Anger Problems ?

Depression is hell as it is been referred by many of the doctors and hypnosis – therapists. There is no single reason for depression. Some of the symptoms of depression are a person feeling sad all the time for no proper reason. Low energy level or just being lazy and not doing your tasks. Things that you enjoyed the most you start hating, withdrawal from family and friends. Constant anger, frustration, not able to concentrate on work, all are symptoms. Weight loss or gain significantly, changing sleeping patterns, less sleep, waking up early and thoughts of suicide or death are some of the symptoms observed.

People can get depressed even if they are been not able to get up with energy in the morning. Depression has many factors, which affect an individual. Medical problem, personal life problems, even genetics can be a cause for depression. You might think how can depression have a genetic cause, research shows that some people get the genes that are inherited from their parents suffering from depression and this can also affect them. Not everyone is affected by it; there can be a case that a person is suffering from depression even though no one from his family has ever undergone it. Events such as death of a loved one, family member, friend or even your pet can be a reason for depression when it goes beyond the normal grief.

Separation from your partner, parents getting divorced, partner betraying you, sometimes not getting satisfaction from your job or work can cause you to go in the state of depression. Family and social problems even trigger the cause of depression. For children seeing parents fight all the time, teens not getting what they want from their parents, negative thoughts in the mind also lead to depression, homelessness relationship problems, all can suffice as reasons. A person may also go into a state of depression if he is abused or scolded all the time. Abusing a person causes a chemical change, which differs the mood of a person. Medical conditions such as disability causes depression.

Depression directly affects the brain of a person. Depression is called as delicate chemistry of brain. Chemicals named neurotransmitters, which send messages, or signals to the brain change the mood of a person. If the flow of these signals is low then the person gets depressed or stressed. Stress also leads to depression. The cure for depression is to balance the neurotransmitters flow normally. Doctors attempt to resolve this by using a method of hypnosis. Hypnosis has been very effective then any other diagnosis. Experts have posted their thoughts about depression and its remedies on the Internet. If you feel that you are a prey of depression you can overcome depression yourself. The remedy is available on the Internet in the form of mp3 or video, which you can download and use to deal with depression. Overcoming depression yourself will help you get cured at a faster rate. Come out of depression and see the new sunshine by the help of hypnosis. Use your freewill in overcoming depression yourself.

Richard MacKenzie
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/depression-can-be-dealt-with-311085.html

We all know that on April 16th, 2007, a new Day That Shall Live in Infamy was tragically born when a 23-year-old South Korean man who had lived in the US since he was eight and was attending a good American university in the state of Virginia shot to death 32 students and faculty before committing suicide. 33 senseless deaths by guns–the worst non-gang related gun incident in modern American history, and a chilling encore to the Columbine High School massacre of 1999 which claimed 13 lives.

Needless to say there have been some very strong reactions among the American citizenry, not to mention the South Koreans who feel a collective sense of guilt (needlessly). The expected calls for stricter regulations and the finger-pointing emerged immediately while relatives, friends, and fellow students grieved for their lost ones.

But who is offering real solutions? Are most people thinking rationally, considering the facts, at this stage? There are 10 myths emerging regarding the Virginia Tech Massacre that need to be closely analyzed, with facts considered, before we end up compounding the tragedy.

Myth #1. Tighter gun control laws would have prevented that massacre.

It happens all the time: someone does something wrong with something and people want the something taken away…from everybody. Does it work for the betterment of society? No.

Consider what we found at Rapid Intelligence’s Factbites. “Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and others, who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated….That places total victims who lost their lives because of gun control at approximately 56 million in the last century.” “Gun-control laws have noticeably reduced gun ownership in some states, with the result that for each 1% reduction in gun ownership there was a 3% increase in violent crime…with no academic evidence that gun regulations prevent crime, and plenty of indications that they actually encourage it, we nonetheless are now debating which new gun control laws to pass.”

Myth #2. Virginia’s gun laws are too loose.

