Here are a few quick tips to improve the quality of your sleep:

1. Only use your bed for sleep, sex and reading that trashy novel your book club doesn’t know about. No TV!
2. Create a soothing bedroom that engages all five senses. Lavender scents, soft cotton sheets, low amber light, quiet, soothing music, even vanilla flavored toothpaste!
3. After the sun sets keep lights low. Think of it as mimicking a camp fire, which signals the brain to release sleep hormones.
4. Have a before-bedtime ritual, such as washing your face, brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, stretching, prayers, light reading then lights out.
5. Go to bed and get up at the same time (within half an hour) every day! This is very importnat even on the weekends.
6. Exercise but not within four hours of bedtime.
7. Remember to breathe! Once you are in bed, breathe a few deep yoga breaths and relax. Do not be concerned about sleep. Your only desire is to relax.

Sleep is essential to our health generally and our sanity in particular.  Interrogators know, if you want to break someone down – deprive them of sleep.

I didn’t appreciate how important sleep was until I became sleep deprived myself. About six years ago, anxiety fed my insomnia, which in turn fed my anxiety. It finally drove me to my doctor’s office.  Surely something was very wrong with my thyroid or maybe I had a brain tumor!

A complete workup that took two days and many little tubes of blood… then I met with my medical specialist.  With unforgettable kindness he asked what was going on in my life.  As I ticked off about five pretty high stress events, I could see where he was going with this, and I didn’t like it.  He said, “Well, that would do it for me!”  So the good news was my brain and thyroid were fine, the not so good news…it was all in my head.

No, it couldn’t be!  I was a psychologist for God’s sake!  Wouldn’t I know if stress was making me sick?  Turns out, if you are overwhelmed, even if you are a qualified mental health professional, you are often the last to know.  A humbling lesson. The frog in the pot syndrome a over again.

ANYWAY… For a couple of weeks I took a sleep medication to get my sleep back on track.  Then I got a crash course on sleep hygiene, learned how to breathe to calm down my anxiety and took a serious look at what I could change in my life to allow a better balance.   These are lessons I learn over and over again and now pass on to my clients.  For really serious sleep troubles I use cognitive behavioral therapy, the best non-medication treatment for insomnia.

Recommended Reading… A Good Night’s Sleep, by a couple of smart guys at Harvard Medical School.

Photo courtesy Thowra_uk via Flickr

This Saturday I will be at the offices of Lauber Financial Planning to talk about Marriage and Money. Amy Jo Lauber is a very special kind of Certified Financial Planner. She cares about people, helping them to embrace good stewardship over their financial responsibilities. Once a month Amy Jo hosts the I Hate Budgeting Support Group. (Such a great name, don’t you think?) This month I have the honor to share some of what I believe can help couples come to a peaceful understanding of how they handle and communicate about money.

We all have our scripts when it comes to handling money. Often we come to our marriages as adults convinced there is a wrong and right way to do things and that is a breeding ground for stress and conflict.

This talk is meant to give you the tools to help you engage in the difficult task of coming together in how you handle money when your scripts differ.

By the end of the talk you will be able to:

1. Embrace this concept: What can I do to be a better spouse?

2. Set aside the need to dominate: Learn how to focus and listen with the intent of truly understanding what your partner is thinking, feeling, what they fear and what they hope, without defensiveness, with an open heart.

3. Learn the four rules for a “Good” argument: The difference between reacting and responding. How to create a safe zone so that you and your spouse may speak freely and confidently!

I hope you will be there, Saturday, May 5, 10:30-12Noon. Click here for directions to Lauber Financial Planning offices.

HA!

How I long for those days!!! Since being on the prednisone I have gained close to twenty pounds. That’s up two dress sizes in two months. I am not here to bitch and moan, although it kind of looks like I am. I would not insult you like that! Many, many people have much worse health problems than I do and more difficult weight issues than I do. It’s not the degree that’s important. It’s that we all have more in common in our pain and discomfort than not.

On another day I will write about how we reflect on our own story in comparison with other’s, the good and the bad about it, when doing so uplifts us and when it only makes us feel worse. But that’s not for today.

Today is for anyone out there who not only struggles with weight, but struggles with weight on medication that tries its hardest to make you pack the pounds.

Because how we look does make a difference in our self-esteem. As much as I sincerely love and try to practice the “I love the inner me” message, I also like how I looked and felt in a size 8 pencil skirt.

On another day I will write about acceptance. Meaning, there’s been a shitload of ‘nothing I can about it so I better learn live with it in serenity ’cause getting mad just makes it all worse.’ But that’s not for today, either.

Today is meant to inspire us to do what we can to stay in control when the weight-gain undertow is pulling us out to sea.

As much as we hate prednisone, we are grateful for it. We take prednisone for the treatment of inflammation, asthma, arthritis of all kinds, inflammatory bowel disease, sarcoidodis, lupus, kidney disease, skin problems, allergies and more. Without it we would be dealing with a heck of a lot more discomfort than extra poundage.

