Do holidays depress you?

 

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UPDATE November 30, 2012

Welcome to my blog. It’s been a while since I posted here on Heart Failure Solutions.

I’ve been very busy creating The Life Breath Club and we are in the beginning stages of bringing our online membership to life!

Chris Downs needed a heart transplant when he joined The Life Breath Club.

He credits what he learned from The Life Breath Coach with his healing.

Chris no longer needs a heart transplant!

Awesome healing is happening!

 

I really love this post I wrote over a year and a half ago now, because it speaks to your need to connect with others in order to find your solutions.

Nobody heals in isolation.  Surround yourself with positive support.

Set yourself up for success.  Without your health, what do you have?

Now back to the blog post you came to read …

Can holidays really feed your spirit?

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Do holidays depress you?

Halloween can be a rather dark sort of celebration, though my family embraces the fun of masquerading as opposed to the “scare factor”.

I have friends that don’t celebrate Halloween because they feel that it conflicts with their religion.  Over the years I have given that quite a bit of thought myself.

For me, it comes down to connection with our community.  If we reject the popularity of Trick or Treating, we lose a chance to bond with our neighbors.

Since it really does take a village to raise a child, I feel strongly about taking every opportunity to connect with the busy individuals that make up our Village Family.

Visiting over hot cider while the kids collect their candy is a lot of fun for the grown ups, and the kids love to run around after dark enjoying each others company.

It’s just not something that happens everyday!

When we head home at the end of the evening I always have a happy heart.  Connecting with my neighbors really feeds my Spirit!

Feeding your Spirit daily can be a challenge.  You can count on your community to be out and about during popular festivities.  You know they will be ready for some fun.

All you have to do is be willing to get out there with them!

How will you feed your Spirit tomorrow?

Portia is a spirited red head who has lead a very colorful life.  She has raised 3 boys and sent them off into the world.

She considers herself a “part time mom” these days because she just has one child left at home, an easy going sweet heart of a little girl.  Any parent of an only child will agree that parenting is a full time job no matter how many rug rats you are rearing!

Portia has had a tough time celebrating herself.

2010 started off a whole lot differently for Portia.  She found Healthy Solutions Chat and accepted the invitation to make it her Health Mastermind.

Portia needed encouragement to nurture herself.  She always put herself last on her list, and Healthy Solutions Chat was just the inspiration she needed.  She rarely missed her weekly Mastermind Call and it became her own personal “Self Care Challenge”.

Portia credits the online support she found for getting her through a Creative Writing Course that she completed this year.  Not only did she pass the class with flying colors, she also experienced great healing by writing her life story.

The intense emotions that writing her story brought up would typically have sent her into a downward spiral.  Not this year!

All week long she remembered what she learned in Mastermind and the bond she created with her Mastermind Team Members kept her feeling loved and supported.

Self Care started happening daily!

Portia shares her secrets with anyone who will listen:

1. Spend time in silence daily.
2. Accept what is, because what you resist persists.
3. Breathe!
4. Enjoy activity daily.
5. Plug in with people who support you.
6. Be committed to YOU and Masterminding YOUR health!
7. Get enough SLEEP!

Portia says:

“Feeding my Spirit Daily” is SO much better than drugging my symptoms.”

 

If you are currently using drugs to deal with depression, please don’t let my message discourage you.

There is a lot you can do to combat your depression and get off of medication.  When you medicate the depression, you medicate your Joy, too.

In order to feel the heights of your happiness, you have to allow the processing of all those less than pleasant and even down right painful emotions.

There are some very practical steps you can take to support a new approach to battling your depression.

Food Matters is a well respected nutritional education company, and they say there are 5 reasons you should NOT drug your symptoms of depression.

Are you considering using Anti-Depressant Drugs to treat your depression?

 

5 Reasons NOT To Drug Your Symptoms of Depression

 

Reason One:   The Journal of the American Medical Association says that SSRI’s like Paxil and Prozac are no more effective in treating depression than a placebo pill.

The article says that SSRI’s may be useful in treating severe depression BUT they don’t have any effect on the routine type of depressions they are most often used to treat.

Using SSRI’s if you have normal, mild, or routine depression is a waste of money, and the drugs have serious side-effects including increased suicidal feelings, aggression, and loss of sexual drive.

Reason Two:   In January of this year, MedPage Today cited a study done at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins. The study says that doctors routinely prescribe not one but two or three SSRI’s and other psychopharmological drugs in combination with few if any serious studies to back up the multiple usage.

The reason for these multiple prescriptions is that one drug isn’t working on its own.  Two or three of this same type of drug is a better idea? Doctors are performing uncontrolled experiments on their patients!

Drugs have dangerous interactions!  Are you willing to be a guinea pig to discover which drugs will react dangerously?

