Mental Health Ministries of the United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, United States 
Mental Health Ministries' current e-spotlight focuses on how to address fear and anxiety.
The beginning of a New Year finds many of us taking stock of our lives, making resolutions for change and setting goals. Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, suggests that a shift towards Extrinsic goals (those having to do with material rewards or other people's judgments) from more Intrinsic goals (those having to do with one's own development and finding meaning) could be related to feeling a loss of control. This shift may be one reason that Americans are so anxious.
Nearly one in five of us - 18 percent - has an anxiety disorder. We spend over $2 billion a year on anti-anxiety medications. College students are often described as more stressed than ever before. Anxiety in children is also on a rise. Our faith communities are one place to lift up the Intrinsic goals of finding meaning, worth and purpose through the shared values of a caring community. This Spotlight focuses on how fear and anxiety affect our daily lives and it offers some ways that we can addresses these concerns individually and with the support of others.
NEW Brochure from Mental Health Ministries - Anxiety Disorders: Overcoming the Fear
Mental Health Ministries Videos on Anxiety
Mental Health Ministries has two videos that address anxiety issues:Anxiety Disorders: Overcoming the Fear
For some 23 million Americans, anxiety is more than a simple case of the nerves. Instead, it manifests in severe panic attacks that lead to fearful avoidance of certain places or situations. These fears can be as crippling as any serious physical illness. Help and hope are available. The complete show is available on the DVD set, Mental Illness and Families of Faith. Or watch it on YouTube.
Overcoming Stigma Finding Hope
All too often the term "mental illness" evokes inaccurate, stigmatizing stereotypes. Studies estimate that one-half of people with treatable mental illness do not seek help because of the stigma. Carol shares her story on how she moved beyond depression and the accompanying anxiety. Mental health professionals discuss stigma, its affects and moving beyond stigma to hope. The complete show is available on the DVD set, Mental Illness and Families of Faith. Or watch it on YouTube.
Article - Overcoming Anxiety
Overcoming Anxiety
When your body has an overactive stress response, there are tools and treatments that can help combat the constant worrying, irrational fears or panic attacks.
Back when our ancient ancestors needed to run from giant hyenas and cave lions, an important survival mechanism readied the body to react to threats. The “fight, flight or freeze” response, which flushes our systems with hormones like adrenalin and cortisol in order to rev up energy levels and sharpen the senses, is hard-wired into humans.
In modern life, we may still encounter exciting, demanding, and possibly dangerous situations. But for some of us, that interior alarm system gets triggered less by real peril and more by everyday stressors and our own minds.
When that happens, we call it anxiety. And when it happens on a constant basis—or to an extreme degree—we call it an anxiety disorder.
“Anxiety tricks us into thinking it’s going to protect us, but it tends to turn into chronic worry, making us even more anxious,” says Patricia Thornton, PhD, a psychologist in New York City who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders.
When the sympathetic nervous system gears up to prepare the body for battle, for whatever real or imagined reason, every organ in the body (and that includes the brain) gets in on the act. Heart rate accelerates, the liver releases more glucose, and the lungs grasp for more oxygen, for starters. Sweating and hyperventilating are offshoots of this process.
It’s the parasympathetic nervous system’s job to take over and return the brain and body to a state of calm.
Due to some combination of genetics, physiology and personality, some people fire up more easily and have a harder time backing off from code red. There’s a lot of evidence linking an overactive stress response to medical conditions like heart disease and high blood pressure, as well as to brain-based disorders like depression, anxiety, and addiction.
Anxious symptoms can be an aspect of depression—in fact, research suggests that up to three-fourths of people with a depressive disorder have “anxious features” during a depressive episode and/or a co-existing anxiety disorder.
An anxiety diagnosis typically follows when symptoms—notably racing thoughts, restlessness, and physical distress such as nausea—occur on more days than not over six months, independent of any depressive episode, and significantly affect performance at home, work or school. Anxiety disorders affect from 20 to 25 percent of North Americans.
