The Inner Child

 

It is not easy to get in touch with your inner child, but once you are able to achieve this, it can be a little frightening, overwhelming, but at the same time allow you to reach huge realizations.

When you are younger, any abuse, trauma, fear more often than not gets pushed away into corners of your mind, almost like secret places and as we grow into an adult, we find healthy or unhealthy coping mechanisms to block the memories.

Meeting your inner child can be traumatic at first, as we have to deal with all the distress that was locked away with it. In order to meet your inner child you need to be ready to bring back all the distress and face it. This should be done through a professional, a psychologist that is trained in Inner Child Therapy, who can gently prepare you for meeting your inner child and deal with what comes up and work through it.

It is not a quick process and requires a lot of hard work, but once through it, there is an amazing difference in your life.

 

Last week's suicide of Chicago real estate auctions mogul Steven Good is the latest instance of what could be termed "econocide"--suicide due to the poor economy. While Good, who shot himself, did not leave a note indicating his motivation, his death comes a month after he made comments about the collapse of the real estate industry at a business conference.

Good's suicide follows that of Kirk Stephenson, a financier who jumped in front of a train in England after his private equity firm suffered losses; French financier Rene-Thierry Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slit his wrists after losing $1 billion in the Bernard Madoff scheme; and German billionaire Adolf Merckle, who threw himself in front of a train after massive investment losses.

These tragic figures had something in common besides economic hard times: They were all men.

In 2005, the latest statistics offered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25,907 men killed themselves, versus 6,730 women. A big part of this discrepancy is that men use much more successful methods of suicide. Each of the four moguls who took their lives did so in a decisive fashion. "Men take far more permanent measures," says Manhattan psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, who counsels many Wall Streeters and their families. "Women might make gestures that are not as strong, that are more a cry for help or attention."

Last week's suicide of Chicago real estate auctions mogul Steven Good is the latest instance of what could be termed "econocide"--suicide due to the poor economy. 

New studies are finding the keys to contentment. Here's how to use them.

Happiness, like baking, is something I've always been good at. And that puzzles me: I don't live in a glass house by the sea, I'm not rich or beautiful, I've endured grief and battled depression. It's true that I've been lucky in love--I have a great husband. But I came to him happy. Yet some people who seem to have all the raw materials for happiness--looks, money, success, and love--seem perpetually glum. So what is it that really makes us happy?

 The answer is not good fortune. Psychologists have known for decades that even winning the lottery won't make a person happier over the long haul. People simply adapt. Think of what happened when you got your last raise: Odds are, you felt great for the first few paychecks but soon adjusted to it, and now you may be back to feeling underpaid. Such observations have led researchers to conclude that each of us has a set point for happiness--a level of contentment that stays constant through changing circumstances, such as the loss of loved ones or winning big bucks.

Helping the Mentally Ill Includes Teaching Them to Be Assertive

By Robin Williams Adams
The Ledger

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Robin Williams Adams
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LAKELAND | Some regular attendees of the Jeanene Brown Drop-In Center still ask for permission to use the bathroom.

That may seem strange to anyone who hasn't dealt with severe mental illness, but Chip Jones has and he understands.

"People with mental illness are told how to act, how to think, how to behave," said Jones, a facilitator at the Lakeland center that provides emotional support for people battling with illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or depression. "They lose their belief, their power, their feeling that they have a right to speak out about things."

Increasingly, local mental health programs want to end the silence. They are encouraging people receiving treatment to speak up, identify their goals and actively help plan their treatment rather than have counselors decide for them.

This major change is part of a national movement to transform the mental health system, in keeping with "Achieving the Promise," a report released four years ago by the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.