Reason Three:  The DSM, diagnostic manual of psychological and psychiatric disorders, which outlines the care pathway in treating disease, is manufacturing new reasons to drug you.

Would you say that you have any of the following “diseases”?

• shyness
• sadness
• restlessness
• shopping too much
• high sex drive
• low sex drive

Increasingly the criteria for inclusion in the DSM, the diagnostic manual of psychological and psychiatric disorders, involves whether the disorder responds to a category of drugs.

We just discussed how the Journal of the American Medical association says that a key class of drugs being used to treat depression for the past 20 years is INEFFECTIVE!!

It is necessary to RETHINK this basis for labeling lifestyle disorders “diseases”.

Reason Four: The future is here, and the social control dreaded since the 1960s is now accepted in the form of a pill.

It may be a whole lot easier to pop a pill than it is to explore the reasons for your distress.

Exploring the reasons for your distress are a whole lot easier than living with side effects such as:

• increased suicidal feelings
• aggression
• loss of sexual drive

You may not have a problem being socially controlled, but the side effect of increasing your suicidal thoughts may be fatal.

Reason Five:  The whole serotonin hypothesis is challenged by these findings.

This new information shows that there may be some help using SSRIs if there is a severe shortage of serotonin, but the average person’s depression cannot simply be related to a “chemical imbalance.”

The human brain is complicated and so are we!  It is absurd to use the simple, quick explanation that depression is related to serotonin alone.

We have no way of measuring serotonin in the brain of a living person, short of cutting open the skull.

There is no way to accurately say what a normal level of serotonin should be.  It can NOT be said that you will be depressed if your serotonin is too low, or that you will be “happy” if you maintain a “normal” serotonin level.

People with high serotonin levels can be depressed and those with low levels can be happy.

Serotonin inducing drugs like ecstasy can make you feel very happy, but so can alcohol and heroin!

 

The increasing tendency to drug depression is a HUGE CONCERN!

Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve got a chemical imbalance!

Ask them what they actually mean and where is the science to prove that statement!

 

“But, how do I get OFF drugs?!”

If you are already on prescriptive drugs for depression this news is devastating! 

Getting off the drugs your doctor likely told you are not addictive may be easier said then done!

One secret to getting off drugs is to get connected with people who know how to combat depression naturally!

I got off anti-depressants the hard way!  I did not know Sacred Breathing or the arsenal of depression fighting tools I know now … way back then.  Psychotropic drugs were prescribed for me in attempt to reduce the mind numbing pain of auto immune issues.  I had no idea I was taking a mind altering chemical, AND the little bit of relief I did get from the drugs was not solving my problem!

10 years of suffering through pain before I found relief with Chiropractic Care, Wholesome Food, and Sacred Breathing is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy!

 

How do you get off drugs?

Portia Rose from New Zealand is determined to stay off drugs!

She credits the things she learned in The Life Breath Club for her awesome success!

“It isn’t always easy to apply every little gem I get from The Life Breath Coach, but I’ve found that when I feel out of sorts I am quickly set right when I get back to the basics.”

Life Breath Club Basics:

• Spend time in quiet stillness daily

Honor yourself by visiting with YOU daily.

Be patient and see what thoughts arise for you each day.

Get to know yourself again!  Spending time in nature can really make this basic self care more powerful.

Mother nature is very healing.

• Accept what is, because what you resist persists.

Refusing to accept what IS …  is insanity!

Acceptance is the first step to creating the transition that will take you from what you don’t want into what you DO want!

• Enjoy activity daily.

Move it or lose it!

Remember that activity is a powerful way to treat and beat depression!

It might help if you DON’T call it “exercise”.

• Get enough SLEEP!

You ONLY create the fuel you burn while you are sleeping.

If you suffer from poor sleep give some attention to nutrition, activity, exposure to sunlight (30 minutes a day at least), hydration, and conscious slow breathing all day long, not just when you are trying to fall asleep.  When you focus on your breath, you “Breathe Into Now”.

Breathing into now is a good thing.  You only have NOW.  There is nothing available to you in the future or the past.  The present moment is the only one accessible.

That might sound like some strange sleep advice, but you’ll find that when you prioritize sleep and attend to self care, sleep is not elusive.

• Plug in with people who support you.

No man (or woman) is an island!

Your support system will raise you up til your Spirit Sings!

Living your life WITHOUT support is setting yourself up for FAILURE!

Plug in with neighbors or join a local senior group.  Get out there and find kindred spirits!

Virtual support is a powerful thing, too!

 

Portia Rose is half a world away from The Life Breath Coach, but the virtual support she gets keeps her connected!

Click on the link below and find out how The Life Breath Club can benefit you!

Join The Life Breath Club Today!

 

Many blessings,

Carrie Tucker, RCP

The Life Breath Coach

Heart Failure Solutions

 

PS– Remember everyday: