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BLOGS
The Power of Love
Love is the best antidepressant—but many of our ideas about it are wrong. The less love you have, the more depressed you are likely to feel.Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. It's not negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally. The less connected you are, the more you are at risk.
It is also true that the less love you have, the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people don't love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love.
There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills.
Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation.
One consequence is that when we hit real love we become upset and disappointed because there are many things that do not fit the cultural ideal. Some of us get demanding and controlling, wanting someone else to do what we think our ideal of romance should be, without realizing our ideal is misplaced.
It is not only possible but necessary to change one's approach to love to ward off depression. Follow these action strategies to get more of what you want out of life—to love and be loved.
* Recognize the difference between limerance and love. Limerance is the psychological state of deep infatuation. It feels good but rarely lasts. Limerance is that first stage of mad attraction whereby all the hormones are flowing and things feel so right. Limerance lasts, on average, six months. It can progress to love. Love mostly starts out as limerance, but limerance doesn't always evolve into love.
* Know that love is a learned skill, not something that comes from hormones or emotion particularly. Erich Fromm called it "an act of will." If you don't learn the skills of love you virtually guarantee that you will be depressed, not only because you will not be connected enough but because you will have many failure experiences.
* Learn good communication skills. They are a means by which you develop trust and intensify connection. The more you can communicate the less depressed you will be because you will feel known and understood.
There are always core differences between two people, no matter how good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those differences surface. The issue then is to identify the differences and negotiate them so that they don't distance you or kill the relationship.
You do that by understanding where the other person is coming from, who that person is, and by being able to represent yourself. When the differences are known you must be able to negotiate and compromise on them until you find a common ground that works for both.
* Focus on the other person. Rather than focus on what you are getting and how you are being treated, read your partner's need. What does this person really need for his/her own well-being? This is a very tough skill for people to learn in our narcissistic culture. Of course, you don't lose yourself in the process; you make sure you're also doing enough self-care.
* Help someone else. Depression keeps people so focused on themselves they don't get outside themselves enough to be able to learn to love. The more you can focus on others and learn to respond and meet their needs, the better you are going to do in love.
* Develop the ability to accommodate simultaneous reality. The loved one's reality is as important as your own, and you need to be as aware of it as of your own. What are they really saying, what are they really needing? Depressed people think the only reality is their own depressed reality.
* Actively dispute your internal messages of inadequacy. Sensitivity to rejection is a cardinal feature of depression. As a consequence of low self-esteem, every relationship blip is interpreted far too personally as evidence of inadequacy. Quick to feel rejected by a partner, you then believe it is the treatment you fundamentally deserve. But the rejection really originates in you, and the feelings of inadequacy are the depression speaking.
Recognize that the internal voice is strong but it's not real. Talk back to it. "I'm not really being rejected, this isn't really evidence of inadequacy. I made a mistake." Or "this isn't about me, this is something I just didn't know how to do and now I'll learn." When you reframe the situation to something more adequate, you can act again in an effective way and you can find and keep the love that you need.
Thx for read...
Young Drivers & Alcohol
Young Drivers & Alcohol Young drivers are over-represented in alcohol related driving accidents. Although drinking, binge drinking, and alcohol related crashes are dropping among young people, specific actions are recommended to further reduce traffic accidents involving alcohol.THE PROBLEM
Young people are over-represented in driving accidents involving alcohol. In a recent year, people aged 16 to 24 were involved in 28 percent of all alcohol-related driving accidents, although they make up only 14% of the U.S. population. 1 Young people are also over-represented in drinking driver injuries and deaths. 2 Even when their blood alcohol contents (BACs) are not high, young drinkers are involved in driving accidents at higher rates than older drivers with similar BACs.
Teens and other young people may be over-represented in drunk driving accidents because, in part, they tend to
* be relatively inexperienced drivers
* be relatively inexperienced consumers of alcohol
* be more likely to use illegal drugs
* have a false sense of invincibility and immortality
THE GOOD NEWS
Fortunately, driving accidents have been declining among young people, just as they have among the general population. And deaths associated with young drinking drivers (those 16 to 24 years of age) are down dramatically, having dropped 47% in a recent 15-year period.