But the extra pounds are no joke. They are a pain in the self-esteem and when the weight sky rockets, as it can, adding up to 50-60 pounds overweight and more, well, then the weight itself can cause health problems. Talk about vicious circles!

Why does this have to happen?

Prednisone creates the perfect storm of weight gain. It comes at you from four fronts: 1. It slows your metabolism and changes how you process glucose. Avoid sugar. Boo! 2. Fluid retention happens. Avoid salt. Boo! 3. Fatty tissue is redistributed to where, I swear to God, it makes you feel as bad as possible: face (moonface), upper back (buffalo hump) and abdomen. Charming! 4. Makes you hungry all the time for anything in your path. Nothing edible is safe in the sites of a prednisone packing mama!

What can we do about the weight gain? Here is my plan. So far it’s worked for me. In my heart I know I could have gained a hell of a lot  more at this point. I’ve been working hard to just keep the madness down to the occasional Oreo orgy.

1. Start with patient maintenance. This is a most important thing. If your on a high dose of prednisone don’t stress yourself out trying to lose weight. You are taking the stuff because you are sick so pay attention to that. See your doctor, follow directions, take the damn tests, blah, blah, blah… and when you can, pamper yourself. Let others pamper you too.

The best you can do when you are in the higher doses is to keep a food journal just to maintain and keep the habit. Just by writing down what goes into your mouth you subconsciously reduce the amount you eat, even a little. Besides, you will need this habit later so may as well start now if you’ve never done it before. Be honest, which can be hard when what you ate in one day could feed a whole colony of hungry hungry hippos.

2. Choose your food thoughtfully. Avoid salt and simple carbs. Embrace fruits and vegetables. Not only are these foods lower calorie tummy fillers, they are packed with antioxidants, nature’s own anti-inflammatory. When my appetite was at its most wicked worst I binged on stuff like French fries, sure, but there were also occasions when I binged on fruit. Weird but true.

3. Exercise. If you can, if your illness allows it, try to move every day. Twenty minutes to half an hour of some kind of exercise will keep your metabolism revved up and keep your muscles from going to mush. I find mixing up activities, from walking, riding my stationary bike, yoga, weight training keeps me from getting bored. And I’m lucky; my body likes it. You may need to talk with your doctor about this. You may need a physical therapist to recommend a routine. Don’t let this hurdle stop you, though, please. Also don’t do aerobic exercise in the evening. You need your rest.

4. Plan meals, plan snacks, plan mini-meals, whatever your style is – Plan It! The more you plan ahead, and shop accordingly, the less apt you are to succumb to gotcha! eating. Do not have a bag of sea-salted, kettle-fried chips in the cupboard! I do not care how many teenagers are in the house insisting they need this basic food group.

5. Count calories Phase 2. As the dosage is tapered down you will begin to feel more in control of your appetite. Start lowering your calorie budget a little at a time. The app on my iPhone called Lose It! lets me adjust my calorie budget so that I don’t stress myself out restricting my calories beyond what I can realistically manage. My Fitness Pal and Sparks People have similar programs.

The good news is that at the lower doses the insanity of the worst side effects ease their grip. The thing I find the most challenging is to believe that this is temporary. The weight-loss I fought so hard for over the last two years is my permanent, natural place to be. It may take several months, it might be years, but I can’t wait to be whining about those extra five pounds again.

What about you? Have you been dealing with the side effects of prednisone? Have you had any success managing your weight on it? Perhaps you have a completely different perspective. Please share your thoughts.

However afraid we are of change, the question that we must ultimately answer is this: What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think, or letting go of how I feel and what I believe and who I am? e. e. cummings wrote, “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” I’m convinced that choosing authenticity is one of the most courageous battles that we’ll ever fight.

~Dr Brené Brown, Take a Risk and Put Your True Self Out There

Here’s a bonus follow-up video Dr Brown did after the first one went viral. Two quotes I’ve got to share:

“Guilt is: ‘I did something shameful.’ Shame is: ‘I AM shameful.” Nice nutshell for two abstract concepts, guilt and shame, that we struggle to distinguish and struggle with, period!

And “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” Dr Brown herself is a living example of how that works.

Upon his death at 93 years old, I read a few articles about Mr. Wallace.

At his lowest and most desperate, a bottle of pills and a suicide note seemed like the only answer for the legendary journalist Mike Wallace.

Whoa! That got my attention. Mike Wallace was not known for being warm and cuddly, weak-willed or a pushover. His reputation was made for yanking people in power under a glaring light; holding them to accountability. He asked the uncomfortable questions most of us were thinking but were too intimidated to ask. I did not know he ever experienced the dark desperation of major depression.

