Exercise to Improve Your Mental Health

By Graeme Cowan

Nobody doubts the benefits of exercise for physical health.

What isn't as widely known or discussed is how essential moderate exercise is to our mental well-being. I created an online survey which sought to find out what health strategies helped people who have experienced an episode of depression or anxiety to bounce back from setbacks. I took a holistic approach, and asked people to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies such as exercise, good rest, good nutrition, emotional support from family, friends, and support groups, fulfilling work, hobbies, charity work, as well as traditional approaches like psychological counseling and medication. In all, over 60 strategies were evaluated, and 4,080 respondents were asked to rate those they had tried. Exercise was in the top three.

Research shows that a 30-minute brisk walk (or equivalent) significantly improves your mood after 2, 4, 8, and 12 hours compared to those who don't exercise (Mayo Clinic, 2008). Exercise also boosts energy, confidence, and sexual desirability (American Fitness, 19 (6), 32-36).

We can't control the slings and arrows that come our way on a daily basis, but we can control our daily habits. Incorporating moderate exercise into our day can inoculate us from the prolonged effects of a setback.

Why Don't People Exercise?

People usually give two main reasons for failing to exercise:

• I don't feel like it. (This is particularly applicable to people who are discouraged or depressed.)
• I don't have the time. (Our relentless 24/7 life usually means there are a thousand things to say "yes" to. An essential element of a thriving life is saying "no" to the trivial many, so that you can say "yes" to the vital few. Exercise is definitely in the latter category.)

Principles to Make Exercise Central to Your Life

Find something you enjoy. To sustain regular exercise, it is important to do something that you find pleasant. The traffic in gyms is 30 to 50 percent higher in January than other times of the year, as people are suddenly inspired to get fit and lose weight. By March, they have returned to normal levels. It's not wise to sign up for a gym if you hate them!

I like walking because it allows me to get out in nature, it's free, and you can do it anyplace and anytime. Some people keep a walking journal so that they can write down the new things they see, hear, and smell each day. This keeps you present. If you prefer swimming, dancing, cycling, boot camps, or hiring a personal trainer, then do that. To experience the mood enhancement qualities of exercise it is recommended to do 30 minutes, 6 days per week. Although people with depression often don't feel like exercising, it is important to go against that inclination.

Have modest goals. Many people believe that to get the benefits of exercise you have to spend two hours in the gym or run a marathon. As highlighted above, this is simply not true. If you have been doing no exercise, start with 15 minutes per day. If you are catatonic and spending all day in bed, just getting out to the mailbox each day is a good start that you can build on. Build activity gradually.

Introduce rituals. Changing behavior requires more than intention. To make it stick, it is essential to introduce daily rituals that prompt the behavior. For example, rituals could include:

• Laying out clothes each night when you go to bed so that when you wake up you can dress without thinking and get on with your day.
• As you brush your teeth each morning, put on a pedometer. When you brush at night, take it off and record the steps taken.
• Set a regular time to walk with a friend or work colleagues. Consider walking meetings.
• Consider using a free smartphone app like FitnessPal, which allows you to monitor your exercise and your calorie consumption.

It's never too late to start.

Graeme Cowan is the author of BACK FROM THE BRINK TOO: Helping your loved one overcome depression, which was SANE Australia's 2009 Book of the Year. He went through a five-year episode of depression which his psychiatrist described as the worst he had ever treated. He now speaks and consults about how to inspire the discouraged to bounce back and thrive. Over 40 free resources can be found at www.Facebook.com/BackFromTheBrink.

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Unknown Book From 1948 Unveils Secret...

More than 60 years ago, an important book was written by a
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You've been warned — this isn't like any other book out there.

 
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Timothy

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Road to Happiness Movie

Road to Happiness Movie: If you can't find happiness inside yourself, you'll never find it in the outside world, no matter where you move. Wherever you go, there you are. You take yourself with you. This is the essence of happiness—learning to find inner contentment in any situation.

Two Stories of PTSD

By Harold Cohen, Ph.D.

Maria was only 15 when she was attacked by a group of men on the way home from school. They took turns screaming abuse at her and then they each raped her. Finally, they tried to stab her to death and would almost certainly have succeeded had the police not arrived on the scene. For months after this horrifying event, Maria was not herself. She was unable to keep the memories of the attack out of her mind. At night she would have terrible dreams of rape, and would wake up screaming. She had difficulty walking back from school because the route took her past the site of the attack, so she would have to go the long way home. She felt as though her emotions were numbed, and as though she had no real future. At home she was anxious, tense, and easily startled. She felt "dirty" and somehow shamed by the event, and she resolved not to tell close friends about the event, in case they too rejected her.