In some cases, feeling anxious can make you more productive and successful, as when you study harder for a test that you’re nervous about. More often, anxiety disorders tend to shrink the boundaries of your life.
If you’re afraid of flying, you might not pursue your dream to go abroad. If social activities make you panic, it’s harder make friends. A loop of irrational worries will sap your energy and attention from other things.
Yet treatment with medication, psychotherapy and stress-management techniques is generally very effective.
Facing fears
Because anxiety can take different forms, talk therapy should be tailored to specific symptoms. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy works well for the free-floating worry of generalized anxiety disorder. This treatment centers around changing the way you think and, therefore, the way you feel and act.
“Learning how to manage an anxious mind is a skill, but you can learn how to be active, thoughtful, more objective and better prepared for situations that you know are going to stress you out,” says clinical psychologist Nick Forand, PhD, director of evidence-based psychotherapy and an assistant professor at Hofstra University’s Northwell School of Medicine on Long Island.
Fretting over a situation (rumination) can stir up the stress response. So can a tendency to anticipate the worst (catastrophic thinking), no matter how unrealistic that outcome may be.
With depression and anxiety, “thoughts can be biased toward the catastrophic,” explains Forand. “We teach people to interrogate those thoughts, to be a bit more objective about those predictions they’re making. What’s the actual likelihood that this is going to happen, and where’s the evidence? Have you been in this situation before, and what happened?”
For and notes that correcting your predictions often requires putting yourself into the very situation that makes you anxious. It’s natural to try to avoid things that set you off, whether spiders or public speaking. But every time you survive a dreaded thing or activity, you have more evidence that your fears were unfounded.
Confronting what you fear in a safe and manageable way is the essence of exposure therapy, which is useful for specific phobias.
According to Eilenna Denisoff, PhD, CPsych, clinical director at the psychotherapy practice CBT Associates in Toronto, it’s important to ride out the body’s stress response. She uses “running scared” for illustration: The adrenalin burst that fuels that “escape from an attacking dog” pace lasts only so long.
“To change behavior, you need to stay in the situation long enough for the anxiety to come down naturally on its own. And on repeated exposure, the brain learns that the feared situation is not as dangerous or intimidating as originally thought,” she says.
Therapists often use what’s called the Subjective Units of Distress Scale, or SUDS, to measure fear and anxiety. The scale goes from zero (“totally relaxed”) to 100 ( “highest distress/fear/anxiety/discomfort that you have ever felt”).
Say the prospect of meeting new people puts your SUDS level at 50 (“uncomfortable but can continue to perform”). A step-by-step approach to reducing that number to 25—somewhere between mild and minimal anxiety/distress—might start with greeting someone in an elevator, then move on to chatting about the weather while waiting in line. Eventually you may get comfortable enough to express opinions in front of a group.
If you get overly nervous about driving, you might start with 10 minutes a day piloting through a quiet neighborhood, then increase the length of time behind the wheel, then go onto major roads during an off-peak time of day, then during busier times, and so on.
Many people also experience anticipatory anxiety—symptoms that flare up when you simply think about facing something that scares you. It’s also not uncommon to dread the idea of having an anxiety attack if you’re going to be in a stressful situation, reinforcing the whole cycle.
Denisoff says it’s not important to get your SUDS level down to zero. Rather, the goal is reducing anxiety to a tolerable level because “you don’t want to be afraid of your own physiology. … When you fear the fear, it activates your alarm. You have to teach your brain to not fight.”
Medication & acceptance
Anyone who has been through a panic attack can attest that it’s a dreadful experience. Rod, a retired pastor from New York state, was halfway around the world when he was hit with what felt like a heart attack.
Rod had been feeling anxious over deadlines and other daily pressures before leaving for a trip to Kenya, where his congregation was partnering with a university. Five days into the two-week trip, in a meeting with the university’s president, he felt intense chest pain, as if someone were standing on his torso.
Anxiety disorders often are difficult to diagnose because physical symptoms like heart palpitations, dizziness, shortness of breath and headache mimic a number of medical conditions. However, when Rod was rushed to the hospital, a doctor confirmed he had no cardiac issues. It was a psychologist back home who identified what happened as a panic attack.
