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Stress affects us in many ways. One common way is it puts us into a pattern of being a victim, persecutor or rescuer. In three recent posts, I discussed how this Drama Triangle works and how to not be at the effect of it.

Learn how to see it happening with yourself and others. Learn how to remove yourself from the drama and how to heal it so you are not vulnerable to it in the future. We all fall prey to the drama; I know I do. Awareness and some simple tools can make a huge difference.

Deepak Chopra, MD wrote a recent article about new research showing our faith in antidepressants is ill founded. He writes about a study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine that states, “More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. “

These researchers found molecular evidence that counters the prevalent dogma that stress is generally a major cause of depression. Specifically, their research more than questioned two beliefs/lies:

Lie #1: Depression is directly linked to stress.
Stress is not causing depression because the genes related to stress are “totally different from those related to depression.”

Lie #2: Depressed people have chemical imbalances in their brains.

Depression doesn’t come from the imbalance of Neurotransmitters, but from the formation and functioning of neurons. These nerve cells adapt to express depression, meaning a depress person develops more sad and hopeless neural pathways than the happier ones we all would want.

How were sold the lies

In the study published in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers analyzed data from a national survey of antidepressant conducted in 1996 and again in 2005.From – Washington Post article:

Pharmaceutical companies nearly quadrupled their spending on consumer advertising for antidepressants during the period of the study. In 1999, drug-makers spent $32 million on direct-to-consumer advertising; by 2005, this figure had jumped to $122 million. Drug ads lead to increased prescriptions and often overstate the benefits of a drug while downplaying the risks.

Recently we celebrated the 20^th year anniversary of Prozac. For 20 years, we were lead to believe that depression was solely a “chemical imbalance.” It was as if our bodies was a high school chemistry lab experiment – if we add a little more of a certain chemical we would get a different reaction. Now we are finding out that may be the most powerful effect Prozac and other similar anti-depressants had was a placebo effect.

More research and clinical evidence is showing life style changes have a huge effect on preventing and healing depression. Being depress can be a normal part of life. Staying depressed is not normal. We don’t need to treat depression with drugs, we need to address what causes ongoing depression.

Mindfulness stress reduction has proven to be a powerful prevention and healing for depression, as well as nutrition, mild exercise, bodywork, acupuncture and other holistic techniques. It is about time we all start using common sense and start questioning the marketing hype of drug companies. I have seen people completely cure themselves of depression and related symptoms with never taking a drug. Let’s do research on that!

Let us know what you feel. What are your experiences with these drugs?

I mentioned before that the more you do in one moment, the less you get done. The bad news for multitaskers is that research is supporting our position. Lifehacker did a post on how high multitaskers perform poorly on memory test.

I know I often have the illusion I get more done, but at the end of the day I really wonder. What is your experience with multitasking?

If you stress out about being deathly ill, you may want to read this post. Most aches and pains are just that – aches and pains. Yet, there are times when those pains are telling us something. Us macho men are the worst at avoiding our bodies signals.

This blog post gives you 7 pains you should not avoid – so if your pain is another pain – chill out.

Chest pain could be pneumonia or a heart attack. But be aware that heart conditions typically appear as discomfort, not pain. “Don’t wait for pain,” says cardiologist Jerome Cohen, MD. “Heart patients talk about pressure. They’ll clench their fist and put it over their chest or say it’s like an elephant sitting on their chest.”

The stance we take in regard to stress literally manifests in our posture. A
defeated approach to life produces a collapsed body. The body that experiences
life as one crisis after another has a body structure that is tense.

The repetition of subtle behavior patterns produces an entire body/mind
construct that self-perpetuates that stance. We all know this when we see
someone walk into our office with a particularly unique posture. Our awareness
may be more unconscious, yet we somehow sense how that person will perform under
stress. It is a little unsettling to realize others experience a similar
awareness about us.

What can be done?

The self-replicating cycle of stress-posture-stress is reversible
through relaxation. As we become more aware of our posture, we can begin to
choose a different response to stress. If, for example, you notice that your
back is tense and your shoulders are held up, you can begin relax these areas.

I can tell you from years of working with clients that when you seriously
begin to relax an old pattern, your first experience is how often we go back to
it. Until we turn our attention to our unconscious patterns, they are just that
– unconscious. The act of becoming aware allows us to experience how unaware we
were and how tense we were. This is the challenging part – hanging in beyond the
initial discomfort and frustration.

After a week or two of serious effort, you will begin to discover that your
back and shoulders are not as tense. As you continue to practice, you will
realize that even under stress your body remains relaxed. Then you may notice
others respond to you and your relaxed body differently.

Background

What we were told is good posture is actually a tense posture. Shoulders
back, chest out, stomach in … all of these are behaviors of stress. Standing at
attention is not a neutral, relaxed posture. When we find our relaxed posture,
we are more present and better prepared. Any good martial artist will tell you a
tense person is a weak person.

Understanding the importance of the interconnection between our bodies and
our minds continues to grow. Psychology is now placing significant importance on
the effects of stress on our bodies and our minds. The work with post-traumatic
stress. by such people as Pat Ogden,
Ph.D.. demonstrates how the tension in our bodies takes us out of
enjoying life.

Fun suggestions

Watch others’ body posture to learn more about yours. It can be enlightening
to watch people walk by and from their posture discern their life story.

• Increase your awareness of how you hold just one part of your body tense.
Shoulders are something most of us hold up and easy to catch. I suggest you
first do this when not under stress.

• Try on other postures and feel their effects. This will assist you in
understanding others. You can step up and follow one of the people you see walk
by – I suggest at a distance.

• Understand posture from an architect’s prospective – how are you holding
your body up to fight gravity? Discover where you can let go (not hold) to be
straighter.

• Notice your posture while sitting, driving, talking on the phone, or
working on the computer

• Notice what posture allows you to breathe the fullest and easiest.

• Have someone videotape you while you are unaware of “performing”

• Be compassionate to yourself – you can change what you see. There are many
body therapies that specifically work with posture and structure that can
greatly expedite your transformation. Some of these are Rolfing, Feldenkrais, cranial sacral
therapy and some forms of massage.

It is great to see more information coming out concerning multi-tasking. The NYT article delineates the negative consequences of multi-tasking very well.

It is true the brain can be over taxed with too many simultaneous tasks. However, we also need to realize that the subtle and often constant stress of multi-tasking impacts our entire body. To hold our focus and ignore distractions takes extra effort which translates into stress. Holding is tension.

This stress becomes cumulative. We need to realize the longitudinal effects. Each event may be a grain of sand. 100,000 of those events start to carry some weight.