Tag: anxiety

Dan’s Latest Top 10 Book Recommendations on Stress, Stress-Management and Anxiety

 

full-catastrophe-living

Over the years, I’ve read too many books to count about stress, anxiety, and depression.  Like most people, I’m always looking for tips and clues about how to handle things better.

Some of these books have turned out to be real stinkers.  Others, retreads of books and articles that have said the same things over and over again.

I have found some gems, though.  Books that have something original to say, or are well-written.

I’ve found that the most useful ones make me want to read them further after the first 25-pages, or so.  Good rule of thumb.

I hope you find help, hope, and insight between their pages.

Manage Your Time to Reduce Your Stress: A Handbook for the Overworked, Overscheduled, and Overwhelmed  — Rita Emmett

The title of this book grabbed my attention because it seemed to capture so much more than just stress management.  Stress management is truly about managing being overworked, overscheduled, and overwhelmed.

According to the author, the key is not time management but “stuff management — taking control of all those tasks to do, people to see, commitments and obligations to fulfill.  Mismanagement of all that “to-do” stuff is what leads to stress.  Emmett combines quick, easy-to-digest tips and infectious good humor to give readers positive ways to handle stress and their overly busy lives.

You can also check out her website for other helpful tips and ideas.

Monkey Mind: A Memoir on Anxiety — Daniel Smith

I first read about Smith’s book in a New York Times article called “Panic Buttons“.  This memoir on stress and anxiety is not only informative and insightful, it’s well-written and funny.

The long list of things that, over the years, have made Daniel Smith nervous includes sex, death, work, water, food, air travel, disease, amateur theater, people he’s related to and people he’s not related to, so the prospect of a book review probably wouldn’t seem like a very big deal to him. Or would it?

This fleet, exhausting memoir, is an attempt to grapple with a lifetime of anxiety: to locate its causes, describe its effects and possibly identify a cure. Or, if not a cure, at least a temporary cessation of the worry that’s been plaguing him since his youth.

Check out his website, The Monkey Mind Chronicles, for more interesting stuff.

Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence — Rick Hanson

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a neuropsychologist and best-selling New York Times author.

Hardwiring Happiness lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures full of happiness, love, confidence, and peace.

In an interview discussing the book, he states:

“So, how do you get good things—such as resilience, self-worth, or love—into your brain? These inner strengths are grown mainly from positive experiences. Unfortunately, to help our ancestors survive, the brain evolved a negativity bias that makes it less adept at learning from positive experiences but efficient at learning from negative ones. In effect, it’s like Velcro for the bad but Teflon for the good.

This built-in negativity bias makes us extra stressed, worried, irritated, and blue. Plus it creates a kind of bottleneck in the brain that makes it hard to gain any lasting value from our experiences, which is disheartening and the central weakness in personal development, mindfulness training, and psychotherapy”.

Check out his website for more information about the book and his suggestions.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases and Coping – Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.

Why don’t zebras get ulcers–or heart disease, clinical anxiety, diabetes and other chronic diseases–when people do?

In a fascinating that looks at the science of stress, Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky presents an intriguing case, that people develop such diseases partly because our bodies aren’t designed for the constant stresses of a modern-day life – – like sitting in daily traffic jams or racing through e-mails, texting and running to pick up our kids after a tough day at work. Rather, humans seem more built for the kind of short-term stress faced by a zebra–like outrunning a lion.

This book is a primer about stress, stress-related disease, and the mechanisms of coping with stress. How is it that our bodies can adapt to some stressful emergencies, while other ones make us sick? Why are some of us especially vulnerable to stress-related diseases and what does that have to do with our personalities?”

Sapolsky, a neuroscientist, concludes with a hopeful chapter, titled “Managing Stress.” Although he doesn’t subscribe to the school of thought that hope cures all disease, Sapolsky highlights the studies that suggest we do have some control over stress-related ailments, based on how we perceive the stress and the kinds of social support we have.

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness – John Kabat-Zinn, M.D.

