Gnawing Anxiety

You may be sitting at your desk at work or driving your car like you do everyday. Nothing is all that different. Nothing is particularly scary, but, all at once, your heart starts pounding and you're scared. You may feel like you're having a heart attack and your breathing may be shallow and urgent. Many people rush to the emergency room at this point.

Panic attacks often convince their surprised victims they're physically ill and need immediate medical help.

The classic panic attack--think Jack Nicholson in Something's Gotta Give--can seem to mimic a cardiac event. You feel like you're dying! Panic attacks are only one way anxiety can impact your life. There are smart, competent people around you who struggle daily with moments of overwhelming fear and anxiety. Many seek a pharmacological answer to these baffling episodes, and medication can help on a short-term basis. There are individuals whose lives begin to revolve around avoiding or trying to avoid this kind of experience.

It might be your boss--an attractive, competent woman who has earned the power she wields. You may have a close friend or a relative. People who struggle with anxiety can alter their lives, avoiding situations that have previously been associated with the overwhelming feeling of not being okay. Many seek professional help to manage their physical symptoms.

You might, however, need to look at your emotional life.

As it is with all complicated human experiences, one answer doesn't fit everyone, but anxiety usually comes from one of several places. Individuals who live their lives very rationally sometimes don't listen to their own feelings very well. They just go on with life, assuming emotions aren't that significant. Your emotions, however, can be vital in conveying information you need. You need to tune into your gut reactions. This isn't saying you're going to be controlled by your feelings. You can still make rational choices in a situation when you are attuned to your feelings .

Most people just want to make this go away, but panic and a sense of chronic anxiety may be your mind's way of telling you to tune into yourself.

Other individuals struggling with anxiety might have an underlying sense of inadequacy: they're not sure they're capable of dealing with whatever life throws them. These individuals can also seem bright and strong-minded. Inside, though, they're convinced of their own limitations. They might have a deep conviction of their inability to respond to situations and people around them.

Which ever disorder fits you, anxiety can be gripping and overwhelming. It can take over your life. Medication is not a long-term solution. Your body will adjust to the meds and you'll start needing a bigger dosage or a different kind of medication. You can learn to manage this emotional experience, however. You can deal with it so well, it no longer rules your life.

We are such finely tuned systems. With therapeutic assistance, you can learn to listen to your feelings without being controlled by them. You can learn to see your own strengths and feel confident in these.

Anxiety doesn't have to rule your life. You can live--not an anxiety-free life--that wouldn't be safe, but you can beat this. You don't have to live with the monster in your closet.

Parenting Lies You Tell Yourself

Having kids is one of the scariest things you can do in this life. The urge to become a parent is strong in most, and for many people, not a lot of thought goes into whether or not to become a parent. It's more a question of when, than if. You may find yourself planning, however, being a different kind of parent from those you see around you or from your own parents.

Be careful, though, that you aren't deceiving yourself.

Parenting challenges every difficult or unpleasant part of you. (You know what these are!) After all, the little munchkins live with you. They see you at your worst and, because they are smaller and have less power than you, they tend to hit below the belt. They always seem to know right where you don't want to go.

Sometimes this just involves being very, very messy when they know it really annoys you, the neatnik. Sometimes, your kid will realize that you really care how the people in the grocery store see you and your beloved child can become your personal terrorist.

Even bigger life-decisions can play out very differently than you planned.

If you value successful social interaction, your little person may be introverted. You like playing sports? Your kid would rather die. You're a Republican? He's a liberal Democrat. Getting a college degree important to you? Your daughter may declare that she's not going to college, at all. Trust me, if you like peas, kids will define themselves (I'm me, not you) by being different. Sometimes very different.

So parenting, while very fulfilling, is one of the most challenging endeavors you will ever undertake. And unlike marriage or any committed relationship(which is the other really tough thing you face), parenting doesn't come with a divorce clause. If you hate being a parent or dislike your kids (major fear for many), you can't just walk away without some pretty significant consequences.

You may be propelled toward having children by your own urges (or society's dictates), and yet you have anxiety about this life experience. Piles of books are published on how to parent. Lots of people are doing it really badly and you don't want to be one of them. So, you convince yourself that your child will "never be like that." Your child won't be rude or unappreciative or obnoxious. Your child will do well in school and will never yell that he hates you.

This is a good time to realize that nothing alters one's outlook like experience. Don't be too quick to judge others. You might very well be one of those parents who refuses to let your child terrorize you into buying them candy when you're checking out at the discount store. You might find yourself, however, dealing with things differently than you thought you would.

If you're engaged in the adventure of raising a child, take every lesson that comes to you and learn for all you're worth. Along with the toothless grins and heart-warming hugs, parenting brings with it a life-long string of personal lessons. Embrace the journey, if you're going there.

Are You The One?

Maybe it's time to quit whining about not finding the "right one" and start asking yourself if you're the right one. The dating-mating hunt is huge these days. Just look at the booming internet dating sites. Lots of people struggle with rotten dates and disappointing relationships and you may be doing the same. It might, however, be time to look at yourself.

The popular TLC show Flip That House has individuals buying a promising property and fixing any problems so they can turn around and sell for a profit. This same approach might yield a productive change in your dating perspective.

Maybe you need to become someone's "The One." It might be a good idea to address your own limitations.

It's important to note that this way of looking at dating doesn't mean anything horrible about you. No implied criticism here. There is, however, room for improvement--always. Life is one long fixer-up. Unless you're entrenched in never changing, you're going to find things you need to do differently.

So, when it comes to looking for a mate, why not do a personal walk-through and look for areas you can improve? The first thing that many people focus on(and get hung up on) is the physical. Looking good, though, isn't as important in a life mate as having good health habits. You don't need to go on a make-over show and get all gussied up. That may feel good, but dealing with personal habits that hold you back is a bigger investment.

What needs changing about you? A good place to start looking is to conduct as objective a study as you can on what you did to torpedo your last relationship. Again, not blaming you. You couldn't have been completely at fault in your last relationship because there were two of you involved, and you didn't have all the power. You did, however, contribute something to it going south.

Pick one--You insisted on everything being your way. You didn't really insist on your way, ever. You were too rigid. You had no boundaries at all and let yourself get run over. You are an emotional spender. You put your emotional well-being in always having money in the bank(more is always better). You struggle to express emotion. You are all-emotion and have a hard time being objective. Et Cetera, et cetera.

Take a good, hard look at yourself. What have your last three lovers accused you of? Can you find a theme in what they said? Remember, you aren't totally at fault in why your past relationships have ended…but you need to see what you contributed to each situation. You need to know yourself. Your areas of struggle. Your biggest challenges. Once you can see these, you've got a good chance of seeing what you need to change to give your next relationship a better shot.

Just knowing the areas where you struggle is huge. When you've got a lock on these, then you can do something about them. Changing isn't easy. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Whether you want to take care of your body better(and locate your abs again) or whether you want to learn to trust yourself, it's going to be hard sometimes. Self-improvement pays off, though. You'll be happier with yourself and, automatically, happier to be around. If you start dealing with your own non-productive behaviors, you'll be more content and your relationships will have a better chance of success.

Be "The One" that special someone is looking for.

Surviving Grief

It doesn't feel like you're going to survive. Maybe there are moments when not surviving seems preferable. You soldier on, though, but you're not sure how. You get out of bed. You put one foot in front of the other and, somehow, you make it through another day. Grief can seem to suck the life out of you and people do it differently. There is no one-size-fits-all.

If you're going to come through this somewhat intact, however, you need to aim to survive the loss. Ironically, you have to go through--feel--these emotions to minimize the damage. Trying to avoid feeling loss and anger, or the sense of being out-of-control of your life, is normal, but it doesn't work.

Maybe you've lost a loved one to death. Or you may be mourning the end of a relationship. Sometimes, too, we grieve big changes in our lives, which can bring loss as well as gain. Grief can be a part of losing a job, a relationship or a significant role--a way in which you define yourself. Grief hurts. Don't let anyone else tell you that you shouldn't feel how you feel or that you should grieve a certain way.

Sometimes, grief is so large and over-whelming that you just can't deal with it. Or it feels like you can't. Sometimes, you might delay your grieving until some part of you can face it. You may have tried a number of unhealthy behaviors in an attempt to cope with loss. Some people try and drink it away. Some try to lose themselves by diving into relationships that are, by nature, dysfunctional.

Think of grief as if you're in the ocean. This is not a nice ocean. You feel like you're drowning in pain. It feels bad, but if you'll notice, the emotion of grief or loss comes in waves. Not unlike a woman's contractions in the birth experience, the emotion of grief can seem to build or can slam into you with the force of a locomotive. Suddenly, you're awash in loss. Drowning. The sense of missing can envelope you and crash over your head. You may feel like you can't breath. Even trying to draw air into your lungs hurts. You probably feel desperate, like you need to do something, anything, to make this emotion go away.

If you'll stay with it, though--weep, yell, rant at the skies, whatever--it will start to diminish after a time. If you curl into a fetal position and cry, or if you start throwing and breaking things(hopefully not things you really like), eventually, the emotion will become less intense. It will subside some. Don't try to reason the feelings away. This is a natural tendency, but it doesn't help. Don't try and distract yourself. Just feel it. Feel the loss, the grief, the missing. If you give yourself over to it, the emotion will eventually subside. Honestly, it will. And if you work your way through the experience, the episodes will eventually get shorter and you'll be able to breathe through them.

Loss sucks. We humans don't ever like it. It never feels good, but eventually, you'll be able to laugh again.

If you're mourning the loss of a loved one, remember, that it's okay to feel better eventually. You want to be able to remember the person you lost, and smile. He had his quirks, crazy things he did or said. Silly or annoying things he didn't do when most people would have. You want to be able to remember him without feeling like you've been stabbed in the gut. You want to feel normal again.

Sometimes you can even feel guilty for not continuing to grieve. Remember, life requires you to return to some functionality. Loving the one you lost, doesn't mean being miserable forever. You have to recover, if you're going to celebrate the life that was so important to you.

Sometimes, it doesn't seem like grief will ever go away, and in some relationships, you may always miss the individual when you think of her. You can, however, survive.

Coping with Infidelity

Christy and Jake(not their real names) have been married seven years. They have good jobs, two wonderful children, ages three and five, and a decent income. Jake just confessed to having an affair with a co-worker.

There are plenty of friends and family who tell Christy she needs to leave him, but Jake is saying that's not what he wants. What should Christy do? She loves him--and hates him--and he's the father of their two sons. He's willing to end the affair and have no more contact with the woman than he has to have for work.

How does Christy ever believe him? How do they heal? Can a marriage survive this kind of damage?

Unfortunately, a lot of couples are facing this situation. Studies rate marital infidelity at an all-time high. Is Christy's only solution to end the relationship and try to find another mate she can trust?

Successfully dealing with infidelity while keeping the marriage intact depends on several things. Are both partners (1) Committed to making the relationship work?, and (2) Can they figure out what went wrong?

If the partner who strayed is still emotionally entangled with the fantasy of the lover, the marriage will not get the healing attention it needs. Fixing and strengthening a marriage so that it nourishes both partners takes the energy of both partners. Sad Reality: You can't do this with just one of you working and you can't do it only for the kids' sake.

You have to put your whole self into healing this relationship, if that's what you want to do.

Some people try to use guilt as a principle motivator--both the wronged partner and the straying partner may think this is appropriate. Guilt is never a long term answer. It doesn't fix the problem that existed before the infidelity, and this is one of the hardest realities to deal with: there were problems before the infidelity. Issues that were unresolved in the relationship led to a break-down in the emotional connection in the marriage.

