breakfast, you may not have an appetite even at lunchtime. By dinnertime your interest in food has returned and you will eat a great deal during and after dinner. You will not only keep on eating after dinner, but you often may continue eating until late at night. Perhaps you may even postpone your bedtime just to eat some more food. You may find it hard to fall asleep, and then you make wake up not long after going to sleep, and again later in the night. During these awakenings you may feel not only the need to eat, but also the fear that you will not be able to get back to sleep unless you eat some more.

Excerpt from The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia

As you think about bulimia nervosa, it’s important that you understand that each of the symptoms interacts with every other symptom. Typically, when you’re struggling with bulimia, your weight and body image have a very strong effect on how you feel about yourself. Therefore, if you believe your body isn’t perfect, you then decide that you’re not a valuable person, and you feel bad about yourself—embarrassed, guilty, angry, sad, and so on. This self-invalidation and negative self-evaluation leads you to feel compelled to change how you look so that you can feel better about yourself. Through the messages of Western culture (for instance, “You’re not in the healthy weight range” or “You look different from the women in magazines or on television”), you have learned to invalidate yourself and now believe that losing weight is one powerful way you can feel better.

by guest blogger Margo C. Watt, Ph.D., co-author of Overcoming the Fear of Fear

Like death and taxes, everyone is familiar with fear and anxiety. Speaking in public, watching a scary movie, or meeting a bear in the woods; all can elicit physical sensations that accompany feelings of fear and anxiety – racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating, and dizziness. Although we often use the words "fear" and "anxiety" interchangeably, they are not exactly the same thing. Fear, for example, is the emotion we feel when we encounter a clear and present danger such as meeting a bear in the woods. Anxiety, on the other hand, is what we feel when we anticipate a fearful situation or event in the future (anticipating the bear in the woods).

Excerpt from The Binge Eating & Compulsive Overeating Workbook

Melinda, a patient, says of her binge eating disorder, “I eat and eat and I know that I should stop, but I can’t. I eat so much that I want to throw up, my stomach hurts, and I have to lie down. Sometimes, I feel like if I don’t eat everything I can get my hands on, I’ll explode.” Her words highlight the anguish that many people feel when food controls their lives.

Both binge eating disorder (BED) and compulsive overeating (CO) are conditions in which food is typically used for unhealthy reasons. People with BED or CO tend to feel powerless, and often lose hope that their behavior can change.

Excerpt from Biting Anorexia

That’s it. That’s it. My hair is stuck to my cheeks with tears. A whole part of me has finished. A feeling of heady liberation and utter redundancy. Speech night: over. School: over. My speech as head prefect to two thousand parents and girls and teachers: over. To all those who failed to support me, who told me to just give up and drop out of school to save myself the effort, who cared more about asking me to “pull up my socks” than how I was, as I stumbled, bone-thin and gray, down school corridors… this speech was as much for them as it was for anyone else.

Excerpt from The Well-Ordered Home

Multitasking is that wonderful ability to per form several tasks at once. It’s a key skill in house-hold and life management. There are examples every where—some good, some not so good. Talking on the phone while at the gym. Putting on makeup while driving. While it is an effective technique, like any thing, it can be over done. Here are two types of multitasking.

Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross, author of The Binge Eating & Compulsive Overeating Workbook, on Fox31's Everyday with Libby & Natalie:

Excerpt from Staying Focused in the Age of Distraction

 
We think you will agree that the challenge is not to stretch even further to take in more information, but, rather, to be mindful and discriminating about where our attention is focused. How can we minimize distractions and overlook things that don’t matter. We all know what it’s like to try to pay attention to something when we are distracted by something else. Suppose we are feeling emotional pain, and we don’t want to focus on the negative. We can direct ourselves away from unpleasant thoughts and feelings. We can do this by mindfully attending to our breathing and being in the present moment. The additional strategies below can also help.

Excerpt from The Procrastination Workbook

Practically everyone can develop a long list of delayed activities. The fact that many of us make “to-do” lists testifies to the very human wish to stay organized and get things done. Though few of us pride ourselves in falling behind, sometimes the things on our lists don’t get done....

The five-step self-development process is a powerful way to gain progressive mastery over procrastination. The five-step process involves establishing a mission, setting goals, building an action plan, executing the plan, and evaluating the results. Following this approach, you pick away at the foundations for procrastination.