In contrast to popular belief, drinking among young people is dropping and has been doing so for many years. For example, statistics demonstrate that within a period of about 20 years, the proportion of American high school seniors who
* have ever consumed alcohol is down 13%
* have consumed alcohol within the previous year is down 15%
* have consumed alcohol within previous 30 days is down 27%
* have recently consumed alcohol daily is down 67%
* have "binged" (consumed 5 or more drinks on an occasion within previous two weeks) is down 24%5
Drinking among young people in general continues to drop
The proportion of youths aged 12 through 17 who consumed any alcohol within the previous month has plummeted from 50% in 1979 to 19% in 1998, according to the federal government's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Thus, the proportion of young drinkers has dropped in 1998, the most recent year for which statistics are available, from one in two to under one in five in 1979.
The proportion of both junior and senior high school students who have consumed any alcohol during the year has dropped again for the third year in a row, according to the PRIDE Survey, a nation-wide study of 138,079 students. The Survey is designated by federal law as an official measure of substance use by teen-agers in the United States.
Drinking among college students continues to drop
The proportion of American college students who abstain from alcohol has increased 16% between 1989-1991 and 1995-1997, according to the federally-funded CORE Institute at Southern Illinois University.
The proportion of first year college students who drink beer has fallen dramatically and recently reached the lowest point in over 30 years. Similar drops have been documented in collegiate wine and spirits consumption over the past decade by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute.
So-called bingeing is not only down among high school seniors but is also down among college students, and has been declining for a number of years. (Most so-called bingeing is not bingeing at all... See "Binge Drinking")
"Binge" drinking dropped significantly among college students in the United States in the four-year period between a recent study by Dr. Henry Wechsler of Harvard and his earlier study. He also found that the proportion of college students who abstain from alcohol jumped nearly 22% that short period of time.
College student "binge" drinking recently reached the lowest level in the nearly twenty years that that the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR)has conducted its surveys for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The proportion of college students who drink has also reached a record all-time low according to ISR research.
College students drink less than people think
College students simply don't drink as much as everyone seems to think they do, according to researchers using Breathalyzers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even on the traditional party nights of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 66% of the students returned home with absolutely no blood alcohol content; two of every three had not a trace of alcohol in their systems even on party nights.
"I'm not surprised by these results," said Rob Foss, manager of Alcohol Studies for the UNC Highway Safety Research Center, which conducted the study with funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Program. "Other Breathalyzer studies we have done with drivers and recreational boaters show similar results - less drinking than is generally believed. We have substantial misperceptions about alcohol use in this country."
THE TASK
While drinking abuse, including drunk driving, is down dramatically among young people, much remains to be done. Too many young people are still needlessly killed or injured as a result of drinking and driving.
We need to reduce Drinking and Driving
* Social Pressure is very effective in reducing drunk driving
o Never condone or approve of intoxication. Intoxicated behavior is dangerous and never amusing
o Don't ever let your friends drive after drinking. Take away their keys, have them stay the night, have them ride home with someone else, or do whatever else is necessary - but don't let them drive!
* Designated Driver Programs save lives
o Volunteer to be a designated driver. It could save your life and the lives of your friends
o It's important to realize that inexperienced drinkers become intoxicated with much less alcohol than do experienced drinkers and are much more likely to have traffic accidents after consuming small amounts alcohol. Even a single drink dramatically increases the chances that a teen-aged driver will have a driving accident.
* Graduated penalties for driving with higher BACs could saved lives
o Faster speeders get higher speeding fines and higher blood alcohol contents (BACs) should get higher penalties. Drivers with blood alcohol contents of .20 are hundreds of times more dangerous than those with only .02 and should receive much higher penalties.
