The Psychology of Anxiety: How it impacts your life

• What is generalized anxiety?
• How emotional experience contributes to anxiety
• Physical causes of anxiety
• Risk and benefits of anti-anxiety medications
• Natural anxiety relief

When going through any major life change (aka a breakup) many of us operate in a state of low-grade anxiety that may erupt into episodes of panic attacks, phobias, or anxiety disorders in the face of increased stress, chronic anxiousness may come to regarded as “normal.”

Psychologists once viewed anxiety as a purely emotional problem. But over 30 years of research demonstrate that anxiety has real, physiological causes that must also be addressed to gain lasting relief. This means you don’t just have to live with ever-present anxiety or medicate your symptoms when feeling overwhelmed by them. Once you understand both the physiological and the emotional causes of your anxiety, you’ll see there’s a lot you can do to resolve the problem.

What is anxiety?

Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. Our ability to feel fear is like a built-in alarm system that brings the full weight of our mental and physical prowess to bear whenever we sense danger. This acute “fight or flight” response triggers a complex interplay between mind and body to deal with a perceived threat — whether real or imagined. What’s not natural (or healthy) is to remain on perpetual high-alert emotionally and physically when our lives are not at stake.

Anxiety symptoms

Symptoms of generalized anxiety and panic attacks may include...

• Irrational fear or dread
• Muscle tension, headaches, jaw-clenching, teeth-grinding
• Insomnia, restlessness, nervousness, fatigue
• “Choked” sensation, nausea, diarrhea, heartburn, IBS
• Chest pain or pressure, shortness of breath, elevated heart rate, palpitations
• Jumpiness, irritability, twitchiness, shakiness
• Sweating, sudden changes in body temperature, hot flashes
• Tearfulness, depression (two-third of people with anxiety disorders also suffer from depression at some point in their lives)*

This is by no means a comprehensive list, anxiety manifests in so many different ways. What you usually don’t feel, when anxious, is tired or hungry, until you eventually crash, and crave sugar, alcohol, or other comfort measures to soothe your jangled nerves.

(NOTE: Sometimes these symptoms can also indicate hyperthyroidism, so be sure to ask your healthcare provider to rule this problem out if you have the above symptoms.)

* Reference

Anxiety and emotional experience

Leading psychologists believe the emotion of each of our memories is chemically encoded in the brain’s amygdala — the “nut” of worry — and that every time we retrieve a memory, for better or for worse, that memory is changed — actually chemically altered. A history of adverse experiences in childhood can set us up for a lifelong pattern of chronic anxiety: from the overt trauma of emotional, physical or sexual abuse, to a parent’s death, divorce, or emotional modeling by an overly anxious, controlling or alcoholic parent, when dreadful things happen to us as children, we may lack the skills to process them. It’s as though the adverse events are trapped inside us, resurfacing as anxiety symptoms when we’re adults.  The good news is that with the guidance of a mental health professional,  just as the responses have been coded toward anxiety at one point they can again be re-coded toward balance. 

When does Circumstantial Anxiety turn to Chronic Anxiety?

Having anxiety when going through a major life transitional event is normal and even to be expected but when does circumstantial anxiety turn into chronic anxiety? Chronic anxiety symptoms can run the gamut in intensity and impact, from vague “background noise” to severely incapacitating. Severe anxiety disorders include obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, and social phobias. These conditions afflict only a small minority of anxiety sufferers, and fortunately, they are highly treatable after medical diagnosis. If you think you might have a serious anxiety disorder, please contact your healthcare practitioner right away. Approaches that include or combine treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapies (for example, exposure therapy), medication, or targeted supplements are proving very effective.

Mild to moderate anxiety, or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is far more widespread but harder to diagnose than severe anxiety disorders. This is the ubiquitous tension that is more common than ever among women today. GAD is characterized by compulsive worrying and physical symptoms of anxiety that persist for more than six months.

While anxiety can be debilitating, mild to moderate symptoms may not obviously affect a persons ability to function. In fact, it is often the high-achieving, “together” person who has chronic anxiety, though it may be difficult for them to admit it.

