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Imagine yourself as the newborn
baby you once were. Whether you're a man, woman, teen, grandma - you've somewhere in time encountered the miracle of
a new born baby. The miracle of course is the fact that the baby is pure. It hasn't suffered anything. It's beautiful, perfect
in all of our eyes. We can feel the newness, the pureness of heart & the wonder of the moment of pure innocence.
Close your eyes
to picture the very moment that you were born. Maybe you know the story of your birth, maybe not. But if you have some
kind of idea, do you know who was in the room when you were born? Who was in the waiting room of the hospital? Who waited
at home for the phone to ring, saying that the time had come?! You were born! And what was the very first thing you did?
With your knowledge
of your birth moment right this minute - how does your personal birth picture make you feel?
What is the first thing that
everyone wants to hear when a newborn baby is born? The
cry! Can you see the picture in your mind?
And so it is with every
baby that is born upon the face of the earth. Did you ever think about your own birth? What were the circumstances of your birth? When you are thinking about your own birth, what are you feeling?
Each of us has a different
story. Each of us are unique. We all had different beginnings. It's this unique, individual beginning that we build
on. As a newborn baby we are perfect. We are an empty slate that will be written upon throughout our entire lives. This is how you must think of yourself as you go through the emotion & feelings pages.
This process is how I learned that emotions & feelings were a vital part of personal growth & recovery. How can we emerge into a state of well being at a much later age, like me - beginning again at age 45! How could I understand why I was the person I was at age 45 if I didn't go backwards & see exactly what was written upon my empty slate - from
the very beginning of my life?
It's not an easy task, but I challenge you to walk through each of the sites with me as I tell you my story & how you can go back to see for yourself - how
you became the person you are today & what you can do to begin a life full of understanding & well being - both mental & physical as you find your own wisdom!
I'm sure
you can think of all the possibilities that the babies being born into the world today might encounter. What's being written upon their clean
black slates? Just as when you were born, every experience in every time is different. We're all individuals with our
own story, with our own unique journey.
When I began with the websites,
I began with the mental health site, anxieties 101. I was traveling blindly in determining what to do and where to go with the website!
It became apparent to me
after several weeks of counseling sessions that if I were to learn about mental illness - I would have to take personal responsibility for finding the information I needed to have. I realized that the system wasn't designed to give me what I truly needed. Therefore, I had to search the vastness of the Internet for my own information until I did have an understanding that I felt comfortable with. My problem was then, "how to use a computer and how to search the Internet!" I was completely computer and Internet
illiterate!
It took some time
for me to understand it all. I had NO clarity of thought. I had confusion, hurt & I felt as though I was stumbling through a thick fog. I was living in such turmoil & pain that I wasn't able to start at anyone's beginning. I did the best I could under the circumstances I was dealing with. I had to wait for the medications to take hold to alleviate the severe symptoms of mental illness I was experiencing.
I also had to admit to myself that I was experiencing mental illness.
That's sometimes a tough piece of meat to cut through. I had to grasp at straws to find a starting point after living one
year in my bedroom - totally isolated from everyone. I had to "come back to life" so to speak & find some element of who I was before I could go back to my
beginnings - able to see the connections.
It's all connected. Your family history, your first, second & third year of life, pretty much establishing
by then the actual personality, temperament (additional info concerning temperament click here) of the person you are today. Believe it or not... that's how it happens & if anything disrupted what might have been a "perfect" upbringing - who knows what might transpire.
Developing coping mechanisms when our needs weren't met, pushing through the parenting techniques of an untrained parent, dealing with not enough attention, too much attention, whatever happened... it all has a bearing
on who you are right now as you read my words.
And this is why I'm using this opportunity - the fact that
Lycos messed up one of the sites that is interwoven into the network - as a positive stepping stone to introduce to you all what I've learned throughout my 5 - 6 years
of personal growth & recovery.
The first site I designed was titled, "anxiety understanding."
After awhile, the whole concept had to change because I use "free sites" offered by Tripod. There's only so much "free space" per site - & I had so much information
to share with everyone.
I had no idea in the beginning about how much information
I would need to acquire an adequate understanding of mental health & mental illnesses.
"anxiety understanding" evolved into anxieties 101 after I had the benefit of learning volumes about mental health & mental illness.
I'm not sure how I grasped the concept of having
to change the "whole person" to recover from mental illnesses, but I had read so many articles that stressed the importance of some basic lifestyle factors & the direct correlation between the mind/body connection.
I also learned that each age group & gender had their own individual
symptoms, problems & concerns that needed to be taken into serious consideration.
End result after many different attempts - anxieties 101 is divided into 3 major sections:
click here! Bob Woodruff: Turning Personal Injury Into Public Inquiry click here!
I was personally very touched by this inspiring story as I watched it on
television last night (2/27/07); especially after I experienced a life altering injury which took me 2 years to recover from.
What I want to ask you is...
If you can't help out with the helmets, below for our military men, can
you volunteer or help our returning soldiers who are recovering with extreme traumatic brain injury?
Here are some links!
Check them out, I know that my family will be searching for a way we can help! Remember that those with traumatic injuries might develop mental health problems.
What is Operation Helmet?
Founded in 2003 by Dr. Robert H. Meaders whose grandson is an active duty Marine in Iraq, Operation Helmet is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated
to providing safer helmet pad upgrade kits to the troops in Iraq & Afghanistan.
To date, more than 6,000 kits have been shipped to the troops in the field.