We need to reduce Drugging and Driving
For safe driving, never use illegal drugs. Illicit drugs are involved in a large proportion of driving accidents, injuries and deaths. Marijuana and other drugs reduce coordination, reaction time, and other abilities required to drive safely.17 In the case of marijuana, this impairment lasts as long as 24 hours after smoking just one joint.
As many as nearly 40% of injured drivers have tested positive for marijuana and the proportion is probably much higher for young drivers. 19 Police almost never test for illegal drug use and many accidents blamed on alcohol are actually caused by illicit drugs.
We need to improve Driver Education
Prospective drivers should be taught adequate information on alcohol and driving and they should be tested on this material on their driver's exams. In too many states, the subject is given only brief mention and seven states do not include any information or testing on it in the process of obtaining a driver's license.
In driving, beginner's luck isn't good enough. For much helpful information, see Phil Berardelli's practical book, Safe Young Drivers: A Guide for Parents and Teens, (McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1996), which is available at your public library or through your library's Inter-Library Loan office.
We need to increase Safe Driving
Don't drive when fatigued. The dangers posed when fatigued are similar to those when intoxicated. Drunk or fatigued drivers both have slowed reactions and impaired judgment. Drivers who drift off cause about 72,500 injuries and deaths every year according to federal estimates. Drowsy driving is a major problem for young people, especially males 18 to 25, because they tend not to get enough sleep.
Don't use a car phone, apply make-up, comb your hair, or eat while driving. Drivers using car phones have about the same chance of having an accident as driving drunk! And hands-free cell phones are just as dangerous to use while driving.
Avoid driving late on weekends. Alcohol-related driving accidents are much more likely to occur at night and on weekends.
Thx for read...
Road Safety
&feature=related
Dangers of texting while driving
Watch iT!
By MisQo 'gRadenko' Mudry
Dec 20, 2008 04:00
Love is the best antidepressant—but many of our ideas about it are wrong. The less love you have, the more depressed you are likely to feel.Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. It's not negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally. The less connected you are, the more you are at risk.
It is also true that the less love you have, the more depression you are likely to experience in your life. Love is probably the best antidepressant there is because one of the most common sources of depression is feeling unloved. Most depressed people don't love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also are very self-focused, making them less attractive to others and depriving them of opportunities to learn the skills of love.
There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills.
Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture ideal of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation.
One consequence is that when we hit real love we become upset and disappointed because there are many things that do not fit the cultural ideal. Some of us get demanding and controlling, wanting someone else to do what we think our ideal of romance should be, without realizing our ideal is misplaced.
It is not only possible but necessary to change one's approach to love to ward off depression. Follow these action strategies to get more of what you want out of life—to love and be loved.
* Recognize the difference between limerance and love. Limerance is the psychological state of deep infatuation. It feels good but rarely lasts. Limerance is that first stage of mad attraction whereby all the hormones are flowing and things feel so right. Limerance lasts, on average, six months. It can progress to love. Love mostly starts out as limerance, but limerance doesn't always evolve into love.
* Know that love is a learned skill, not something that comes from hormones or emotion particularly. Erich Fromm called it "an act of will." If you don't learn the skills of love you virtually guarantee that you will be depressed, not only because you will not be connected enough but because you will have many failure experiences.
* Learn good communication skills. They are a means by which you develop trust and intensify connection. The more you can communicate the less depressed you will be because you will feel known and understood.
There are always core differences between two people, no matter how good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those differences surface. The issue then is to identify the differences and negotiate them so that they don't distance you or kill the relationship.
You do that by understanding where the other person is coming from, who that person is, and by being able to represent yourself. When the differences are known you must be able to negotiate and compromise on them until you find a common ground that works for both.
* Focus on the other person. Rather than focus on what you are getting and how you are being treated, read your partner's need. What does this person really need for his/her own well-being? This is a very tough skill for people to learn in our narcissistic culture. Of course, you don't lose yourself in the process; you make sure you're also doing enough self-care.
