How do I get information about Medications

Posted on February 15, 2014 by JmaC

How can I get information about medications?

Many mental health consumers, as well as concerned family and friends, seek information to help them better understand the benefits of prescribed medications, potential side effects, and to help them in talking with their doctor about such matters.
Mental Health America encourages consumers to talk with their doctor regarding any medication-related questions or concerns and to inform him or her about all the medications being taken so that negative drug interactions can be avoided.
In addition to talking with their doctor, many consumers and their family members want to consult other information sources.

Medication Decisions
When you’re feeling overwhelmed or confused, it’s understandable that you might want to let others make medication decisions for you. But it’s becoming clearer to researchers, providers and mental health consumers themselves that being actively involved in your treatment can make a real difference in your recovery. Talking honestly with your doctor is a big part of that process. If you discuss your concerns and learn about your options, you are much more likely to come up with a plan that works well for you and for the life you want to create.
The following tips can help you decide about taking a medication:
•Get information. Ask your provider how the medication is supposed to help with your specific concerns. Also find out about any possible side effects. You might consider taking notes, since it can be hard to remember a lot of information, especially when you aren’t feeling well. You also might ask a friend or relative to go with you for emotional support and to help keep track of important information. Use MHA’s Antipsychotic Medication Checklist to help with such discussions.
•Talk with others with similar experiences. Self-help groups and peer specialists-people with mental health conditions who are trained to help-can provide great first-hand information. Local Mental Health America affiliate offices, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance and Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are good sources for this kind of support. Remember that every person is different, but you can learn from the experiences of others.
•Think about your priorities and goals. Is relief from symptoms extremely important? If not, maybe you’re willing to live with some symptoms to avoid side effects. What are your main life goals? How might medication help?
•Sometimes the only way to know if a medication is right for you is to try it. You may find that it helps you feel much better. If not, you can decide to stop later.

What should I ask about the medications that are prescribed for me?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that you ask the following questions:
•What is the name of the medication and what is it supposed to do?
•How and when do I take it, and when do I stop taking it?
•What foods, drinks or other medications should I avoid while taking this medication?
•Should it be taken with food or on an empty stomach?
•Is it safe to drink alcohol while on this medication?
•What are the side effects, and what should I do if they occur?
•Is a Patient Package Insert for the medication available?

How can I tell if my medication is working?
Some people get relief from their symptoms immediately, others after a few days or weeks; for others, it may take even longer. After a short time on the medication, it’s important to share with your doctor or therapist how you are doing with the treatment. Together, you may need to find the right amount of medicine or combination of medicines.
It’s especially important to tell your doctor about any side effects you’re having from the medication. You may be able to make some changes in dosage or the time of day you take the medication to lessen or get rid of the side effects. There are also newer medications that have fewer side effects than older drugs, making it easier for people to stay on them. If after an extended period of time on a medication you are still not experiencing progress, you may need to talk with your doctor about trying another medication. Consult your doctor before making any changes in your medication.
How long you take medication really depends on your particular needs. Some people are able to discontinue medication when their symptoms have fully subsided and they have reached their treatment goals. Others may need to remain on medication for longer periods of time as part of a long-term recovery plan.

To talk with a knowledgeable professional, you can consult the following resources:
•Your local pharmacist is a valuable resource to answer medication-related questions. Pharmacies are required to provide written information about prescriptions they are dispensing.
•Pharmaceutical companies have staff that can respond to questions from the general public. View pharmaceutical company medical information telephone numbers below.
•In addition, many states have Drug Information Centers operated by area hospitals

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Affirmations How To

Posted on February 15, 2014 by JmaC

But what makes powerful affirmations powerful? In my opinion it’s the addition of EFT that makes the affirmations powerful. (EFT is short for Emotional Freedom Techniques)

Why don’t affirmations always work?

Some people don’t find affirmations much use. This is because we often get a little voice in our head telling us we don’t believe what we’ve just said in an affirmation. Gary Craig, the founder of EFT calls them ‘tail-enders’. These are very useful because they are the key to overcoming.

What are Emotional Freedom Techniques?

We can overcome the negative obstacles by tapping on meridian end points on the face and body whilst getting in touch with the problem we have.
Negative thoughts and feelings are outward signs that the energy in the body is blocked somewhere. Our body has energy channels, called meridians, which were charted by the ancient Chinese and used in Chinese medicine. EFT uses this knowledge of the meridian end points as does acupuncture. However, EFT utilises tapping pressure on the points instead of needles. (If you have not come across Emotional Freedom Techniques before, then check out this page for an explanation and chart of the tapping points.)

