We all encounter a degree of resistance in life, it’s simply unavoidable. But does it seem to you like life has been getting more difficult lately? Do you find that it takes more effort to accomplish things that used to be simple?

Isn’t technology supposed to make life easier, more affordable, and less complicated? Theoretically, life should be getting easier, not more difficult. Has that been your experience, or is the exact opposite true?

The ability to cope…

There seems to be something about technological advancement that makes certain specific tasks easier, while simultaneously making life as a whole more challenging.

A quick glance at the increase in prescriptions for antidepressant and anti-anxiety meds makes one fact crystal clear. People on average are losing their ability to cope with the challenges of life.

How do you cope with challenges?

Everyone develops their own ways of coping with challenges. Some of them are productive, some are neutral, and some are destructive. How we choose to cope with life’s challenges will eventually define the direction of our personal growth and development.

If we use happy hour, drugs, anger, or depression as a coping mechanism, what will be the long-term effect on our personal development? And yet, for a growing number of people, these are common responses to challenging situations.

The positive side of coping

We all have the ability to turn challenges into motivation and opportunity. If we learn to view each and every challenge as an opportunity for personal growth, we will be much more inclined to choose productive ways to meet those challenges.

The more you learn to embrace the idea of personal growth, the more you will appreciate the life lessons that come from successfully meeting new challenges. Oddly enough, many of the most valuable lessons we will ever learn are the byproduct of challenging situations.

You can run, but you cannot hide!

Life will always present us with challenges, it’s up to us to decide whether that is a good thing, or a bummer. Our perception will determine our response, and ultimately our attitude toward life in general.

Do we see our circumstances as positive, or negative? Do we see insurmountable obstacles, or new and exciting opportunities? Do we welcome the chance to grow, or do we just want to avoid anything that requires effort? Your answers to those questions will form the framework of your life.

The springboard approach

The two most powerful forces for change are moving away from pain, and moving toward pleasure. When some situation in life makes us uncomfortable, why not harness that energy and use it as a springboard for positive action.

Discomfort is a signal that some area of life needs our attention. If we complain about it, or try to hide from it, the discomfort increases. If we analyze the situation, and then take decisive action, the discomfort motivates us to move away from pain, and toward pleasure. Discomfort is a source of energy that we can use in a positive way.

How I use discomfort to create motivation

When I become aware that something in my life is causing discomfort, here’s how I create a springboard. First I agitate the discomfort by looking at the negative ways I am experiencing it. Then I acknowledge the direction I need to go in order to move toward a solution. Finally, I challenge myself, make a commitment, and use the discomfort as rocket fuel to accomplish my new goal.

I especially like to do this with fitness goals. While many people are content to allow their level of fitness to decline after the pass a certain age, the very thought creates adequate discomfort to keep me motivated. As a result, my continued progress has added to my motivation and determination. You see, with the right coping skills, discomfort really does become a source of energy that we can harness and use in a positive way.

Choose positive coping skills

To some degree we can work to simplify our lives and reduce the number of challenges we are exposed to. This can make a significant difference in our quality of life, but we will still face challenges! In the long run, adopting positive and productive methods for meeting those challenges is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Are you finding life to be increasingly more challenging?
What are your favorite ways of coping with challenges?
The lines are open!

If you enjoyed this article, consider email or RSS updates!

Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some point in their lives.

However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

When these sensations occur and people do not understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying. Fight/Flight Response: One of the root causes of panic attacks?

I am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight response as an explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?

Anxiety is a response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is actually causing you great harm…perhaps the most significant of all the causes of panic attacks.

However, the anxiety that the fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors—when faced with some danger, an automatic response would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.

Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does not harm—an important point that will be elaborated upon later.

The Physical Manifestations of a Panic Attack: Other pieces of the puzzle to understand the causes of panic attacks. Nervousness and Chemical Effects…When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a section of the nervous system. It is this system that is responsible for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the autonomic nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Although I don’t want to become too “scientific,” having a basic understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system will help you understand the causes of panic attacks.

The sympathetic nervous system is the one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for action, readies us for the “fight or flight” response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love dearly as it serves as our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.

When either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body, which has an “all or nothing” effect. This explains why when a panic attack occurs the individual often feels a number of different sensations throughout the body.

The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less known, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body. Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.

After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.

You can do your best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually it stops. In time, it becomes a little smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent—modern science is always discovering amazing patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of dealing with the most complicated array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body’s primary goal is to keep you alive and well.

Not so convinced?

Try holding your breath for as long as you can. No matter how strong your mental will is, it can never override the will of the body. This is good news—no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are going to die from a panic attack, you won’t. Your body will override that fear and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported incident of someone dying from a panic attack.

Remember this next time you have a panic attack; he causes of panic attacks cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind may make the sensations continue longer than the body intended, but eventually everything will return to a state of balance. In fact, balance (homeostasis) is what our body continually strives for.

