Between Us Girls

How to Keep Your Cool When the Heat is On

Whether you're a chronic worrier or steady as a rock, chances are that you have experienced anxiety at one time or another. I'm not talking about panic attacks or anxiety disorders, just the run-of-the-mill anxiety we experience when we are about to face someone or something that sets those butterflies a-fluttering.

Think blind date, job interview, marriage proposal, confronting your nosy neighbor...any situation that might make you tense and fearful. You're worried about the impression you'll make, you fear you might embarrass yourself, you're afraid that you'll come across as unprepared or that you will get a negative reaction.

The anticipation of potentially stressful events can be worse than the event itself. So when the heat is on, how do you keep your cool? Next time you are worried about an upcoming event, try some of these ideas and see how they work:

Do Your Homework

Preparation is key. If you are worried that things will go wrong or that you won't be ready for whatever is thrown at you, take a hint from the scouts and be prepared. Gather whatever information or tools that you think you might need and have them at the ready.

7 Tips for Keeping Things in Perspective

We are all too familiar with stress and what it can do to our health and well-being. Each and every day new problems crop up that create the opportunity for worry and anxiety to stop us in our tracks. But every problem that we encounter doesn't carry the same weight. Difficulties, like people, come in all shapes and sizes and keeping our perspective is important if we want to avoid being sent into a tail-spin numerous times a day.

So how do we do this? How do we keep things in perspective so that we aren't overcome with anxiety every time an obstacle shows up in our lives.

There are many ways to maintain perspective – to see our problems for what they really are and to not let them balloon to larger-than-life proportions. It all comes down to stopping, breathing, and taking the time to ask ourselves some important questions:

The Wisdom of Illness

      Everything that happens to us in life has value.  Each experience, good or bad, offers us a learning opportunity. 

     Sometimes, when something wonderful happens, we learn that life is fun or that hard work really does pay off.  But when something bad happens?  Well, the lesson might not be so readily apparent but it's there...that pearl of wisdom exists.

     Take the stomach virus I just recently survived for example.  Please...take it...no, no really...I'm done with it...it's all yours.  Seriously though, take my recent bout with this virus as an example.

    On the surface, there seems to be nothing good that can come of so much pain and unpleasantness.  But delve a little deeper and you find that this type of illness - the drop whatever you're doing...you're coming with me...you will do nothing but what I say for the next day or two type of illness - has a very important lesson to convey.

     Being totally debilitated gives one time to think.  In between bathroom runs and prayers for death, I found myself becoming quite philosophical.  I realized, (Read more...)

Alleviating Mom's Fears About Boy/Girl Relationships?

     Those of us who are moms worry, a lot.  It's part of the job description.  We do our best to raise our kids and to teach them right, but we still worry.  How do we know what they're doing when we're not around?  How do they treat other people?  In particular, we worry about what will happen in adolescence. Will our boys act like gentlemen or like animals?  And how do we protect our girls? Boy/girl relationships can put teens, and their parents, through their paces. But an interesting recent study suggests that, at least when it comes to the modern boy's perspective on girls, we may have less to worry about than we thought.

     The State University of New York studied 10th grade boys in an effort to learn how well they were really behaving within the context of boy/girl relationships.  It turns out that most of the boys said they chose whom to date based on how much they liked the person rather than an urge to have sex.  And when they did decide to have sex, it was most often because they were in love with their partner, not because everyone was doing it or because they were in a hurry to lose their virginity.  (Read the full, original article here.)

     Written from a fairly liberal, feminist perspective, the original article claims that feminists should be given credit for this improvement in boys attitudes.  After all, the author claims, by becoming more engaged in activities outside the home, feminist women have encouraged fathers to become more active in the home and with their children.  Here's a quote from the article:

"It's not feminists who argue that boys are mindless animals only interested in sex; no, that argument comes from your anti-feminist social conservatives, who manage to inject it into abstinence-only sex education:

One curriculum teaches that men are sexually aggressive and lack deep emotions. In a chart of the top five women’s and men’s basic needs, the curriculum lists “sexual fulfillment” and “physical attractiveness” as two of the top five “needs” in the men’s section. “Affection,” “Conversation,” “Honesty and Openness,” and “Family Commitment” are listed only as women’s needs."

