Need solutions for the medication, medical appliances and/or medical travel that you can't afford? READ EMPOWER Yourself.
A Health Information Management professional, I survived a life-threatening emergency with information that only a person of my professional experience would know. And I’m sharing it!
B'SD 10 Tevet, 5775 Today is a low-key fasting day for Jews able to endure a lack of food during the daylight hours. The rest of the world is recovering (or not) from staying up too late and partying too hard last night. So today's blogpost is a lighthearted look atThe 4 Greatest Psychological Discoveries of 2014. Gosh, a lot of good sense aka folk wisdom can be found in that research. Keep life simple, everybody. Life is a work in progress. You are, too. Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism. Fill yourself with compassion.
Speeding along the Jewish and worldwide calendar, it's time to notice that October is National Book Month.
Heading into Jewish and non-Jewish holiday seasons, you know it's a bummer to be stuck with emotional, physical, disability or financial setbacks. They make the future seem so glum.
Want to lower lower your stress and cut your medical costs, worldwide?
Here's a solution:
Check out what one highly respected psychiatrist says of the book: "A wonderful book! Golani challenges & energizes us all to seek and savor life to the fullest for our mental and physical health. ...EMPOWER Yourself is lifesaving, emotionally rewarding, spiritual, funny and helpful."
Judith Guedalia, PhD. Director Neuropsychology Unit, Chief Medical Psychologist ER TraumaShaare Zedek Medical Center
We're already reeling from the Cayley Anthony horror. I've spent the past few days praying with much of the world for the safe return of Leiby Kletzky H'YD, with the rest of the concerned world.
Pretty splashy image up there, huh? I hope to fill you with as much optimism as that picture implies.
Why?
Jews around the world are reflecting on the Jewish New Year season that passed last month. It seems that everybody else is looking forward to January, but all of us are worrying about the daunting lead-up to it: Thanksgiving season. Xmas parties. Kwaanza fests. Bills. More bills. Tempers. Fourth quarter reports. Bosses cut losses by firing staff. Fear. Panic.
Here's some nifty advice I found in a recent Psych Central Newsletter. I blended it in a way to help you more than the original presentation might:
Here are 4 steps to get unstuck:
Name the stuckness – In other words, simply say to yourself, this is the feeling of being stuck
Find the physical sensation – Take a brief scan of your body and become aware of where you notice the greatest sensation. Get a sense of how large it is, it’s shape, does it have a color? Get curious about it. Getting curious helps us break outside of the box.
See choices – Ask yourself the question, is there another way I can see the situation I’m in? What choices do I have here? See if you can do this without judgment, more as a brainstorm.
Take action – Put one foot in front of the other and begin engaging in one of those choices.
Even if the choice doesn’t stick at first, know that this practice in itself is training your mind to get unstuck from the cycles it gets caught in. When you notice yourself wandering into past habitual ways of being, know that is expected and just gently guide yourself back.
Want to learn how to cope with medical problems that easily? It's a one-click wonder.
The one-stop resource center for a healthier, happier life: Quick and convenient E-book EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Buy it HERE.
Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism.
I'm still receving calls from audience members who heard me speak last week, or from someone who heard them summarize my remarks. I'm going to share two popular paragraphs of my presentation with you here, and separate them with an illuminating video from one of my friends and mentors. It went "live" the day after my mental health conference presentation.
"Neuropsychologist and director of Behavioral Health at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Dr. Don Hafer, suggests taking at least as much time for mental health as for physical fitness. Though physical fitness requires activity, mental fitness means stillness. Psychoanalyst Dr. Gary Malone of the Dallas Psychoanalytic Institute aka medical director of psychiatry at Baylor All Saints Medical Center at Fort Worth, writes prescriptions for patients to block off a half hour a day simply to be "calm and introspective." Rebbe Nachman calls it hitbodedut. It works."