Rod started to get a handle on his anxiety after getting his hands on the book Don’t Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks, by clinical psychologist R. Reid Wilson, PhD.
“My copy is now underlined and has exclamation points and red and blue underlining,” says Rod.
He has found the meditation exercises in the book to be the most helpful. They’ve become part of his daily devotional, though he also calls on the technique as needed.
“Meditation is a form of acceptance,” says the pastor, who also takes a low dose of anxiety medication. “An hour after you’ve done your meditation, the same symptoms can occur, but now, instead of saying, ‘Dang it, here it comes again,’ I just tell the anxiety, ‘I’ve got to do things today that I think are important, and if you want to come along, come along.’”
While meditation and other mindfulness practices aren’t a magic bullet for treating anxiety—no single treatment is—new studies steadily roll out illustrating how the practice reduces symptoms.
For example, findings published in the January 2017 issue of Psychiatry Research showed that an eight-week course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction helped people with generalized anxiety disorder handle stress better than an eight-week stress management education course focused on habits such as diet, sleep, and other wellness markers.
Keep calm & carry on
Any activities that help reduce stress will be helpful for anxiety. Yoga, for example, has documented benefits for reducing anxious and depressive symptoms. So does exercise in general. Focusing on the breath—taking five deep breaths or adopting a pattern like breathing in for eight counts and out for four counts—works for many people.
Individuals often hit upon their own tricks, too, such as rubbing a worry stone or listening to soothing music. Andrea sets a timer for somewhere between 12 and 17 minutes (“Don’t ask why I don’t just do 15; I don’t know,” she says) and lies down with her eyes closed until the buzzer rings.
It is one of many tools the professional blogger from South Florida has used in recent years to keep anxiety at bay. She also swears by improving her diet. She once subsisted mostly on fried foods, sugary snacks, and caffeinated drinks. She switched to healthier foods reputed to boost levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood.
“A proper diet will balance your entire body,” she says. “It might not get rid of the problem completely, but it helps.”
At her worst, she recalls, she frequently found herself sitting on the floor, gasping for air, hoping not to pass out. In college, her panic at the thought of being surrounded by new people was so bad she needed her roommates to drive her to classes.
In time her attacks became less severe: She would feel dizzy and nervous, her heart would race, and her hands would be clammy, but she could function fairly well until her symptoms subsided.
Realizing that she won’t be overwhelmed by anxiety has been liberating.
“If I worry about being scared, then I’m adding an additional concern to my day,” Andrea says. “I have to know that the feelings are valid, but then I move on. I let it play out how it’s supposed to, and it eventually goes away.”
* * * * *
What, me worry?In anxiety disorders, symptoms often are triggered by internal signals—thoughts and interpretations of events—rather than external threats of physical harm.
If we don’t resolve those negative patterns, “we end up re-creating exactly what we were trying to avoid in the first place,” says Colorado psychotherapist Laurie Weiss, PhD, author of Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words.
It helps to:
Rein in the what-ifs. To get worries out of your head, write them down. (You can also sing them, or record them into your phone.) Use a timer and don’t go over 15 minutes, advises psychologist Patricia Thornton, PhD.
“You might think you’re doing something about your anxiety by thinking about every permutation of a situation,” she says. “But that just makes you more anxious—and keeps you from living your life.”
Find calming cues. When Rod Rod’s anxiety was at its peak, he would hum Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” which opens with the lyrics, “Hello darkness, my old friend/ I’ve come to talk with you again.”
“The anxiety was a form of darkness because I felt out of control,” he says. “But when you have the ability to know what’s happening to you, to deal with it immediately and accept it immediately, you can get on with your day.”
Avoid quick fixes. Alcohol, drugs, avoidance behavior and other short-term solutions won’t do anything to help you cope the next time anxiety strikes. Instead, acknowledge that anxiety is a natural alarm system, seek support, and learn stress-reduction techniques to prevent it from taking over your life.
