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Your dictionary definition of:

dis·turb   

tr.v. dis·turbed, dis·turb·ing, dis·turbs

  1. To break up or destroy the tranquillity or settled state of: Subterranean fires and deep unrest disturb the whole area (Rachel Carson).
  2. To trouble emotionally or mentally; upset.
  3.  
    1. To interfere with; interrupt: noise that disturbed my sleep.
    2. To intrude on; inconvenience: Constant calls disturbed her work.
  4. To put out of order; disarrange.

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experiencing a natural disaster is disturbing

stories from Hurricanes Katrina & Rita  

 

Disturbing

No One Was Ready for This

Brandy Duncan has been an RN for a little over a year, after 8 years as a paramedic. She works in pediatrics. My perspective is that lots of hospitals weren't prepared for this kind of tragedy.

I work at a pediatric hospital in Baton Rouge, LA. The facility I work for has made huge changes to help out hospitals involved in this terrible situation.

We received many small children from New Orleans Children’s Hospital on Wednesday, plus we received a few small children who were rescued from roof tops.

I'm really frustrated that it took so long for us to receive these children when the conditions were so bad at those hospitals in New Orleans. It's really sad that the hospitals weren't evacuated before the hurricane even reached land.

The government knew it was going to be bad when it finally hit. I cared for a young lady who was rescued from her roof top with her 5 children. She described how she was in her attic with her children & had to swim back under the roof to get her children out. By the time she made it out her 2 month old was pulseless & not breathing.

One of her older children did CPR & got the baby back. Luckily they were rescued shortly after this incident & brought to a shelter in New Orleans. The medics at the shelter told her she & the baby needed to go to a hospital but her other 4 children weren't allowed to go. So she wasn't going to leave, they then told her they'd come back & get the others.

They never did… I stayed on the phone at work on Wednesday with American Red Cross & Coast Guard for hours trying to find her little ones & no one could help me. It was a very sad situation. She finally located her children late Friday afternoon in Dallas, Texas!

She's in Baton Rouge with no money & only the clothes on her back. This is just one of the sad stories that we heard. At least her children are alive I guess, while lots of people lost their loved ones.

I was involved in the triage process when the children arrived on Wednesday night & it made me very proud to see all the nurses working together to get these children the healthcare they needed. We received many sick babies & they arrived in personal vehicles & not ambulances.

The parents didn’t want to wait any longer for transportation. One little boy really touched my heart. When we were sending him up to his room he wanted to give every nurse a big hug, just so sweet. He was also so excited to see a glass of ice - remember there had been no water or electricity since Monday - really sad.

After working 16 hours on Wednesday, on the way home I just cried, so many people suffering because there just isn’t enough help. I then get home, turn the TV on & see nurses & doctors made to sit on the side of the road waiting leave on a bus & not knowing when they will be out of there. (The health professionals weren't allowed to leave with the patients that were evacuated.)

I find this very disturbing. I've seen & heard a lot these last few days & the people we treated have seen a whole lot more than me. Out of all the parents & children we received, they were all very nice & just grateful to be somewhere that was a little safer. No one was ready or could have been ready for this type of devastation. I do hope that I never have to see another disaster like this one again

why we feel disturbed....

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Terrorist Attacks & Children

A National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet; By Jessica Hamblen, Ph.D.

When terrorist attacks occur in this country, our children may witness these events by watching TV, hearing people talk at school, hearing people in public places discuss the events, etc.

For instance, the World Trade Center attacks & the Oklahoma City bombing received widespread attention & media coverage that many children were exposed to.

But how should we speak to our children about these events when they occur?

Should we shield them from such horrors or talk openly about them?

How can we help children make sense of a tragedy that we ourselves can't understand?

How will children react?

How can we help our children recover?  

Fortunately, there've been few terrorist attacks in the US. One consequence of this is that there's little empirical research to help us answer the above questions. Information from related events can be used to provide answers.

How do children respond to trauma?

There's a wide range of emotional & physiological reactions that children may display following disaster. From previous research, we know that more severe reactions are associated with:

  • a higher degree of exposure (i.e., life threat, physical injury, witnessing death or injury, hearing screams, etc.)