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feature #1: underlined link words
I believe & work very hard to offer this special feature within all
of the emotional feelings network of sites webpages because I also believe with all my heart
that all of you are special as well. When you read thru the articles, definitions or quotations
- you'll see the underlined link words (all emotion & feeling words, as well as other specifically pertinent to recovery & personal growth words) that are offered for you to delve even further into the meaning
of the information being displayed.
The reason I believe this so important for you in recovery from many dysfunctions or personal growth efforts is that often we can't make progress until we allow
ourselves to be open to all possibilities & allow ourselves to develop a sense of curiosity.
When you click on the underlined link words - a new window will always
open - leaving you with the original window of information that you began with. You don't have to delete your original window,
just minimize it until you have looked over your new & additional information concerning the emotion or feeling underlined link word you clicked on.
There are also underlined link words for additional resources offered
to you as in:
- It's in the News... article titles you can click on that will open in a
new browser window as well - that are pertinent & up to date with information concerning the emotion or feeling word featured on the page
- Very Important Additional Resources....article titles or website addresses for additional resource information that's very valuable - no need to search the web on a search engine - these sites are pertinent & timely in their presentations
- Article & Book Titles within an article.... you'll find article links
for articles copyrighted & not posted at the authors request, but too valuable to leave
out, additional referred to articles as posted by the author of the article & links to websites that the author refers
to within the articles.
feature #2: the
emotional feelings network of sites
Throughout the 4 years I've been working on these sites, the information base has grown immensely.
Personally, my research began online with learning about mental illness when I was finally diagnosed
with an anxiety disorder & depression. With the information I obtained online - I progressed in my personal growth & recovery until I realized that
I was "stuck."
I soon found that I was "stuck" because I had many unresolved emotions & feelings that had been buried, hidden or repressed that needed to surface & be resolved. It was essential that I work on my unresolved feelings & emotions - learning to identify what I've been feeling & "not dealing with" throughout my life - to begin to resolve hurtful emotions that emerged thru all of the dysfunctional events in my life.
In beginning of
my emotion & feeling work, it began to be apparent to me that many emotions & feelings are intertwined or connected with each other. When I designed the first emotional feelings website I had to start
over with that important understanding in mind. I had to add as many emotions & feelings that I had space for.
Then I discovered
as well that our unresolved emotions & feelings are directly tied into our mental illnesses, dysfunctional thinking, false or misguided beliefs, eating disorders, lifestyle habits, etc. until I realized that the only possible option for me then was to include a network of
sites that would link everything together to offer the best chance for all visitors to emerge with a more complete understanding of what their self help journey would include if they were to be successful.
This is how I discovered
the importance of the underlined link word system. The underlined link words will
take you throughout a network of sites that pertain to many important subjects & provide you with an added "insight" of how your concern is tied in to your emotions, feelings, mental & physical health, your lifestyle factors as well as counseling, medications & thought processes & even your belief system.
See the index of sites
included within the emotional feelings network of sites directly right of this
column!
feature #3: special word definitions!
Some authors use some pretty
strange words in their articles, so i highlight words that may be difficult to understand with the color pink! the definition is then included at the bottom of that page or sometimes
directly beneath where the word is used in an article! This allows for a complete understanding of what you're reading. This
will help with your reading comprehension!
feature #4:
At the bottom of each
page there's a menu of web links to the source sites from where the articles displayed on each page came from,
unless, of course, i have accessed that information somewhere & an unknown source was listed.
feature # 5: some articles by yours truly!
you'll find the notation, "personal note:" or
sometimes just an article with my name, "kathleen," or "kathleen howe" as the author. i try to write on each homepage - every month - an article entitled, "i just gotta say it!" all participation by yours truly is totally dependent on how much time i have available for it...
Now that anxieties101 has been such a hit - I've begun anxieties102! It was time. There is so much going
on today in the world of mental health that the size restriction at anxieties101 were met
long ago. It's time for expansion in the mental health world!
Visiting The Layer Down Under: click the underlined
link!
The Layer Down Under at one time, was
included in the spare space on each site and consists of additional information that wasn't accessible thru our navigational
menu on the left hand side of each page. The Layer Down Under is a source of information concerning the tools that
you'll need to "dig in deep" while exploring your emotions & feelings.
I named it The Layer Down Under because as you'll soon discover, if you haven't already, that there
are layers & layers of unresolved emotions & feelings buried deep within each of us. To get down beneath the very first layer of
them all, you need to learn some additional information that will help you understand how to resolve those old hurts,
raw open & sore emotions that have been underlying everything you have done in your life.
Discover one emotion & be sure that it's secondary to the original or another emotion that's above the original
emotion experienced during your traumas. That's the way it works.... Just peel back the layers down under to learn more &
more buried information.
Subjects covered in The
Layer Down Under....
Addictions - Drug & Alcohol Abuse, Gambling, Smoking, and more... Becoming addicted to something is a negative coping
mechanism that we use to keep us from feeling the pain we have inside us...
Attitudes... What's yours?
We all have attitudes. Learn more about how your attitude affects your daily life & impedes your progress in self
growth & discover.....
Beliefs - Extracting False Ones....
We all have beliefs.
Most of our belief systems were formed when we were children living in a dysfunctional world... often times learned from our parents who were
dysfunctional themselves....
Body Image.... I myself have lived w/an eating disorder for most of my life, "night eating syndrome." Professionals
aren't quite sure what to do with this disorder yet. Although it was discovered in the 1950's, professionals haven't
studied much about it.... I believe that my negative body image sold me on eating at night for comfort among other things....
Read more about what people are facing these days w/their own body image issues....
Accepting Change.... Change isn't easy. We all get used to doing things a certain way &
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