Category: mental health

The Places I Go To Cope With Tough Times

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We all have tough times in which we feel as if we will never resurface to the other “peaceful” and happy side. We all have times in which the hits seem to keep coming and the hell seems never-ending. It is hard to summon hope and sustain a positive outlook in the middle of strife, stress, and disappointment. Keeping your thoughts positive when you’re basically sitting in the middle of a metaphorical pile of crap isn’t easy, but it’s necessary.

At some point, when you’re feeling stressed, you need to take matters into your own hands and find ways to shut out the madness and bask in some quiet time and peace.
For me, I have a few places that I turn to for stress relief, peace and quiet and a break from reality. As a single parent whose job is to provide emotional and financial stability for my daughter, I feel it is in my job title to maintain my own emotional health. Ultimately, as parents we need to teach our kids how to cope with emotions and tough times, so never, ever, ever feel selfish for taking care of yourself. Like the old airplane adage, if you don’t have your emergency mask on, how can you put your child/children’s mask/s on?

Here are my go-to places when I need “Serenity Now…”

Read More: The Places I Go To Cope With Tough Times 

Finding Peace,

Laura

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8 Signs You’re Limiting Yourself After Divorce & How to Stop It

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You’ve gotten the divorce and made it this far, but you’re not really happy. It’s as if you’ve got one huge dark cloud over you and you can’t seem to escape it. Mostly, because you seem to keep getting in your own way. Your life was supposed to evolve and get better, which is why you got a divorce in the first place, but it’s as if you’re stuck. The real issue is you are limiting yourself and it’s keeping you from fulfilling your full potential, as well as being happy. Here are 8 signs you’re limiting yourself after divorce.

1) You Act as if the Divorce Happened Yesterday

Even if the divorce was a year ago or more, you’re acting still as if it happened yesterday. You’re mourning. Depressed. Angry. You can’t seem to get past the whole drama of the marriage, even though you say you’ve put it behind you.

You haven’t! It’s the shadow that follows you and it limits your potential.

2) You Have a Million Excuses for Everything

When someone asks you when you’ll start dating, exercising, seeking a raise, or doing anything remotely productive, you’ve got an excuse for it.

It’s never the right “time” you say.

You don’t have enough time, encouragement, money, energy etc.

The list of excuses is Old Testament long. Biblical.

Really, you are the biggest problem you’ve got and you hold yourself back.

Read More: 8 Signs You’re Limiting Yourself After Divorce & How to Stop It
Excuses, Excuses,

Laura

7 Ways to Build Gratitude For Your Life After Divorce

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” … you can build your gratitude muscle by consciously choosing to be more grateful, and thereby you will be happier.” (Harvard study finds strong link between gratitude and happiness – http://www.phillyvoice.com/harvard-study-finds-strong-link-between-gratitude-and-happiness/)

It can be hard to have gratitude for your life after a divorce because so much of it can look so greatly different than your life did before, and some of it may not be happy changes. And if you have kids, they could be struggling with the same feelings. There’s always the feeling that you “lose” when you divorce because, in reality, you do usually lose money, objects, time with kids and properties, etc. You actually lose things.

However, we wouldn’t divorce if we felt we would simply just lose, lose, and lose. The flip side to all of this sad sack stuff is you win when you divorce. You really do. And if you find these “wins” then you will really be able to build true gratitude into your life after divorce.

When you are feeling like a grouchy sore loser, do these things to feel like a winner again!

1) Remind Yourself of Your “Wins”:

I don’t mean your literal wins like alimony or getting the family home…I mean the wins of divorce that you can’t see or touch. The wins of divorce that are daily manifestations of how you live after the divorce like:

– Winning peace in your home—no more fighting!

– Winning the chance at love again…the right love, and not the wrong one!

– Winning focused and concentrated time with your kids in which you can parent and breathe easier when you’re with them.

– Winning the chance of starting your life over again. Just think about all the miserably married people in the world who wouldn’t love that shot!

Read More: 7 Ways to Build Gratitude For Your Life After Divorce

Winning,

Laura

8 Mental Mantras To Adopt After Divorce to Find Peace

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One of the worst parts about divorce and separation is the initial marching band that’s going off in your brain, and no—this isn’t a nice “in-tune” band. There’s like a cacophony of clashing notes…a melody in constant “minor” and the feeling as if your brain never shuts the heck up. How do you, after the divorce papers are signed and you’re walking out into the world as a newly single Mr. or as Ms., find some peace as you make a whole new life?

You adopt mental mantras that you say daily, or as needed, in order to fool both you and your brain into believing you’ll be ok because guess what? You will be! You just need to make yourself believe so.

 

1) For the Discouraged: This Too Shall Pass:

It was my saying of the summer! I am still saying it.

You will encounter some new hardships as a divorced person and if you have kids, they’ll also be going through major changes.

As hard as things are today, remind yourself that they won’t be around tomorrow.

Indeed in time, everything changes.

This too SHALL pass. Repeat.

 

2) For the Brand New Single Parent: I Am Only One Person:

I tell my daughter this often.

I am only one person, with one set of hands. Be patient.

Be patient with yourself. Be patient as you adjust to doing things on your own. Be patient as you learn a new rhythm.

Read More: 8 Mental Mantras To Adopt After Divorce to Find Peace

 

All in a Mind Set,

Laura

How the Gym Saved Me From My Depression

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The past year has tested every part of my being and reached into just about every corner of my world. Whether it was work, my divorce, or parenthood, this year has been a marathon of events in which the bottom line always required that I just keep on running . . . or swimming. Depends on your sport of choice. Wink.