  • closer proximity to the disaster

  • a history of prior traumas

  • being female

  • poor parental response 

  • parental psychopathology

Findings from a study following the Oklahoma City bombing indicate that more severe reactions were related to:

  • being female

  • knowing someone injured or killed

  • bomb-related television viewing 

  • media exposure (Pfefferbaum et al., 1999; Pfefferbaum et al., 2000)  

Talk to Kids About Disturbing Events

Senseless acts of violence involving children have become all too commonplace in our society:

  • school shootings

  • child abductions

  • accidental drownings 

  • kids killing kids

And with modern technology being what it is today, parents can't realistically protect their youngsters from these broadcasts, especially with the media's endless reporting of these events.

Violent events, such as the 1999 shooting at the Jewish Community Center in California, is sure to prompt questions from young children who are exposed to the vivid accounts of a tragedy.

After seeing or hearing about a traumatic episode involving other kids, children usually have 2 feelings:

They fear that the event will happen again & they become vulnerable that a similar event will happen to them.

How to help children cope with what they've seen or heard is a big challenge for parents. Some adults want to keep their youngster's childhood a period of carefree innocence & avoid discussing these issues.

But not talking to children about the violence they hear about or actually see first-hand, denies them the opportunity to figure out what it means, especially in a society where extreme violence has become the norm.

Yet, there's hope. Even in these violent times, there are ways parents can help their children cope with what they see or hear in the media. In Remote Control Childhood? Combating the Hazards of Media Culture, author Diane E. Levin provides useful strategies for parents.

  • Allow children to express their feelings about what has happened. Parents should share their feelings with their kids.

  • Trusted adults play a vital role in helping children sort out what they've heard & need to figure out. Let children know it's OK to raise these kinds of issues with you.

  • Reassure youngsters they're safe & they're loved. Children often relate scary things to themselves & worry about their own safety. This kind of reassurance is what a child needs most to hear.

  • To a child younger than 8, try saying something like: "I know you feel a little scared by what you saw on the news, but you'll be fine. This can't happen to you because I'm here to protect you & take care of you just like always."

  • An older child of 10 or 11 might be comforted by a few additional details: "Dad & I aren't the only ones who are watching over you. Adults in your community like neighbors, & the police & teachers are all looking out for your safety ."

  • Children feel better when they talk about their concerns. It lifts the burden many kids have of facing their fears all alone. When parents sense that a violent event (whether real or fictional) has upset their child, parents might say something like, "That TV program we saw seemed very scary to me. What did you think about it?" & see where the conversation leads.

  • Children respond instinctively to honesty. When parents are honest, children are more likely to respond in kind. However, first try to find out as much as you can about what your child knows & understands about the particular episode.

  • Base your response on what you find out. This means delivering the truth, but only as much truth as the child is interested in.

  • Follow the child's lead, giving small pieces of information at a time & seeing how the child responds before deciding what to say next.

  • Remember the importance of touch. A hug can reassure children that they're loved.

  • Watch the news with your child to filter stories as they see them. Get in the habit of discussing current events, both good & bad, on a daily basis. This way, when a disturbing event comes up, parents have a forum for talking about it.

  • Talk with teachers, baby-sitters, daycare providers & others who may be with children so they understand how the child has been affected.

  • Watch for signs of repetitive play in which children re-enact all or part of the disaster.

  • Reassure children that their feelings are normal in response to viewing a traumatic event.

  • Turn off the TV!

It's important for parents to talk to their child about what their youngster has seen or heard in the media. This allows parents the opportunity to lessen the negative effects of the news while providing the youngster with parental ideas & values.

While children can't be completely protected from the reporting of violent news events, parents can help make them feel safer & less vulnerable to the many problems in the world around them.

For more information about Talking with Kids about Tough issues, go to http://www.talkingwithkids.org/, the national initiative by Children Now and the Kaiser Famiily Foundation.

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Disturbing Thoughts

Question:
D
espite my best efforts, I think about my co-wife excessively. Thoughts of her come unbidden to me & disturb my mental peace. Any advice?

 

Answer:
All thoughts that disturb our mental peace are from our ‘false/ego self’ & they do their job real well… their function is to disturb us!  ;-)   The initial thought isn't in our control, it comes to us without any effort on our part. 

Our effort is in not letting that thought continue to spiral us downward, i.e., not getting ourselves engaged in it. 

The victim or ‘poor me’ aspect of self likes to feel sorry for itself. It triggers thoughts & feelings that make us look at our situation & focus on the negatives. If we allow ourselves to feed on it, this negative pattern picks up momentum & goes on & on….