     Do you agree?  Has our modeling of more balanced and egalitarian male/female relationships payed off?  Can we put our worries about how our boys are treating our girls on the back -burner?  Perhaps.  Or were most boys acting like gentlemen all along and we just didn't know it because we had all bought into the "teen-aged boy as a sexual predator" stereotype instead of finding out how boys really felt and behaved in the world?  Are the author's interpretations of this recent study accurate?  Or do you think that we still have plenty to be worried about?  Check out the full article and let us know what you think.

Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing

     Everybody worries, some of us more than others.  I've been a worrier all of my life.  In fact, I come from a long line of worriers.  It's quite normal to worry really and it can even serve a purpose.  Concern about the consequences of our actions or future events can motivate us to act responsibly and to plan.  There's nothing wrong with that, is there?  Nope, there isn't...unless you take it too far.

     For some of us, worry becomes an obsession.  We practice it with such skill and frequency that we elevate it to an art form.  Spending so much of our time and energy on worry unfortunately doesn't allow time for much else.  This type of chronic, obsessive worry is often referred to as rumination; dwelling and mulling over past errors and fretting over the possibility of more to come.  Rumination can frazzle our nerves, test the patience of our loved ones and make us, and everyone around us, miserable.

     In Martin Seligman's book, "Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life," he describes how rumination occurs when we dwell on, mull over and relive negative events.  In essence, we are worrying endlessly about things we can do nothing to change.  In fact, claims Seligman, women have a much greater tendency toward rumination than do men.  Men tend to act (kick the dog, punch a hole in the wall or shoot some hoops to distract themselves) while women tend to think (and brood and obsess and question why).  A woman's tendency to ruminate also adds to the likelihood that she will develop depression.  Women are, in fact, twice as likely to suffer from depression as are men.

     What makes a person become a ruminator?  There are probably a myriad of causes including the behavior modeled by our parents, the number and frequency of failures we've experienced and others.  There is some research being done at Yale University that suggests that it may even be an inherited tendency.  When I look at my own family tree, I would be inclined to agree.  So, to put it simply, we don't know exactly what causes some of us to ruminate, but we know that it is bad for us.  So can we change this?  And if so, how do we go about it?  I'm glad that you asked.

     Changing this type of behavior is never easy, but there are things that you can do.  The first step is to recognize that you have the tendency to ruminate and to decide to do something about it.  That accomplished, you need to do a little spying on yourself and actually catch yourself in the act.  In "The Power of Optimism," Alan McGinnis suggest catching yourself thinking negative thoughts and taking a moment to evaluate them.  Are they productive?  Are your perceptions realistic or are you exaggerating?  What evidence is there to back up your negative thoughts?  For example, does your recent failure to please your boss with progress on a particular project mean that you have screwed up big time, that you always screw up, that you'll never be able to fix this, that you are a complete and utter failure?  A little critical analysis will usually lay waste to these types of catastrophic conclusions.

     But these thoughts have a way of intruding anyway.  To really get rid of them you have to distract yourself and replace these thoughts with more positive ones or with some engaging activity.  You might want to put off thinking about the negative stuff running through your mind until you get home, or write it down in a notebook so you can dwell on it later.  Then you'll need to make use of a prepared mental list of distracting activities or positive thoughts that you can whip out in an emergency.  Take time to find an inspirational quote that you can recite to yourself or a phrase such as "I'm not perfect and I don't have to be" or "This too shall pass" or whatever floats your boat.  You can sing an uplifting or favorite song to yourself or suddenly find the button on your shirt so fascinating that you are distracted by examining it in detail.  Sounds ridiculous but these things can work and sometimes make you laugh at yourself in the process.

    Loretta LaRoche wrote a wonderful little book called "Relax - You May Only Have a Few Minutes Left: Using the Power of Humor to Overcome Stress in Your Life and Work."  In it, she says that laughter reduces blood pressure, relieves muscle tension, encourages deeper breathing and boosts your immune system.  She also has some great ideas for injecting humor into not-so-amusing situations.  So the next time your driving yourself crazy with worry, try distracting yourself with something goofy.  Even force yourself to make a silly face or put a huge ridiculous grin on your face (although you shouldn't do this in the middle of the discussion with your boss).  See how it goes; you just might break that negative thought pattern and give yourself a laugh in the process.  Let me know if it works or if you have any other worry-busting ideas