As a busy lawyer, I was immediately attracted to the title Full Catastrophe Living. It literally leapt of the bookshelf and cracked me on the head.  Who doesn’t live a life so jammed with stuff to do that it feels like a catastrophe?

Chronic stress saps our energy, undermining our health, and making us more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and disease.  The heart of the book is based on Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program at the University at Massachusetts Medical Center.

The author takes the phrase “full catastrophe living” from book and movie “Zorba the Greek”.  If you’ve never seen it, an Englishman Basil – – who is half-Greek – – inherits a run down mine in a small Greek town.  To help him restore it, he hires  a local character named Zorba to be the foreman of the local laborers. Zorba, full of the zest of a life truly lived, is asked by Basil, “Do you have a family?” Zorba responds “Wife, children, house – – the full catastrophe!!!”

Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection Between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness – Richard O’Connor, Ph.D.

Author of my favorite book on depression, “Undoing Depression”, Richard O’Connor, Ph.D., has written another simply brilliant book on the consequences of “perpetual” stress in our lives – the alarming and escalating rates of clinical anxiety and depression.   This was the first book I read that made clear to me the connection between stress, anxiety, and depression. It formed the basis for my blog on the topic How Stress and Anxiety Become Depression. The human nervous system was never meant to handle this many stressors. It’s as if the circuit breakers in our brains are blown by too much stress running through our brain’s circuitry.  This book is a perfect fit if you want to learn a lot about the brain and physiology of stress – I found it fascinating.  If you’re looking for a quick read and pick-me-up, this isn’t it.  Check out his website.

A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook — Bob Stahl

The author writes that the key to maintaining balance is responding to stress not with frustration and self-criticism, but with mindful, nonjudgemental awareness of our bodies and minds.

This book employs some of the same mindfulness strategies discussed in Full Catastrophe Living but does it in the format of a workbook.  I find this format very helpful because it’s practical and gives me exercises to do to put into practice mindfulness to reduce my daily stress load.

The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques – Margaret Wehrenberg, Ph.D.

Medication, once considered the treatment of choice, is losing favor as more and more sufferers complain of unpleasant side effects and its temporary, quick-fix nature. Now, thanks to a flood of fresh neurobiology research and insights into the anatomy of the anxious brain, effective, practical strategies have emerged allowing us to manage day-to-day anxiety on our own without medication. Addressing physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms, Margaret Wehrenberg, Ph.D., a leading mental health clinician, draws on basic brain science to highlight the top ten anxiety-defeating tips. Everything from breathing techniques to cognitive control and self-talk are included.   I really like that the 10 chapters are highly readable and short. Dr. Wehrenberg is also a frequent blogger at the Psychology Today website.  Here’s one of her blogs, The One-Two Punch of Negativity and Fear.

Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong: A Guide to Life Liberated from Anxiety – Troy DuFrene

This book approaches the problem of anxiety a little differently than most. Instead of trying to help you overcome or reduce feelings of anxiety, it will help you climb inside these feelings, sit in that place, and see what it would be like to have anxiety and still make room in your life to breathe and rest and live, really and truly live, in a way that matters to you.  This approach is based upon a research-supported form of psychotherapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, also known as ACT which starts with the assumption that the normal condition of human existence is suffering and struggle, ACT works by first encouraging individuals to accept their lives as they are in the here and now. This acceptance is an antidote to the problem of avoidance, which ACT views as among the greatest risk factors for unnecessary suffering and poor mental health

The Worry Cure – Robert L. Leahy

For “highly worried people,” or those who suffer from the “what-if disease,” this book presents a systematic, accessible self-help guide to gaining control over debilitating anxiety. Leahy is an expert in changing thought processes, and he walks worriers step-by-step through problems in the way they think, with pointers on how to change these biases. The author then outlines a seven-step worry-reduction plan (remember, I love plans!) beginning with identifying productive and unproductive worry, progressing to improving skills for accepting reality, challenging worried thinking and learning to harness unpleasant emotions such as fear or anger.

Self-Coaching: The Powerful Guide to Beat Anxiety – Joseph J. Luciani, Ph.D.

