excerpt from The OCD Workbook:

Expect lapses and beware of relapse—especially upon making progress! What’s the difference between the two? Only a world of difference! Lapses are accompanied by a relatively minor uptick in OCD symptoms, are usually short or limited in duration, and almost always occur during a period of short-term life stress or transition. Getting married, divorced, changing jobs, the birth of a child, a move to a new location/community, illness in the family—both happy events and unwanted events—can be associated with a short-term lapse in your recovery from OCD. They are completely normal and should be expected as part of the normal waxing and waning of OCD symptoms throughout your life. Your previous recovery should be fully intact when the outside situational stressors subside.

Relapse, on the other hand, is a much rarer, severe regression back to pretreatment levels of symptoms. It is usually associated with some significant life stressor or disruption in social support, plus additional factors such as alcohol or drug abuse, and in almost all cases, having gone off of your prescribed anti-OCD medication. The sooner you face the issues of lapse and relapse and learn some tools to both prevent them and manage them when they occur, the better.

The following suggestions can help you:

excerpt from 10 Simple Solutions to Chronic Pain

Depression afflicts 50 percent of chronic pain patients (Fishbain et al. 986), and some have estimated the figure to be much higher (Romano and Turner 1985). Most experts agree that symptoms of depression occur following the onset of pain and are more likely to be present in people who are psychologically susceptible (Sullivan et al. 2001).

In addition, people with chronic pain seem to experience more problems with anxiety than the general population (Craig 1994). Fears of reinjury and pain, worries about future losses (especially of functional abilities and finances), and a sense of threat of psychological harm from the stress and strain of chronic pain are common (Rosensteil and Keefe 1983). Anxiety, when present, contributes to higher levels of distress and disability associated with chronic pain (Waddell et al. 1993).

Anger is also a frequent problem for many people with chronic pain (Fernandez and Turk 1995). Patients in our clinic often report feeling more irritable and angry after the onset of their pain. Anger, in turn, interferes with activities and increases pain intensity and symptoms of depression (Tearnan and Lewandowski 1992; Kerns, Rosenberg, and Jacob 1994), fueling a vicious cycle. Anger may also significantly interfere with motivation and acceptance of treatment goals in people with chronic pain (Gatchel 2005).

Depression, anxiety, and anger have another debilitating effect: They often make people believe they’ve changed into someone they don’t like—a person who is always angry and discontented, someone indecisive and lacking confidence, a shell of their former self. And in fact, it is difficult to feel or think like your former self when you’re depressed, anxious, or angry. However, you haven’t lost the things you cherish about yourself— your values and core beliefs. They still reside within you.

Before working on specific techniques to improve your mood, you need to understand the nature of depression, anxiety, and anger. This will help you recognize when you’re having problems. Also, bear in mind that negative emotions rarely exist in isolation. When people are angry, they’re often depressed and anxious. The suggestions and interventions in this chapter are effective in modifying all three negative emotions.

excerpt from The Chronic Pain Care Workbook

People react differently to pain. How you cope with your pain is largely based on how functional you are physically and psychologically. The more you are able to do the things you want, the easier it is to cope with pain. The more you are able to view your self as healthy, the more sound your ideas and thoughts about living with pain. Conversely, the more you see yourself as sick, injured, or damaged, mentally or physically, the harder it is to cope with life. In short, the higher your psychological and physical function, the better you do. Your thoughts and ideas about having pain can play a major role in determining how well or how poorly you cope with pain.

Ellis and Harper introduced an important way of looking at how thoughts and beliefs influence behavior in their work helping people with problems other than chronic pain. However, many pain management centers around the world have adapted this model to evaluate how people’s thoughts and beliefs shape the chronic pain experience.

New Harbinger's second piece on Huffington Post.

By Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D., author of 10 Simple Solutions to Adult ADD

Approximately 4 percent of the general population has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). You may be wondering if you have ADD - you have difficulties staying on task, and tend to interrupt others, among other difficulties. Here are some ways that may help you find out if ADHD is an issue for you:

read the rest of the piece here.

excerpt from Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain

We’ve often tried to account for the almost total lack of attention myofascial trigger points receive in the medical field—despite the fact that every day we perform therapy that relieves chronic pain in the great majority of people coming to us.

We’ve had many patients who were scheduled for surgery but after being treated with trigger point elimination techniques, chose not to go through with surgery because their pain was gone. We’ve also treated people who had already undergone surgery. Some of them qualified for the diagnosis of failed back surgery syndrome. Although pain relief is more difficult in such cases, we are usually able to help. Additionally, general anesthetic and surgical procedures sometimes activate latent trigger points, so we often treat painful conditions caused or exacerbated by surgery.

by guest blogger Judith Siegel Ph.D., LCSW, author of Stop Overreacting

Too often, people believe that the best way to manage anger is to suppress it. I have worked with so many clients whose problems are directly linked to their need to distance from their ‘bad’ feelings. But is anger always bad? Research based on neuro-imaging suggests that anger is an emotional response that generates from the amygdala. Like other hard-wired emotions, anger is a response to stimuli that sets off a reaction in our minds and bodies. The most important question is not how to suppress it, but to understand how we process it. Working with beliefs about anger is helpful, but is only part of the solution. If childhood experiences with adult anger have programmed us to shut down, then it is almost impossible to access thoughts and beliefs in the presence of the emotional intensity and anxiety that anger produces.

A new approach to anger management is to focus on helping connect the dots. One line of dots runs from the left to the right hemisphere of the brain, creating a neural pathway between thoughts and feelings. Without that path, the triggers that have generated anger can not be comprehended, and the result is senseless rage or shutdown. Another set of dots that need to be connected runs between awareness of our physical selves and awareness of feelings. I have worked with so many people who, even in the middle of an explosive outburst, have no awareness that they are angry. Learning to measure the degree of anger that you feel at any given moment in time is a helpful exercise, for it is important to comprehend and accept that there is a full range of emotional experience that involve both mind and body.

excerpt from When Anger Hurts

1. First, and most importantly, STOP.

2. Watch what you say to yourself.

3. Act the opposite.

Laura J. Knoff, NC, discussed her book, Whole-Food Guide to Overcoming Irritable Bowel Syndrome, tips on eating healthy, and loving it on Bay Sunday.