Like a tangled-up knot of emotions and physiology, the origins of anxiety are often found rooted in both. But the feeling of anxiety always begins with stress: a trigger  such as a breakup, that initiates fear in the limbic system. At the first whiff of apparent danger, your brain chemistry, blood hormones, and cellular metabolism all kick into action.

With chronic anxiety, the intensity of this response may be less dramatic but it never shuts off, even if there’s no persistent threat. Over time, symptoms may be generated by seemingly minor, “everyday” events because your limbic and nervous systems have been sensitized to react to them as emergencies. The biochemical state associated with anxiety can then come to seem “normal” to you, a state that is maintained by your neurotransmitters, hormones, and metabolism at the expense of your health and happiness.

As far as temperament goes, recent studies suggest that a propensity toward worry, anxiety, and even panic can involve interactions between several genes. The genetic links seem to be most associated with social anxiety disorder, which is fairly common. But these genetic associations are not a destiny that you cannot overcome. That’s because natural anxiety relief is about resetting both the physical and emotional roots of your anxiety, and creating a new, healthier equilibrium

Weighing risks and benefits of anti-anxiety medications (anxiolytics)

Medication for anxiety is being prescribed with abandon. Scared of flying? Take a Xanax. Can’t sleep? Take an Ambien. Shy at parties? Try a BuSpar. For severe physical symptoms of anxiety, a limited course of medication may be required and even necesary.

What to consider first: Anti-anxiety medications are highly addictive;  they do nothing to reboot the neural and hormonal pathways for long-term mental health — they simply disrupt the pathway and mask symptoms so you can function. In some cases drugs like Xanax and Ativan can actually make symptoms worse.* In other words, anxiolytics are just not a workable solution for the long haul nor were they intended to be.

The vast majority of people with anxiety symptoms do not need medication. However, anti-anxiety medicine when a person feels completely paralyzed by their symptoms can be not only appropriate but neccesary. There are times that the body needs help calming a nervous system enough so that the body can reset on it's own to better health.  Some reasons to consider a temporary anti-anxiety medication:

• prolonged inability to sleep
• prolonged inability to focus
• panic attacks
• prolonged inability to participate in normal daily functions such as going to work

From initiating helpful lifestyle and dietary measures, to entering therapy and learning new relaxation techniques, there are many safe, effective, natural anxiety treatments that provide lasting relief and healing.  Always speak to your medical doctor to determine what is best for your individual needs and continue to discern when  medication is needed when it has served it's purpose and it's time to end treatment.

Bringing it all together

Getting a handle on anxiety before it manifests into full-blown health concerns is an important goal. Anxiety is a natural response to stress but sometimes the body has a hard time turning it off. A basic guideline is prolonged anxiety for a period of 6 months or longer should be evaluated by a physician or mental health care provider. If you already have chronic anxiety, or feel that your current anxiety is not lifting as it should, supporting your body, examining your past, and rebalancing your body and mind will go a long way toward relieving your symptoms.

And if you’ve tried to resolve your anxiety in the past and have yet to find relief, try again and  keep going. Just imagine how powerful you could feel if all the energy that has been fueling your anxiety and fear was instead unleashed in a life-affirming, positive way!

 Why Use Yoga for Anxiety and Depression?

 By Harvard Health Publications- Harvard Medical School

Studies suggest that this practice modulates the stress response.Since the 1970s, meditation and other stress-reduction techniques have been studied as possible treatments for depression and anxiety. One such practice, yoga, has received less attention in the medical literature, though it has become increasingly popular in recent decades. One national survey estimated, for example, that about 7.5% of U.S. adults had tried yoga at least once, and that nearly 4% practiced yoga in the previous year.

Healing Assignment 1: Journaling

How to make it work for you.

Now that you have read about the psychological and emotional benefits of journaling it's time to start your own.  You will find many journaling assignments among your healing assignments here.  So let's get started! 

At times we all wish we had a way to tap a magic wand to our heads, draw out our spinning torturous thoughts and painful memories and store them somewhere away from our present experience.  

Sometimes we just need to let it out, get it out and let it go before we go crazy. Journaling is like having your own personal memory holder, your best friend and therapy space with you at all times.  Your journal is the perfect place to empty out. It’s also a great reflection tool to look back upon and realize past and present perspectives, where you’ve been on your healing journey, patterns that you never realized and how far you have come. Journaling will be an integral part of the healing assignments at Relationship Emergency.  Even if you have never done it before you will surprise yourself. 

Try it and see!

• First do not worry about neatness, grammar or misspellings. This is meant to be a place for your free uninterrupted flow of thoughts.
• Your journal does not have to be on paper pages.  You can experiment using your computer or any other creative means you can think of.
• If using a traditional journal decide what size feels the best to write in, what type of pages your prefer, lined or unlined and what cover pleases you.  Make it something that represents you or this particular time in your life.
• Write or Paste healing and Inspirational images to yourself, snippets of articles, cards, poems or quotes throughout to surprise you, support you and inspire you as you write.
• If possible ask a friend you trust who has been through a hard break up or divorce to write a message to you to paste in the journal from the perspective of having gone through it,survived and hopefully thrived!  If you don't have a friend you can ask look to this site as a friend.  You will find many examples.
• Use your journal as your sacred healing space. Use it to store your thoughts, record dreams, uncensored feelings, rants and unbridled emotions. Complete and keep the exercises provided throughout Relationship Emergency in it. 
• Create a ritual around journaling, this is your private time and space to be with all of it and pour out all that is inside you.  This is your designated process time.
• Remember be kind to yourself.  Journals are not a place to  judge, criticize or be fearful of repercussion; although it is a great place to record your habit of or impulse to do so.  Your journal is a reflective and collective tool, as if you were plugging your brain into a t.v. screen and emptying, observing and taking note of all that is there.   Treat this journal as the completely private and inviolate space that it is.  You can be completely uncensored here. 
• One last thing, journal as you will.  The last thing you need is another reason to be critical of yourself.  If you only use it to complete your healing assignments so be it.  Open yourself to trying, push your edges and always return to compassion for yourself.  Do the best you can.

Healing Assignment:  Riding The Wave of Breath

Yogic breathing for emotional processing

 Here is a simple, yogic-based practice designed to use the breath to help integrate physical, emotional, and energy experience. It is a five-part technique which helps us remain present for the experience of the wisdom of the prana body.

The first step in the process of connecting with the wisdom of prana is conscious breathing—using the full yogic breath, or diaphragmatic breathing. The breath immediately penetrates the frozen structure of the false self.

 Says the poet Lao Tsu:
The softest of stuff in the world
Penetrates quickly the hardest.
Insubstantial, it enters
Where no room is.

Anything that brings us back to the switching station of breath has the potential to loosen our identification with the physical body and heighten our connection with the prana (energy) body. What happens when we redirect our attention to breath is that we immediately enter the world of energy, of movement, of arising and passing away, of constant change. There is no distance to travel to this world. We are right there. The technique of riding the wave both evokes this level of experience and helps us to be with it more and more fully.

Since the breath is the switch that integrates the emotional body/prana body with the physical body, conscious breathing opens parts of the body that may have long been shut off from the life force. And when the wave of breath moves into these exiled areas, the results can sometimes be instantly dramatic.

2) Relax

Muscular tension in the body can inhibit the flow of energy, sensation, and feeling, keeping areas of the body defended against the wave of energy. While intentionally riding the wave, it is usually best to find a comfortable posture that allows full, deep breathing and an open chest and heart, a posture into which the body can relax, and keep relaxing.

The most effective area to begin relaxing is usually the belly. I have found it helpful to repeat the mantra: "Soft belly." It’s so simple. In the midst of the waves of life, just soften the belly. This is a brilliant device, because when we think, "soft belly," we immediately soften our breathing and take deep, diaphragmatic breaths. This automatically shifts our entire energy experience, cutting through obsession. It grounds us. We can feel energy flowing all the way down to the lower part of the body, to our feet and legs. Suddenly, what appear to be dense and solid thoughts and feelings become permeable to the wave of energy. They’re broken up. They become transparent. They move. We feel alive again.

Full yogic breathing will help the muscles relax and will automatically cut through any "fight or flight" response. Areas of the body that continue to hold tension and constriction, and unconscious visceral attempts to choke back intense sensation and feelings will become obvious. We can move our awareness directly there to explore and to consciously relax as much as possible.

As the wave of breath and energy intensifies, we will surely want to get off, and we may repeatedly "tense up" in order to defend against it. We must remember that the tension of the false self is chronic and unconscious and that it constantly works against the spontaneous energy of prana. We must, therefore, consciously remember to relax and keep relaxing in order to stay with the wave.

3. Feel. "Feeling"

in this technique is an active state. It does not mean just "having feelings;" it means moving actively toward the sensations, the energy, the emotions, and into them. We "breathe into them" as if we could send breath right into their epicenter. We develop the acuity of our awareness so we can begin to feel the whole range of sensations—their color, their texture, their intensity, their mood.

Actively feeling means turning our attention minutely toward our moment by moment experience—dropping what we think about what is happening, our evaluations and judgments about it, and becoming fully absorbed at the level of sensation, feeling, and energy. Learning to focus deeply on sensation in this way develops our capacity to be with sensation and feeling. We develop curiosity so that we’re interested in the exact topography of the feeling. "Where in the body is the feeling most intense? What is the exact texture of the sensation? Are there patterns of movement?"

This kind of pro-active feeling reveals one of the central laws of the energy body: energy follows awareness. As we bring awareness to exiled aspects of our energy body, we open these previously unconscious areas to the flow of prana. Consciousness and energy are deeply linked. More consciousness results in more wave of life.

4. Watch

 There now can be a profound and natural shift to witness consciousness, to the zone of neutrality, where we’re not choosing for or against any kind of experience, but just being with experience exactly as it is. As we become absorbed in the witness, we’re free both to participate in and to stand apart from our experience. We no longer fight with what is. As we drop into witness consciousness, we may experience some intuition arising from deep within our cells—a knowing that cannot be experienced through the mind alone. "Watching" is a special place we can stand vis-a-vis our experience, where we just "let life be" the way it is. In the zone of the witness, our attention is focused on "how is it?" rather than "why is it?" or "do I like it?"

It is important to remember that the "watcher" or observer is also the coach of the entire experience, the part of us that remains unidentified with the "problem" and remains able to coach us to stay on the wave of energy. It is the abiding voice constantly repeating the mantra "breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow." It is the still point at the center of the storm of energy, and it is the seat of our trusting in the wisdom of energy.

5. Allow

 When we don’t try to control our energy experience, we’re free to surrender to the wave of sensation, of feeling, and of energy. In these remarkable moments of freedom, we can let life as it is touch us because at our core we know that "everything is already OK." We know that the energy moving in the prana body is intelligent. We know that it is moving in just the right way for healing and full integration to happen. We relinquish our resistance. We let the whole, natural process happen to us. Somehow, we trust that all we need to do is support the process in these simple ways, and it moves itself to full integration. The key to the fifth step is this: We don’t have to make the wave of life happen. We can just let it happen. As we learn this kind of trust in the process, our capacity to ride the waves of life increases dramatically.

An essential aspect of the fifth step is this: We must allow the process to happen without necessarily understanding it. Insight may come later, but it will come always simply as a by-product of being present for experience. In this final step is a quality of surrender, of "falling into the gap" where life can change us. There can be an exhilarating sense of freedom when this happens, a deep letting go of our "grip" on life. This kind of surrender requires a willingness to be changed. It involves, too, a willingness to trust life, to keep the focus of our awareness on energy in motion instead of on trying to understand what is happening. Prana is intelligent, after all.

This simple technique of "riding the wave" can become for us a kind of bridge that we can use at any moment to cross over from isolation and separation to relationship with the phenomenal world—the world of the senses, of nature, of the heart and the body. It can become one of the boats that we row as we traverse the wild inner river of feelings and life

Click here for Audio Meditation:  Riding the Wave of Breath: Yogic Breathing for Emotional Processing

Understanding Depression

The different facets of depression.

Depression includes a range of normal negative emotions, and most women experience symptoms of depression at some point in their lives. However, clinical depression differs significantly from situational or mild depression, even though some of the symptoms can be the same. There are several types of depression, some of which are mood disorders, and it is important to understand where your symptoms fit in so that you can find the best help for depression. Here are some of the symptoms of depression of all types.

• Overwhelming, persistent feelings of grief, anxiety, guilt or despair
• Feelings of worthlessness
• A sense of numbness or hollowness
• A loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed, often including sex
• Decreased energy, dullness
• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Irritability
• Disrupted sleep patterns, including insomnia or not being able to get out of bed
• Overeating and weight gain
• Reduced appetite and weight loss

Mild or situational depression

In mild or situational depression these symptoms ebb and flow and eventually lift. They are usually appropriate reactions to an identifiable cause, such as going through a major life transition, experiencing a crisis, loss or trauma, or placing too much physical stress on the body. Women also often experience post-partum depression or depression as a symptom of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Many women are affected by seasonal affective disorder (SAD), in which their symptoms of depression consistently follow a seasonal pattern.

Mood disorders

The difference between these mild or temporary types of depression and clinical depression is that mood disorder symptoms are more severe, and there isn’t usually a clear cause of depression. For people with clinical depression (called major depressive disorder or MDD), the symptoms are debilitating and often develop spontaneously. Mood disorder symptoms do not let up, and can spiral into a full-blown, entrenched mental health crisis.

Major depression is often accompanied by suicidal thoughts, obsession with death, or suicide attempts. If you or someone you know has these thoughts or feelings, or has considered or attempted suicide, you should find help immediately — don’t wait to see if the symptoms improve. Seek the advice of your doctor or a psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker.

People with severe MDD sometimes experience psychotic symptoms. In this case, medical treatment is necessary.

Another form of clinical depression is dysthymia, also called double depression. Dysthymia is diagnosed as chronic depression that lasts for more than two years. The symptoms are not necessarily as severe as those of MDD, but are more persistent.

Some people experience bouts of depression, either mild or severe, interspersed with periods of intense energy or impulsivity. This is a sign of a mood disorder called manic depression or bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is relatively rare but can become very debilitating without treatment. If you are having or have had symptoms of mania such as excessive energy, loss of the need for sleep, sudden and dramatic increases in productivity or creativity, periods of impulsive behavior, or feelings of grandiosity and invincibility, you should talk to a mental health expert or your doctor.

Treatments for depression

For people with major depressive disorder, dysthymia, or bipolar disorder, antidepressants or mood stabilizing drugs are usually an important part of their treatment. However, patients with these diagnoses will also benefit from additional, more holistic approaches that include examining lifestyle and diet. Be sure to discuss your symptoms of depression with your doctor or mental health provider.

Women experiencing the common types of depression that are mild or temporary can often find relief through alternative treatments for depression. For more information on depression relief without antidepressant medications, and why that might be the choice for you, please read our full article on antidepressants.

Finally, chronic physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders, and pain can be an indication of depression, but may be symptoms of an underlying physical condition that warrants further testing. Before taking antidepressants for these symptoms you should get a second opinion. Integrative medical practices (those that combine alternative and conventional medicine) are very successful at finding the true source of these seemingly mysterious ailments. (For more information see our article on how to make alternative medicine work for you.)

Return to Stage 2

Pet Scan of the electrical activity in a depressed versus non-depressed brain 

The Alchemy of Tears

Why feeling is healing

We’ve all experienced a “good cry”—whether following a breakup or just after a really stressful day, shedding some tears can often make us feel better and help us put things in perspective. But why is crying beneficial? And is there such a thing as a “bad cry”?

University of South Florida psychologists Jonathan Rottenberg and Lauren M. Bylsma, along with their colleague Ad J.J.M. Vingerhoets of Tilburg University describe some of their recent findings about the psychology of crying in the December issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Your Brain on Depression 

Integral approaches to working with depression

Brain chemistry — serotonin and much more

Serotonin, the neurotransmitter we hear most about when it comes to depression, may be affected by many different things in different people. Often women with intense cravings for carbohydrates notice they feel better after eating them. This is because the precursor to serotonin, tryptophan, requires the insulin we produce upon eating carbs to move it from the blood into the brain to be converted to serotonin. Studies suggest some women release more or less beta-endorphin, another feel-good neurotransmitter, after eating sweets or refined carbohydrates. But as everyone knows, a sugar high doesn’t last forever, and when women come down, they find themselves feeling even lower with more intense cravings — not to mention the extra weight and guilt that frequently accompany this cyclical pattern.

The Psychology of Breaking Up

 What's love got to do with it?

by Lisa Walker, M.A.

Love, it is a primary topic and important focus for every human being.  It is a drive that is hard wired within us and every human thrives off of it.  It starts when we are babies, our need for touch and love is so important that if we don't get it the consequences can be death.  That is some deeply primal programming with some very real results.

A psychologist working with trauma survivors highlighted this observation of working with refugees. She was surprised that the survivors fleeing their homes from war were not talking to her about the atrocities they had seen or homes they had lost but rather the man they met on the boat during their exodus and why he was now dating someone else but still calling her.

Surprising right? Well not really. What can we glean from all of this? That the drive to partner, the drive for affection and for love is a basic and powerful instinct. As children most of us experience ourselves in constant in relationship to our parents. From the very beginning of our conscious experience, we could feel that they were there, and, so far as we knew, they had always been there. For most of us, there was also something immensely pleasing and peaceful about this early attachment. Even though as adults we know that our childhood experience of safety was somewhat of an illusion, we want to create a parallel experience in adulthood by creating loving relationships, which we hope will create the same stabilizing function in our adult lives. With our partners as our constant companions and champions, we feel we are secure. This is also true, in a different way, for people whose parents didn't create a feeling of security in childhood. For them there is a desperate need to establish the sense of security that was always painfully lacking and fulfill a missing experience of childhood.

As children, our relationships were fixed; we were inextricably part of some type of a family unit. But in adulthood, we move into that segment of life where we choose our relationships, or so we think! We hope to recreate an adult romantic relationship that recreates a feeling of security and connectedness that we experienced as kids or longed to. When these relationships end, we are adrift in the open sea of non-connectedness and it can suddenly feel as if we are completely alone. We can’t go back in time to our homes and be kids again, so when we end our adult relationships, we may feel as if we have disconnected from the only familiar context we can relate to or resonate with as a safe loving place in our adult lives.   We feel emotionally devastated.

Another thing that makes breaking up so painful is that we have a number of myths about love and relationships, about how love and marriage “should be.” Our ideals about love no longer match up and they are contradicted when our relationships end. These are some of our love mythologies:

• Love is forever
• My partner will satisfy ALL of my needs and I his
• Someone will come and save me or make all my dreams come true
• If I’m good enough they will change their mind
• If I don’t express any needs I will be loved.
• If I’m beautiful/handsome/wealthy enough I will be loved.
• It’s my job to make sure that relationships stay intact even if they are not good for me.

These myths are rampant in our romanticized media world, as children we watch fairytales such as Cinderella and Snow White. As adults we get more of the same in Romantic Comedies; the man is always a confirmed bachelor but the right woman somehow makes him into a completely different emotionally available person. Notice that the movies always end at the wedding day.   Because most of us have consciously or subconsciously subscribed/been indoctrinated by these myths, when our relationships fail we begin to blame ourselves for failing or not being good enough or even desperately clinging because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Because we never think to question the concept of forever, we instead look to ourselves and what MUST be our shortcomings to being loved. Relationships end either through death, divorce or separation, this is an undeniable fact and every single person on this planet will experience this. When we begin to accept that this does happen and often times for good reason, we can do so without such terror and crisis in self-esteem.

The irony about these myths is that they began in times when the life span was half of what it is today and most marriages were politically or economically based and made without an inkling of romantic love. In those days, when a person promised to love, honor and cherish, it very seldom approached the four, five or six decades of marriage that could conceivably be possible today.

When we apply these misguided ideals to ourselves now, however, they have one psychological result: crises of self-esteem because we are unable to build relationships that resemble these fairytale ideals. In the past people worked together to survive, in modern society we have the capability of moving into deeper levels of development: emotional, spiritual and aesthetic. And it is through relationship, that we are really able to explore the true depths of ourselves as reflected by and through our romantic partners.

This can be a difficult concept for anyone to align with, despite the strides that women have made in the workplace and as independent self sufficient beings. We want to hold onto love as the one part of life where there is still magic, romance, and transcendence of all the difficulties of life. Although love does serve to meet these needs the deeper truth is that we all enter into relationships for very specific reasons, whether we choose to see them or not. And often we do NOT choose to be that transparent with ourselves.

When we fall in love it is often with someone who will help complete something, whether it be ourselves, our missing childhood experiences, having a family or a career. Often it’s something about which we are entirely unaware, like trying to achieve emotional security.

Even with all of this information love still does retain mystery, magic, and romance. There are actual chemical processes that happen when we fall in love that mirror what happens in our brain when we are on certain euphoria producing drugs. What we do need to take the mystery out of, is the dissolution of love. When a relationship ends, it is vital to look at it through reality colored glasses and ask “What was it really about?” “What where doing together anyway?” Often the irrational fears that come up directly after a break up are great clues to our hidden motives.  We need to see what happened so that we don’t feel guilty, so that we learn for the future, so that we can love again. In the process we need to stop judging ourselves for the genuine why’s that brought us together. If we were raised in a financially comfortable environment for example with adoring parents, it is not unusual that we would want to replicate that environment and experience. The lesson is to understand ourselves, what makes us feel safe and loved and not judge ourselves about it. Where we get sidetracked is when we focus on only one component, for example “I must find a financially prosperous partner” to the exclusion of all the other qualities that inspire love within us. Or the other extreme of trying to prove we aren’t a certain way and looking for the opposite extreme of who we have always been. There are many combinations and formulas for your life and developmental needs. The main component of healing through the painful process of parting is when we truly understand the meaning of our relationships- the tasks we undertook in them, the gifts we received from them-that we can survive their endings with ourselves and our self-esteem intact.

Go back to Stage 1

Depression, Antidepressants and Natural Alternatives

What you should know

 by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Grace was in her 40’s when she first came to see me. She was juggling a career and a family, caring for her aging father, and helping her husband start his own business. Finances at home were tight since he’d quit his job, putting a strain on their marriage. She was feeling low and tired all the time, so she went to her doctor for help. She left the office with a prescription for an antidepressant. Four days later, she came to the clinic with her unfilled prescription in hand to ask me, “Do I really need this?”

Taking flower essences shift emotional states. They are gentle yet

powerful remedies that you take under your tongue. They have no scent

and are intended to shift different mental, emotional and physical states.

Flower essences are vibrational remedies that work to balance an

individual’s subtle energy field. When a person’s subtle energy is flowing

they feel good. When there is a trauma or a level of pain whether

physical, emotional or mental people tend to freeze their energy so as to

not feel. Flower essences offer gentle support to keep the energy flowing

offering strength to feel which gives a person relief.

There are thousands of flowers and each has a different energy pattern

perfect for addressing different issues. These energy patterns can be

perceived by observing the shape of the flower, the time of year it grows,

the climate, the color and other factors. This is called the plant signature.

Below is a photograph of the bleeding heart flower. You can see that the

flower is shaped like a heart. At the bottom of the flower a tear drop

elongates out the bottom of the blossom. This illustrates perfectly the

experience we all have when our heart is broken. Bleeding heart flower

essence when taken is an immediate heart salve. There is a deep ache in

the heart a pain that comes from the loss of the attachment to someone

deeply loved. Bleeding heart flower essence fills this ache with beautiful

pink healing energy.

Joe unexpectedly lost his father. He wasn’t able to work and wasn’t able

to sleep. I gave him bleeding heart flower essence. When I saw him a few

days later he thanked me profusely expressing how the ache in his heart

had been lifted and he could finally sleep. He expressed he was still

grieving but was able to feel more peaceful as he moved forward in his

healing process.

Discover the amazing power of flower essence to support your journey of

healing. Call to schedule an appointment to receive a personally blended

flower essence.

For more information on Flower Essences or Energy Healing visit http://aprilwaldman.com/

April Waldman, MS has over 14 years training as a healing arts practicioner and  holds a Masters Degree in Organizational Development from Pepperdine University. She works with individuals one on one and offers  personal development workshops as well as consultations with leaders in developing personal and professional potential.