5 Steps toward Better Health

Do you spend time some days feeling vaguely guilty or anxious about your health but just can’t move ahead with what to do? Here are five areas for you to consider to help you get started.  Even reading this article is a step in the right direction! When wanting to set goals and make changes, most people spend a great deal of psychological and emotional energy at the pre-contemplation and contemplation stage. They know they want to move ahead, but they struggle with identifying and creating a plan.  The first step in overcoming this barrier is to IDENTIFY what it is you want to change.  For many, a great place to start is with the Number One area listed below: Be brave and find out – learn about your current health status instead of not knowing, worrying and considering the worst possible outcome. Even though it might sound simplistic, once you move ahead and begin with discovery and identification of your current status, you have accomplished a big step in becoming successful and gaining more peace of mind about your health concerns.
Begin with the first step!

1. Obtain Baselines and learn about your health status.
This involves moving past denial and includes learning all you can about your physical health. It involves a visit to your primary care or other physician to establish medical measures and baselines on your health status and includes weight, BMI, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and other tests determined by your physician.  This should also include identifying your family risk factors, identifying your social support needs, identifying your psychological challenges, identifying the stressors in your life and your coping challenges and style.

2. Set goals for improving your health; contact and work with your medical doctor/health care provider for medical direction; work with your psychologist or coach for motivation and support.  
Once you know your health status and baselines, including BMI, weight, cholesterol, blood pressure readings, etc., you can now move toward establishing goals for improvement where needed.  This may include lowering your cholesterol, lowering your blood pressure, reducing your risk of stroke or cardiac illness, reducing familial risk factors.

3. Improve Levels of Exercise and Fitness
If you are like most people, your intention is to make exercise and fitness a priority, but the busyness of your life gets in the way.  Identify your exercise routines and activities (or lack of), including how many days, minutes and type of exercise you are currently completing.   Keep an exercise and activity diary for 2-4 weeks. One you have a numerical count of what you actually do during the week, you can then decide on areas of improvement. This might include any or one of the following:  getting more exercise, getting regular exercise, doing aerobic activities, joining a yoga class, achieving a good fitness level,  increasing strength, increasing endurance, increasing flexibility, increasing energy levels.

4. Make Better Eating and Nutrition Choices   

Keep a food diary and include what you eat, when you eat, where you eat. Include when you feel hungry and what you are doing.   Once you have done this discovery process, you will be able to establish clearer and more doable goals in this area. This might include eating smaller portions, eating out less frequently, eating less fast food, learning more about nutrition, eating more freshly prepared foods and meals. This also includes beginning with establishing your current eating lifestyle.

5. Improve Your Quality of Life with rest, play and recreation

What are you doing now for rest, recreation, play, relaxation?  What do you do for fun?  Write out your list of your current status and then list things you really have loved to do in the past but have let slip. Begin by giving yourself even a few minutes a day to do a favorite activity.

Keep track of your progress – use an app or a journal or your google calendar. Write yourself reminders and congratulate yourself when you have success in taking even the smallest steps toward better health.  

How to Breathe!

Learning to become mindful about how you breathe is essential to mastering stress.  Unless you are a vocalist or public speaker, you may not have learned how to breathe in a stress reducing manner.  When you breathe with shallow, chest focused breaths, you may be even increasing your anxiety and feelings of stress. When you breathe correctly, using your diaphragm, you will find that your feelings of anxiety and stress are reduced.   It does take practice to learn how to breathe correctly. In this article, I’ll take you through the first steps in learning how to breathe from the diaphragm.  After you’ve mastered the first steps, in my next article I’ll give pointers and next steps on how to become your own expert in deep, mindful breathing to reduce stress.

You have probably heard about mindfulness – a stress reduction intervention that includes diaphragmatic breathing.   Researchers studying mindfulness, including mindful diaphragmatic breathing techniques, are finding positive results for people struggling with stress, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, pain, depression and other diagnosis.  Even if you are not diagnosed with a condition but struggle with managing stressors in your life, mindfulness and diaphragmatic breathing can help you cope and master your stress.

Your first step in learning diaphragmatic breathing is to choose a time and place where you will not be interrupted by noise, people or circumstances.

Next, you will need to find a place where you can lie down on your back. If your disability prohibits you from doing this, position your body in the most relaxing open posture you are able.

When lying down on the floor on a rug or blanket, take on a “dead body” pose – legs straight, relaxed, slightly apart, toes pointed outward, arms at your side, not touching your body, palms up and eyes closed.

Focus attention on your breathing – place your hand on the spot just beneath your rib cage. Note where your body rises when you breathe. If your are breathing from your chest, make note and see if you can instead breathe from below your rib cage.  Scan your body for tension -  your chest, abdomen, throat and neck.

 Begin Deep Breathing.