The interference for your body is nothing more than the sensations of doing rigorous exercise. Our body is not alarmed by these symptoms. Why should it be? It knows its own capability. It’s our thinking minds that panic, which overreact and scream in sheer terror! We tend to fear the worst and exaggerate our own sensations. A quickened heart beat becomes a heart attack. An overactive mind seems like a close shave with schizophrenia. Is it our fault? Not really—we are simply diagnosing from poor information.

Cardiovascular Effects: Activity in the sympathetic nervous system increases our heartbeat rate, speeds up the blood flow throughout the body, ensures all areas are well supplied with oxygen and that waste products are removed. This happens in order to prime the body for action.

A fascinating feature of the “fight or flight” mechanism is that blood (which is channeled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed. For example, should there be a physical attack, blood drains from the skin, fingers, and toes so that less blood is lost, and is moved to “active areas” such as the thighs and biceps to help the body prepare for action.

This is why many feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack-often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the precursor to a heart attack. Interestingly, most people who suffer from anxiety often feel they have heart problems. If you are really worried that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.

Respiratory Effects: One of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the fear of suffocating or smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel tightness in the chest and throat. I’m sure everyone can relate to some fear of losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, anxiety grows from the fear that your breathing itself would cease and you would be unable to recover. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.

A panic attack is associated with an increase in the speed and depth of breathing. This has obvious importance for the defense of the body since the tissues need to get more oxygen to prepare for action. The feelings produced by this increase in breathing, however, can include breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or tightness in the chest. The real problem is that these sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.

Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn’t trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn’t suit my body’s requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify—along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let the body continue doing what it does best—running the whole show.

Importantly, a side effect of increased breathing (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is actually decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.

Other Physical Effects of Panic Attacks : Now that we’ve discussed some of the primary physiological causes of panic attacks, there are a number of other effects that are produced by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, none of which are in any way harmful.

For example, the pupils widen to let in more light, which may result in blurred vision, or “seeing” stars, etc. There is a decrease in salivation, resulting in dry mouth. There is decreased activity in the digestive system, which often produces nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and even constipation. Finally, many of the muscle groups tense up in preparation for “fight or flight,” and this results in subjective feelings of tension, sometimes extending to actual aches and pains, as well as trembling and shaking.

Overall, the fight/flight response results in a general activation of the whole bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, because this process takes a lot of energy, the person generally feels tired and drained.

Mental Manifestations: Are the causes of panic attacks all in my head? is a question many people wonder to themselves.

The goal of the fight/flight response is making the individual aware of the potential danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for potential threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very difficult to concentrate on any one activity, as the mind has been trained to seek all potential threats and not to give up until the threat has been identified. As soon as the panic hits, many people look for the quick and easiest exit from their current surroundings, such as by simply leaving the bank queue and walking outside. Sometimes the anxiety can heighten, if we perceive that leaving will cause some sort of social embarrassment.

If you have a panic attack while at the workplace but feel you must press on with whatever task it is you are doing, it is quite understandable that you would find it very hard to concentrate. It is quite common to become agitated and generally restless in such a situation. Many individuals I have worked with who have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that artificial light—such as that which comes from computer monitors and televisions screens—can be one of the causes of panic attacks by triggering them or worsen a panic attack, particularly if the person is feeling tired or run down.

This is worth bearing in mind if you work for long periods of time on a computer. Regular break reminders should be set up on your computer to remind you to get up from the desk and get some fresh air when possible.

In other situations, when during a panic attack an outside threat cannot normally be found, the mind turns inwards and begins to contemplate the possible illness the body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might have been something you ate at lunch, to the possibility of an oncoming cardiac arrest.

The burning question is: Why is the fight/flight response activated during a panic attack even when there is apparently nothing to be frightened of?

Upon closer examination of the causes of panic attacks, it would appear that what we are afraid of are the sensations themselves—we are afraid of the body losing control. These unexpected physical symptoms create the fear or panic that something is terribly wrong. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the fight/flight response if you are not frightened to begin with? There are many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through fear.

For example, it may be that you have become generally stressed for some reason in your life, and this stress results in an increase in the production of adrenaline and other chemicals, which from time to time, would produce symptoms….and which you perceive as the causes of panic attacks.

This increased adrenaline can be maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone. Another possibility is diet, which directly affects our level of stress. Excess caffeine, alcohol, or sugar is known for causing stress in the body, and is believed to be one of the contributing factors of the causes of panic attacks.

Unresolved emotions are often pointed to as possible trigger of panic attacks, but it is important to point out that eliminating panic attacks from your life does not necessarily mean analyzing your psyche and digging into your subconscious. The “One Move” technique will teach you to deal with the present moment and defuse the attack along with removing the underlying anxiety that sparks the initial anxiety. © Joe Berry

Learn more: Joe Barry is the author of this article and an international panic disorder coach. Visit his informative site to learn more about issues related to panic and anxiety attacks and how to solve them naturally.

