3 Clues That You Need to Regroup

There are moments when I least expect resiliency to pop up and remind me that I need to regroup. Sometimes those moments show up at the beach, on the sand, in the form of a bee.



Clue #1: Indecisiveness



The other day I was seriously pondering how to spend my day. I am usually not so indecisive but for whatever reason, I was torn between a relaxing day at the beach or a mountain hike. Two cups of coffee and two hours later, the beach was finally my choice.



Clue #2: Anxiety Provoking Self-Importance



I arrived to discover a parking situation that was pretty bleak. Optimistically, I drove slowly and spotted an older couple just loading their things into the back of their truck. I stopped and put on my blinker and know for sure they saw me waiting there. Twenty minutes and several heavy sighs later, they finally made their way to their next destination as I pulled in anxious to get to the sand. Did I drive to another spot or think about what their routine may be after a kayaking session? Nope. I was too wrapped up in thinking about me and how I was so ready to relax, breath and listen to the waves crash against the shore.



My beach towel floated to the sand, I kicked off my flip flops and removed my pink cover-up and rolled it up to act as a makeshift pillow for my head as I laid back to enjoy the rest of my day. Ten seconds passed and I suddenly felt a sting next to my armpit. I went to feel the area with my eyes closed thinking maybe an ant... and felt a bee! With a swipe of my hand the bee was off my skin and I could see the fat stinger protruding from an area that was already turning red. I pulled the stinger out and thought "Great! I should have gone to the mountains." Who gets a bee sting at the beach anyway? Jellyfish, yes. Bee? Never, up until now.



Clue #3: Throwing in the Towel



I stood up and got ready to leave. I bent down and began to pick up my towel when a thought came over me. Why was I allowing a couple with a slower routine than what my expectation was and being in a hurry to park or a tiny bee sting take away all of my joy? I was literally getting ready to throw in the towel on my beach outing and it had barely just begun. I looked around, sat back down and took 10 deep breaths. In that moment, I thought there is no better remedy for a bee sting and frustration than to go jump in the ocean.



As I stood in the water, the rhythm of the ocean took over. Being pulled as the current moved out, being pushed back towards the shore as the waves came in and tasting the salt on my lips as my face became drenched by the sun. There was no longer any impatience or self importance or indecisiveness and certainly no throwing in the towel at the first sign of a hiccup in my plan. There was only the energy of the universe dancing all around me and within me.



I had let the stress of my life get in the way of living in the moment and allowed my mind to be consumed with indecisiveness. I didn't even think to appreciate the couple who so carefully and gently placed everything in their truck. I judged them instead of learning from them and almost left the beach totally pissed off at a bee. There they were... three sure clues that I needed to stop and regroup, be resilient, and that is exactly what I did.



Are you ignoring the clues telling you it is time to regroup or are you open, aware and making the changes you need to make to say yes to living a resilient, in the now, awakened life?



To learn more about Michelle Renee visit http://ift.tt/1kaKGZ0



from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1z5rZje

via IFTTT

Are There Tears in Your Popcorn? What to Learn From The Fault in Our Stars

A 2014 movie phenomenon is The Fault in Our Stars . Released June 6, it cost only $12 million to make (that's low in Hollywood) and as of only 20 days later, by June 26 it had taken in $104 million, making it for a time the No. 1 box office hit in America, where it stayed in the top 10 for weeks. Why has it enjoyed such success?



When I went to see the movie on date night with my wife, we knew from the movie descriptions in the paper that it was about a teenage woman and teenage man, both of whom were facing cancer. About halfway into the movie, I was aware of sobbing behind me. And in front and on the side as well. Lots of tissues were being used. This did not surprise me at all, since my eyes were wet and teary, as were my wife's. If we were still snacking on our popcorn, there would have been tears as well as butter in it. How has this film touched so many movie viewers?



The movie is a screen adaptation of the popular book of the same title written by John Green. The inspiration for the book came from the author's first hand experience as a student chaplain at a children's hospital and his personal inspiration by a young woman dying of thyroid cancer. As of early June 2014, it had sold 10.6 million copies. It was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list (for children's chapter books) as well as Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com, and Barnes and Noble. It was wildly popular with young adult readers, who have turned out in droves to see the film.



As a film, superbly written by the team of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the direction by Josh Boone was directly targeted to our hearts. It worked so well because the stars seemed so genuine, both Shailene Woodley (from The Descendents) as Hazel and Ansel Elgort (from Carrie) as Gus. They had worked together before, but this was the first time in this type of relationship.