The other person may not be hot. In fact, he or she is probably very ordinary. The wronged spouse usually has a hard time comprehending the affair, in this case. She's not even attractive! Try to understand that extra-marital relationships are rarely about the sex. This kind of relationship is like an opportunistic infection in a person with a weakened immune system. If there wasn't a problem in the first place, the affair wouldn't have happened.

One of the hardest things to do, when you're the cheated-on spouse, is to move beyond the pain of this betrayal to begin to fix the problem. (I am not saying you need to blindly forgive! Don't do this! It doesn't make the problem go away.) What has to happen is understanding--true understanding--of the issues in the relationship and the feelings you both struggled with before the infidelity. If you're the wronged spouse, you may swing between fury, tremendous pain and an irrational guilt. If you're the partner who had the affair, you probably switch back and forth between groveling and anger at your spouse and, even, a longing for the fantasy of the affair. This is a horrible experience for everyone.

You have to learn to talk to one another, talk about the issues that most impact the relationship. (You may not even know what these are, at first.) You have to listen. This is painful, but extremely productive. The conflicts and poor communication patterns between the two of you have to be fixed if you're going to move beyond this tremendously difficult experience and find each other again. Probably the hardest thing for the wronged spouse to face is his or her contributions to the problems in the marriage before the infidelity. The cheating is only your fault if you were the one getting naked with someone to whom you weren't married. If you cheated, that was irrefutably your choice. But healing a relationship requires you to deal with the relationship.

It can be done.

Relationships, if set on a good foundation of dealing with conflict, can heal. Like a broken bone, they can heal stronger than they were before, but its a long road. Not everyone will want to take this path. Some are too savaged by the breach of trust, some are too angry. It's a very personal decision, and one only you can make.

Because She's My Mom

One hundred and fifty million cards will be sent this Mother's Day. The celebration of maternal love and devotion ranks behind only Christmas in the number of flowers sent. We love our mothers, even if we don't always like them and we're not sure they like us.

"She's always yelling at me. She doesn't like my job. I don't make enough money for her. I should do my hair differently. She doesn't like my car!"

"She's critical and I can never do anything right. She thinks I'm a terrible mother. Half the time, she doesn't even seem to like me."

"My mother hates my husband and she's always pointing out things my kids do wrong. We're always nice to her. I don't know what to do."

"She likes my sister, Jenny, better than me. I'm always having to hear what Jenny's(names are changed) doing or how smart Jenny is. She even likes the guy Jenny is dating better than my boyfriend."

Getting along with your mother can be complicated and frustrating. Unhealthy, even, for some. But doing without her completely isn't an option for most people. Everyone wants a mother, even if the one they have doesn't seem to love them very much, she's still mother. Even adults who've been abused by their mothers as children frequently struggle with the idea of not having a relationship with them. We want contact with our mothers. We want them to love us.

After hearing a horror story of a genuinely uncaring mother, I always ask, "Why are you still interacting with her? Why is she still in your life?" Almost universally, people shrug and say the same words. "She's my mother." This is also the response to nagging mothers, critical mothers and mothers who are generally toxic. It's almost as if giving birth, or raising a child, gives the mother figure a free pass. Whatever she does, she's still your mother, so it doesn't matter. Even if you hate your mother, you still tolerate her in your life.

Like the feedback score on Ebay generally keeps sellers honest, we can usually rely on consequences to keep ourselves, and others, basically in line. This doesn't seem to apply to the mother role, though. No matter what she does…she's still your mom.

Some people long for the "mother" role. For some, this is true even when they have no way to support themselves, much less take care of their children, but the role of "mother" is powerful. Many people seeking motherhood will say that they want "Someone to love. Someone to love me." This isn't necessarily reflective of their ability to put that love into action. They're not always able to act loving or to care for a child the way every child deserves, but they long, ache, to be loved the way mothers are loved.

We want to love our mothers and we want them to love us.