* Help someone else. Depression keeps people so focused on themselves they don't get outside themselves enough to be able to learn to love. The more you can focus on others and learn to respond and meet their needs, the better you are going to do in love.
* Develop the ability to accommodate simultaneous reality. The loved one's reality is as important as your own, and you need to be as aware of it as of your own. What are they really saying, what are they really needing? Depressed people think the only reality is their own depressed reality.
* Actively dispute your internal messages of inadequacy. Sensitivity to rejection is a cardinal feature of depression. As a consequence of low self-esteem, every relationship blip is interpreted far too personally as evidence of inadequacy. Quick to feel rejected by a partner, you then believe it is the treatment you fundamentally deserve. But the rejection really originates in you, and the feelings of inadequacy are the depression speaking.
Recognize that the internal voice is strong but it's not real. Talk back to it. "I'm not really being rejected, this isn't really evidence of inadequacy. I made a mistake." Or "this isn't about me, this is something I just didn't know how to do and now I'll learn." When you reframe the situation to something more adequate, you can act again in an effective way and you can find and keep the love that you need.
Thx for read...
Young Drivers & Alcohol
By MisQo 'gRadenko' Mudry
Dec 20, 2008 01:39
Young Drivers & Alcohol Young drivers are over-represented in alcohol related driving accidents. Although drinking, binge drinking, and alcohol related crashes are dropping among young people, specific actions are recommended to further reduce traffic accidents involving alcohol.THE PROBLEM
Young people are over-represented in driving accidents involving alcohol. In a recent year, people aged 16 to 24 were involved in 28 percent of all alcohol-related driving accidents, although they make up only 14% of the U.S. population. 1 Young people are also over-represented in drinking driver injuries and deaths. 2 Even when their blood alcohol contents (BACs) are not high, young drinkers are involved in driving accidents at higher rates than older drivers with similar BACs.
Teens and other young people may be over-represented in drunk driving accidents because, in part, they tend to
* be relatively inexperienced drivers
* be relatively inexperienced consumers of alcohol
* be more likely to use illegal drugs
* have a false sense of invincibility and immortality
THE GOOD NEWS
Fortunately, driving accidents have been declining among young people, just as they have among the general population. And deaths associated with young drinking drivers (those 16 to 24 years of age) are down dramatically, having dropped 47% in a recent 15-year period.
In contrast to popular belief, drinking among young people is dropping and has been doing so for many years. For example, statistics demonstrate that within a period of about 20 years, the proportion of American high school seniors who
* have ever consumed alcohol is down 13%
* have consumed alcohol within the previous year is down 15%
* have consumed alcohol within previous 30 days is down 27%
* have recently consumed alcohol daily is down 67%
* have "binged" (consumed 5 or more drinks on an occasion within previous two weeks) is down 24%5
Drinking among young people in general continues to drop
The proportion of youths aged 12 through 17 who consumed any alcohol within the previous month has plummeted from 50% in 1979 to 19% in 1998, according to the federal government's National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Thus, the proportion of young drinkers has dropped in 1998, the most recent year for which statistics are available, from one in two to under one in five in 1979.
The proportion of both junior and senior high school students who have consumed any alcohol during the year has dropped again for the third year in a row, according to the PRIDE Survey, a nation-wide study of 138,079 students. The Survey is designated by federal law as an official measure of substance use by teen-agers in the United States.
Drinking among college students continues to drop
The proportion of American college students who abstain from alcohol has increased 16% between 1989-1991 and 1995-1997, according to the federally-funded CORE Institute at Southern Illinois University.
The proportion of first year college students who drink beer has fallen dramatically and recently reached the lowest point in over 30 years. Similar drops have been documented in collegiate wine and spirits consumption over the past decade by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute.
So-called bingeing is not only down among high school seniors but is also down among college students, and has been declining for a number of years. (Most so-called bingeing is not bingeing at all... See "Binge Drinking")
"Binge" drinking dropped significantly among college students in the United States in the four-year period between a recent study by Dr. Henry Wechsler of Harvard and his earlier study. He also found that the proportion of college students who abstain from alcohol jumped nearly 22% that short period of time.