This is a good book for those who don’t want to see a therapist or, if they do, need extra doses of encouragement and practice to overcome their stress and anxiety. The author advises readers to identify themselves as specific personality types (e.g., “Worrywarts,” “Hedgehogs,” “Perfectionists”) and then gives specific instructions on how to change the particular thought patterns associated with this type of personality.  So many people who struggle with anxiety never got what they needed while growing up – – enough love, encouragement, and affirmation.  Lacking these core experiences, we develop can develop particular maladaptive strategies to cope with people and situations that push our buttons.  This is the only book that I’ve read that pairs specific coping recommendations with particular personality types.

What books would you recommend?  Hit the comment button and submit your favorites.

Next Steps:

If you are interested in talking to Dan about CLE eligible trainings he offers law firms, call him at (716) 913-6309 or via our contact form. One-on-one coaching is also available for lawyers who need individualized attention. Go to Dan’s website Yourdepressioncoach.com to download his free book and schedule a consultation.

 

Why We Can’t Think Our Way Out of Depression

In the book, The Mindful Way through Depression:  Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness, four experts explain why our usual attempts to “think” our way out of depression or “just snap out of it” lead us deeper into a downward spiral where depression only worsens.  Through insightful lessons (and an included CD with guided meditations) drawn from both Eastern meditative traditions and cognitive therapy, they demonstrate how to sidestep the mental habits that lead to depression, including rumination and self-blame, so that one can face life’s challenges with greater resilience.

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The authors explain how our trying to outthink depression is problematic:

“When depression starts to pull us down, we often react, for very understandable reasons, by trying to get rid of our feelings by suppressing them or by trying to think our way out of them.  In the process we dredge up past regrets and conjure up future worries.  In our heads, we try this solution and that solution, and it doesn’t take long for us to start feeling bad for failing to come up with a way to alleviate the painful emotions we’re feeling.  We get lost in comparisons of where we are versus where we want to be, soon living almost entirely in our heads”

Lawyers, by the nature of our work, are required to live in their heads a lot.  Not only that, our thinking habits are prone to pessimism –we look for problems everywhere and try to fix them.   We are the ultimate “fixers”.  This can get us into trouble, however, if we are prone to or suffer from depression.   The authors point this out:

“Once negative memories, thoughts, and feelings, reactivated by unhappy moods, have forced their way into our consciousness, they produce two major effects. First, naturally enough, they increase our unhappiness, depressing mood even further.  Second, they will bring with them a set of seemingly urgent priorities for what the mind has absolutely got to focus on – our deficiencies and what we can do about them.  It is these priorities that dominate the mind and make it difficult to switch attention to anything else.  Thus we find ourselves compulsively trying over and over to get to the bottom of what is wrong with us as people, or with the way we live our lives, and fix it.”

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The author’s solution to this virtual swampland of depression:  mindfulness.  The practice of mindfulness is actually quite simply to do and involves sitting in silence and watching our feelings and thoughts float by the stream of our consciousness.  But instead of taking them literally – that such depressing thoughts and feelings are REALITY – we just detach from them and let them continue to float down the river.  We stop trying to react to these states by stopping our attempts to try to fix them.  We move from a “doing mode” to a “being mode.”  We pay attention to a neutral experience – the in and out sensation of our breath.  When we notice a thought or feeling flowing by and see that we are getting embroiled with it, we let it go and return to our breath.  Check out this great video, “Mindfulness with Jon Kabit-Zinn.”

In “The Zen Path through Depression”, Philip Martin advises us to stop running away from our depression and face it.  It can even provide us with a unique type of experience:

“In depression our back is often against the wall.  Indeed, nothing describes depression so well as that feeling of having nowhere to turn, nothing left to do.  Yet such a place is incredibly ripe, filled with possibility.  It gives us the opportunity to really pay attention and just see what happens.  When we’ve done everything, when nothing we know and believe seems to fit, there is finally the opportunity to see things anew, to look differently at what has become stale and familiar to us.  Sometimes when our back is against the wall, the best thing to do is to sit down and be quiet.”

