Monday, July 26, 2010

10 Ways to Reduce Anxiety

In my "Secrets of Happy Families" book, I include a chapter called "Breathe." Unless we take care of ourselves, we can't take care of our families.

Ten Ways to Reduce Anxiety (That Don’t Involve Drugs)

1. Keep moving. Studies show that people who engage in regular physical exercise have lower levels of anxiety. A study of over 1000 men by Wales et al (2007) showed that those who participated in high-intensity leisure time activities had reduced levels of anxiety and depression five years later.

2. Hug! Physical contact increases levels of oxytocin, which is associated with calming and bonding. Just 20 seconds can significantly change your brain chemistry for the better.

3. Hum. Humming relaxes the vocal cords, and helps induce relaxation in the body. Sit quietly, making elongated vowel sounds (of either “M” or “N”). Do it before you have to talk to someone, and you’ll notice your voice sounds less stressed. A study of Pranayama (combination of yoga positions and breathing that includes humming) produced a significantly greater increase in perceptions of mental and physical energy and feelings of alertness and enthusiasm than either visualization or relaxation excercises.

4. Tense up your thigh! Progressive Muscle Relaxation, or Deep Muscle Relaxation, is a proven technique that psychologists teach in order to reduce anxiety. The technique involves tensing different muscle groups, and then allowing each muscle group to "let go." During the relaxation phase, calming chemicals are released into the bloodstream, reducing feelings of anxiety. However, if you don't have time to march through each of the muscle groups, your thighs and buttocks comprise the largest muscle group, and by tensing for a count of five seconds, then releasing, you can begin to feel some increased feelings of relaxation surge through your body.

5. Take a flight: visualization exercises allowed tobring to use its wonderful imagination in order to bring you to a place of tranquility and serenity. In order to use visualization, it's important to not only picture yourself in a place that's relaxing (such as a bathtub, the beach, or an ocean cruise line), but use your other senses, such as smell, hearing, taste and touch to bring your imagination to a place of comfort and repose.

6. Breathe: years ago, the Beatles promoted the use of transcendental meditation as a way to bring inner peace. New research has shown that many of the same physical and emotional benefits associated with transcendental meditation can be gained through simple breathing exercises. By learning how to control your breathing, you shift your attention from panic to peacefulness. The technique is simple, although it takes practice. .
When you have a moment to yourself, sit in a comfortable, quiet place. Breathe in deeply through the nose, using your diaphragm (the muscle under your ribcage), not your chest, to move the air. The intake of breath should be deliberate, and you should make a point of feeling the fresh, oxygenated and pure air enter your nose. As the intake breath lasts from four to six seconds, visualize the air filling your lungs. Hold for a second or two.
Then, through pursed lips (to make sure the air doesn’t rush out too quickly), slowly breath out, imagining that the exhaled air is expelling impurities and tension from your body. Again, breathe in the fresh, invigorating air, hold for a moment, and follow with a deliberate and slow release of the used air from your lungs.
If you do this breathing exercise for several minutes each day, you will learn to control your breathing during times of stress, and this will reduce the effects of the invasive stress hormones.

7. Distract: Anxiety will bother you a lot less if you don’t pay attention to it.
In studies of people who were anxious about exposure to snakes or spiders, their anxiety levels increased when they thought about possible exposure. Those who distracted themselves with activities managed to stay calmer.
Many people have anxiety reducers right I their pockets or pocketbooks—their cell phones. Playing a video game on your cell phone (such as bejeweled) can help distract your mind from the anxieties dwelling inside of you, and keep your attention sharp at the same time.

8. Reach out to friends. The best predictor of good emotional health is the number and quality of friends around you. People who are socially disconnected are between two and five times more likely to die from all kinds of illnesses. Having friends around you provides you with a sounding board, cheerleaders, and may help you to keep perspective. Their positive attitude toward you when you are feeling lack of confidence will help you to deal with your self-doubts.