Pretty soon it makes one feel that life is nothing but negative & awful.  This is also known as ‘awfulizing’.

Suggestions

1. Examine your own self…Do you harbor negative feelings toward your self, your co-wife or your situation?

This isn't for the purpose of beating yourself up, but for your own awareness, so you can work on the underlying feelings that trigger these thoughts. 

Usually these are tied to self-esteem issues.

  • Do you compare yourself to her?
  • Does she have to be ‘bad’ to make you feel good about yourself?

These are your issues that you'd need to work on.

A believer is like a mirror to another. My guess is some issues are being brought to the forefront that have been a struggle for you in other situations also.

The outward situation may be different but the underlying issues aren't new. So take a deep look at your inner self.  We're put in certain situations in life that'll help us grow & evolve in aspects of ourselves. Life is about self-growth & self-improvement.

2.  Practical ways of curbing a thought.  Replace it with a positive thought.

Not easy to do, but it works with practice. It's almost impossible to stop a thought, but it isn't impossible to re-direct it toward something positive. Try to meditate, visualize, do dhikr… see what works for you. Everyone has to find their own special way of moving to the positive.

Journaling about feelings also helps, it's very cathartic & often times it reveals significant information about our selves that maybe we haven't been aware of... giving us more food for thought & work. 

3. Remember that we choose how to relate with life’s events. Your attitude is your choice.

You choose to think, feel & act a certain way. Make choices with conscious awareness. If you want to be angry do it consciously, if you want to be peaceful, make that a conscious choice.

This helps in not feeling victimized. If you want to be miserable do it consciously. Allow yourself to be miserable all day. It's almost funny how when we allow ourselves to ‘be’ a certain way it doesn't feel as powerful or attractive.

A word of caution: just don’t judge yourself as you work thru this process of growth. Nothing makes matters worse than harsh criticism & impatience. So be gentle with yourself as you learn from yourself & move to a place of inner peace.

Regards
Uzma Mazhar

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Dealing with Disturbing Insights

 

Just the other day I revisited a book which was a big seller a few years back. You might remember it. 'Passages', by Gail Sheehy. At the age of 35 she was confronted with a horrific scene which jolted her very existence & caused her to feel the urgency of life.

She was covering a story in Northern Ireland & saw a young man shot down in front of her.

She suddenly came face to face with her own mortality. But in reality she began to live. Her inner vision had changed & she saw life in a new way.

All of us like, Gail Sheehy, are faced from time to time w/a barrage of questions about ultimate purposes, meaning & values. The urgency of our own life can suddenly grip us & we feel this deep need to search for meaning.

This can be initially a traumatic & disturbing moment.

Such moments of self-realization, of inner anguish, can often leave us feeling alone & frightened.

However, we aren't alone in these experiences although at the time we may believe we're on our own. In fact in some ways we are.

There are times when we all stand alone shuddering in the knowledge, excitement & fear of our own unique existence, being acutely conscious of our selves being confronted w/seemingly unanswerable questions surrounding us.

We can in such moments catch a glimpse of the immensity of the many unfathomable riddles & mysteries of life.

Such insights can so change & challenge us that we're driven by them into a deeper quest for meaning because our own being demands it of us.

When such challenges come, see them signals pointing you towards deeper personal growth. Your soul & mind are now restless. Let them grow.

Below are some common reactions that children & adolescents may display (Dewolfe, 2001; Pynoos & Nader, 1993).

Young Children (1-6 years)

  • Helplessness & passivity; lack of usual responsiveness

  • Generalized fear

  • Heightened arousal & confusion

  • Cognitive confusion

  • Difficulty talking about event; lack of verbalization

  • Difficulty identifying feelings

  • Nightmares & other sleep disturbances

  • Separation fears & clinging to caregivers

  • Regressive symptoms (e.g., bedwetting, loss of acquired speech & motor skills)

  • Inability to understand death as permanent

  • Anxieties about death

  • Grief related to abandonment by caregiver

  • Somatic symptoms (e.g., stomach aches, headaches)

  • Startle response to loud or unusual noises

  • "Freezing" (sudden immobility of body)

  • Fussiness, uncharacteristic crying & neediness

  • Avoidance of or alarm response to specific trauma-related reminders involving sights & physical sensations

School-aged Children (6-11 years)