Part of the quality of our lives, of maintaining ourselves, is learning and growth.  The ongoing pain of our depression is a wakeup call that we need to think about how we typically respond to our depression and how we might respond differently – by moving from a doing to a being mode. This can be achieved with mindfulness meditation.

Copyright, 2013 – Daniel T. Lukasik

 

68 Facts About Clinical Depression

1. To be diagnosed with major depression, you need the following: a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in daily activities for more than two weeks; mood represents a change from the person’s borderline mood; impaired function: social, occupational and educational.  Then it make a laundry list of specific symptoms. You needed to have five of these nine, present nearly every day: depressed mood nearly every day, decreased interest or pleasure in most activities, significant weight change or change in appetite, change in sleep, change in activity, fatigue, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, difficulty concentrating and thoughts of death or suicide, or has a suicide plan.

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2. Roughly 19 million people in the United States suffer from depression every year.

3. At some point in their lives, about one in four Americans will experience depression.

4. Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression than men.

5. People who are depressed are more prone to illnesses like colds than non-depressed people.

6. The main risk factors of depression include past abuse (physical, emotional, sexual), certain medications (drugs that treat high blood pressure), conflict with family members or friends, death or loss, chronic or major illness, and a family history of depression

7. Globally, more than 350 million people of all ages suffer from depression.

8. There are interrelationships between depression and physical health. For example, cardiovascular disease can lead to depression and vice-versa.

9. Depression affects all people regardless of age, geographic location, demographic, or social position.

10. The World Health Organization estimates that depression will be the second highest medical cause of disability by the year 2030, second only to heart disease and it is predicted that depression will soon outstrip heart disease as the leading cause of disability worldwide.

11. Many creative individuals experienced depression, including Ludwig van Beethoven, John Lennon, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Georgia O’Keefe, Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sylvia Plath.

12. Major Depressive Disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 15-44.

13. While major depressive disorder can develop at any age, the median age at onset is 32.

14. Symptoms of dysthymic disorder (chronic, mild depression) must persist for at least two years in adults (one year in children) to meet criteria for the diagnosis.

15. Dysthymic disorder affects approximately 1.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. This figure translates to about 3.3 million American adults.

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16. The median age of onset of dysthymic disorder is thirty one.

17. Symptoms of bipolar disorder include wide swings between mania and depression.

18. Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.

19. The median age of onset for bipolar disorders is 25 years.

20. In 2006, 33,300 (approximately 11 per 100,000) people died by suicide in the U.S.

21. Nearly 400,000 people attempt suicide every year in the U.S.

22. Suicide is the sixth leading cause of death in America and more deaths are attributable to suicide than death by handguns.

23. More than 90% of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable mental disorder, most commonly a depressive disorder or a substance abuse disorder.

24. 15% of those who suffer from some form of depression take their lives each year.

25. Four times as many men as women die by suicide; however, women attempt suicide two to three times as often as men.

26. Depression causes people to lose pleasure from daily life, can complicate other medical conditions.

27. Depression can occur to anyone, at any age, and to people of any race or ethnic group.  Depression is never a “normal” part of life, no matter what your age, gender or health situation.

28. Unfortunately, although about 70% of individuals with depression have a full remission of the disorder with effective treatment, fewer than half of those suffering from this illness seek treatment. Too many people resist treatment because they believe depression isn’t serious, that they can treat it themselves or that it is a personal weakness rather than a serious medical illness.

29. “In the last 5 years, American employers have lost over $150 billion of productivity to depression alone. That is more than the GDP of 28 different States during the same period.” – Former Congressman, Patrick Kennedy.

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30. Nearly 30% of people with substance abuse problems also suffer from depression

31. Men typically experience depression differently than women and use different means to cope. For example, while women may feel hopeless, men may feel irritable.  Women may wish to share their suffering, while men may become socially withdrawn or become violent or abusive.

32. Depressed people get colds more than non-depressed people.

33. Freud, who revolutionized the practice of psychiatry with his theories of the unconscious, postulated that depression comes from anger turned inward

34. Researchers have found a direct relationship between depression and the thickening of the lining of the carotid artery in women, a major risk factor for stroke.

