Accept practical support

These are marvelous and necessary skills that you can rely on in every area of your life. There will be activation because these are two action-oriented emotions, but your Grounding and Focusing practice -- and your ability to work respectfully with both emotions -- can help you remain focused and stable in the presence of your fearxiety. Confusion and Anxiety: Knowing How to Let Yourself Rest People often mistake confusion for anxiety, especially when their heads are swirling with facts, ideas, and concerns that won't line up in any kind of order. Anxiety and confusion can join together (confusiety? You might even say that they bring you contrasting gifts: on one hand, anxiety sharpens and increases your energy and focus, and on the other hand, confusion reduces your focus so that your awareness becomes hazy and uncertain. Because these two emotions are so different, you might feel disoriented when they appear together (or when they oscillate back and forth with one another). Emotion Gifts and Skills Internal Questions CONFUSION is a mask for fear and anxiety that arises when you have too much to process all at once. Confusion can give you a much-needed time-out. Attending a support group can be a good way to educate yourself about Parkinson's and also learn new ways to care for your loved one. Find out whether there's a Parkinson's or Parkinson's caregiver support group in your area by checking your local newspaper for community announcements of meetings, or look online for your local Parkinson's article, which will be able to tell you about any support groups that may be in your area. If you are unable to locate a support group specifically for Parkinson's caregivers, there may be general caregiving support groups in your area that could be beneficial. Remember, many of the issues you face are universal to all caregivers. Make sure you call the group's moderator ahead of time to ensure that the group will be the right fit for you. Caregiving in the Mid-Stages of PD I bought a battery-operated doorbell and put the base unit in the central part of the house. I then velcroed the buzzer part to my husband's wheelchair. I also attached a piece of Velcro to the nightstand by his bed. That way we could attach the doorbell there when he was in bed.

Recent research shows it's not the increase in serotonin that affects depression but the increase in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. On the other hand, lower levels of BDNF (or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which stimulates neurogenesis and neuroplasticity) is a marker for depression. High rates of neurogenesis are associated with healthy emotion regulation and positive feelings of joy, peace, fulfillment, and love. Cognitive benefits also accrue: rapid learning, increased executive function, cognitive enhancement, and increased problem solving. When the brain is producing new neurons at a high level, neuroplasticity is high. Neuroplasticity refers both to the process of making new connections among existing brain cells (synaptogenesis) as well as neurogenesis. The human ability to change and evolve, to creatively adapt to new situations, to learn new things, and respond freshly to life, requires neurogenesis and synaptogenesis operate at peak capacity. A high degree of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity are hallmarks of a healthy brain. To build a strong, resilient, radiantly healthy brain means, first and foremost, increasing the brain's rate of growth, neurogenesis, and synaptogenesis through a neurogenic diet. It's essential to stimulate the brain's natural growth, its rebuilding and strengthening capacities, by increasing neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. And then there are sunglasses, sports glasses, driving glasses, lazy-Sunday-afternoon glasses . Go to the chicest boutique in town and do one-stop shopping. MEDIUM: Update only one category a year in your wardrobe of frames for work, play, and dressy occasions. Go to the chicest boutique in town to research the frames you want, then shop smart online. Bring the frames to your optician and have the lenses put in. LOW: Buy one pair of super-chic glasses that serve all your needs. To save on the frames, buy hip reading glasses at a department store or specialty shop, bring them to the optician, and have your prescription popped in. To save on sunglasses, consider transitional lenses. Splurge on a wardrobe of eyewear. For weekends: fun shapes and colors

Let your inner child freely speak. As that happens, many different feelings may arise. Allow them all. Keep bringing your attention to where the highest-intensity feeling lives. Stay focused on it and let it release. Keep looking in your mother's eyes and see what else is there. Maybe you felt unseen or unheard or not good enough. Keep asking your Divine to show you more, to take you deeper. Keep breathing. Keep experiencing. I want results. Elizabeth looked over her glasses into Marvin's eyes. Then she asked, Do you ever write a check to pay for groceries at the supermarket? The cashier verifies your ID and writes the number on the check, right? Then what happens? I usually wait around while the cashier calls the manager or assistant manager to come over and approve the check, answered Marvin. The manager's talking to someone two aisles over as he or she is initialing the check. Now that I think about it, it doesn't seem rightespecially since the 'wake-up call' you have given me. Why isn't it right? It sends a message that the store doesn't trust the cashiers and that the only employees there who have brains are the managers.

If you want to change the world change yourself first. Take charge of your life. Put your needs first and stop everything else. Once your needs are fulfilled, go and teach other people how to achieve theirs. If you want to improve your self-esteem, there is no way around watching very, very closely who you spend your time with. You need to stay away from the negativity of toxic people and bring the positivity of supporting ones into your life. Associate with people who help you with your strengths, stay away from people who belittle your accomplishments and let go of relationships that constantly hurt you. People around you can be the springboard to motivate yourself, gain courage, and help you take the right actions, but on the other hand can also drag you down, drain your energy, and act as brakes in the achievement of your life goals. If you are around negative people all the time, they can convert you into a negative and cynical person over time. There is really something to the saying that you are the average of the five persons you spend the most time with. So today I'd like to help you work on forgiving and releasing any anger you might have, so that you can feel good about yourself. Anger is an honest emotion. But when it is not expressed or processed outwardly, it will be processed inwardly, in the body, and usually develops into a disease or dysfunction of some sort. We generally get angry about the same things over and over again. When we are angry, we feel we don't have a right to express it, so we swallow it, which can cause resentment, bitterness, or depression. So it's good to handle our anger and release it whenever it comes up. If you feel like expressing yourself physically, then get some pillows and start hitting them. Don't be afraid to let your anger take its natural course. You have already kept your feelings bottled up too long. There is no need to feel any guilt or shame about feeling angry.

Identify Distractions There is a common phrase that goes what you resist persists. In line with the habit of overthinking, trying to prevent yourself from thinking about something only makes you think too much about it. As a result, the best way of stopping this is by doing something more engaging. Go for a walk with friends. Learn to play a new musical instrument. The point here is that you should make an effort to distract your mind. Stop Being a Perfectionist Evidently, there is a good feeling that comes with knowing that you have done something perfectly. Nevertheless, it is quite demanding to do things perfectly all the time. On the contrary, the fundamental Stoic notion of cosmopolitanism23 entails that any such discrimination ought to be rejected as incompatible with Stoic philosophy. Hence my rephrasing of pertinent bits of Epictetus. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME, AND IT WON'T BE THE LAST I am most certainly not the first to rewrite or update the Enchiridion. Nor, doubtlessly, will I be the last. This may sound strange, and even presumptuous of me, but as I have already argued, philosophies of life and religions are not static entities, they evolve over time. Consider for instance the religion I grew up with in Italy, Roman Catholicism. Very few people in the world, including so-called fundamentalists, would argue that we ought to read the Old and New Testament as if societal norms, and moral norms in particular, had remained unchanged over the last two millennia. That's why there is no such thing as a literal reading of Scripture, notwithstanding the loud proclamations of a number of misguided souls. And if we can reasonably reinterpret and update what some refer to as God's own words, surely we can do the same with mortals such as Epictetus.