Is that so? We found something very interesting when we searched at Factbites. “The fatuity of gun-control laws is nowhere better illustrated than in Virginia, where high-school students in rural areas have a long tradition of going hunting in the morning.” Furthermore, according to the FBI, Virginia’s background check regulations for buying guns are the most rigorous and the best of any of the 50 states.

Myth #3. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in “gun-toter” states like Virginia.

With all those teenagers in Virginia bearing arms, that’s surely the case, right? Not exactly. Rapid Intelligence’s StateMaster statistics service tells us that Virginia only ranks 25th among states with regards to the number of gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in the state.

Myth #4. The US Constitution’s Second Amendment encourages gun crimes to flourish in America.

At first, there seems to be something to this. Rapid Intelligence’s NationMaster statistics service reveals that the United States ranks fourth among all nations for the most murders committed with guns annually. The US also ranks eighth among all nations in the world for most murders per capita annually with guns.

But in this context, the stats are deceiving–because there is additional information.

According to ‘The Armed Citizen’, “Studies indicate that firearms are used more than two million times a year for personal protection, and that the presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, prevents crime in many instances. Shooting usually can be justified only where crime constitutes an immediate, imminent threat to life, limb, or, in some cases, property.” Recent instances of this noble use of guns–made available to citizens by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution–include Topeka, Kansas gas station owner Dean Yee using his gun to protect himself against two armed robbers who demanded money from him at gunpoint. Yee shot one robber and that caused the other one to flee. Had Yee not had his concealed weapon permit and his gun, he would very likely have been shot by the robbers–perhaps to death. These instances also include Las Vegas homeowner Raymond Hill, who was awakened in the night by his 12-year-old daughter and told by her that two armed men were breaking into their house. Hill loaded his weapon, called the police, then went downstairs and killed one of the burglars, who was coming into Hill’s house through a window from which he had removed the screen. The other burglar fled on a bicycle, but police nabbed him.

It is most logical to conclude that what the statistics about US gun murders really reveals is that if more Americans took advantage of their Second Amendment rights, violent crime rates would go down–not up.

Myth #5. The US needs to follow the lead of other Western nations like the UK and Australia and make just about every gun illegal to private citizens.

That would at least mostly rid the nation of all the Seung-Hui Cho threats, wouldn’t it? This is what a Factbites search came up with: “Ironically, both [Trent] Lott and Handgun Control acknowledge that the reams of gun control laws on the books in Washington and in all 50 states have been ineffective in eradicating mass shootings or preventing children from bringing weapons to school…Since Australia banned private ownership of most guns in 1996, crime has risen dramatically on that continent, prompting critics of U.S. gun control efforts to issue new warnings of what life in America could be like if Congress ever bans firearms.”

There is also something else to consider. The United States is not even placed among the top 48 nations of the world in terms of police per capita. It is far more logical to conclude that we need more police officers to enforce the laws that are already on the books, not more laws. More police with guns, in fact.

Myth #6. “Mass shootings have come to define our nation”, obviously because of the “easy access to increasingly lethal firearms that make mass killings possible.”

Josh Sugarmann’s irresponsible quote, which he stated as direct reflection on the Virginia Tech massacre, is not only void of statistical evidence, it does not fit the facts as they have been observed. While it’s true that mass shootings began happening more frequently than previously in the US in the 1960s, if such things have “come to define our nation”, then so have car accidents and plane crashes, and that would just have to be because far too many people are privileged to be able to drive or fly. Sugarmann’s quote is toxically emotional.

Turning to a search at Rapid Intelligence’s Factbites reveals the fact is that “Mass shootings essentially disappear in States that pass laws allowing qualified citizens to carry concealed handguns…So, to conclude, the facts are clear–more firearms in the hands of honest, responsible American citizens means the thugs on the streets commit less violent crimes, and the thugs in the government are less likely to assault the citizenry with storm trooper police state tactics of murder and genocide… it is lamentable that 30,000 Americans die yearly from firearms.”

Myth #7. This massacre proves that Americans have too many liberties and need to have their rights curtailed.

Cho was South Korean, not American, although he clearly had assimilated into American culture. Beyond that fact, let’s look at a couple of statistics at NationMaster.

Do you enjoy having the freedom to choose your own lifestyle (provided that you work for what you want)? Most people do. Let’s note that South Korea, the nation from which Cho came originally, is not among the leading nations for offering freedom of lifestyle choice; the US ranks second in the world, just barely behind Finland. In other words, the person who came from the more suppressive culture was the one who abused the freedom of decision making that US citizens enjoy. Another statistic at NationMaster shows forth that the worst mass shooting by an individual in American history was carried out by someone who had a background of significant cultural and economic suppression of freedom compared to what Americans enjoy. And keep in mind, he raged against “rich kids”—those with the privileges that he clearly coveted (and would have been able to enjoy for the rest of his life had he peacefully graduated from the American university he attended). Cho murdered because, in his darkened mind at least, he was prevented from having freedom–not because he had too much of it. While Cho was enjoying a life of upper middle class privilege, he clearly had the suppression and poverty of his boyhood years imprinted on his psyche–he considered himself a “have not” among “haves”.

Myth #8. Cho only did what he did because he was bullied by the privileged American rich kids who surrounded him; it was not really his fault, but the fault of the Americans who bring these things on themselves.

Virginia Tech is a good school, but it is not the Ivy League school that so many Korean parents covet for their children; and the students at Virginia Tech do not come from particularly affluent families. Cho’s parents were the owners of a $400,000 house that Cho grew up in later years; he would have to have been stretching his imagination a long way to believe that he was surrounded by super-wealthy white kids who were somehow unfairly advantaged or keeping him down. Cho had acquaintances among the white American students who went out of their way to try to include him in fun, college-student-type activities. Cho in fact accompanied them sometimes when they went out, and he would drink beer with them and engage in a game of tossing ping-pong balls into glasses of beer; he was apparently quite adept at it, too. But he played the games without expression.

Even before he went to the university, Cho was known to be sullen and quiet among his family. One thing he enjoyed a lot was playing video games–something he had in common with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the pair of killers at the Columbine high school massacre-shooting in 1999 whom Cho cited in his twisted manifesto as one of his inspirations. Cho had no history of being picked on except when he set himself up to be looked at strangely–such as by writing the disgusting plays he wrote for English class, or deliberately reading aloud English literature passes in a dark, guttural accent. Or writing down his name as “?”. Cho was mentally diseased long before he went to Virginia Tech. His outgoing older sister came out just fine–at an Ivy League school called Princeton, where she would have been surrounded by the sons and daughters of millionaires. If Cho had been so abused and scarred by America, then how come she hadn’t?

Myth #9. The gun shops that sold Cho his guns should have known better and should be held legally accountable and perhaps forced to shut down.

The FBI and the Virginia State Police concur that the local gun shop, Roanoke Firearms, acted in full compliance with the state and the federal law. A background check was performed and Seung-Hui Cho was found clean. Although Cho did have mental problems, he was not listed as a possible danger because he had never been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. When he was taken to a mental ward once, he was only held overnight, did not resist, and was deemed of sound (even if bleak) mind by a professional psychiatrist. This was in spite of the fact that a special justice had, in 2005, found Cho mentally ill.

The other gun shop, which sold Cho one of his weapons via the Internet, was in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and it, too, filled out the right paperwork and did the background check that it was supposed to do.

While it is perfectly reasonable to consider revising the law so that it is more comprehensive (meaning Cho’s visit to the mental ward would have shown up in his record as would his having been found “mentally ill”), it is completely absurd to point a blaming finger at the gun shops. The businesses did exactly what the law says they are to do. Suing them or shutting them down will accomplish nothing except to harm the business owners and their employees.

Myth #10. Poor Seung-Hui Cho was deeply troubled. Somebody should have helped him when he was crying out for help, and then this would never have happened. We brought it on ourselves with our indifferent society.

There is nothing evidential to back up the notion that Cho was deeply troubled by anything other than his own self-centeredness. Cho was not a victim of anything or anyone. In the words of one of his former poetry and creative writing professors, Cho “was just mean”. She goes on to say, “We’re talking about [his being a victim] and crap like that, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings; troubled youngsters drink and drive…I’ve taught crazy people…It was the meanness that bothered me…[In his writings] the threats seemed to be underneath the surface.”

If anything, the United States needs to wake up to the realization that there are mean young people out there, full of self-centered anger for no good reason, and they neither need nor want “help”. They need to be straightened out.

The US ranks third in the world in murders committed by young people (ages 15-24). That puts the U.S. in the company of two very violence-and-corruption-prone South American nations and a Russia still struggling its way from the shards of Communism to the building of a free, capitalist-based society. In the light of a lot of Americans’ reactions to the Virginia Tech Massacre, we really need to take a shot of cold reality and wake ourselves up, instead of making ourselves sick with guilt.

Cho was just mean, for whatever twisted reason. Had more people accepted that and acted accordingly, he probably never could have done what he did.

Brant David McLaughlin
http://www.articlesbase.com/news-and-society-articles/the-top-10-myths-about-the-virginia-tech-massacre-138619.html

Anger can create two situations, one is a form of feelings and the other is a form of hate or violence. I believe we all agree the latter when turned into violence requires a physical action to protect you and your family, but the first has other implications.

It is interesting at times to revisit past quotes to see if there meanings still apply today.

- “We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them”. –Charles Caleb Colton.

– “Anger is only one letter short of danger”.-- Unknown.

– “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too,   can become great”. – Mark Twain.

– “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love”. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

You might have noticed that the one thing all these quotes have in common is that anger leads to even more anger and a downward spiraling situation. It causes you to say things to people you love which cannot be taken back, only apologized for.

That’s why at Don Richardo’s we always stress the urgency for solutions sooner rather than later. Managing anger is a problem, but there are solutions that are available to you. Here is one you might have heard before:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. Eleanor Roosevelt.

There may be many things you can’t control, but how you react is one thing under your command.

Will leave you with one more quote:

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”. – Zig Ziggler

This is where you take over. Your action or inaction will determine how quickly you get anger and other problems behind  you.

Start Today..

Ric Bai
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/managing-your-anger-you-can-lick-it-739260.html

Self-care is an intrinsic, continuous and highly important activity performed by any professional, particularly those involved in health care. Also called the ‘inner therapy’, this practice aims to ensure that both mental and physical health of the professional is in good shape. So why is self-care for Counsellors important? Essentially, Counsellors have a clear responsibility: their clients. If a Counsellor is not mentally and physically healthy, his/her ability to provide support to clients is limited.

So what are the strategies for self-care in the counselling profession? There are many strategies which vary according to each person’s state of mind. Irrespective of the strategy being used, a Counsellor’s self-care activities are in place for a single purpose: that is, ensuring daily work stress does not result in burnout.

The Problem: Burnout

Burnout is the consequence of excessive work, stress and other related factors. Although the concept of burnout can also be applied to other contexts, for the purpose of this article we’ll stick to the work environment. Many people suffer from burnout for various reasons, and usually the problem is related to several prominent areas of an individual’s life: happiness, health, success, and others.

“Burnout is not simply excessive stress. Rather, it is a complex human reaction to ongoing stress, and it relates to feeling that your inner resources are inadequate for managing the tasks and situations presented to you. The signs and symptoms of burnout are similar to those of stress, but burnout includes an emotional exhaustion and an increasingly negative attitude toward your work and, perhaps, your life.” (Help Guide Mental Health)*

This concept is well-known in mental health disciplines, particularly counselling. For this reason, many counselling courses include the topic in their training schedule: a measurement to ensure that each prospective professional is aware of their own limitations.

Burnout in Counsellor Training: The Principles

According to Corey, “burnout manifests itself in many ways. Those who experience this syndrome typically find they are tired, drained, and without enthusiasm. They feel unappreciated, unrecognised, and unimportant, and they go about their jobs in a mechanical and routine way.” (Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy)**

Counsellor education generally introduces the concept of burnout to students, aiming to provide sound theoretical material that will help future counsellors to prevent, understand and act upon such a problem. The material commonly refers to the causes, remedies and prevention methods of burnout.

Causes

As cited previously, burnout is the result of a complex human reaction to stress. Such reaction can be so diversified among people that it would require highly advanced mathematical algorithms to actually derive all the possible cause combinations of burnout, and the influence of each of these causes. However, despite the unpredictability of individual responses to stress, there is a set of causes which are common to most people:

- Performance of repeated activities over time which seem to be insignificant; – Lack of appreciation for a certain task or overall effort at work; – Strong pressure to perform at work; – Excessive conflict in work relationships; – Lack of opportunities for expression and improvement; and – Presence of unresolved personal conflicts outside of the work environment.

Recognising such causes is the first step to understanding a series of events that may lead to burnout. The next step would involve the person’s particular responses to mental stress and their capability to recognise certain physical traits that could indicate over-stressed responses from the body.

Remedies

Burnout remedies for professional counsellors will vastly diverge between individuals. Resembling the causes, remedies are effective according to individual traits, particularly when referring to the level of stress each person can deal with.

Some people prefer to deal with their stress-related problems by increasing or decreasing certain individual activities, such as increasing the amount of time exercising and/or decreasing the amount of time working in the office. Interactive individuals may prefer to work through their issues with others, such as participating in workshops, consulting with their supervisors or simply allocating time to talk to a friend or colleague. Many Counsellors would mix individual and group activities to reduce incidence of stress and attempt to eradicate burnout.

Counsellors may also diverge in their perspectives towards stress and burnout. Some people are naturally passive and tend to surrender to their own circumstances, generally putting themselves in the position of victims. This assumption leads to feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, which increases the difficulty of dealing with stressing factors, resulting in either a delay in eliminating burnout, or increased intensity. However, there are also Counsellors who are proactive towards stress. Such people have a different perspective towards stressful events – they recognise the individual traits which are affecting them, and actively attempt to resolve them through a mix of introspection and scenario analysis. This approach – or active stance – is desired in order to improve stress management skills and avoid burnout.

In an industry where human relationships are so intrinsically related to work, it is sometimes inevitable to experience distress and burnout. On these occasions, it is important that Counsellors effectively remediate burnout in order to invoke balance in both professional and personal lives.

Prevention It is better to prevent rather than remediate – this saying illustrates the need for preventing burnout before it happens. Most people ignore the first signs of excessive stress, and by doing so, become vulnerable to further pressure from work. At some point, Counsellors may find it very difficult to attend counselling sessions, to get to work, and to perform in several other areas of life. Preventing burnout is simply a necessary task to anyone aiming for a balanced and fulfilling career (and life).

There are several burnout prevention principles which can be divided into three categories: physical, mental and strategic.

Physical

Stress is a pattern of physiological responses which are caused by specific events in people’s lives. Such responses include an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, sugar levels and re-direction of blood flow to major organs. With such a complex set of events, it is reasonable to assume that maintaining good health will reduce the incidence of ‘undesired’ stress (distress). In fact, it is more than reasonable. Because stress causes such ‘explosive’ reactions in the body, a healthier body is vastly more capable of dealing with excessive amounts of stress than an unhealthy body.

How do you improve your health? Exercising will play the leading role in improving and maintaining a ‘healthy status’, allowing your body to be ready for the energy boost caused by stress. A balanced diet will ensure that the body has all nutrients necessary to perform daily activities, including regular stress-related responses. A balanced diet includes avoiding excessive intake of particular stress-related substances, such as caffeine and sugar.

Mental

Relaxation techniques such as imagery, meditation and breathing can at first conjure up feelings of inaction and statis. Music and introspection are also a good combination for improving the state of mind of a person. These are commonly used techniques, however any mental exercises that draw attention away from stressful events, and provide a ‘relaxed’ state to the individual, are useful. Such exercises will depend on the personal preferences of each Counsellor, and the resources that are available at the time.

Furthermore, the role of perception is extremely important in determining the health issues associated with the incidence of stress. Sometimes Counsellors perform a kind of mental ’self mutilation’ in which they take responsibility for anything that goes wrong in a counselling session, or with a client. In this context, feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness will remain obstacles and can perpetuate to the Counsellor’s personal life. In these instances, the Counsellor needs to re-assess their perception towards certain events: you may call it a self-directed cognitive behaviour therapy.

Strategic

Probably the most prominent cause of burnout in a workplace is the inability of an individual to meet certain deadlines and achieve particular goals which are simply impossible to achieve in the first place. Applying strategy as a form of burnout prevention means ensuring that goals are achievable.

This way, Counsellors will not put themselves under unnecessary pressure. Furthermore, strategic thinking also allows individuals to recognise their personal and professional limitations, and work effectively with those limitations in order to achieve a balanced (and successful) counselling career.

The First Steps: Shaping a Career

In the beginning of their counselling careers, most individuals are much more sensitive to burnout than experienced Counsellors. Why is that? Because their levels of anxiety are peaking as they are about to find out whether this profession is really for them, and if they can handle their clients and support them by effectively applying the theoretical concepts they have learned.

Dealing with the normal anxieties of the first few sessions is part of the process of inner development that the counselling profession requires from all its peers. The fact that it deals with human beings, which can be vastly unpredictable, will affect the Counsellor’s confidence to some extent. The nature of a counselling session, which can have a major impact in a client’s life, also evokes doubts in the Counsellor’s mind. It is important for the Counsellor to simply recognise such doubts as a normal part of their own behaviour, and to understand the feelings which are associated with them. Beginning Counsellors can be so overwhelmed by their anxieties that they will fail to really ’see through’ the situation. This inability to deal with a client could result in stress and possibly burnout.

Professional Insight: Strategies from Counsellors

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of strategies that can help a Counsellor with self care. Each individual differentiates in the strategies used, and the need for them. Therefore, we’ve decided to get a first hand insight on burnout by asking two experienced professional Counsellors what were their opinions and strategies towards the problem.

“If there are challenges at work, talking with somebody (anybody) immediately after is called de-briefing, and may result in problematic issues not manifesting within the body and causing frustration, anger, hurt, and even illness. For difficult clients, supervision is imperative to access a mind to break the difficulties into manageable parts.

Outside of work, personally, what works for me is to have a regime of care for my body by attending a wellness centre where I involve myself in a class of Aqua Fit and Yoga every week. Massage when I can – preferably once a month or even a facial is good.

Because of Yoga, I have learned the art of switching off in a meditative mode very quickly, so the minute I walk outside of work I am in another area of life (i.e. the going home mode). I look forward to time spent with family and good friends or attending a movie and eating pop corn – to me, that is bliss. Then by the time I go back to work I feel as if I’ve been away for a week. This works really well for me – the art of deceit of your own mind.” (Kathleen Casagrande, AIPC Education Adviser)

“To function effectively as a Counsellor we need to be in good shape personally – physically, mentally and emotionally.

Given that, just like everyone else, we will have times of difficulty in our own lives, it is particularly important for us to recognise the danger signals and take action to deal with any undue stress quickly.

Like many of my colleagues I have a number of tried and tested remedies for keeping my life in balance.

A quick fix which I can use anytime and in any stressful situation is to concentrate on my breathing rhythm and deliberately make it slower and deeper.

Listening to music is a sure-fire way for me to de-stress, as are walking on a beach, playing tennis, being out on the water or getting involved with a good book.

On the subject of reading, I work on maintaining and upgrading my skills and knowledge – having confidence in one’s ability is an important element in avoiding workplace stress.

And my very favourite way to look after myself? A glass of wine on a sunny afternoon with my partner somewhere by the water.” (Wendy Mead, AIPC Senior Education Adviser)

Sources

*Help Guide Mental Health (www.helguide.org/mental/burnout_signs_symptoms.htm).

** Corey G (1996) Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy (p. 44).

Pedro Gondim
http://www.articlesbase.com/psychology-articles/burnout-and-counsellor-selfcare-strategies-139750.html