excerpt from Loving Someone with OCD

The cumulative effects of OCD on marriage can result in a relationship burdened by stress and conflict. If left alone, the challenges of OCD moments combined with OCD’s threats to the couple’s emotional and physical intimacy, related financial stressors, interference in social relationships and activities, and fears for the future can shake the very core of your relationship.

Failure to communicate with each other openly about these stressors serves as a form of avoidance that, whether purposeful or inadvertent, creates the opportunity for the root of the problems to grow while creating even greater opportunity for devastating and painful effects on the relationship.

excerpt from Letting Go of Anger

“When I’m really mad at others, I sometimes take it out on myself.” “I get just as mad at myself as I do at other people.” “I just hate my guts.” Anger turned inward means taking the feeling of anger, and behaving in a way that turns that anger on ourselves. The results are that we hurt ourselves, sometimes knowingly but often without thinking much about it. Although anger is a feeling, it can lead us to angry behaviors such as blaming, ignoring, shaming, criticizing, attacking, condemning, abandoning, and physically harming its target. What happens when we target ourselves for these kinds of punishments? We often hear people say they are frustrated, angry, even furious with themselves. Some people get as angry with themselves as they do with others in their lives. But many say they are angry only with themselves. There are also those who refuse to admit any anger whatever, but treat themselves like yesterday’s trash. They are angry and disgusted that they are here in this world, feeling inadequate and paralyzed, they try to justify the fact that they exist, and often feel like failures.

It is when we turn our anger inward often, with too much energy, calling ourselves names and feeling angry with ourselves for whatever we do, that our anger becomes a problem—for us and usually for those who love us, as well.

excerpt from The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook for Kids

Think back to your own childhood for a moment. What are the five most stressful moments that come to mind? If you are like many adults, family fights are at the top of your list.

All couples argue at some time. All kids lose their tempers, too. It is rare to find siblings who don’t occasionally quarrel or call each other names. But arguing and fighting should be an exception, not a rule. If your family life is tainted by constant bickering, sarcasm, yelling, or other forms of arguing, you should put peacemaking at the top of your stress-reduction to-do list.

Everyone, even children as young as five, can learn peacemaking or conflict-resolution skills. Conflict-resolution programs have been used in schools for more than a decade, and there is one thing we know about them: they work. There are many ways to teach these same skills at home. Here is one activity that can help family members find peaceful ways to resolve their differences.

by guest blogger Fugen Neziroglu, Ph.D., co-author of Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding

Hoarding is defined as the acquisition and failure to discard a vast amount of items that appear to have little or no value. It is a serious disorder that can have a severe impact on one’s everyday life. The clutter associated with hoarding provides a lack of functional living space, and even can lead to unsafe, unsanitary living conditions. Hoarding is often associated with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) with 20-30% of individuals with OCD showing hoarding symptoms. However, hoarding can also be seen in obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), depression, dementia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and eating disorders.

While many individuals may acquire multiple items or collect things, individuals with hoarding have difficulty in regulating the amount of items that are acquired, discarding items, and /or organizing the items. Many individuals with hoarding provide rationales for hanging on to their objects. This reasoning includes emotional comfort, a reminder of an important memory, a perceived value of the item, or a sense of responsibility that one must not be wasteful, and control over their possessions among others. Individuals that hoard items can have an intense perceived connection to the items acquired, thus discarding the item can provoke severe anxiety.

The repercussions of hoarding are severe and dangerous. Individuals that hoard have poor quality of life. Their living space is often unhealthy and unsafe. The incredible amount of clutter and disorganization can lead to health issues including headaches, insomnia, and allergies. Often there can be structural damage to homes such as water leaks due to the weight of the possessions, as well as fire hazards with the multitude of items blocking the exits. Additionally, hoarding may to lead to social isolation. The clutter environment does not provide opportunities for others to visit. Hoarding greatly affects family members as well as the patients. Hoarding can lead to strain in familial relationships. There may be financial problems or resentment from a spouse, child, or sibling, ending in divorce, separation, or children moving out of the home. Family members have to make accommodations and adjustments to their everyday life, for example, children and spouses cannot have friends over due to the living conditions.

excerpt from Visualize Confidence

As children we start out full of confidence in our abilities and strengths, with unlimited creative imaginations. Free from self-doubt, we are eager to try out new things and explore new worlds. It’s only as we grow older that we start to evaluate our behavior, second-guess ourselves, and judge ourselves against others. And, as a result of hard knocks and disappointments, our self-confidence takes a beating. Self-doubt comes first and foremost from our inner critic. Let’s consider how the inner critic sabotages our confidence.

excerpt from Children of the Self-Absorbed

Creativity, as used here, includes the following:

• Developing new ways to do things and solve problems
• Perceiving things from a new perspective
• Bringing a fresh, new, or novel approach to something that already exists
• Engaging in creating something that brings you pleasure
• Learning something you did not know and making constructive use of the knowledge
• Streamlining, correcting, reducing, or eliminating barriers, constraints, and roadblocks
• Trying something different

excerpt from Children of the Self-Absorbed

Your self-absorbed parent may still expect you to be at his beck and call, even though you are an adult and have a life and responsibilities separate from him. He may make unreasonable demands on you to do things he can do for himself, to be responsible for his physical and emotional welfare, to always do what he wants you to do or to be what he wants you to be, to act on his desires and wishes, and to accept his authority without dissent. He seems to think that your responsibilities, such as a job or family time, should be secondary to whatever he thinks or wants. You may try to meet as many of his expectations and demands as you possibly can, but you can never give him enough, and trying to meet his demands may even be detrimental to other parts of your life. Both unreasonable demands and intrusive questions show a lack of understanding and respect for your boundaries. Further, both put you in a position where you run the risk of off ending if you do not immediately comply and do what is wanted or supply the desired answers. Intrusive questions are those that ask for intimate, personal, and sensitive information about yourself or others that you may not want to share. When faced with questions like these, you may need time to understand your own needs, desires, and wishes, and when engaged in an interaction, you cannot take the time you need. You are too busy interacting and reacting.

Excerpt from Walking After Midnight

I love being in the center of the busy energy in our home. However, I hold my breath every time the phone rings. I know at any moment the police could call to say there has been some activity on the criminal investigation, and our lives will be thrown into a tailspin.

I agonize over how the waiting must be affecting families on the other side of the tragedy. Surely parents have seen loved teenagers change over the last two years as they have tried to push the events of New Year’s Eve 1997 far, far down into the realm of forgotten memory. I imagine those parents watching in isolation, fearing something horrible has happened to pull the light from their children’s eyes, but having no idea what it was.

excerpt from Mindful Motherhood

First, I want you to know that being mindful is not yet another goal you must achieve to be a good mom. It’s not about becoming a perfect Zen mama who stays calm, cool, and collected in the face of anything that comes; uses only organic baby foods, clothing, and linens; stays on a career path while also being available to her family; and stays fit and trim all the while. The last thing I want to do with this book is put another giant task on your list of “things I must do to be a good mom.” Mindful motherhood is not about becoming someone other than who you already are.

Mindful motherhood, simply put, is being present, in your body, and con¬nected with your baby no matter what is happening. It’s being aware of your experi¬ence from moment to moment, as it is happening, without pushing it away, trying to make it stay, or judging it as bad or good. It is meeting each situation as it is, and over time, more and more often, approaching whatever is happening with curiosity and compassion.