Joe saw a good deal of active combat during his time in the military. Some incidents in particular had never left his mind – like the horrifying sight of Gary, a close comrade and friend, being blown-up by a land-mine. Even when he returned to civilian life, these images haunted him. Scenes from battle would run repeatedly through his mind and disrupt his focus on work. Filing up at the gas station, for example, the smell of diesel immediately rekindled certain horrific memories. At other times, he had difficulty remembering the past — as if some events were too painful to allow back in his mind. He found himself avoiding socializing with old military buddies, as this would inevitably trigger a new round of memories. His girlfriend complained that he was always pent-up and irritable – as if he were on guard, and Joe noticed that at night he had difficulty relaxing and falling asleep. When he heard loud noises, such as a truck back-firing he literally jumped, as if he were readying himself for combat. He began to drink heavily.

Both Joe and Maria suffered from PTSD and, with time, both were able to control their symptoms. The first step in this process was for each of them to find someone they could trust – for Maria it was her art teacher, and for Joe it was his girlfriend. It was important for them to share how they were feeling, but it was also helpful for them to have someone who would listen. To Maria's surprize her art teacher reacted very supportively, seeing her not as "soiled", but as very hurt, and in need of help and comfort. Joe's girlfriend also expressed her willingness to help him cope with his intrusive memories, but she insisted that he find a way other than alcohol.

Maria and Joe both decided to participate in therapy. Maria worked with a therapist and then began group therapy where she was able to discuss the rape and her reaction to it with other people who had been sexually assaulted. She found that the support of others who had been in similar situations made her feel less alone. She learned that feeling "dirty" and somehow guilty after being raped is a very common experience, and after that she was better able to express her anger towards the man who had raped her. Working with this group also allowed her to begin to re-connect with and trust others.

Joe was not comfortable working with a group of people and chose to work with a therapist one-on-one. His first step was making the decision to stop drowning out his memories by using alcohol. He and his therapist then began to discuss his combat experiences, identifying the activities, people, sounds, and smells that could trigger these symptoms, and working on ways to manage his symptoms. Although he was initially reluctant to deliberately expose himself to such cues, he eventually agreed to an exercise of seeing old war movies. Over time, he learned to watch such movies and continue to remain reasonably calm.

In addition to therapy, medications helped Maria and Joe relieve some of their symptoms. The anti-depressant that Maria took helped to decrease the intrusive memories and her levels of anxiety. For Joe, the medication made him less irritable, less jumpy, and also helped with the problems he had falling asleep. Joe developed sexual side effects on his first medication, and although he wanted to discontinue all medications, his therapist succeeded in encouraging him to switch to a different agent.

Maria's symptoms ended within three months, while Joe's lasted longer. Both were eventually able to control their symptoms through a combination of therapy, medication, and the support of family and friends.

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Green Spaces Reduce Stress Levels

Green Spaces Reduce Stress Levels

By Janice Wood Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on February 16, 2012

The presence of parks and woodland in economically deprived areas may help people cope better with job losses, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue and anxiety, according to a new study.

The study found that people's stress levels are directly related to the amount of green space in their surrounding areas — the more green space, the less stressed a person is likely to be.

Researchers measured stress by taking saliva samples from a group of 35- to 55-year-olds and measuring levels of cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress. They found that if less than 30 percent of a surrounding area was green space, its population showed unhealthy levels of cortisol.

The study shows that for every one percent increase in green space there was a corresponding — and steeper — decline in stress levels. Where there is more green space, people tend to respond better to disruptive events, either by not getting as stressed in the first place or by coping better, researchers said.

Participants were also asked to rate their stress levels and these results directly related to the percentage of local green space, the researchers note. People with more green space had lower levels of self-reported stress.

Exercise was another factor found to reduce stress, but it may not be related to exercising in park land, researchers added. People reported feeling less stressed if they lived in areas with more green space, regardless of how much exercise they did.