A who’s who of anxiety
Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Exaggerated anxiety and tension that is not tied to something specific, persists for months, and can impair normal life and relationships. GAD, which affects twice as many women as men, causes people to anticipate catastrophe and worry excessively about anything from serious issues to routine concerns to events with very little likelihood of actually happening.
Other symptoms include irritability, trouble concentrating, fatigue, headaches, muscle tension and aches, difficulty swallowing, trembling, twitching, sweating, and hot flashes.
Panic Disorder: Unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms such as chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness or abdominal distress. Panic attacks can occur at any time, even during sleep.
Social Anxiety Disorder: Overwhelming anxiety or excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations. Social phobia, as it’s also known, can be generalized or pegged to a particular activity, such as eating in front of others.
Specific Phobias: Strong, irrational fear reactions to something specific, such as germs, heights, thunder, flying, confined spaces, open spaces, and certain animals or insects.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Obsessions are repetitive thoughts or impulses, such as a fear of getting an infection or fear of hurting a loved one. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that people perform in an attempt to control or decrease anxiety—constantly checking that an oven is off to prevent a fire, frequent cleaning or hand-washing to avoid germ contamination, or ritualistic behaviors like flicking a light switch a specific number of times.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm might or did occur, or exposure to something emotionally traumatic, can lead to hypervigilance, nightmares, flashbacks, hostility, social withdrawal, irritability, and other depressive and anxious symptoms.
Sources: Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
* * * * *
Read More: Emma Stone On Anxiety & Panic AttacksRead More: SoundOFF!: Anxiety Disorders
* * * * *
Printed as “Overcoming Anxiety,” Summer 2017ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ROBIN L. FLANIGANHas 29 Articles
Robin L. Flanigan is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in People Magazine, US Airways Magazine and other national and regional publications. She lives in Rochester, NY.
Article - A Healthy Home is a Happy Home: How to Optimize Your Home for Healthy, Stress-free Living
It's no secret that our environments influence the way we think, feel and act. Most people desire good health and for most people, their home is the environment they are most often surrounded by. Everyone deserves to live a happy, healthy life and we can start by creating a home environment optimal for health. Stress reduction is the first step toward living a healthy life, because stress is a large determinant of good health. Continuous or chronic stress can cause muscle tension, headaches and migraines, heart problems, adrenal fatigue, nausea, overeating and is overall draining for your energy levels.
This blog article offers a number of suggestions on ways to make changes where you live to reduce stress and promote overall health. For example, you can relieve stress by bringing some plants into your home. A few ideas include looking to reduce clutter, setting aside a place for solitude and meditation, making healthier choices about food and simple things like bringing some plants inside. Studies have shown that exposure to nature improves mood and reduces stress. Article available at How to Optimize Your Home for Healthy, Stress-free Living.
Research Study - Benefits of Mindfulness for Combating Anxious Thoughts
This blog article offers a number of suggestions on ways to make changes where you live to reduce stress and promote overall health. For example, you can relieve stress by bringing some plants into your home. A few ideas include looking to reduce clutter, setting aside a place for solitude and meditation, making healthier choices about food and simple things like bringing some plants inside. Studies have shown that exposure to nature improves mood and reduces stress. Article available at How to Optimize Your Home for Healthy, Stress-free Living.