  • Feelings of responsibility & guilt

  • Repetitious traumatic play & retelling

  • Feeling disturbed by reminders of the event

  • Nightmares & other sleep disturbances

  • Concerns about safety & preoccupation with danger

  • Aggressive behavior & angry outbursts

  • Fear of feelings & trauma reactions

  • Close attention to parents' anxieties

  • School avoidance

  • Worry & concern for others

  • Changes in behavior, mood & personality

  • Somatic symptoms (complaints about bodily aches & pains)

  • Obvious anxiety & fearfulness

  • Withdrawal

  • Specific trauma-related fears; general fearfulness

  • Regression (behaving like a younger child)

  • Separation anxiety

  • Loss of interest in activities

  • Confusion & inadequate understanding of traumatic events (more evident in play than in discussion)

  • Unclear understanding of death & the causes of "bad" events

  • Giving magical explanations to fill in gaps in understanding

  • Loss of ability to concentrate at school, with lowering of performance

  • "Spacey" or distractible behavior

Pre-adolescents & Adolescents (12-18 years)

  • Self-consciousness

  • Life-threatening reenactment

  • Rebellion at home or school

  • Abrupt shift in relationships

  • Depression & social withdrawal

  • Decline in school performance

  • Trauma-driven acting out, such as with sexual activity & reckless risk taking

  • Effort to distance oneself from feelings of shame, guilt & humiliation

  • Excessive activity & involvement with others, or retreat from others in order to manage inner turmoil

  • Accident proneness

  • Wish for revenge & action-oriented responses to trauma

  • Increased self-focusing & withdrawal

  • Sleep & eating disturbances, including nightmares

How should you talk to your child?

Create a safe environment. One of the most important steps you can take is to help children feel safe. If possible, children should be placed in a familiar environment with people that they feel close to.

Keep your child's routine as regular as possible. Children find comfort in having things be consistent & familiar.

Provide children with reassurance & extra emotional support. Adults need to create an environment in which children feel safe enough to:

  • ask questions
  • express feelings
  • just be by themselves

Let your children know they can ask questions. Ask your children what they've heard & how they feel about it. Reassure your child that they're safe & that you will not abandon them.

Be honest with children about what happened. Provide accurate information, but make sure it's appropriate to their developmental level.

Very young children may be protected because they aren't old enough to be aware that something bad has happened. School age children will need help understanding what has happened.

You might want to tell them that there's been a terrible accident & that many people have been hurt or killed. Adolescents will have a better idea of what has occurred. It may be appropriate to watch selected news coverage with your adolescent & then discuss it.

Tell children what the government is doing. Reassure children that the state & federal government, police, firemen & hospitals are doing everything possible.

Explain that people from all over the country & from other countries offer their services in times of need.

Be aware that children will often take on the anxiety of the adults around them. Parents have difficulty finding a balance between sharing their own feelings with their children & not placing their anxiety on their children.

For example, the September 11th attack on the US was inconceivable. Our sense of safety & freedom was shattered. Many parents felt scared & fearful of another attack.

Others were angry & revengeful. Parents must deal with their own emotional reactions before they can help children understand & label their feelings.

Parents who are frightened may want to explain that to their child, but they should also talk about their ability to cope & how family members can help each other.

Try to put the event in perspective. Although you yourself may be anxious or scared, children need to know that attacks are rare events. They also need to know that the world is generally a safe place.

What can parents do?

(Excerpted from Monahon, 1997)

Infancy to two & a half years:

  • Maintain child's routines around sleeping & eating.

  • Avoid unnecessary separations from important caretakers.

  • Provide additional soothing activities.

  • Maintain calm atmosphere in child's presence.

  • Avoid exposing child to reminders of trauma.

  • Expect child's temporary regression; don't panic.

  • Help verbal child to give simple names to big feelings; talk about event in simple terms during brief chats.

Give simple play props related to the actual trauma to a child who is trying to play out the frightening situation (e.g., a doctor's kit, a toy ambulance).

Zero-to-Three has published excellent guidelines for parents whose very young children (ages 0 to 3) might have been exposed to media or conversations about the September 11th terrorist attacks.

2 1/2 to 6 years:

  • Listen to & tolerate child's retelling of the event. 

  • Respect child's fears; give child time to cope with fears.

  • Protect child from re-exposure to frightening situations & reminders of trauma, including scary TV programs, movies, stories & physical or locational reminders of trauma.

  • Accept & help the child to name strong feelings during brief conversations (the child can't talk about these feelings or the experience for long). 

