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Need to run away to gather your thoughts, calm your jangled nerves, and get back to your center?  Maybe it’s time to escape to the beach! 

 No, you don’t have to take the nearest flight to Miami.  No need to do all that traveling or wait that long.  You can do it right now. 

After suffering too long with a hand infection, I finally reported to an emergency room last week, and was immediately admitted to the hospital.  I was quickly reminded of something  that I tell my clients: being in a hospital is like entering into another culture, with different clothing, rules, language.  You ae the patient and you are the outsider.  It has been a long time since I felt this helpless.  You wait, you worry, you put up with a lot of discomfort.  Things happen on someone else’s schedule.  You have minimal choice about what you eat, if any.&

It always really annoys me when I hear the phrase, "don’t sweat the small stuff."  First, I don’t like cliches.  Second, and more important, it usually being said by someone who doesn’t understand what the person they are saying it to is going through.  Caregivers, for example.  Caregiving is all about sweating the small stuff, being there to manage the little details that contribute to quality of life for the person you are taking care of.  Making sure a favorite snack is available.  Giving them a call in the middle of the day.  Double and tripl

These days, daily life gives us any number of reasons for our frustration button to be pushed hard.  You name it, the weather, the economy, our jobs, family… and facing the day-to-day challenges of a medical condition. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about how random our lives are.  I am not trying to be negative or fatalistic here, but in my own life and the lives of people around me I am constantly being reminded of how so much of life — no, most of life — is completely out of our control.  The whole course of our lives, what we thought we would have or be or do, can suddenly change, in the time it takes to read an email message, make a phone call, or meet with a physician.  When we give up the illusion that we are in complete control of our lives, and instead decide to live life on l

While you are taking care of your mind and body, are you also paying attention to your spiritual self-care? 

One of the issues that I often talk about with patients is support. Some tell me that their family members are constantly attempting to do things for them, to the point that they are made to feel that they can’t do anything for themselves. Others tell me that their families aren’t helpful at all.

Clients with chronic pain often tell me that doctors are skeptical of their requests for pain medication, and ask them questions that imply that they are concerned that they may have an opiate addiction, and even skeptical that they are being “scammed.” Unfortunately, there are a number of doctor shoppers out there without a valid medical need who are manipulating physicians into prescribing opiates. As a result, individuals with a valid need may not get the help they need.

Sometimes it can feel like life throws a lot of curveballs at once, and they come at us so fast that we feel like we don’t know which one to try and catch, or if we should even bother to try. 

Here’s a way to look at what’s going on in your life in a way that might help to reduce your anxiety.

Support is a critical element in coping with a medical diagnosis.  It’s important to have someone — or a few someones — who can listen objectively, and who won’t pass judgment or try to "fix’ the newly-diagnosed patient.  Unfortunately, friends and family members are often not so helpful in offering emotional support, mainly because they are dealing with their own emotional reactions to the diagnosis, and their own helplessness.  Objective friends, members of the clergy, a support group, or a mental health professional may be bette