Research Study - Benefits of Mindfulness for Combating Anxious Thoughts
Just 10 minutes of daily mindful mediation can help prevent your mind from wandering and is particularly effective if you tend to have repetitive, anxious thoughts, according to a study from the University of Waterloo. The study, which assessed the impact of meditation with 82 participants who experience anxiety, found that developing an awareness of the present moment reduced incidents of repetitive, off-task thinking, a hallmark of anxiety. The study, co-authored by Waterloo psychology professors Christine Purdon and Daniel Smilek and Harvard University's Paul Seli, was published in Consciousness and Cognition. Available at bpHope.Article - Almost Two-Thirds of Children Worry All the Time
The BBC reports on a study that reveals the number of 11 and 12-year-old children who experience anxiety. Concerns about family and friends and fear of failing at school are the top causes of anxiety. There was a gender divide, with 36% of girls worrying about being bullied, compared with 22% of boys. More than 80% of the children surveyed said the best way for adults to help was to listen sympathetically and pupils said it was important to be kind to anxious classmates. The most common coping strategies were talking to family members (72%) or to friends (65%), while 65% of boys calmed themselves by playing computer games compared with 39% of girls. View the article.Center for Anxiety e-Newsletter
The inaugural issue of the Center for Anxiety's e-newsletter has recently been announced. The Center, with offices located in New York City, Brooklyn, and Boston, focuses on religiously/spiritually-integrated treatments for anxiety (particularly for those from Jewish backgrounds, but also for those from any religious or non-religious background). For more information and to register to receive the newsletter, see their website or contact the Center's founder and director, Dr. David H. Rosmarin at info@centerforanxiety.org.Article - Bipolar & Pets: Breaking the Grip of Panic Attacks
A blog from a bphope shares how pets can be helpful when you are in the midst of a panic attack. Whether it's a service dog or a companion animal, pets have been documented to get the attention of their owners during an anxiety episode or a panic attack and break the grip the panic has. For some, having a psychiatric dog will allow people to go out in public again with confidence. They know that if they have a severe attack, their dog will get their attention, break the spell and offer love and affection. Article at bpHope.Book - Anxious: Choosing Faith in a World of Worry
Our culture is frantic with worry. We stress over circumstances we can't control, we talk about what's keeping us up at night and we wring our hands over the fate of disadvantaged people all over the world, almost as if to show we care and that we have big things to care about. Worry is part of our culture, an expectation of responsible people. And sadly, Christians are no different. But we are called to live and think differently from the worried world around us. Worry is a spiritual problem, which ultimately cannot be overcome with sheer willpower-its solution is rooted entirely in who God is.
Challenging the idolatrous underpinnings of worry, former Christianity Today executive Amy Simpson encourages us to root our faith in who God is, not in our own will power. Correctly understanding the theology of worry is critical to true transformation. Available on Amazon.
Article - How to Re-Awaken Your Spirituality to Reconnect with the Natural World
The key to your health and happiness may lie in how spiritual you are in your daily life. In fact, research regarding religion, spirituality, and health by Dr. Harold G. Koenig found that people who were more spiritual fared better regarding mental health over their lifetimes. While he notes that religion, medicine, and healthcare have always related to one another, Dr. Koenig suggests that in recent times society has separated those components. However, recognizing the effects of spirituality on our health and well-being is important for maintaining good health and recovering from illness. View the article here.Article - 5 Ways the Church Can Help Someone Facing Mental Illness
This article, 5 Ways the Church Can Help Someone Facing Mental Illness, by Brad Hambrick, is an edited excerpt from "Towards a Christian Perspective of Mental Illness." Hambrick states, Undoubtedly, mental illness is a difficult subject to address because of its complexity and highly personal nature. Everyone is affected by mental illness; either personally or someone they love. As a result, it is a subject that must be discussed and addressed in the church. Let's not let our silence hurt people by leaving them to struggle in isolation. The article offers five ways the church, corporately or through individuals can help someone facing mental illness.
Teach a balanced view of mental illness as a part of an ongoing education process.
Befriend those who are struggling with mental illness with multiple people so no one person carries the full weight of responsibility.
Have a relationship that includes but transcends the struggle with mental illness.
Help people sort their struggles into categories of sin, suffering, and identity which can be caused by biology, environment, or choice.
Attend a counseling session with your friend, take notes, gain an understanding of their struggle, and serve as an echo of key truths or practices recommended by the counselor.
"Towards a Christian Perspective of Mental Illness," is available for free in its entirety in both video presentation and PDF article formats. The PDF file is available on the Mental Health Ministries website.
Blog Posts from Church4EveryChild - Key Ministry
Helping to connect churches and families of kids with disabilities Key Ministry encourages readers to check out the resources they've developed to help pastors, church leaders, volunteers and families on mental health-related topics, including series on the impact of ADHD, anxiety and Asperger's Disorder on spiritual development in kids, depression in children and teens, pediatric bipolar disorder, and strategies for promoting mental health inclusion at church.