Below is an excerpt of the article Mike Wallace’s Battle With Depression and Suicide, by Mikaela Conley. The bold emphasis is my own:

“The CBS 60 Minutes correspondent could make some of the most powerful leaders in the world sweat with nervousness, but Wallace will also be remembered as a voice and face for those who have suffered in silence with depression and other mental illnesses.

…Wallace said his first major bout of depression was triggered in 1984 after U.S. Army General William C. Westmoreland sued Wallace… for libel. Westmoreland was featured in the CBS documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” in 1982, and Wallace was the chief correspondent for the investigative report.

“I was on trial for my life,” Wallace [said].

The public humiliation and questions of integrity made him feel “dead inside,” Wallace wrote… He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and took sleeping pills in an attempt to get some shuteye. Even after revealing to a family doctor that he worried about his mental state, Wallace said the doctor told him, “You’re a tough guy. You’ll get through it.”

When Wallace’s wife Mary asked whether her husband could be suffering from clinical depression, the doctor reportedly told the couple, “Forget the word ‘depression’ because that’ll be bad for your image.”

But depression consumed him. Wallace described his rock bottom point, when he attempted suicide. “I have to get out of here,” he recalled thinking.

“So I took a bunch of sleeping pills, wrote a note and ate them, and, as a result, I fell asleep,” he said.

Mary found him unconscious in bed around 3 a.m. Doctors were able to pump his stomach and revive the journalist before he underwent psychological treatment.

…Wallace wrote of his life post-suicide attempt. “Before the new year, I was admitted to the hospital, ‘suffering from exhaustion’ …

Talk therapy and antidepressant medications pulled Wallace through the severe bout of depression in the mid-1980s. While he admittedly had suffered a few more episodes, treatments allowed for better coping methods in the years after his suicide attempt.

When asked what advice he had for those suffering from depression, Wallace said, find a “good psychiatrist.”

“You’re not a nutcase if you want to go see a psychiatrist.”

About 17 million Americans will suffer from depression at some point in their lives and according to the World Health Organization, about 5.8 percent of men and 9.5 percent of women worldwide will experience a depressive episode in any given year. Symptoms of depression include changes in sleep and appetite, inability to enjoy oneself and thoughts of hurting oneself.

Wallace acknowledged that the stigma of mental illness left many people, including himself, undiagnosed and untreated. While awareness and advocacy has curbed some of that taboo, there is still work to be done to remedy such perception of mental illness.

“Until very recently, individuals in positions of power, influence, and authority went to great lengths to hide their mental illness, such as depression, out of fear that the stigma associated with the illness might negatively impact their careers,” said Dr. Amir Afkhami, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences at George Washington University. “However, the illness also allowed Wallace to have a familiarity with despair that allowed him to have empathy and a deep sense of connection with victims of injustice. This came across in his interviews during his tenure on 60 minutes and his work as a producer.”

Experts say any time a public figure like Wallace opens up a discussion about mental illness, it is easier for others who may be suffering in silence to come forward and get treatment.

“What Mike Wallace did by his willingness to talk about his depressive illness was extraordinary,” said Dr. Carol Bernstein, associate professor psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. “That kind of openness with something that is usually shunned, avoided and stigmatized in our society was very brave and courageous of him.”

Read the entire article here: Mike Wallace’s Battle With Depression and Suicide, Mikaela Conley, April 9, 2012

In my inbox this morning was this quote brought to me by Elisha Goldstein, author of The Now Effect:

“In between stimulus and response there’s a space, in that space lies our power to choose our responses and in our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor Frankl

Holiday’s, whatever you celebrate, Passover, Easter, the Spring Equinox, give us that space. They are a time to pause. I love that about holidays.

When I take time to observe a holiday whatever is pressing on me, worries, decisions waiting to be made, tasks needing attention, it can all wait. I give myself permission to enjoy just being. I hope you will too! Have a happy, peaceful day!

Photo courtesy Sofia Francesca Photography

Q: When Is Having a Chronic Illness a Good Thing?

A: When it makes you a better, deeper, more thoughtful person.

Yesterday my friend Mary Cimiluca sent me this note. Ironically I had been looking for this very quote for a month! Or maybe it wasn’t irony. Maybe it was one of those cosmic, spiritual connection things! Now that gives me goosebumps! Whatever it was, I was very happy to receive it. Mary is the Producer and Writer for the Website and Facebook pages for the Viktor Frankl Movie, Victor & I, a very cool and needed project documenting the genius of Dr. Frankl. It is amazing she had any time to write me at all!

With her permission, her message…

” I thought you might enjoy this quote a friend sent me today since like me, you have talked about living with chronic illness…this is  from the book, “The Unquiet Mind” by Kay Redfeld Jamison… In her epilogue she writes, given a chance whether to choose her illness or not, she says that she would (and now I quote her):

‘…Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; worn death ‘as close as dungarees,’ appreciated it – and life – more; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty, and seeing things through.’ “

Many who struggle with chronic illness, or care for someone who does, feel the same way. Can you relate to this quote? Please share your thoughts.