What Is Happiness?
by: Terri Emmett
We all say we want happiness, but how many are willing to give what it takes to achieve it? Realizing that true happiness is a result of giving - not of receiving - discourages many people from obtaining it for their own. They don't want to make the personal sacrifices required to achieve it for themselves and consequently, all they can do is resent those who have found it. The biggest secret for finding happiness is to realize that disciplined determination on your part is required to acquire it..............
Below are 10 simple tips to help ease the effects of your panic attacks, obviously it's not possible to do all 10 at the same time but pick and choose the tips that help reduce your panic attacks. If one of the tips doesn't help then try another. You may want to print these tips out for easy reference if an attack occurs...............
Depression self-help tips include aerobic exercise; taking classes that involve interaction and creativity; and spending time with people who make you feel better, rather than those who make you feel worse.........
Remeron Settlement Results in $36 Million for Consumers.......
"Avs," as Palace members affectionately call them, fall into two overall categories. The first are the standard set of "smileys" that come with the Palace program . Inspired by ASCII smileys, these faces are available to all users. They come in a set that displays basic human emotions and behavioral signals - happy, sad, angry, winking, sleeping/bored, blushing, head-nodding, head-shaking. The user also can change the color of the face or add to it one or more props, such as hats, wigs, scarfs, devil horns, a halo, a glass of beer, a bicycle, etc. Because the faces and props can be mixed and matched, users have at their disposal an almost infinite array of combinations to express themselves...
WASHINGTON - If you think beauty can't go more than skin deep, swallow this: Health officials on Thursday said drug companies could start gussying up their pills with pigments like those that give cosmetics a pearly sheen.
The pearlescent pigments can be used in any drugs that are swallowed, including pills, tablets and liquids, the Food and Drug Administration said. As a result, drugs may never look the same again.
The pigments can produce...
This is the story of my journey of life.
I had always been outgoing and up for a challenge. Nothing scared me and I would think nothing of jumping on a train and seeing where I ended up. I was always working and was very happy with my life.
I was at a party in another part of the country and met a wonderful girl and a year later we were married. We moved to another part of the country away from her village to start a new life together. Everything was great, we had two beautiful children and we always did everything together as a family. I lost my job and we had the usual problems that families have but nothing that we couldn’t cope with. I had financial worries but I was been the macho man and keeping them to myself because I didn’t want to worry my wife with them.
For a couple of weeks I began to have this blister like rash suddenly appear all over my body which made me feel very dizzy. It would stay for an hour or so and then go as suddenly as it came. I went to the doctors but they said they didn’t know what it was and wouldn’t be able to say unless I went in with it so they could see it themselves. I later found out many years later, quite by accident, that what I had was Uticaria which can be brought on by stress.
A few weeks later, while my wife was at a friend’s house I received a distressing phone call, which I won’t go into details about, and all of a sudden my world collapsed. I had taken acid many years ago and it felt like I was tripping again. But this time it was very frightening. I really had no clue what was happening to me and I found myself pacing up and down the garden waiting for my wife to return back home. I was shaking like a leaf, I couldn’t breathe and I felt like I was on fire.
My wife duly came home and packed me off to bed telling me I would be ok in the morning. But the next morning I felt worse and wouldn’t get out of bed. I stayed in bed for a week, in the dark with the curtains closed and feeling scared of everything. I was petrified to eat, sleep, talk and even going to the toilet. I honestly thought I had gone insane. My wife called out a doctor and as soon as he entered the bedroom he told me that I had had a nervous breakdown and gave me some pills to help calm me down.
I was so relieved that I hadn’t gone insane but I refused to take the medicine because I was petrified of what they might do to me. I stayed in bed for a further two weeks and because all I ate was literally crumbs I had lost so much weight that I had no strength to walk. In fact it felt like I was walking on broken glass. When I eventually got the nerve up to go back downstairs I felt unable to talk to my kids and wife. I was living a constant anxiety and panic attack.
My wife couldn’t understand how I had gone from been so extrovert and fun loving to a complete stranger. As a result I spent a lot of my time over the next couple of months been frustrated with her lack of understanding, and no doubt her been as equally frustrated with me. Until one day she had had enough and left with the kids and went back down to her home village 400 miles away. So after 7 years of blissful marriage we were divorced.
Because I wanted to see my kids again I tried every doctor and psychiatrist I could find to help me get the courage up to travel the 400 miles to where they lived. My ex-wife put every block she could in the way of me and my kids because she didn’t want them to have a mentally ill dad. This all added to the stress and every time I made progress with my health she would bring something new up which knocked me back.
I wish I could say it all worked out great but it didn’t. I fought for two years but I had to come to the realization that I couldn’t even walk down the road, never mind travel 400 miles, without falling to pieces. So as a result, up to now, I haven’t seen my children in six years.
But before anyone thinks this is just all doom and gloom let me continue.
I struggled long and hard and pushed myself to get some sort of life or normality. I was still having really bad anxiety and panic attacks but not as often as I was and some days I was almost ‘normal’.
Three years ago I met a wonderful woman through a chat site. I was surprised that she only lived a few streets away from me. We decided to meet up in a local café and we got on really well. I knew sooner or later I would have to tell her my background and about my mental condition so on the second date I told her. Yes I know it seems like a heavy thing to do on a second date but she would find out eventually and I didn’t want her to have any false pretence about me.
To be honest I expected her to walk out the door because after all who would want to take someone on like me. She asked me quiet a few questions and seemed to be happy with my honest answers. I still thought she was just been gracious and didn’t expect to see her again. But instead she invited me for dinner.
I asked her a year later why she decided to be with me and she told me that one of the reasons was because I had been so honest with her knowing fine well I could have easily blown it by been so honest.
Around her I can truly be myself. If I am having a bad day I don’t have to hide anything. In fact she encourages me to tell her and explain what is going on in my head so she can better understand me. She is such a positive force in my life that I have managed to pass my driving test and now I drive a car. Strangely though she doesn’t drive because she says the thought of it petrifies her.
I have been with her for over three years now and she has really brought me out of my shell. She encourages, and sometimes forces me to stretch my boundaries of what I think I am capable of. I do things now that I would have never dreamed about before I met her. She is almost as desperate for me to see my children again as I am myself and with her behind me I can’t really fail.
I still don’t work full time because I still have too many bad periods to be of use to an employer. I’m still sometimes too frightened of the world to leave my comfort zone. I’m realistic to know that I will never be the same person I once was before my nervous breakdown. But in the same breath I also know I am getting just that little bit better everyday so I will never again be that stranger I once turned into. All it took was for me to have faith in someone else and just as importantly for her to have just as much faith in me.
The things I have learned is that stress can be sneaky and doesn’t always show itself until it explodes out of control. If you have worries share them with someone else. It doesn’t matter who you talk to because it is far better to talk than to keep it all bottled up. Always try and remain as positive as you possibly can, believe me I know how hard that can be to do. Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to be 100% perfect. Nothing in this world is 100% perfect. Wasn’t perfect before you started to have anxiety and panic attacks so stands to reason that it won’t be perfect now. The only thing that has changed is you – not the world.