35. Sufferers of depression may experience more cognitive impairment on less sunny days than on sunny days.

36. Post-partum depression, or depression after the birth of a child, affects about 10% of new mothers.

37. People with depression are five times more likely to have a breathing-related disorder than non-depressed people.

38. The lifetime risk of developing depression in those born in the decades after WWII is increasing.  The age of onset is becoming increasing younger.  Today the average age for the onset of depression varies between 24-35 years of age, with a mean age of 27.

39. Depressed individuals have a two times great overall mortality risk than the general population due to direct (e.g. suicide) and indirect (medial illness) causes.

40. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is the term for depressive periods that are related to a change of season.  SAD is four times more common in women than in men.

41. People with depressive illnesses do not all experience the same symptoms.  The severity, frequency and duration of the symptoms will vary depending on the individual and his or her particular illness.

42. Anxiety disorders often accompany depression.  The anxiety disorder may precede the depression, cause it, and/or be a consequence of it.

43. “Health economists consider depression just as disabling as blindness or paraplegia”. Richard O’Connor, Ph.D.

44. “The cost, in terms of direct treatment, unnecessary medical care, lost productivity, and shortened life span, was estimated at $83 billion dollars a year in the United States alone for the year 2000”.  Richard O’Connor, Ph.D.

45. Only a third of people with long-term depression have even been tried on antidepressants, and only a small number of them have ever had adequate treatment.

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46. 189 million prescriptions were written for antidepressants alone in 2005.

47. The percentage of adults on antidepressants between 1994 and 2002 tripled.

48. Living in overpopulated areas and taking in too much information (which could, for instance, include being on the inter net too much) are common causes of depression

50. Researchers at New York University established that depression destroys nerve cells in the front part of the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for optimism.

51. 34% of people living with depression reported that first experienced symptoms of depression before age 18. Across the life span, the difference in discernment was a mean of 12 years.

52. 20% of people living with depression reported being diagnosed before age 18. Almost 30% were diagnosed between the ages of 18-29 and 30% between the ages of 40-49.

53. 20% percent of people living with depression reported that they first received psychotherapy or counseling before age 18; 21 percent between ages 19-29; and 18 percent between the ages of 30-39.

54. 14% reported first taking psychiatric medication before age 18; 24% between ages 18-29; and 23% between ages 30 – 39.

55. 60% of people living with depression rely on their primary care physicians for treatment rather than mental health professionals. This has implications for professional education, particularly in prescription and monitoring of medications.

56. 67 % of people living with depression currently use psychiatric medication as their primary treatment compared to 16% who use psychotherapy or counseling as their primary treatment. However, two-thirds use psychotherapy and counseling overall.

57. 35% report being extremely or very satisfied with current treatment; however, a similar amount 33% report dissatisfaction.

58. Alternative strategies are reported to be very helpful. These include prayer, physical exercise, animal therapy, art therapy and yoga.

59. Although only about 20% of people living with depression have used animal therapy, 54% found it “extremely” or “quite a bit” helpful.

60. 5% of people living with depression currently use nutritional or herbal remedies, but of the 27% who have tried them, only 8% have found them very helpful. However, this contrasts with 23% of the caregivers who believed they were helpful for the person in their care.

61. Major depression is 1.5 to 3.0 times more common among first-degree biological relatives of those with the disorder than among the general population.

62. Addictive drugs affect the same areas of the brain involved with depression.

63. Antidepressant medications currently account for $11 billion in drug sales in the US and are the third most commonly prescribed medication.

64. One in ten Americans are on an antidepressant, and this rises to one in five women between 40 and 59.  60% take them for two years or more.

65. 71% of Americans say that they do not know much about depression.

66. 20% of Americans surveyed feel that depression is a personal weakness.

67. 23% of Americans said they would not tell others if a family member were diagnosed with depression.

68. “The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days.  One has the sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.”  – Leonard Cohen, songwriter

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