The book and the film appeal to people because they show the problems that patients face while undergoing treatments, and the unpredictability of life's outcomes. Also (no spoilers here) it deals with the need for love and support, friends and family, and quality of life even in the face of disease symptoms. How this teenage couple deals with these issues is compelling and heart-warming. I was hooked.



In particular, oncologists have come to realize the unique challenges being faced by younger cancer patients. These differ from older patients since adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients face more difficulty with their physical and emotional roles, physical and social functioning, and fatigue. Worse, and as depicted so well in the film, unmarried young patients have much worse symptoms. There is considerable emphasis finally being paid to the important issues that AYA patients face and more progress is expected as more institutions focus new plans for controlling cancer in these patients.



What do we take home from the movie? What are my tips from this experience?



• Patients facing life-threatening illness need the support of family and friends. Too often patients feel abandoned since others seem uncomfortable around them. Frequently friends are watching their words lest they inadvertently use negative terms.



• Support groups can be helpful, but one must beware that there can be depression, stress and anger when other members of the group relapse and even die.



• When choosing treatments, consider the importance of quality of life. This includes enjoying social relationships as well as family, especially for younger patients who are more sensitive to changes in friendships.



• Get support for controlling symptoms of the disease. If your physician is not controlling these symptoms adequately to allow a good quality of life, consider getting a consultation with other specialists who can be more effective. This might include pain specialists, physical therapists or physiatrists, psychiatrists or psychologists, or internists specializing in fatigue. Mind-body interactions may be important and using meditation, yoga, and progressive relaxation can help. If symptoms do not improve, get a second opinion when necessary. For advice on when and how to get a second opinion, see my book Surviving American Medicine.



• If the patient is a young adult, make sure you have researched the unique websites available for AYAs, adolescent and young adult patients, since there may be unique tips to help such people.



The Fault in Our Stars movie portrays the fault in our lives when challenged with illness, and the joy in our lives when these challenges are met.



from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1z5rZ2V

via IFTTT

Ebola Death Toll Rises To 467 In West Africa

VA Offers Doctor's Appointment To Veteran 2 Years After He Died

ACTON, Mass. (AP) — The Veterans Affairs Department is apologizing to a Massachusetts woman for offering an appointment to her husband almost two years after he died.



Suzanne Chase, of Acton, tells WBZ-TV her Vietnam veteran husband, Doug, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2011.



In 2012, she tried to move his medical care to the VA hospital in Bedford. They waited four months and never heard anything. He died in August 2012.



Suzanne Chase says two weeks ago she got a letter addressed to her husband, saying he could call to make an appointment.



She says the VA had to know her husband was dead because she applied for funeral benefits and was denied.



The department said in a statement: "We regret any distress our actions caused to the veteran's widow and family."



from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1iRxa1A

via IFTTT

My Close-Up View of The Fault in Our Stars

Last week, I texted my friend Amani to see if he wanted to catch The Fault in Our Stars. He texted back, "kidding?"



We've been friends since we were fifteen, and he knows I'm averse to movies and books with a love-in-the-face-of-death storyline. I've never read Love Story, never seen Dying Young, or even Ghost. I avoid these stories the way a mafia member might avoid The Sopranos, or a woman who's been in prison might not be too excited about Orange Is the New Black. I'm not afraid these stories will l break my heart; I'm afraid they'll get everything wrong. When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a boy, Stephen, who had cystic fibrosis. He was healthy when we met, but he knew his life would be short, and it was -- we were together until he died at thirty. It's been years since; I'm remarried and living a more normal life, but I'm still wary of depictions of my former existence. When your circumstances are the subject of bad pop songs and self-help retreats ("live like there's no tomorrow"), you worry a little when a book or movie about those circumstances comes out.



When I read that John Green was also a little squeamish about Love Story, I cautiously picked up The Fault in Our Stars. The story, about Hazel and Gus, two teenagers who both have cancer and fall in love, is very different than the life I lived out. For one, I was healthy, and for two, Stephen and I got years, not months. But the basic relationship set-up -- knowing your time together is limited, talking about illness and death as casually as other people your age talk about fights with their parents -- was the same.



