''To Your Health'' ~ articles

"Getting Rid of Your Anxiety"

Psychotherapist Daniel Rutley discusses displeasure anxiety and how a proactive attitude can help you battle this often crippling emotion.
09/03/2005
by Daniel Rutley (balancetv.ca)

Look at the Root of Your Anxiety, in Energy
Psychotherapist Daniel Rutley discusses displeasure anxiety and how a proactive attitude can help you battle this often crippling emotion.
Sigmund Freud is the grandfather of "talk-therapy." He introduced a theory: Our chief motivating force in behaviour is a drive to achieve pleasure and to avoid pain. A person who experiences "displeasure anxiety" is anxious about an upcoming event that she finds unpleasant or painful to deal with, thus minimizing pleasure and happiness and motivating avoidance acts.
There are 3 beliefs that lead up to displeasure anxiety:

1. "Some bad thing might happen." Meaning, you anticipate that something adverse or obnoxious is impending. As a rule of thumb, the more distant the event, the less anxious you will likely be about it.

2. "If it does happen, it would be awful and catastrophic." This suggests that if there is a loss, it would be of great enough importance to rob you of happiness. In other words: "If 'x' happened, then I couldn't be happy." This statement is the essence behind anxiety.

3. "Because it would be catastrophic, I must find a solution so that I can control it."The inability to find a solution -- which the individual believes is essential -- to a problem is a key factor within anxiety. When anxious, there is a sense of helplessness or inability to cope with the identified concern.

The belief that you need to be happy and content at all times will cost you greatly in life. Often, you won't even know how much this belief will be a detriment to you.
It may be uncomfortable for you to ask the man across the dance floor to dance. It might be unpleasant to discuss a family member's rudeness. It might be stressful to ask for a raise or promotion at work. Most people who are successful in any area of life push through or tolerate the brief loss of happiness and displeasure that those who fail do not.
People often give up far too early and are not persistent enough to put up with the disappointment of repeated failures. As the story goes, "You don't want to have your dreams go unfulfilled just because you gave up too soon. Imagine the forgotten nameless gent who gave up after his sixth attempt to create a delicious soft drink and 6-Up was a failure."
Displeasure anxiety is the real culprit behind a lot of anger, forms of procrastination, jealousy, very often a lack of progress in one's life and virtually all addictions. When there is an unpleasant situation to face, the anxiety drives the person to escape the uneasiness, instead of dealing effectively with it.
Avoidance behavior is a highly developed skill by those who have had years of displeasure anxiety. This is why it is important to be sincerely dedicated to overcoming it -- because years of training will want to kick in and have you avoid the agitation and hard work of overcoming this form of anxiety. The way through displeasure anxiety is to WORK THROUGH IT.
You can handle any difficulty. Take charge, take action and your anxiety will lessen. Work on stopping the anxiety today. Don't wait. Procrastinating in this area will only allow it to get worse.
*** Daniel Rutley is a psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in depression, anxiety, anger and behaviour management and relationship issues.

"Creativity confined"
Has studying the arts become more about the pursuit of a career than the quest for craftmanship?
- the Toronto Star
Mar. 8, 2005

LIZ WORTH - SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Photo: Keith Beaty/Toronto Star