The research was led by the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt's OPENspace research center, working with the Universities of Glasgow and Westminster. The findings were published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

Source: University of Edinburgh

 

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Secrets, Shame, And Guilt

By Nanette Burton Mongelluzzo

A secret is something that is kept hidden.
We all know about secrets. There are quite a variety. There are good secrets; those we keep about the surprise birthday party or the special gift you have for someone you love. Good secrets can also be the confidences we keep for others that will not cause harm.
Therapists keep secrets, siblings keep secrets, employees keep secrets, friends keep secrets, and there are secrets about the past that one or two people may know, but they keep this private out of respect for you.
There are bad secrets as well. Bad secrets are those things that usually mean someone is getting hurt. In counseling teens ask me to keep things secret that sometimes cannot or really should not be a secret. Sometimes these are secrets that are about child abuse, sexual abuse, or other harm that has come to the young person or someone they know.
Let’s take a look at secrets; the good and not so good. Let’s take a look at the significance of shame and the difference between shame and guilt. All of these involve anxiety, worry and fear.
The origin of secrets dates back to the beginning of human interpersonal communication. The soon as human beings began living in groups it became necessary to have secrets. Somewhere along the way, usually through an unfortunate circumstance, a human discovered the dire consequences involved in not keeping a secret. It may have been taking a rock from a pile a neighboring tribe had used as a collection site for eventual tools. It may have been hunger related. It may have been part of a strategy to have kept a secret. We have had secrets as long as we have lived in groups.
Secrets have a long history. There are secret societies, secret rituals, secrets involved in Shamanism, and secrets used in Game Theory. There are secret cults, secrets in government, secrets with regard to spies and spying, and secrets in nature. Animals often build their den or nest in a concealed, or secret place in order to protect their home from intruders. Animals bury their food or hide it, as in the example of dogs burying a bone, squirrels hiding nuts, or pack rats hiding just about anything they find including bright pieces of aluminum and candy wrappers.
People consciously keep secrets about themselves due to shame, or perhaps guilt. We don’t want others to know everything about us for fear of being judged, harmed, ridiculed, embarrassed, or even exiled in some fashion. Sometimes people keep secrets from themselves concerning something they cannot accept and therefore cannot fully incorporate into their knowing about self. We keep secrets about harmful or bad things we have done to others. Families keep secrets and often these are secrets with dire psychological consequences for everyone.
There is a difference between shame and guilt.
Shame is when you feel like you’ve done something wrong but you don’t know what it is that you’ve done wrong.
Guilt is when you feel you’ve done something wrong and you have. You can feel guilty about breaking into Marlowe’s Department Store when you were 13, because you really did do this.
You can feel shame about the way someone talks to you, looks at you, or when someone shows disapproval. Shame is formless, ethereal, floating, and penetrating. It is hard to wrap one’s hands around shame.
The origin of shame is believed to be in early childhood. It is a technique used by many, if not most, families to obtain obedience to authority. Remember being told not to do something because of how it would make your mother, father, brother, sister, or someone feel? Do you recall hearing that you needed a certain behavior because, ‘What would the neighbors think.’ Shame is a secondary feeling related to the primary feeling of fear. Shame always involves fear.
It may not be possible to have a world without secrets. It may be that too much information is shared. Do we really need to know everything about everyone? Couples often ask me if I think it is healthier for them to disclose everything to one another. My response is, “Absolutely not, please don’t.” I believe in keeping secrets as long as the motivation for keeping them is one of good intentions. I believe secrets can keep us safe and secrets can hurt. Again, it depends on the motivation behind the secret.
More importantly it is essential to look at shame. Shame usually involves something that wasn’t said and wasn’t done. When parents use shame as a form of corrective discipline they are not thinking about the secret they are keeping. When mother says, “You should feel really bad that you made noise and your dad couldn’t sleep. He works hard for this family.” The secret is that mother is not telling something about her. Perhaps she is afraid of father’s anger. Perhaps she is just afraid. Likely she doesn’t know a better way to ask you to keep down the noise and so she resorts to shame.
In the end I think we want to make an earnest attempt at being honest with ourselves. Embrace the dark sides, the errors, the horrible mistakes and costly miscalculations. This releases shame and with it the secrets we may no longer need to keep.

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A View of PTSD Symptoms as Healthy by Athena H. Phillips, MSW, LCSW, Post Traumatic Stress / Trauma Topic Expert Contributor