Editor’s note: Joe Berry’s success in dealing with all forms of Anxiety Disorder is very impressive. If you or a loved one struggles with anxiety I hope this information is helpful… Learn more

The following is a guest article from my friend a colleague Dr. Annette Colby. If you have ever been depressed or experienced feelings of hopelessness, you will appreciate what Annette has to say. On the other hand, if you have a friend or loved one who is dealing with depression this information will give you the resources to be truly comforting. Whatever your situation, this is a must read. Personally, I made a copy to keep in my desk for ready access.

Best Things to Say to Someone who is Hopeless or Depressed

If you have a friend or loved one who is experiencing hopelessness or dealing with depression, it can be difficult to know exactly what to say or do. While there isn’t any one magic thing to say that will alleviate their pain, there are many ways to offer support.

The best way to offer help is to listen, validate their experience, and provide acceptance. By offering this type of support, you can help put things into a more balanced perspective. In addition, your offer of companionship lets them know that they are not completely alone. They have someone with them even as they attempt to find their ways through very difficult and dark period.

Some helpful hints are to listen while making the person feel un-threatened. Show them with words and actions that they can trust you. Let them know that you are available. Use your positive energy and retain inner hope that change can occur. Just because those dealing with depression may not believe they can get through it doesn’t mean that you have to agree with their point of view.

Here are some words to say that will show your support, while also allowing the person to feel what they are feeling.

“You are important to me even when you are feeling down.” People who are feeling hopeless often think they are weak for feeling this way. They may believe they have a character flaw. Reassure your friend or loved one that you can understand why they might be thinking these types of thoughts, but in your eyes it isn’t true. Offer comfort as you speak from your heart and tell them that you know for a fact that depression or hopelessness isn’t caused by personal weakness, laziness, or because they have done something wrong. This statement of compassionate truth validates their experience while also offering them another point of view. Dealing with depression is a legitimate human experience.

“I may not understand what you experiencing, but I do know that there is always meaning in suffering.” Without trivializing their experience, you can offer a model of acceptance that may help the person begin to accept their experience. Accepting one’s suffering is often a first step to claiming it, becoming familiar with it, and potentially moving beyond it. Don’t claim that you know the meaning of their pain. Let them know that you wish they weren’t hurting, and yet you have faith that this depression is valid and meaningful.

“Would you go outside with me for a short walk?” The hurt inside and the struggle just to get through the day makes many hopeless or depressed people want to isolate inside the safety of their home or bed. Offer to take the person outside. They will most likely resist your offer. Don’t be pushy, but if at all possible be persistent. Fresh air and a change of scenery can help them breathe, can give them access to the healing power of nature, and can get them through at least part of the day.

“Can I sit with a while? It’s okay if we don’t’ talk.” Making small talk or taking care of you socially is often an impossible task to a  person who is dealing with depression. Even though they are feeling lonely and isolated, they choose to be alone because the thought of keeping someone else entertained requires too much energy. Offer to be with a person and suggest sitting together outdoors, watching television, or reading together. Reassure them in advance that you have no expectations of being entertained. Don’t feel the need to fill up the silence. What is often healing or helpful is your willingness to sit comfortably, even in silence, without expectation.

“I’ve noticed lately that you have been down. Do you want to share your feelings with me? I’d like to listen.” Listening with compassion to a person sharing dark or despairing feelings can be difficult for most people to handle. It’s a normal tendency to want to talk, give advice, or offer solutions. However, your ability to listen is immensely healing.

When you give someone the freedom and safely speak, they are able to hear their own thoughts, often for the first time. Validating and reflective listening (telling them back what you think you heard them say) allows them to hear, in a new way, what is going on in their heads. Listening (not fixing or offering advice) creates movement and allows a fresh perspective to be gained.

Effective paraphrasing reflections that allow the person to feel heard and understood include:

* “Is there a way you can help me see how it is for you?
* “Let me see if I understand. What you want me to recognize is…”
* “That’s a good point. You feel your life is not worth living…”
* “I can see that you feel strongly about that. Can you tell me more?”
* “I can understand how you could see it like that. Then paraphrase how you think they see things.

“When bad things have happened to you before, how did you cope?” They may not be able to come up with an answer, but asking this type of question may trigger them to remember that they have had bad times in the past and they did somehow get through those times. This type of question may help them mobilize their inner resources. It can also help them remember that there was a time before depression and hopelessness and that there is hope for change in the future.

Let your friend or loved one ask the “Why me?”’ question. Don’t answer their question, but instead encourage them to voice their beliefs. If they fall silent, one way to lead them beyond the, “Why me?” question is to say, “I don’t know why you are suffering, but I am sure it is not because you are being punished or because you’ve done something wrong. What could we do right now to help you feel better?”

“How can I be most helpful to you? Most likely they won’t have an answer. It is common for those dealing with depression to lose interest in things they used to enjoy. Many tasks or hobbies feel overwhelming. And they may have trouble thinking, recalling things, or even focusing. However, be persistent. You never know how your interest and compassion will make a difference in their journey.

If you enjoyed this article, consider email or RSS updates!