  • Expect & understand child's regression while maintaining basic household rules.

  • Expect some difficult or uncharacteristic behavior.

  • Set firm limits on hurtful or scary play & behavior.

  • If child is fearful, avoid unnecessary separations from important caretakers. 

  • Maintain household & family routines that comfort child.

  • Avoid introducing experiences that are new & challenging for child. 

  • Provide additional nighttime comforts when possible such as night-lights, stuffed animals & physical comfort after nightmares.

  • Explain to child that nightmares come from the fears a child has inside, that they aren't real & that they'll occur less frequently over time. 

  • Provide opportunities & props for trauma-related play.

  • Try to discover what triggers sudden fearfulness or regression.

  • Monitor child's coping in school & daycare by expressing concerns & communicating with teaching staff.

6 to 11 years:

  • Listen to & tolerate child's retelling of the event

  • Respect child's fears; give child time to cope with fears

  • Increase monitoring & awareness of child's play which may involve secretive reenactments of trauma with peers & siblings; set limits on scary or hurtful play.

  • Permit child to try out new ways of coping with fearfulness at bedtime: extra reading time, leaving the radio on, or listening to a tape in the middle of the night to erase the residue of fear from a nightmare.

  • Reassure the older child that feelings of fear & behaviors that feel out of control or babyish (e.g., bed wetting) are normal after a frightening experience & that he or she'll feel better with time.

11 to 18 years:

  • Encourage adolescents of all ages to talk about the traumatic event with family members

  • Provide opportunities for the young person to spend time with friends who're supportive 

  • Reassure the young person that strong feelings: guiltshame, embarrassment, or a wish for revenge - are normal following a trauma

  • Help the young person find activities that offer opportunities to experience mastery, control & self-esteem

  • Encourage pleasurable physical activities such as sports & dancing

excerpt from: Summary of the Rage-Depression Survey Results  by Leon James & Diane Nahl

Younger people report feeling like they have no control over their emotions & being disturbed about things more frequently than older people.

The percent of people who feel this on a recurrent basis - weekly, daily or hourly, goes down with each age group:

  • 59 % - under 19 years
  • 55%  - ages 20 to 35
  • 38% ages 36 to 55
  • 30% ages 56 to 59

 (item 31)

I'm really disturbed....
 
The 1st thing that really disturbs me is that our government doesn't take our childrens' educational needs to heart. Education has been a place that the government has been able to rob Paul to pay Peter so to speak! Frankly, I'm sickened by the level of education our children are receiving. I'll prove this later on down below.
 
The 2nd thing that really disturbs me is the fact that a great number of people who were victims of hurricane Katrina last year have refused to go on with their lives. They were living on welfare before Katrina. They were what I call - "honkered down" in their own little world of lottery tickets, 40's wrapped tightly in brown paper bags, gin n' juice & crystal meth.
 
It disturbs me that they just sat in their homes, watching their cable t.v. -"the weather channel," and said, "we're not going to help ourselves, we're going to force the government to help us!"
 
It disturbs me to the nth degree, that now that Katrina has destroyed the mess those people lived in, so that they have to tear it down and re-build, an opportunity to use their faith in God and learn how to have faith in themselves as well as, learning how to rebuild themselves as well... to be a strong productive members of the community.... instead they sit somewhere - mostly in FEMA trailors until their time ran out there - and collect welfare, food stamps and medicaid, instead of moving on and relocating. Those people are the first to complain about how poorly they were treated as victims of the hurricane. Although they didn't leave when they heard a "big one" was heading their way.... somehow they've turned it around to be President Bush's fault... That's incredibly sad.
 
It disturbs me that now the country is facing another hurricane season... and still, Mayor Nagle is two timing the citizens of New Orleans with double talk to Dr. Phil on the phone, spouting off about the Disaster at the World Trade Center and I wonder.... does he have a clue what will happen if they get hit again this year? I hope so... it would be nice if he took responsibility for not evacuating the city earlier.
 
(Can you tell that subject really disturbs me?)

The 3rd thing that really disturbs me? I am livid concerning the fact that daily, children are being abused by those closest to them. Here in Dayton, Ohio... on our new today, they've told us that foster parents of a 3 year old autistic little boy left him in a closet all weekend when they went out of town to go to a family reunion.
 