(readers, hitbodedut is Hebrew for introspection. Rebbe Nachman was a remarkable 18th-century philosopher and rabbi whose heartwarming teachings still reverberate around the Jewish world)
(HaShem is a Hebrew nickname for
The One Above. Jews say "HaShem"
to indicate such respect that they
will not use That Name in vain)
Here's the 2nd paragraph from those presentation remarks I'm sharing with you:
"Okay, we have fearful grief- and guilt-reduced patients calming down as all this is coming together with repeated efforts. Now they can re-focus on finding solutions for mounting problems. Free information on the Internet isn't enough, though. Not all sick people use PCs. A patient-empowering coach, I've made Readily Available Information available on a global basis with face-to-face and phone coaching and a printed book. My updated E-book and companion blog are for the digitally enabled patient. By consolidating can-do coping skill strategies with humorous content relevant to illness and healthy perspective into several formats, I've enabled people to cope better on their own. No less than medical ethicist Dr. Daniel Eisenberg informed me that my content helped him to survive a "devastating" diagnosis. I hear positive feedback from readers and my coaching clients, too. Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital keeps a copy of my print edition in the Patient Information Center, at the initiative of social worker Chaya Har-El. I pray that more psychotherapists will use my information as some already do, or refer people to it."
Well, readers, there you have it. Medical evidence backs up spiritual realities. Anyone, ill or healthy, needs time to comtemplate, to reassess, and to appreciate life - AND themselves - on various levels. Tears may fall, sighs might come out from your heart. A giggle or two might bubble from your throat. Then you'll realize that you're meeting your true self.
Enjoy the "How do you do.
Here's what I just realized
I'm capable of."
In my coaching efforts I remind clients that setting aside that daily amount of Inner Focus time is a habit to be developed. Life has a way of messing up new resolutions and habits. Make focused efforts to use the same part of the day to think deeply. If you miss your appointed time, make it up as soon as you reasonably can. WHY is that so important? Well, the doctors I cited above just told you: IT HELPS YOUR INNER AND OUTER HEALTH!
"It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To" is having something of a snowball effect on readers of the book and listeners to my radio interviews.
One reader and listener, a San Diego native who is a retired mental health professional, wrote to remark about my appearance on the Yishai Fleisher show the other day:
"Yocheved, nice job on the radio today.
You came across very well and very real.
Steve Sherr."
A CranioSacral therapist in my neighborhood (she sells copies of "It's MY Crisis!" to her clients) just gave a copy of "It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To" to a psychotherapist who uses the office next door. Why? "Because it'll be a good addition to her practice," I was told.
Hmm, that's a growing consensus among medical and mental health practitioners who've read the book. Why might that be?
Today I'm sharing a breakthrough in the treatment of teens whose depression does not respond well to standard drug therapy.
Too often, medical professionals respond to the problem by switching the young adult to a different drug. That's not always likely to help matters, and it can upset an already troubled person even more.
Now there's GOOD NEWS about treating drug-resistant teen depression: Combination Therapy. It's the simultaneous use of talk therapy and medical treatment. Psychotherapy helps depressed teens, especially in combination with effective changes in medication. Treatment from a competent therapist is the key to making a newer drug regimen ease the depression.
The National Institutes of Health announced in February that "Combination Therapy" works significantly better for about 55% of the teens who become involved with an effective psychotherapist. That's a statisitic to respect.
Read this NIH News Release to learn more. And may your heartaches and worries diminish over time.
Compassion is the most important part of dealing with anyone experiencing depression. Compassion can prevent, even cure it. I invite you to see this awesome video before you read one more word:
BTW, the "RESOURCES" section of my book lets you know how to find competent therapists worldwide! Buy a copy today! Learn to COPE with an emotional challenge.
~*~*~*~
Suffering with a Medical Crisis? Been there, done that, wrote a book about it, and going forward into the future.
Want to learn many more can-do healing/coping strategies?
Then read, benefit from, and tell others about It's MY Crisis! And I’ll Cry if I Need To.