I was moving. I was dealing with a difficult person. A child undergoing many changes. Job changes. Health issues. Money issues. It felt like once one thing had resolved, another major issue was waiting for me right on deck. There were certain times in which I was so stressed, eating was almost impossible. My stomach decided to take on all of my stresses for my brain, and I just wasn’t myself.

I wondered quite a few times why this was happening. But as time has gone on, I have realized that no matter the reason, I am getting stronger and tougher, mentally and physically.

After my Summer of “no food,” I finally felt well enough and looked to the gym with open
arms; it was like I was reuniting with a lover. The gym had always been a great source of
stress relief and fun for me, and so I was looking forward to getting back to “picking
things up and putting things down.”

It wasn’t just that working out helped increase those happy, feel-good hormones in my mind. It wasn’t just that being able to do real push-ups for the first time in my life got me into shape.

The gym saved me from succumbing to depression. It kept me from giving up.

Read More: How the Gym Saved Me From My Depression

Your Anxiety Is Lying to You — Here Are Helpful Ways to Overcome It

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Anxiety is a nasty devil. Anxiety will have you believing things that in no way are true and will unravel you to your last wit’s ends. Anxiety will ruin your belief in yourself and in others. Hands down, anxiety is an evil joker that will fool you and your sane brain and heart into believing myths that are just not true. Knowing that anxiety can trick you into believing falsehoods is powerful. Why? Because it then allows you to tell yourself that you cannot believe the “junk” that anxiety feeds you. And when you recognize that your anxiety is just “talking smack again,” you’ll begin to take back your life and loosen anxiety’s grip on your mind, heart, and life. Here are five things your anxiety is fooling you into believing.

1. People Don’t Like You

Your anxiety will have you believing people are talking about you, thinking poorly about you, or in general don’t like you. This is not the same as paranoia. Anxiety is different. Your anxiety will misinterpret things people say or do and have you thinking that, perhaps, a person doesn’t like you or is disappointed in you. Sure, sometimes someone might not like you . . . or your anxiety could have you misinterpreting social cues or panicking for no reason.

When this happens, breathe deeply and ask yourself these questions:

Read More: Your Anxiety Is Lying to You — Here Are Helpful Ways to Overcome It

Don’t Believe The BS,

Laura

If You’re Stuck in a Cycle of Panic Attacks, Here’s What to Do ASAP

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If you have ever had one panic attack, you already know it’s not fun but if you have ever had a cycle of attacks . . . ugh.

It’s absolutely horrifying and debilitating. Going through one attack will leave you fatigued, but if you experience a cycle of attacks that come either within the same day or same week, you know how frightening and upsetting it can be.

A year and a half ago, I experienced a cycle of panic attacks within a week. They came day after day . . . after day. I had never had a panic attack before that instance and since then, have not had any in a year.

The cycle of attacks came while I was driving, of all things. I would begin to get hot shortly after I got in the car and then hotter and hotter until my stomach dropped, chest hurt, heart raced, nondriving leg grew numb, and my throat felt like it was going to close. I couldn’t understand why it was happening when I was driving, until I realized that that’s when my mind went on autopilot and stopped worrying about my stressors (a divorce and finances) and could focus on taking my daily commute.

If you have experienced a cycle of attacks and don’t know how to get it to stop until randomly they disappear on their own, follow my advice to get through and stop the cycle as quickly as you can.

Read More: If You’re Stuck in a Cycle of Panic Attacks, Here’s What to Do ASAP

It Will End,

Laura

Get It Together, Girl: 13 Signs Your Life Is A Hot Freaking MESS

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We hate to break it to you, BUT…

We all have heartaches, down periods, tribulations and stressors in our life. When you take a mental photograph of your whole life from birth to today, chances are you’re going to have some serious grey and black splotches.

But overall, you wake up each day and do what you have to do. You’ve got it together. Unless of course, you’re a hot freaking mess! 

No doubt, if you’re a catastrophic mess, people know it. The bad news is most likely, people are judging you or being empathetic toward you. The good news is every one becomes a mess now and then. But when your life has a constant orange roadblock sign in it and every one, including yourself, decides that your life is a big pile of sh*t, that’s where the problems arise.

Here are 13 signs your life is a hot mess.

Read More: Get It Together, Girl: 13 Signs Your Life Is A Hot Freaking MESS

Pull it Together Now,

Laura

The Suicide Trend

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Over the holidays this years I watched as my news feed filled with “not-so great” news stories and updates of suicide upon suicide…upon suicide. Then someone I hadn’t seen in a while but who I think is a great person, attempted suicide unsuccessfully.

It floored me.

An astute friend of mine commented,”What’s with all the suicides?” and we noted that perhaps it was the holidays and our age. We are at the end of our thirties. Midlife crises are coming our way from now until age fifty.

Notably, a lot of these suicides were men.

This follows what research has shown time and time again: Current studies say men commit suicide 4 times more often than women, even though we tend to classify ourselves as depressed more often than our XY counterparts.

Then, as a woman who is almost divorced, (I heard news we have 1 more paper to hand in and then we get our uncontested divorce date and it’s bam, done!)  I wondered how often divorce plays a factor in suicide, and everything I have read has said that divorce increases suicide rates for parents (especially men, and children).

As we reach the end of our thirties, many of my friends, associates and acquaintances, are hitting many different milestones of life that can cause happiness or depression:

  • Births of children & family growth (or lack thereof)
  • Stable marriages or divorces
  • Buying & renovating homes (or losing them)
  • Career growths and raises (or starting new careers or losing a job

So what was it that was causing this string of suicides exactly, and is there any real answer?

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