Using the Set Up Statement

So, if you know EFT or have just read the free manual, then you know that most times EFT is used it starts with a set-up statement.
This acknowledges that you love and accept yourself even with the problem (that you’re addressing with EFT). But some people just cannot bring themselves to say those words because they don’t believe them to be true. So you may want to adapt the set-up to something you can believe in. A client of mine says: “I’m willing to love and accept myself”.

Tap on the Tail-enders

You can tap away the negative thoughts and feelings of those tail-enders that come to mind when you say an affirmation. This helps us when we’re thinking about how to be happy. Just listen for the ‘Yes Buts.”
Here is a sample affirmation that may have a tail-ender for you. “I love myself”. The tail-ender, that little voice in your head, may be saying “That’s totally untrue! I don’t even like myself.”
So, you can ‘tap on’ the fact that you don’t love yourself. “Even though I really don’t love myself I’m open to the possibility of doing so one day.” And then at each tapping point you can us the phrase “I don’t love myself”, or “I hate myself” or whatever feels true for you.

Need Some Help With EFT?

It’s not always easy to do the tapping on your own for yourself. Heck even good EFT practitioners have regular sessions with others! So if you want some help, find out the options here.

Tap in those powerful affirmations

When I want to work specifically on loving myself (and yes, I’m still a work in progress), I sometimes say the whole set-up statement at each tapping point. This emphasises and ‘taps in’ the ‘loving and accepting oneself’ part of the equation.
So lets get back to those powerful affirmations. Well, actually, I think you can use any affirmations you feel are right for you, but use EFT along with them. However, it’s important to make sure they are written in the correct way. Check out the page on writing affirmations if you’re not sure.

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The Key to Becoming more Optimistic

Posted on February 15, 2014 by JmaC

Optimism isn’t rose-colored glasses, unicorns or eyes-and-ears-closed denial. It isn’t merriment every minute of the day, or utter delight on most days. And it isn’t a trait only some of us are blessed with while others are doomed to a deep, undying pessimism.Optimism actually can be learned. And it actually helps us be more resilient. Optimism helps us bounce back when we’re facing trials and tribulations and stress strikes.
Optimism keeps us well. “Doctors, rank optimism right up in line next to exercise and good nutrition when it comes to good health-building behaviors.”

So what is optimism exactly? Optimism is “a flexible mindset and focused action.”
Optimists persevere, persist and problem-solve. “They are willing to shift, adapt, change their goal if necessary, but they keep going.”
Thought process, is key in fueling optimism.
For instance, how often does a molehill become a mountain in your life?

Challenging Pessimistic Thoughts
When I was in high school, getting a few incorrect answers on a test only confirmed my incompetency. Snoozing and scrambling to get ready meant the entire day’s productivity was scrapped. Being tired in a class corroborated that I was never going to make a good life anyway.
It’s these pessimistic thoughts that can truly derail our days, and paralyze action. Getting a handle on these negative ruminations is important.

That’s because the path to being more optimistic is actually paved with less pessimistic thoughts. “Building optimism is not a matter of thinking more optimistically, it’s a matter of thinking less pessimistically.”
“Pessimistic thoughts tend to cluster in sweeping generalizations that imply long-term troubles as opposed to temporary circumstances. The car stalling is downright annoying, and probably cuss-worthy, but it doesn’t mean you’ll end up living alone on a school bus with thirty-two cats.”
Pay attention to your thoughts and the words you use to talk to yourself. Do they tend to be pessimistic? Sweeping negative generalizations? Mean-spirited self-judgments? Mostly doom and gloom?

Once you can identify these thoughts, examine them. Interrogate them. Ask yourself these questions:
•“What is the problem or setback that’s got me freaked?
•What do I believe about that situation?
•Are those reactions, thoughts and beliefs true? Really?”
And when things don’t go your way or you make mistakes, forget the absolutes and sweeping generalizations. Avoid using words like “always” and “never.”

Remember that “Difficult things don’t have to signify a downward spiral that will limit your life,”
Look at situations from all angles and perspectives. There’s never just one side. While a divorce can be devastating and trigger feelings of regret and guilt, it also can trigger “feelings of relief and excitement around your newfound independence and opportunity.”
“Reframing allows you to see the situation from all sides, and then you can focus on the one that feels more helpful, more optimistic.”
Optimism is empowering. When difficult moments arise, optimism reminds us that we can still move forward. “Grounded optimism is about recognizing the difficulties, believing things can get better, and then making them so.”