For the creatively inclined, the four walls of a classroom can become a box.
Look up the meanings behind creativity and education and you'll find them to be opposite concepts. Creativity means having the ability to create instead of imitate; to go beyond the conventional, while education means to drill in specific information, discipline, habits, routine, and methods. It's no wonder that these two very different notions struggle to unify.
What happens when artsty types go to school? Do they learn how to be more of what they already are, or do they get lost to the rigidity of instruction?
Lately, I've been fighting off the influence of a formulaic writing style that has been seeping into my pen. Since I became a journalism student, I've been wondering if going to school is a mistake — at least for certain people.
I'm feeling a little threatened. It's like my freedom to let my fingers pound away at the keyboard is gone. It's been replaced with rules that have names that sound like diseases: parallelism, subordinate conjunctions, inverted pyramids. The stories that we hand in are often as pale as the paper they're printed on. No one talks about ideas or questions. All we talk about is a structure, as if every story should come with a how-to manual. As if life does.
Sergio Elmir knew paying tuition fees wasn't going to make him a better writer — but writing more often would. Having recently left the realms of higher education to chase after freelance opportunities, Elmir says that classrooms and creativity don't mix.
"Obviously no one believes that creativity can be learned," the 25-year-old says. "School, or at least the education system, is based around teaching skills. It's all about the status quo and finding a foot in the door and all the other things that blind artists to the true meaning of art."
Not everyone looks at education like that. Toronto's Margaux Williamson, 29, was an art student at Queen's University in Kingston and at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, and her work has appeared in New York, as well as high-profile Queen St. W. galleries.
"The argument that education in the arts will corrupt an artist is really condescending," she says. "The sentiment that ignorance will keep you strong is thankfully outdated in most fields and areas of life.
"If an individual proves to be so easily controlled or manipulated by an institution such as an art school through such means as peer pressure, an arbitrary grading system, or a negative professor, I can't imagine how they would actually function in the real world as an artist."
Williamson says schools help people express their art more clearly and help students get their footing in the field.
But Elmir argues that pursuing an arts education in general can be counter-productive.
He sees school as the ultimate in conformity, in which it wears people down and then moulds them into a predetermined ideal. Teachers often take on the role of employer and become more concerned with productivity than with intellectual development.
Instead of inspiring students, Elmir believes school dumbs them down. By striving to teach people, an individual's abilities are overlooked. Instead, classrooms become human assembly lines, with the end product being groups of people who all have the same skills.
"There's a focus, at least in my experience, of schools using repetitive action and other numbing exercises to make you learn something," he says.
"Sitting down and memorizing a list of terms will not teach me anything. Personally speaking, I don't think that schools are meant to produce artists. They aren't teaching art to artists as much as they are teaching them how to turn their gifts into a skill.
"I guess the biggest issue at hand is that school makes art seem like any other job in the world, which is the biggest insult to all art and artists."
Art students like Jennifer Castle have to be aware of the traps school can lead to, like getting into a curriculum that might have her colouring within the lines when she'd rather be drawing new ones. What she finds is her classes are heavy on technique but light on ideas.
After finishing a degree in anthropology, the 28-year-old Castle had been working on her art and decided to take it further by going back to school at the Toronto Art Centre. She says there are advantages and disadvantages to becoming a trained artist versus being self-taught. Castle now gets exposure to more media — everything from painting to sculpture to photography — and access to the school's facilities, but has to deal with her work being constantly critiqued.
"I don't get the chance to be experimental like I would be if I was working on my own," Castle says.
Her classes often focus on an end result — seeing a project through to the point where it would be able to be showcased in a gallery. And because there's such a strong emphasis on technique, Castle feels confined to what her classes dictate.
"It's sort of a hindrance having to produce something presentable. My work tends to be rougher around the edges. I like things half done so they can be changed around."
Art classes can lack an acceptance of the student's ideals. They can also shatter romantic notions of aesthetic talent being something that happens in people naturally. Castle admits that there is a formula behind art, but doesn't see technique as the beginning, or the end, of artistry. She points out that creative types will do what they want regardless of the rules.
"Art is about ideas and the expression of them," she says. "But art forms can be learned, someone can teach them to you through motor and eye training. But there are people who find ways to make things whether they know the technique or not."
Castle doesn't let school have a negative impact on her. Instead, she takes advantage of her time there and uses it to be more productive. "I used to think about things a lot more, but now I actually do them," she says.
Some students feel it's easier to just give up, like former fashion student Veronica Araujo.
She found that where she thought ideas would have been, there was a drive instead to make a profit. During a two-year stint at Humber College, she eventually came to describe the fashion industry as "ugh."
The 22-year-old remembers the moment when she realized she wanted out. It was in her second semester when she learned about trend forecasting — the industry's method of predicting and dictating what will be next season's "in" thing.
"I thought designers just pulled designs out of their heads, but they have teams of people going out to forecast trends for the next two years," Araujo says. "It's all about money."
She found her program overloaded with sales and marketing tips. And if there was a lesson in fashion, Araujo says it wasn't on being original but instead on how to get into the same clothes as everyone else.
Although she's given up on the fashion industry, Araujo still believes the truly creative will persevere.
"I think that people who have it in them will always be creative," she says. "You can learn the foundations and techniques which help to add to the craft, but if you're not creative you can't just pick up a paintbrush or write a poem just because you took some classes and read up on it. A creative person will find an outlet for their art, even if they are in a (situation) that doesn't allow for much of that."
For Elmir, school did have at least one positive aspect. He could either stay in school and work on a "pretend" newspaper, or get outside and write for a real one.
"School put me on a path," he says. "That I will never deny. If it wasn't for school, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. Even though school was basically everything I didn't want to do, it helped me narrow down my choices and focus on what I really want to do with my life."
None of the people in this story have given up on their talents. People who are truly passionate about art will continue with it, with or without formal study. And it's with this knowledge that Elmir feels he will find success.
"School can be dangerous because once you graduate you consider yourself a productive member of society," he says. "But in reality, as an artist, you should strive to live outside of society to facilitate your ability to look in and comment on what's happening to the world."
***Liz Worth is a journalism student at Humber College. ID@thestar.ca