Think of the cliché "Only a mother could love…" and you'll get a picture of what we want to experience from the women who give birth to us. Even if you're ugly(or think you are), too heavy, not successful and, generally, feel unlovable, you want to believe your mother will love you, no matter what. Mother's Day celebrations tend to reflect our desire for this unconditional love. Love no matter what we do. No matter who we are. We want to receive it and we feel a compelling desire to give it to our moms, but parents(both mothers and fathers) need to realize that how we parent will have lasting consequences on our children.

Love may be unconditional, but relationships(barring the "she's my mother" sentiment) are conditional. We need consequences. We need to know that if we behave badly, we'll run the risk of losing relationships. This is the only way most of us learn. It's what helps us to see our best choices. The way we behave matters. It counts.

So, love your mother. Be a loving parent, but don't forget that love helps us grow stronger. It doesn't ignore our flaws or act like we didn't do the stupid things we did. Love holds us accountable because we need that. Loving parents are precious, and they don't excuse us. Let's love them the same way.

How He Loves

Liz's boyfriend doesn't do anything for Valentine's Day except buy her a lame card from the grocery store and suggest they order pizza instead of her cooking. She cries every February. He's not that good at birthdays, either, always wanting her to tell him exactly what to get her. Whenever she dresses up, all he says is that she looks 'nice.' Maybe he just doesn't love her.

Or maybe he loves her a lot, but his love comes packaged differently. People tend to have their own personal styles for showing love. They can also want demonstrations of love that differ from the norm, but not everyone understands this. Not knowing how loved ones experience or expresse love is the often the root of misunderstandings in couples. Valentine's Day is one of the biggest times of the year for these couple conflicts. Some men trot down to the florist every year for the dozen red roses to be delivered at her work place. There are women who crowd Victoria's Secret for peek-a-boo lingerie their men couldn't care less about. Forget the package. Some men really just care about what's inside; men who toss aside the lingerie, hardly noticing these wisps in the heat of the moment. Believe it or not, there are women are disappointed as they lug home the same red roses every year from work. What makes a person feel loved isn't a one-size-fits-all deal.

If you're a traditionalist, you may not understand how anyone could not care about red roses and lingerie. You may, however, find the standard expressions of love all that moving. When it comes to showing or feeling loved, you may march to a different drummer. Not everyone shows love the same way. And what makes a person feel loved is very unique to the individual. You need to know what works for your loved one. You need to ask.

Just for grins, the next time the two of you are having a lovely dinner or taking a walk or are basking in post-coital afterglow, ask this question, "Tell me a time when you felt most loved by me." Now, your partner might cast you a wary look and ask what you mean, suspecting one of those relationship traps. You need to stress that you're really wanting to know. Ask him or her to tell you actual moments.

"Tell me a time when you felt most loved by me" can yield some really interesting responses. Your partner may have to ponder on this, so don't push for an immediate answer. But if he says he feels loved when you're nice to his mother(I've heard this one) or when you surprise him at work for lunch, listen. Different people really do have different triggers that say I Love You. Getting this kind of info helps you better target your expressions of love.

One day, Liz looked up at the visor in her car and realized Sam loved her.

The home they'd recently purchased had only one garage door opener. For some reason, she'd never noticed that her car was always the one parked in the garage. On that day, however, she got it. Sam had taken the garage door opener for access to the garage that day, so it hadn't been in her car. She was headed home late from work that same night, as usual, and there was the garage door opener...in her car. The only way it could have gotten there was for Sam to have gone to her work and placed the opener back in her car so she could drive safely into the garage that night.

Sam loved her--in a very active, caring, concerned way. He'd gone out of his way to return the garage door opener to her car. His love came in the form of actions more than flowery words.

You probably have your own style of showing love. We tend to do what makes us feel loved rather than speaking to our loved one in our loved one's particular language. No one's saying that you can't cook for her, if cooking feels special to you. She's got to eat. But it's important to convey to your loved one that you care what she wants. If you want her in the relationship with you, you have to factor her way of seeing things into your life. Get her roses every now and then, but also take her kayaking if that rings her bell.

And, yes, it's good if your style of feeling love gets considered in by your loved one, too. This goes both ways. After all, we want you both to feel loved.