The woman, or "foster mother" was just on the news before the weekend begging anyone that knew anything about the missing boy to call the police. She had stated that she passed out at a local park when the boy came up missing. She stated she had some medical condition.
 
When they arrived home the boy was dead. The "foster father" then took the boy's body to the woods slightly out of town and burned the body.
 
This disturbs me!

It's disturbed me that for some time, our country only attacks severe miscarriages of justice half heartedly, not ever solving the problems, never rehabilitating the victims, never protecting those in need of protection... it's always a run around, a viscious circle... it's so disturbing.
 
I offered to start a program for Dayton Public Schools that includes group support meetings for the kids in the elementary schools for them to work on emotion & feelings work. I offered to do it at no cost to the school district. I offered it to the principal of my daughter's school, the superintendent and the deputy superintendent....
 
it's disturbing that no one has even sent me a confirmation email that they received my offers by email.
 
It was equally disturbing when on the second day of school my son came home from school - again Dayton Public School system, but as a High School freshman.... with a ruined shirt, a huge ink stain on his arm and needing all new school supplies because teachers in two separate classes didn't know that some of the kids in each class had ganged up on my son, broke his pen on his shirt and tore up his notebooks.
 
It disturbs me further that two of his teachers are screaming loudly and rudely at their students, calling their students demeaning names, marking F's on their school records just because they want to and ignoring dangerous situations in their classrooms. The teachers are incompetent. They have no passion to teach. My son routinely describes their problems to me...

 
  • this one is depressed because she is single and may never find a husband
  • this one was in the hospital in Mexico for 3 months after being bitten by a poisonous exotic lizard in Mexico - only to get home from Mexico to get in a severe car accident
  • another one - oh, the principal of the school, has a closed email account because her email address on the school's website has never been used - it was closed for inactivity - I found this out after my email to her was returned by the postmaster
  • another teacher accuses my son of being somewhere he's never been! He has a habit of intimidating students, yelling at them, harrassing them while they are attempting to finish their work.

Does anyone understand why I'm feeling disturbed?

It also disturbs me that the Democrats continually malign our president! I do believe that in our country's earlier days, this same type of behavior was considered treason!

Can you imagine not being disturbed because you're a member of the military in the world's most organized and developed country where one of three major political parties continually maligns the President, ridicules the reason you're fighting a war for and continually asks the President to send home troops who are helping to keep your ass alive in Iraq?

Can you continue to fight in the war, undisturbed? Can you go on, knowing that instead of getting help and relief from our own military - the Democratic party wants to start sending guys home.... leaving you to fight without any back up? Those guys are sitting in Washington, D.C. eating lunch in safe, ritzy places, complaining that they can't use the private jet any more at the taxpayers' expense!

Why do we have to live in this country continually finding ourselves disturbed at the overall dysfunctions in every day life, never mind the subjects of world peace, hungry or starving children in our own country can't get help but African children have a celebrity spokesperson times two?

After the amazing amount of money people all over the world donated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.... is anyone disturbed that more progress hasn't been made?

geez o pete!  My mind races with thoughts, because that's the kind of brain I happen to have been born with... I think of ways to fix things, but don't know how to try to initiate them into action. I worked out a program that I named, "Community Creative Care," that would take the place of welfare.

If you don't participate, get your card scanned with the amount of volunteer hours you put in - you don't have a place to stay, or food stamps or child care. There's no way you can get a 40 wrapped in a brown paper bag, buy drugs or drive a Lincoln Continental.

If you don't put in the time to get assessed by a mental health professional and a medical doctor, you don't get Medicaid. Medicaid is only given to those who have chronic illnesses or life threatening injuries.

The rest of the time, if you don't put in the time volunteering, and get your card swiped to prove it, you don't get treatment. You can't bring your child into the emergency room because he or she has a cold. 

You see, I can believe that Bill Gates, at Microsoft could come up with the right software for this project.

You get your financial situation assessed as well. If you don't participate and prove your participation by getting your card swiped so it can be recorded by the computer, you can't participate in the program. Then you have to go to classes to learn how to use money to your best advantage.

You participate in the child care center to learn how to take care of kids, have your card swiped and if you have your own children, you have to pass a very detailed parenting class, first aid class, and again... get your card swiped to earn credit for your own children to be tended to while you're at school and at work.

You must participate in Mental Health Counseling, Marriage Counseling & Substance Abuse Treatment if need be. Your children must be assessed as well. You must have your card swiped for credit in order to attend school & get an internship for work.