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Favorite Quotes

Posted on February 15, 2014 by JmaC

Maxwell Maltz Quotes
If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.

Close scrutiny will show that most “crisis situations” are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.

Times will change for the better when you change.

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.

For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.

Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.

Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.

Realizing that our actions, feelings and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.

Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow – after you have done your best to achieve success today.

Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.

Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.

Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person’s feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.

To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.

You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you.

You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.

What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live / with your self-respect alive and growing.

One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life, has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center.

When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative “success mechanism” within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or “willpower.”

Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.

People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Always have something ahead of you to ”look forward to” to work for and hope for.

We are injured and hurt emotionally, Not so much by other people or what they say and don’t say, But by our own attitude and our own response.

Stand up to crises. Don’t let them throw you! Fight to stay calm… even surmount the crisis completely and turn it into an opportunity.

Refuse to renounce your self-image. No matter what happens, you must keep your good opinion of yourself. No matter what happens, you must hold your past successes in your imagination, ready for showing in the motion picture screen of your mind.

No matter what happens, no matter what you lose, no matter what failures you must endure, you must keep faith in yourself. Then you can stand up to crises, with calm and courage, refusing to buckle; then you will not fall through the floor.

You will be able to support yourself.

Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. Man alone can direct his success mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability.

Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself.

It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear.
This is where you will win the battle / in the playhouse of your mind.
You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.

You are embarking on the greatest adventure of your life — to improve your self-image, to create more meaning in your life and in the lives of others. This is your responsibility. Accept it, now!
Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.

An idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis.
Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have no goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal.

Failure feelings – fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence – do not spring from some heavenly oracle. They are not written in the stars. They are not holy gospel. Nor are they intimations of a set and decided fate which means that failure is decreed and decided. They originate from your own mind.

Happiness isn’t something that happens to you. It is you yourself do and determine upon.

I may be a mistake maker, but I’m also a mistake breaker.

You are not your mistakes

You are not your failures.

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Bipolar Serenity Prayer

Posted on February 15, 2014 by JmaC

BIPOLAR SERENITY PRAYER”

God- Life is about more than me. There is a meaning and design to the world independent of what I think or feel. The first (and maybe biggest) trap of bipolar is to convince you that “it” is all about you and the measure of how things are is how you feel. “Life is not about what I can or cannot control, thank goodness, because so much of this is beyond my control.” There is a “higher power.” There is someone to turn to when I feel all alone and powerless and all feels loss. grant me the serenity-“Grant”- that means it is a gift.

It is not something I earn or create. Serenity is not something that I accomplish. It is something I accept. And again it means giving up my need to control. “If every time I say control I could change it to manage or influence my life would be so much better.” Serenity is a focus on here and now. It is not being angry or sad about things gone wrong, or anxious about things yet to go wrong. Serenity is about taking things as they come. To accept the things I cannot change-acceptance is such a major part of dealing with this. So much time is needlessly worrying about “what I got”, and not enough about “what I do with it.” Control is a focus on what I got. Management is a focus on what I do with it. A first rule of walls- “No matter how much you bang your head on them it doesn’t create a door to walk through.” the courage to change the things I can..

To live with bipolar means to be scared. There is a good reason some people call it a “terminal disease.” Positive steps are sometimes so small that they don’t always even seem a step. There are enough wounds and scars that you can’t help but worry sometimes about what is next. “And sometimes it so hard and so tiring and seems so impossible you just don’t want to try. Giving up seems to make such good sense.”

And the wisdom to know the difference-The beginning of all is to know. “Knowledge is necessity.” A big part of knowing what to do is knowing what you got. Another major part of wisdom is staying focused. Looking. Not assuming that because something feels so it doesn’t make it so. Wisdom also means realizing when you are not being so smart. The smartest thing is to be able to see our foolishness quick enough not to wreck. It is important to realize that these things don’t just happen sequentially. It isn’t just do this first and this second and so on. Each one feeds into the other and the other feeds into it. Serenity helps give you courage, but courage increases your serenity. Wisdom helps to develop both, but each of them also increases wisdom. It is a net in effect. The serenity prayer in a real way is a safety net to keep you from drowning in the high waters of bipolar.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen

unknown source

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