Ten pages into the book, I relaxed. The characters were unapologetic, direct, and darkly funny. They were familiarly both old-too-soon and resolutely young. I appreciated the book's take on a question I'm asked all the time: How did you make the decision to be with someone who was going to die young? It's often implied that this was a courageous, even selfless move on my part. In the book, as in my own life, it wasn't either of those things; it wasn't a decision at all. Like Hazel or Gus, I'd found someone worth loving; I was going to have him for as long as I could, or as long as the relationship lasted. Of course I should have been scared. I might have if I'd known what I was getting into. But I was 17, with the confidence of a 17-year-old. And besides, I've never known what I was getting into.



When I think back on those years of my life, I remember jumping off rocks into the river with Stephen in the same split-second I remember his IV antibiotics. I remember an argument over who should vacuum right alongside a trip to the ER. The funny thing about that life was that while it might sound heartbreaking from the outside, from the inside it was just one more version of being alive. It could be mundane, euphoric, rough, boring, fulfilling, or overwhelming, depending on the week or the day. It was difficult but not lacking -- a full life, and deserving to be portrayed as such.








As Amani and I sat in the movie theater, eating our popcorn and junior mints, we placed bets on whether any of that fullness would make its way on screen in a mainstream teenage movie. It was a lot to ask. Still, the fact that the movie had been made seemed somehow hopeful. Amani was Stephen's best friend, and since Stephen has died we talk a lot about the fact that there's not much room for thinking or talking about death in our culture. We decided we were heartened that so many people had come to see this movie. Somehow it was especially heartening to know that, according to the previews, the same audience that would be seeing Transformers: Age of Extinction and Ouija was also flocking to The Fault in Our Stars.



"People underestimate 14-year-olds," I whispered as the lights dimmed.



"Maybe they haven't had much experience, but they are emotionally fearless."



"Those things may not be unrelated," Amani whispered back.



As I watched the story unfold, I listened to teenage girls sobbing around me. Yes, maybe the story spoke to them because it was urgent and romantic, and fit the depth and scope of emotion teenagers feel about many things, if my memory serves right. But maybe that was underselling this audience. Maybe the story spoke to another part of being a teenager, the part adults overlook when they complain that teenagers are self-absorbed and frivolous. The part that involves looking at life, head-on. That burning desire to get to the bottom of things and understand them. Maybe this was part of what drew them to The Fault in Our Stars -- a desire, at the peak of health and invincibility, to contemplate life without either, to imagine what it might feel like to live with death so close.



I know for myself that watching one character grieve over the other, I floated between the fictional story and the real. I remembered losing Stephen; I imagined losing my second husband. I love him dearly, and I'm all too aware that if he dies before me I'll be forced to know the depth of that love in an entirely different way -- the smallest traces he leaves around the house now -- a black sock, a note about the kids, will leave me reeling and slumped on the couch. I imagine losing the kids themselves. I'm missing people who are right here with me, terrified in that missing, and grateful to come up for air from it, but also grateful to have imagined it -- to experience, viscerally, what they mean to me, and how desperately I want every minute with them I've got.



from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1iRx9uE

via IFTTT

Illness and Dating

The dating world can be so difficult to navigate -- even on a good day. For someone battling illness, it becomes a whole new kind of challenge. As if dealing with a chronic or even terminal illness weren't enough, many people are getting sicker younger these days, putting them in a position to deal with things like dating, college, and/or a variety of other issues that we never used to address because they didn't come up as frequently.



Recently, more and more movies and television shows are broadcasting these issues to the public. I, for one, am eternally grateful and wish there had been more discussion about these topics when I was younger and dealing with them myself. Finding out you are sick is scary enough, but when you think it may mean a lifetime of isolation because you don't know how to tell people, it is simply terrifying!



When you are young, you meet a lot of people. Of course, people are going to want to have relationships with you. That alone can cause anxiety sometimes, but I still remember the sinking feeling I would get knowing I would inevitably have to have the "talk" with them. How would I say it? What would they say? How would they react? Maybe I should just bail now! It was horrible, and it still can be a little sickening at times but I know I'm not alone. I'm not the first person to go through this and I won't be the last!



For a long time, I thought being sick meant that I was somehow damaged or that I had baggage. I guess, technically, I did have baggage but who doesn't?! Over the years, I've dated a bit and can truthfully say everybody has baggage and, quite honestly, some people need to rent a storage unit for all of theirs so mine began to pale in comparison. All I'm saying is nobody is perfect. Don't put anyone else on a pedestal or think of yourself as "less than." We're all a mess -- just in different ways.