How many Democrats are out there screaming communism, socialism, or that we need a multi million dollar study done by the Democratic party to see if this program is feasible?

Besides administration, this entire system is self supporting. It's built on give and take. You give some - you take some... because you earned it, not because you don't want to do anything but sit on your ass. You see, it disturbs me that this country as big and smart as it is... can't think of what I already thought of and get it moving.
 
Even upon its conception, planning, building and implementing is there opportunities for partipants to be assessed, put to work in volunteering opportunities, educational programs, internships, sponsorships, scholarships and all by earning self respect, integrity, dignity and by helping others succeed. Yeah... it's possible. I figured every aspect of it out when I can't sleep at night. I've made presentations.
 
It just disturbs me that it hasn't already been done yet. For that simple reason, I'm intimidated by the government, by the "man" and by the "system already in place." It's not that hard to figure out. I needs to be done, but there's some reason that no one at the top wants to put it in motion.... it's truly disturbing.

One of the largest generations to have ever lived upon this earth, The Baby Boomers, are retiring now. They need opportunities to make money because they didn't save enough. They need volunteer opportunities that they can barter for essentials. They need a sense of purpose. They need company, compassion and to stay active in their senior years.
 
While now the population of senior men in our country are the most likely to commit suicide, just think if a program like Community Creative Care got off the ground and these senior men were needed to mentor young investors, teach specialty skills, and feel like they're needed. They need to have a reason to take care of themselves. We all want to be needed. We all want to develop close relationships... can you imagine how this concept could turn our country around?
 
Then finally, to teach this same system to developing countries all over the world. What a fine testimony to be an American this would be. Instead, I remain disturbed just as millions of others are. It's a disturbing world we live in. Someone at the top must want it to stay that way... isn't that disturbing?
 
kathleen howe 8/2006

Compulsive Eating: A Disturbance in the Brain
By Colette Dowling, M.S.W.
 
Compulsive eating is a national problem, perhaps particularly among women. Studies show that frighteningly large numbers of women are obsessively involved with food & dieting.
 
Many are preoccupied with dieting - or eating. Some become hooked on diet pills. Others, locked in cycles of losing & gaining & losing, never seem to be able to get off the dieting pendulum.
 
The struggle with weight becomes a constant in their lives. For a saddeningly large number of women, eating isn't a natural & pleasurable experience. It's fraught with anxiety & a kind of drivenness.

Social pressures to be thin & beautiful have long been thought to be the cause of compulsive eating in women, but biology has added a new view. Eating affects - & is affected by - the same chemicals in the brain that regulate mood.
 
Scientific information about the relationship between this illness & mood disorders is important for anyone who feels "out of control" about eating, not just those with full-fledged eating disorders.
 
Compulsive eating is symptomatic of a biologic condition. And it's treatable.

In the early 1980's, Dr. Katherine Halmi of Cornell University Medical College reported the startling findings of a study she conducted at the State University of New York. Of 355 students surveyed, 13% met the official DSM (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual) criteria for bulimia.
 
Hers was one of the first studies to show how widepsread eating disorders have become. Fascinated, James Hudson & Harrison Pope, who were doing research on bulimia at McLean Hospital, ouside of Boston, applied Halmi's figures to the general population & estimated that 5 million people in the US will suffer from bulimia at some time in their lives.

Hudson & Pope decided to sample seniors from two schools in the Boston area. At College A, "a prestigious rural college for women," 14.7% turned out to have full-fledged eating disorders & another 10%  binged at least once a week.
 
"Even more striking findings emerged from College B, an urban coeducational university," they wrote. "Of 102 women respondents, bulimia, anorexia & once-a-week binging brought the grand total of those with compulsive eating disorders to an alarming 32.5%."

Although their findings correlated with those of other researchers, Hudson & Pope remained skeptical. The figures seemed so high that the psychiatrists thought they must not be correct. Another study was clearly needed.
 
After working up a new questionnaire & testing its validity, Hudson & Pope went off to suburbia. "We stood in the middle of a mall & offered every woman a dollar to fill out the same confidential questionnaire & deposit it in a sealed box."
 
This was research grass-roots style. In all, 300 women participated. "When we opened the box & scored the results, we were stunned."

Hudson & Pope's shoppers didn't just suffer from compulsive eating. Over 10% of them met the diagnostic criteria for full-fledged bulimia. But in the younger women the illness apparently was rampant. 17.7% were, or had been, bulimic.
 
