How to Talk to Anyone (Junior Talker #2), DeYtH Banger, Clive Cooper [i read book TXT] 📗

stress affects your body. Where do you feel tension in your body? Finding ways to reduce that tension will also help your mental stress. A warm bath, a massage, or stretching can help you release built-up tension.

 

Visualize

 

Think of a place where you feel safe, comfortable, and relaxed. Picture it as clearly as you can, including imagining what you would feel, hear, and maybe even smell if you were in that relaxing place. Let yourself enjoy being there for a few minutes. 

 

 "I am not my slip-ups, mistakes, or shortcomings. Disappointment in myself is a place to visit, but not to live. "-Smokefree Laura

 

 

Exercise

 

Being active sends out natural chemicals that help your mood and reduce your stress. Sometimes a short walk is all it takes to relieve stress. And walking is free! 

 

Talk

 

You don’t have to deal with stress alone. Share your feelings with friends, family, and other important people in your life who are able to support you in staying smokefree.

 

Focus

 

Life can sometimes be overwhelming. Try not to get caught up in worrying about what’s next. Instead, try to focus on what is happening now, not what you might have to deal with in the future. 

 

Care

 

Make an extra effort to take care of yourself. This includes basic things like eating a balanced diet, drinking lots of water, and getting enough sleep. 

 

Try to cut down on caffeinated drinks. They can make you feel anxious and increase nicotine withdrawal symptoms.

 

 

 

 Do Good

 

Doing something nice for others can make your day a little better too. Being caring toward others helps you reduce your own stress. 

 

Decaffeinate

 

Caffeine can help you stay awake, but it also can make you feel tense, jittery, and stressed. Cutting back or even doing away with caffeine can help reduce your feelings of stress. Switching to herbal tea or even hot water with lemon gives you a chance to enjoy a hot beverage but without the caffeine. 

 

Accept

 

Life is full of twists and turns. You’ll always have some stress in your life. It helps to understand that there will be good days and bad days.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8.1. - Fuck You (Part 2)

 Note: Women... search for somebody to validate... them... for emotional support... and helping them to achieve high status.

 

 

Posttraumatic Growth: Shifting from Dysfunction to Evolution

 

March 20th marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Although only a fraction of American service members remain deployed to Iraq today, the residual effects of combat permeate many of our communities.

 

As a nation we opened our communal arms to the men and women as they returned home from Iraq.  Main Street parades were held and memorials were constructed. However, a darker side of this time began to show and still remains. It's the presence of the psychological effects of war, the most notable being post-traumatic stress disorder - simply referred to as PTSD.

 

PTSD has a long and sordid history with war.  After witnessing countless soldiers suffering from fatigue, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath, Civil War doctor Jacob Mendes Da Costa labeled soldiers as suffering from "Soldier's Heart".  What was believed to a be a cardiovascular condition was in fact anxiety. 

 

The term "battle fatigue" was the dominate label during World War II. And although the medical community's understanding of the psychological consequences of combat was greater at this time, many military leaders incorrectly and callously labeled struggling soldiers as cowards.

 

It wasn't until the Vietnam War that researchers truly began to classify and categorize the many shared psychological symptoms of combat veterans. Consequently, the term PTSD made its way into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the publication often referred to as the "psychiatric bible."

 

Today, 15 years into the longest period of war in our nation's history, we're still trying to understand PTSD. The prevalence rate in post-9/11 veterans hasn't changed from that of their predecessors from earlier conflicts, which has been reported to be as high as 30% in certain groups.

 

Our treatments haven't changed that much either. Talk-therapy and medications are the dominate interventions for our combat veterans. And unfortunately it's estimated that only about half of veterans who need treatment actually seek it. And of those who initiate treatment only a modest portion actually finish and achieve remission.

 

One hundred and fifty years after Soldier's Heart, it's time to rethink our approach to PTSD. Let's get away from the medical model that reduces our combat veterans to a set of symptoms and start harnessing their inner strength and turn their struggles into new possibilities, purpose, and meaning.

 

This novel concept is called "posttraumatic growth," or "PTG". PTG supports the notion that our most difficult experiences can make us stronger. Instead of just thinking in terms of recovery from traumatic events, we should also help combat veterans use their experiences to grow and become stronger, healthier, and better versions of themselves.

 

Many experts in psychology and psychiatry believe that PTG can be cultivated in veterans. In fact, over 30 years of research by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, the fathers of modern-day PTG, establishes a strong foundation for this belief.

We don't believe that facilitating PTG in veterans should replace current treatments.  Talk-therapy and medication are effective for a subset of combat veterans struggling with PTSD. We do believe that leveraging veterans' inner strength in order to help them explore new possibilities for psychological, relational, and spiritual growth is imperative.  In other words, we must help them focus on what they have gained from their combat experiences versus what they have lost.