Time and experience has taught me that I've been down this road before, and it isn't the end of the world! Some have gone better than others, but none have gone terribly. Any person who can't handle you being sick isn't right for you, and it really is better that you know now. I know how cheesy that sounds, but it really is true! If you have health issues, anyone you choose to be with will need to be able to cope. If they are not cut out for that, it doesn't make them a bad person, but it may mean they are not the right person for you. One thing is for sure, it isn't worth your health so don't stress about it!



from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1o4afO2

via IFTTT

Are You Stuck in the 'Resistance Syndrome'?

Do you find yourself stuck in your life, resisting doing what you really need to do? There is a good reason for this.



Did you learn when you were growing up that resisting was the only way to maintain your integrity in the face of invasive, controlling parents or other caregivers? The problem is that this may have been true when you were a child, but it's not true now. In fact, when you are driven to resist out of fear of being controlled, you are not free to make your own choices. You are not even free to do the things you know are best for you. Paradoxically, you are actually controlled by your resistance. What used to safeguard your integrity now cheats you out of your personal freedom and sabotages your ability to grow and change.



Once people resist parents, they may transfer this resistance to their relationship with their mate, boss, or even to themselves or a higher power. You might be projecting your controlling parents onto your concept of God and then resist what might be in your highest good.



If you had parents who were extremely invasive and consuming in their attempts to control you, you may have felt very helpless and lonely. You discovered ways to resist to not feel so helpless over your loss of self. This resistance then became part of the identity of your ego-wounded self, and you became addicted to it. It became a way your ego wounded self attempts to make you feel safe.



The "resistance syndrome" is, in my opinion, often why people get stuck in depression, stuck in their recovery, and why their healing seems to go just so far and no further. It is a key reason why people have not been able to open to a higher source of guidance and experience unconditional love, comfort and wisdom firsthand.



Symptoms of the "Resistance Syndrome"



There are seven symptoms of the "resistance syndrome." Most people who are caught up in this syndrome will identify with at least three of them.



1. Being stuck: No matter how much therapy you have, how many different healing processes you try, how many self-help books you read or how many workshops you attend, you don't feel better. Nothing is working. You are stuck in your unhappiness, your relationships, your work, and you often feel alone and misunderstood.



2. Having had controlling parents: One or both of your parents were controlling -- invasive, overprotective, engulfing, consuming, physically or sexually abusive, shaming or critical.



3. Wanting to change but not taking meaningful action: You seem to have the best of intentions to really take care of yourself in new ways. You decide on some new actions you'll take, but somehow you never seem to carry them out for more than a few days or a few weeks at the most. No matter how many resolutions you make to follow through, you never do.



4. Denying your real motivation: You say you want to change -- to become loving, successful, happy, responsible, spiritually connected, slender, sober, healthy, on time, organized and so on, yet it never happens. You are in denial about the fact that you have a more important goal, which is not to be controlled by anyone or anything, not even by your own good intentions.



5. Resenting the goal: While you say you want to be loving, successful, responsible, healthy, organized and so on, you resent the very thing you say you want. You may even, at times, judge it as being an unworthy goal: "People who jog are too obsessed with their appearance. Why are looks such a big deal in our culture?"



6. Getting satisfaction out of others' frustration with you: When people react negatively to your lack of action or your obstinate behavior, you feel gratified, like a rebellious adolescent who is winning the power struggle with his or her parents. You might even feel a gloating satisfaction when your therapist is not able to help you get "unstuck." You might feel this same satisfaction with regard to your concept of God, who also cannot get past your resistance.



7. Fear of failure: Resisting is a good way of never having to test yourself out. As long as you are determining your worth by your success or failure, rather than by your effort and intrinsic qualities, you will likely remain stuck.



You are "winning," but what are you winning? And what are you losing?



The Way Out



The way out of the "resistance syndrome" is to decide that whether or not someone thinks they are controlling you is irrelevant to you, and to make it okay to fail by not attaching your worth to success or failure. When you define your worth by your effort and your intrinsic qualities -- such as kindness and caring -- then you can fail, learn from it, and keep making more effort toward whatever is alive and passionate for you.



Making these profound decisions can free you to follow through on what is in your highest good and what might bring you great joy.



Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a relationship expert, best-selling author, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® self-healing process, recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette, and featured on Oprah. To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with others, take advantage of our free Inner Bonding eCourse, and join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships." Discover SelfQuest®, a transformational self-healing/conflict resolution computer program. Phone or Skype sessions with Dr. Margaret Paul.



Connect with Margaret on Facebook: Inner Bonding, and Facebook: SelfQuest.



from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://ift.tt/1rddWFS

via IFTTT