After adjusting the prevalence rates to reflect the difference between the age distribution of the shoppers & that of the American female population, Hudson & Pope came to the conclusion that some 10 million American women have a history of bulimia.

Compulsive eating lies on a spectrum of disorders. Many women are caught up in unhealthy eating rituals that may be less severe than anorexia & bulimia but which still are wreaking havoc on them physically & emotionally.
 
By studying the more extreme forms of eating disorder, scientists have gained insight into how ALL eating compulsions work.

Bulimia is related to a category of behaviors that are called "obsessive compulsive". People with full-blown obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may wash their hands dozens of times a day or count obsessively.
 
In all obsessive illnesses the behaviors & thought patterns seem to have a life of their own. In bulimia, the compulsive eating component is uncontrollable binging. The binge itself has a strikingly unthinking, automatic quality. It's as if "the normal shutoff mechanisms fail, almost as if some piece of circuitry had been miswired in the brain," Hudson & Pope reported, in their classic book, New Hope for Binge Eating, which was published in the eighties.

The obsessional nature of an eating disorder is hard to recognize at first, partly because the female preoccupation with size & weight is so prevalent that it's considered normal. But such thoughts can become so all-consuming that they interfere with functioning.
 
In their book, Hudson & Pope wrote, "We have seen patients who weigh themselve 40 times a day. Between weighings they obsess about whether there might be some slight error in the scale, or perhaps some anomaly of the humidity, which might cause it to register a shade lower than the true weight, or some angle of the light that causes them to slightly misread the dial."
For the woman with problems of compulsive eating, almost no aspect of life goes unaffected. If she's binging frequently she feels that she is in the grip of a frightening addiction - & she is. Friends & lovers go by the wayside as her involvement with food & dieting increases.
 
Once-pleasurable activities are forgotten as her waking hours become dominated by binging, the prepration for binging & its aftermath.

Scientists have found that women with bulimia are also likely to suffer from other psychiatric disorders. Major depression is most common. It occurs far more frequently in bulimics than in the general population & it also shares certain features with disorders of compulsive eating- notably, disturbance in sleep, energy & mood.
 
In both depression & disorders of compulsive eating there's often a drastic decrease in sexual desire.

Although some researchers view depression as a reaction to eating binges, many studies suggest that the depression comes first. 1/2 of all bulimic women have had a depressive episode a year or more before the onset of the bulimia.
 
80% will experience such an episdoe at least once in their lives.

The most intriguing link between the two illnesses is that bulimia & depression both respond to antidepressants. When bulimic women are treated with antidepressants, any depression they have is relieved as well.
 
But fascinatingly, bulimic women who aren't depressed also respond to antidepressants. In other words, it isn't the depressive symptoms of bulimia that are being treated with the medication. The bulimia, in toto, is - the binging & purging, the obsessive thoughts about weight, food & size & any mood disturbances that many accompany these symptoms.

In the late 80's information began to emerge from the field of neurophysiolgy on antidepressant treatment of bulimia. Changes in brain chemistry seem to produce not only the binging & purging, but also the obsessional ideas about food, weight & eating.
 
An article in the American Journal of Psychiatry described how the starvation anorectics inflict on themselves lowers their supply of norephinephrine. "Anorexics may be lessening their own anxiety by lowering their levels of norepineprhine," Dr. Maurizio Fava, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, observed.
 
"Lessening their anxiety by starving themselves may reinforce the severe diets that anorexics adopt & may encourage them to repeat the process whenever they begin to feel anxious.
The euphoria that results when the brain opioids, or endorphins, are increased may help perpetuate starvation diets. Extreme dieting "elevates levels of opioids, producing a sort of high that may also reinorce the behavior," Dr. Fava said.

Serotonin is altered in people with disorders of compulsive eating. Bulimics have lower than normal levels of serotonin. As we've seen, low levels of serotonin are associated with depression & anxiety. They also reduce the sensation of having eaten enough - which may in part explain why bulimics feel compelled to binge.
 
womens-wellbeing-and-mental-health.com womens-wellbeing-and-mental-health.com

Colette Dowling is a psychotherapist with a private practice in New York City. She can be reached at dowlingcolette@earthlink.net

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Dealing with Disturbing Insights

 

Disturbing Thoughts

 Compulsive Eating: A Disturbance in the Brain

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