9. Rethink things: When people are prone to anxiety, they tend to think of all the negative things that they are confronted with, and focus on that. Selectively paying attention to the bad makes you more prone to pessimism and anxiety. Thinking about possible good outcomes, and forcing yourself to consider the possibility that good things might also happen is part of a form of therapy called “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” (CBT) Many studies comparing people who receive general supportive therapy, medication therapy and CBT shows that often CBT can work as well as medication. General supportive therapy, on the other hand, doesn’t work much better than placebo to help people recover from panic.

10. Delegate! Give your worries to someone else. You don’t have to own everything that you worry about. And you don’t have to take on the weight of the world. Making a list of the things that worry you is a good start to feeling less overwhelmed. Next, look at the list and see where others might pitch in. Perhaps your husband can pay the bills this month, or your kids can bring out the recyclables from the kitchen. Maybe your sister can arrange the family vacation this year (or a travel agent) rather than you having to be saddled with all the responsibilities. Remember, though, if you give up command of a problem that means you can’t expect everyone else to do it to your exacting standards. But letting go of exacting standards can be another way to reduce stress.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Guy TIme

How important is it to a man that his wife (or future wife) let him have his "guy time"?

Guy time is extremely valuable for a married man, but it’s not a right, it’s a privilege. By that I mean that men often assume that once they get married, they can pick up where they left off with their guy friends, anything from weekend golf to frequenting strip clubs.

Women want to know, first and foremost, that they are a priority. If he makes sure that she feels valued, then he can next begin to ask for what he needs, but not if she thinks that it’s her expense.

And what role does a woman play in this arrangement? She 1) should agree to listen to her husbands ideas for guy time without judgment, 2) should not choose for him what he does or whom it does it with [big caveat here—if it involves single guys picking up women, or using drugs or alcohol, then it’s fair game for a wife to say “no”] 3) should agree specifically what the activity will and how long it will last, 4) agree how and when to “check in,” and not randomly call and text 5) help her husband succeed at getting it right—work with him to set his cell phone alarm for when he turns into a pumpkin and then 6) greet him warmly when he comes home.

Try adding a little guy time to a husband's marriage. It will benefit both of you!

Monday, July 5, 2010

One talk, different marriages

Recently I gave a talk called "The Secrets of Happily Married Couples" to an audience of about ten couples at a small, but luxurious, Pocono resort known as The Lodge at Woodloch. As is typically the case in these spa lectures, the talks tend to be intimate and can get very in depth. All but three of the couples had children who were between the ages of five and seventeen. One of the other couples, still in their 20s, had been married for two years; two other couples, I would guess, had been married about thirty years.

It became clear to me, as the group chimed in with questions and began to describe their own experiences, that I couldn't lump together "marriage" in a way that would mean the same thing for everyone in my audience. To the young childless couple marriage may represent a world of boundless possibilities, mutual giving, satisfying long walks and quite moments of reflection. To the family with school age children, marriage means dealing with heavy work loads outside the home compounded by the strains of rearing kids. They may be working through compromises on everything from whether the children should be permitted to sleep over at a friend's home, to whether they should be allowed to quit piano lessons. The couples with adult children seemed to take all this in, and hardly seemed ruffled by the struggles of their younger attendees.

Although a small sample, I was impressed with how this group represented three phases of marriage, and highlighting the unique challenges that face a marriage with children in the home. The take home message from watching these couples is that many marriages (I would venture to say almost EVERY marriage) begin in a blissful phase, and then undergo stages of extreme duress. But at the tail end of this experience are those calmer, long-married couples who have managed to raise a family and push though the tough times, and to come out feeling great not only about the outcome, but about the fact that they got there together!

Remember, the success of the long-married couples wasn't due to good luck, and wasn't because their marriage was any less troubled than average, it's that they stuck it out and learned from each other (and demonstrated to their children) how to have a great marriage.