 

Bret A. Moore, Psy.D., is a former Army psychologist, veteran of the Iraq War and writer. He's the co-author of "The Posttraumatic Growth Workbook.”  

 

Ken Falke is a retired Navy Master Chief. He's chairman and founder of both the Boulder Crest Retreat for Military and Veteran Wellness and the EOD Warrior Foundation and co-author of "Struggle Well".

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8.2. - Fuck You (Part 3)

 What Is the Psychological Toll of Stalking?

 

 

 

 

“What are you going to do? Are you going to live in the dark, locked in here? Afraid to look out, answer the door, leave? Yes, he's out there, and he's clearly not going to leave you alone until one of three things happens: he hurts you and gets arrested, or he makes a mistake and gets arrested, or you stop him.”   —Rachel Caine

What constitutes stalking behavior(link is external)? While the #metoo movement has brought sexual harassment and assault against women into the spotlight as never before,  the question of how to deal with complaints of stalking continues to defy easy solutions. 

 

Source: Tony Bowler/Shutterstock

 

Part of the problem stems from the lack of agreement over what constitutes stalking behavior in the first place. Despite efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recognize stalking as a form of partnership violence, laws pertaining to stalking behavior vary widely from place to place and getting police protection is often impossible for many potential victims until too late.

Along with more blatant stalking behaviors such as threats of physical or sexual violence,  researchers have also identified what they term unwanted pursuit behaviors (UPB) which, while creating a feeling of menace in their targets, are rarely illegal in themselves. These behaviors can include:

 

questioning friends and family of the person targeted to gather information on whereabouts, new relationships, or friendships. appearing in places where the targeted person might be. waiting outside the target's workplace/school/home. sending or leaving unwanted gifts or letters.

 

 

Along with these in-person unwanted behaviors, stalking victims are also reporting having to deal with a sharp rise in cyberstalking(link is external) activities including:

 

threatening to release information and/or images if the target doesn't do what the stalker wants. sending an excessive number of emails/Facebook posts or repeatedly trying to make contact using online chat. sending threatening texts/posts/tweets, etc.

 

Whatever form the stalking takes, the consequences can be severe for the person targeted.  Researchers have consistently shown that being stalked can often produce of posttraumatic stress, whether that stalking involves in-person stalking or the online equivalent.   Even when dealing with cyberstalking alone, studies show that victims are far more likely  to report depressive and somatic symptoms, sleep problems, and generally lower well-being than non-victims. Victims are also far more likely to take defensive actions such as taking time off from work or school, changing jobs or schools, and even moving away from family and friends to avoid contact with their stalker. 

 

A new research study published in the journal Psychology of Violence(link is external)provides an in-depth look at different kinds of unwanted pursuit behavior and how they can relate to relationship violence and posttraumatic stress. The researchers designed their study to refine existing measures of cyber- and in-person victimization as well as to gauge how this victimization can predict interpersonal violence and psychological problems afterward.  For the purpose of this research, Christina Dardis of Towson University and a team of co-researchers recruited 330 women, aged 18 or over, from a pool of psychology undergraduates at a mid-Western university. All of the participants reported having been in one or more relationships which ended in the previous three years.  

 

To conceal the real purpose of the study, all participants completed an online survey titled, "What happens when your relationship ends?" Along with collecting demographic data, the survey contained items from inventories measuring:

 

"In-person" unwanted pursuit. Based on a 26-item measure used in previous studies, participants were asked how often they experienced unsolicited contact behaviors ranging from relatively minor actions such as "Wait outside of your home, work or school” to more serious examples including, "Cause harm to someone close to you or to your pet” Cyber unwanted pursuit. Based on an 18-item research instrument measuring cyber-harassment, participants were items such as “[Did he/she] Use web cam to monitor your activities" as well as items relating to threatening calls, emails, or posts, checking on ex-partners by using their password, excessive phone calls/emails, etc. Follow-up in-person and cyber unwanted pursuit items. When participants endorsed items relating to experiencing unwanted pursuit, they were then asked to complete items describing the extent to which this harassment made them feel frightened or annoyed. History of physical, sexual, or psychological victimization. Participants completed items describing different forms of abuse with higher total scores reflecting degree of victimization. Posttraumatic abuse symptoms. Items relating to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder as measured by the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).  This included symptoms such as flashbacks, avoidance behaviors, and hypervigilance.  For the purpose of the research, items focused on symptoms experienced in the past seven days. Depression symptoms. Using the 20-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, participants reported on any depressive symptoms occurring in the past week.  Total score was used to measure level of overall depression.

 

 As expected, results showed considerable overlap between reports of unwanted in-person pursuit behavior and unwanted cyber-pursuit.  Among the 59 percent of women who reported two or more examples of unwanted behaviors,