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Trauma symptoms are often experienced and viewed as invasive and malevolent.  Helplessness, hopelessness, confusion and a condemnation of self for their existence also appear thematic.  The initial layer of trauma treatment is frequently the unraveling of self-loathing for the expression of symptoms themselves; survivor and therapist collude in their endorsement of them as being inherently destructive and are to be eradicated.  A divergent perspective could be that symptoms are an expression of health versus illness.  Viewing the manifestation of PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) as having utility may offer an alternative understanding of the client’s presentation as offering direction to treatment, internal compassion, decreasing fear of symptoms and can foster a relationship between survivor, therapist and Trauma.  Additionally, the externalization and personification of Trauma may illuminate the individual functions of client presentation while offering precise direction for treatment.
In the embodiment of Trauma we view it as something that has characteristics and ways of being in the world that are consistent over time and place (and in this case it’s interaction with people).  Defining PTSD according the DSM IV is a means of detecting  its’ presence in the life of a survivor while establishing a foundation for this discussion. According to the DSM IV(American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders (4th ed). Washington DC: Author), diagnostic criteria include intrusive memories, thoughts, or dreams of an event, a sense of reliving it,  and intense distress in response to both internal and external cues that resemble an event(s).  Individuals may thus become avoidance of triggers or cues, increase isolation, may have a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop (a foreshortened future) and of being detached.  Sleep difficulties are common; mood labiality, and hyper vigilance are also common (American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders (4th ed). Washington DC: Author).
Drawing from the concepts of narrative therapy and the externalization of a problem (the person is not the problem the problem is the problem) allows us to develop a relationship with Trauma and to begin to evaluate its’motivations (Playful approaches to serious problems: Narrative therapy with children and their families. Freeman, Jennifer C.; Epston, David; Lobovits, Dean New York, NY, US: W W Norton & Co. (1997). xvii, 321 pp.).  Symptoms could be conceptualized as tools utilized by Trauma on our behalf in order to protect us, remind us of our core values, and to ensure that what happened before won’t happen again. It could be argued that the trauma response corresponds to the level of violation on self and values; a profoundly disturbing event calls for a profoundly disturbing response (from Trauma’s perspective).  Analogous to the concept of stuck points in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy (Akin-Little, Angeleque (Ed); Little, Steven G. (Ed); Bray, Melissa A. (Ed); Kehle, Thomas J. (Ed), (2009). Behavioral interventions in schools: Evidence-based positive strategies, School Psychology (pp. 325-333). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, xi, 350 pp.) flashbacks, dreams, invasive thoughts and triggers provide specific information about the violation the client’s event(s) infringed upon them.
The appraisal of an individual who is “symptomatic” of PTSD could render the view that they are sick, crazy or irrational.  They might appear dissociative, clinically depressed, anxious, highly reactive or rageful (or all of the above).  Both therapist and survivor may be in agreement that these symptoms are a mark of disease, which connotes that alleviation of symptoms is the obvious goal.  An alternative view may be that Trauma will relax once there is a degree of trust in self to clearly identify one’s core values, to reflect his/her significance in the world, and in one’s ability to maintain safety. It will refrain from presenting images (flashbacks and dreams) when the stuck point has been identified (will cease making statements that the individual is culpable for what happened once there is a demonstration of mastery over the event, and it will hold back on invasive, persistent thoughts once the survivor is able to look at the event rather than avoiding it.  The way in which the symptoms manifest reflect individual values and provide explicit guidance for healing; if therapist and client are willing to work with trauma, listen and absorb the information it has to offer, it will not compelled to invade with such rigor.
In working with survivors, the aspect of their event that is troublesome can be quite specific and idiosyncratic.  Additionally, groups of people exposed to the same event often are disturbed by different parts of it. Trauma may be providing images to the survivor in the form of flashbacks, invasive thoughts or dreams to vehemently demonstrate the specific violation imposed by the event(s).  Interpersonal trauma such as child abuse, domestic violence, or sexual assault may render someone feeling responsible for what happened to them, feeling dirty or shameful, betrayed, feeling duped or foolish, unimportant or completely exposed.  Trauma might be conveying to someone that they are at fault for an assault because it wants the individual to have a sense of mastery or agency.  Helplessness is not acceptable to that particular individual and thus blaming the self is an acceptable tone to assume. Repetitive images of betrayal in the context of trauma and the associated feeling of foolishness would reflect Trauma’s attempt to ensure you do not trust people you shouldn’t. Feeling foolish is unpleasant enough to deter us from repeating the same mistake, and from the perspective of Trauma, will maintain inner safety.
The way in which a survivor expresses their PTSD can vary widely and presentations can be very complex and oppressive.  Survivors blame themselves for what happened and often enter into treatment with a great deal of shame because they should have “gotten over it” without help. Viewing their presentation as useful, even critical to their treatment trajectory as well as providing specific insight to their core values may offer some relief from shame. Entertaining the possibility that one does not respond to catastrophic events highlights the conceptualization of symptoms as healthy; a non-response would likely be more problematic than the manifestation of PTSD.  In other words, Trauma isn’t irrational in it’s assumptions; its’ response is proportionate to the event experienced by the survivor and is working toward rebuilding that which was lost to tragedy.

Athena H. Phillips, MSW, LCSW, therapist in Portland, OR. All Rights Reserved.

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