An open letter to do better with anxiety

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Do you ever wonder why, as a parent, it is so difficult to help a loved one who is suffering from anxiety?  Anything you might suggest to reduce the anxiety can set up the fear of possible failure, which in turn can feed the anxiety itself.  I’d like to get together with people who grapple with this problem here in Warren. This is important to me because I know that when anxiety is not well managed horrible things can happen. My son Alex suffered from undiagnosed anxieties throughout his youth, his teenage years, and his early adult years. His self-medication… Continue Reading

The Anxiety Crisis

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It may be a sign of an improving society to see that anxiety itself is rising as a concern and an opportunity.  Anxiety affects anyone who pays attention to life around us, and it adversely affects almost all of us at some time or another either acutely (immobilizing us) or chronically (nudging us to self-administered reactions).  Many will accept the “just get over it” or the “it’s a normal part of life” thoughts about burdensome anxiety.  And any of us will self-medicate our way through anxious times with comfort food, social alcohol, or natural or pharmaceutical “remedies.”   Surely it is… Continue Reading

Alex’s Story

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My son Alex did not live a tragic life.  But he also did not live an easy life.  From his early years, Alex struggled for three decades with an invisible and progressive illness that was as deadly as an undiagnosed cancer.  Alex excelled in physical activities, particularly skateboarding and dancing.  And Alex excelled verbally with an incredible vocabulary and a fantastic ability to mimic the voices of cartoon celebrities.  Marge Simpson was one of his funniest.  Alex was a fun and funny guy to party with.  He could get people to laugh.  His apparent social ease and apparent openness and… Continue Reading

Find ways to respond to the local and global anxiety crisis that threatens us all

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Anxiety is very common.  Situational anxiety is adaptive.  It revs us up and can bring us to higher levels of performance.  Even so, we all need to know how to calm ourselves too.  It is basic human nature to presume that others experience emotions pretty much as we do.  This is usually the case; however, more than 40 million adults have anxiety disorders.  Said another way, if you have a dozen friends, one of your friends probably has persistent anxieties that can disrupt their lives. In normal situations (such as speaking in public or taking tests), anxiety involves an elevated… Continue Reading