Draw your legs up so that your knees are bent in a way that is comfortable to you. Your toes should be turned outward.

Scan your body for stress/tension.

Place one had on your abdomen and one had on your chest.

Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose into your abdomen.  The hand on your abdomen should rise as you inhale. Your chest should move very little.

Exhale through your mouth, making a quiet, whooshing sound.   Relax your mouth, tongue and jaw.  Take long, slow deep breaths, focusing on your hand rising on your abdomen (focus just below your rib cage) with each inhaling breath and lowering with each exhale.  Focus on the sound and feeling of your breathing.  Do this 5 minutes at a time to begin with.  As you become more comfortable and familiar with mindfulness breathing, increase your time to 10 minutes or longer.

At the end of each breathing session, scan your body for tension.  Compare your feelings of stress and tension at the end of your session compared to when you began. Journal your progress.  Practice these steps for as long as it takes to master.  You will know you have mastered diaphragmatic breathing lying down -  when your chest rises very little and your abdomen rises most. Your diaphragm is then doing the work it should be doing!

After practice, remain in position, let go of your focus and concentration, relax and congratulate yourself for a job well done.

Is Your Communication Style Stress Provoking or Stress Reducing?

Is Your Communication Style Stress Provoking or Stress Reducing?

Communication style can be either stress provoking or stress reducing.  There are individual differences in the way people relate to stress and distress.  In his book Stress Management for Wellness (1999), Schafer presents six ways of relating to stress.  Although no individual is strictly one type or the other, review the following types and see if you can identify with any of them.

Stress Seeking/Stress Avoiding Types

·        Stress Seekers thrive on the challenge, the sensation and the risk involved

·        Stress Avoiders thrive on the familiar, avoiding challenge, sensation and risk sometimes at all costs. The avoidance may be based on rational thinking or irrational fear of risk-taking.

Distress-Seeking/Distress Avoiding Types

·        Distress Seekers thrive on misery, illness, crisis, martyrdom; they may have become addicted to these patterns since childhood

·        Distress-Avoiders thrive on health, contentment, activity and do all they can to avoid and reduce distress.

Distress-Provoking/Distress Reducing Types

·        Distress Provokers thrive intentionally or sometime unintentionally on creating misery, disharmony, illness and upset for others

·        Distress Reducers thrive on doing all that is possible to promote health, happiness and growth for others.

These patterns of communication, thought and action are frequently set in motion during childhood. The pattern is perpetuated through what is called repetition compulsion.

Feedback Loop

Now consider this.  Communication strategies and messages that add to another person's self worth or reduce tension,  help prevent and reduce distress in others. In turn, through a feedback loop effect, distress is lowered for the self also.

And in turn, communication strategies and messages that increase tension and cause or add distress for others, through the same feedback loop effect, increase distress for self.

Karl Albrecht in his book Stress and the Manager (2008) has identified a list of distress provoking and stress reducing behaviors.

Distress provoking (punishing) actions include:

Monopolizing the conversation

Interrupting

Showing obvious disinterest

Keeping a sour facial expression

Withholding customary social cues such as greetings, nods, ‘uh-huh’.

Throwing verbal barbs at others

Insulting or verbally abusing others

Speaking dogmatically

Not respecting others opinions

Complaining

Whining

Criticizing, finding fault

Demanding ones’ own way; refusing to negotiate or compromise

Ridiculing others

Patronizing, talking down to others

Losing one’s temper frequently and easily

Playing games, withholding information, manipulating or competing in subtle ways

Throwing “gotcha’s” at others, belittling others

Telling lies, evading honest questions

Making aggressive demands on others

Disagreeing routinely

Asking loaded or accusing questions

Overusing ‘why’ questions

Breaking confidences

Flattering others insincerely

Joking at inappropriate times

Bragging; talking only about self

Stress-Reducing (rewarding) actions include:

Giving others a chance to express views or share information

Listening attentively; hearing other person out

Sharing oneself with others; smiling, greeting others

Giving positive nonverbal messages of acceptance and respect for others

Praising and complimenting sincerely

Expressing respect for values and opinions of others

Giving suggestions constructively

Helping others succeed

Talking positively and constructively

Affirming feelings and needs of others

Delaying automatic reactions; not flying off the handle easily

Leveling with others; sharing disagreement openly, honestly, respectfully

Confronting others constructively

Stating agreement with others when possible

Questioning others openly and honestly

Keeping the confidences of others

Joking constructively and in good humor

Now that you’ve read the list, go back and check the items that apply to you.

If you’re feeling brave, and ready to take a risk, ask someone close to you to check items that apply to you.

Which communication behaviors would you like to decrease/increase?

Why?

Use the lists above by reviewing them frequently, identifying the ones you want to change and monitoring your progress.