Article - Depression in Children and Teens...a Primer for Pastors, Church Staff and Christian Parents
Article - Depression in Children and Teens...a Primer for Pastors, Church Staff and Christian Parents
Stephen Grcevich, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and Key Ministry Board Chairman, developed this series of blog posts for a teaching series. Links to the posts in the series are presented here, along with a list of recommended resources for pastors, church staff, volunteers and parents seeking to serve kids and teens with depression and their families. For additional free resources and support in ministering
to kids with disabilities and their families, check out the Key Ministry website.
Book - Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the SacredFrom a leading researcher and practitioner, this volume provides an innovative framework for understanding the role of spirituality in people's lives and its relevance to the work done in psychotherapy. It offers fresh, practical ideas for creating a spiritual dialogue with clients, assessing spirituality as a part of their problems and solutions, and helping them draw on spiritual resources in times of stress. Written from a nonsectarian perspective, the book encompasses both traditional and nontraditional forms of spirituality. It is grounded in current findings from psychotherapy research and the psychology of religion, and includes a wealth of evocative case material. Available on Amazon.
Book - Suffering and Spirituality: The Path to Illness and Healing
After twelve years, author Lorraine M. Wright, RN, PhD revisits her well-received book, Spirituality, Suffering, and Illness: Ideas for Healing (2005). With updated research and new illness narratives, this latest edition provides insights, guidance and advice for individuals and families experiencing suffering and for helping professionals seeking to soften their suffering. Spirituality and Suffering: The Path to Illness Healing also offers clinical practice ideas from a nonreligious approach of the crossroads of suffering, spirituality, and illness. A holistic model emphasizing suffering, spirituality, and illness beliefs, the Trinity Model, is also offered. Actual clinical examples are provided to show how to integrate, implement, and enhance health professionals spiritual care practices that soften suffering with patients and families experiencing serious illness, disability, or loss. Available on Amazon.Book - Moral Injury: Restoring Wounded Souls
Moral Injury: Restoring Wounded Souls is a resource by Larry Graham Ph.D. for chaplains, pastors and spiritual caregivers designed to help people through the practices of soul care and moral guidance. Dr. Graham has studying the traumatic impact of war, moral dissonance and injury in the life of individuals and communities.
The author says that if we can share our burdens, we can bear them. If we can bear them, we can change the circumstances that brought them about. In a world where anything goes, people have a hard time deciding what is right and what is wrong. This book offers help for persons dealing with their feelings of guilt, shame, and responsibility when many people don't believe in sin and have a limited or "flexible" moral framework. Available on Amazon.
New Home for Mental Health Ministries
New Home for Mental Health Ministries
Mental Health Ministries has recently come under the United Methodist Disability umbrella to collaborate with the DisAbility Ministries Committee (DMC) to find ways to include all God's children with physical and emotional disabilities. The focus of the fall DisAbility Ministries Committee newsletter is mental illness. It includes stories of what some churches are doing and helpful links. View their latest newsletter.Snippets from Susan
Fidget Quilts
My husband and I volunteered to help a group make "fidget quilts" ...even though neither of us sew! A "Fidget, Fiddle, or Busy" Quilt or Activity Blanket is a small lap quilt, mat or blanket that provides sensory and tactile stimulation for the restless or "fidgety" hands. They provide sensory or tactile stimulation through the use of fabric choices, colors, value of colors next to one another, textures, and the use of accents or simple accessories such as pockets, laces, trims, appliques, buttons, secured beads, ribbons, braids etc. 
Our quilts were donated to the Alzheimer's Association. But these quilts can also be helpful for persons with autism or anxiety disorders to keep hands busy. I loved the soft, silky fabric on the quilt I worked on...hard to give it up! 
Rev. Susan Gregg-Schroeder
Coordinator of Mental Health Ministries
www.MentalHealthMinistries.net
STAY CONNECTED:
The United Methodist Committee on DisAbility Ministries
---
No comments:
Post a Comment