College student "binge" drinking recently reached the lowest level in the nearly twenty years that that the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR)has conducted its surveys for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The proportion of college students who drink has also reached a record all-time low according to ISR research.
College students drink less than people think
College students simply don't drink as much as everyone seems to think they do, according to researchers using Breathalyzers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Even on the traditional party nights of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 66% of the students returned home with absolutely no blood alcohol content; two of every three had not a trace of alcohol in their systems even on party nights.
"I'm not surprised by these results," said Rob Foss, manager of Alcohol Studies for the UNC Highway Safety Research Center, which conducted the study with funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Program. "Other Breathalyzer studies we have done with drivers and recreational boaters show similar results - less drinking than is generally believed. We have substantial misperceptions about alcohol use in this country."
THE TASK
While drinking abuse, including drunk driving, is down dramatically among young people, much remains to be done. Too many young people are still needlessly killed or injured as a result of drinking and driving.
We need to reduce Drinking and Driving
* Social Pressure is very effective in reducing drunk driving
o Never condone or approve of intoxication. Intoxicated behavior is dangerous and never amusing
o Don't ever let your friends drive after drinking. Take away their keys, have them stay the night, have them ride home with someone else, or do whatever else is necessary - but don't let them drive!
* Designated Driver Programs save lives
o Volunteer to be a designated driver. It could save your life and the lives of your friends
o It's important to realize that inexperienced drinkers become intoxicated with much less alcohol than do experienced drinkers and are much more likely to have traffic accidents after consuming small amounts alcohol. Even a single drink dramatically increases the chances that a teen-aged driver will have a driving accident.
* Graduated penalties for driving with higher BACs could saved lives
o Faster speeders get higher speeding fines and higher blood alcohol contents (BACs) should get higher penalties. Drivers with blood alcohol contents of .20 are hundreds of times more dangerous than those with only .02 and should receive much higher penalties.
We need to reduce Drugging and Driving
For safe driving, never use illegal drugs. Illicit drugs are involved in a large proportion of driving accidents, injuries and deaths. Marijuana and other drugs reduce coordination, reaction time, and other abilities required to drive safely.17 In the case of marijuana, this impairment lasts as long as 24 hours after smoking just one joint.
As many as nearly 40% of injured drivers have tested positive for marijuana and the proportion is probably much higher for young drivers. 19 Police almost never test for illegal drug use and many accidents blamed on alcohol are actually caused by illicit drugs.
We need to improve Driver Education
Prospective drivers should be taught adequate information on alcohol and driving and they should be tested on this material on their driver's exams. In too many states, the subject is given only brief mention and seven states do not include any information or testing on it in the process of obtaining a driver's license.
In driving, beginner's luck isn't good enough. For much helpful information, see Phil Berardelli's practical book, Safe Young Drivers: A Guide for Parents and Teens, (McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1996), which is available at your public library or through your library's Inter-Library Loan office.
We need to increase Safe Driving
Don't drive when fatigued. The dangers posed when fatigued are similar to those when intoxicated. Drunk or fatigued drivers both have slowed reactions and impaired judgment. Drivers who drift off cause about 72,500 injuries and deaths every year according to federal estimates. Drowsy driving is a major problem for young people, especially males 18 to 25, because they tend not to get enough sleep.
Don't use a car phone, apply make-up, comb your hair, or eat while driving. Drivers using car phones have about the same chance of having an accident as driving drunk! And hands-free cell phones are just as dangerous to use while driving.
Avoid driving late on weekends. Alcohol-related driving accidents are much more likely to occur at night and on weekends.
Thx for read...
Road Safety
By MisQo 'gRadenko' Mudry
Sep 22, 2009 10:41
&feature=related
Dangers of texting while driving
By MisQo 'gRadenko' Mudry
Sep 3, 2009 12:59
Watch iT!
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