"Top 10 power plant foods"
These ingredients pack a nutritious punch.
04/03/2005
By The Canadian Living Test Kitchen (Canadian Living)
Related Articles:
Test your food IQ
Extreme eating

Natural Wonders
Plant foods are packed with phytochemicals, which are biologically active plant chemicals that are vital to health. Thousands of phytochemicals have been identified, and many act as antioxidants, reducing the activity of free radicals, which are harmful compounds produced by the body that damage DNA and body tissues and lead to chronic disease. Plant foods are also good sources of potassium; vitamins A, C and E; folate; and fibre.

Cancer-Fighting Carotenoids
Carotenoids are a group of pigments found in plants, and all offer potent protection against a variety of cancers.
· Lycopene is responsible for the red colour in tomatoes, watermelon and red grapefruit.
· Lutein makes broccoli and spinach green.
· Beta-carotene is the most abundant carotenoid and is found in dark green and bright yellow or orange vegetables, and red and orange fruits, including cantaloupes, mangoes, apricots and papayas. Beta-carotene is converted to vitamin A by the body.

Plant Power Shopping List
Leafy green vegetables, specifically kale, collards and spinach, are excellent sources of fibre, vitamins A and C, and the cancer-fighting carotenoid lutein.

Good for you recipes:

• White Bean and Kale Soup Country Spinach Toss
  Tomatoes, pink grapefruit and watermelon are sources of vitamins A and C, and lycopene, which is a phytochemical associated with reduced risk of prostate cancer.
• Barley Salad with Tomatoes and Corn
  Pink Grapefruit Sorbet
  Watermelon Slush
• Berries, including cranberries, have antioxidant properties and are a source of anthocyanins, which belong to the group of plant compounds called flavonoids. Flavonoids may have antioxidant abilities and are being studied for their anticancer potential.
  Banana Berry Smoothy
  Berry Breakfast Puff
• Soybean products, such as tofu, can help lower cholesterol, may protect bone health and may prevent cancer.
  Vegetable Tofu Salad
  Cumin Carrot Tofu Patties
• Fibre? both soluble and insoluble? offers a spectrum of benefits for heart health and the prevention of colon cancer and diabetes.
  Fibreful Muffins
  Nutty Banana Bran Muffins
• Ground Flaxseeds are associated with heart health and the prevention of stroke and cancer. They are a rich source of fibre, omega-3 fatty acids and lignans, which have antioxidant properties. Some research has shown that a diet rich in soy products and flaxseeds can help ease the symptoms of menopause in some women.
  Farmland Flax Cookies
  Country Seed Bread
• Garlic contains allylic sulphides, phytochemicals that may have cancer-fighting properties. Garlic is being studied for its antioxidant activities and potential heart-healthy benefits ? it is touted to lower cholesterol and blood pressure and prevent blood clots.
  Roasted Gralic and Tomato Savoury Custard
  Roasted Garlic Soup and tomato Salsa
• Onions contain quercetin, an antioxidant that may reduce the risk of heart disease by preventing LDL cholesterol from oxidizing, which causes it to become artery-clogging.
  Balsamic Onion Crisp
  Caramelized Onion Pie with Rice Crust
• Legumes include dried beans and lentils. They are low in fat and sodium and are generally good sources of both soluble and insoluble fibre, protein, iron, calcium and folate. Lentil Curry with Squash and Spinach
  Black Bean Chilli with Avocado Salsa
• Nuts and seeds are great sources of protein, fibre, iron and vitamin E. They're high in fat, but many varieties contain healthy fats as well as an array of antioxidants. Walnuts, for example, are a source of omega-3 fatty acids and ellagic acid, a compound with cancer-fighting properties. Pumpkin seeds are a source of phytosterols, which compete with cholesterol for absorption in the gut and may lower cholesterol levels.
  Sesame Fish on Spinach
  Sesame-Crusted Scallops with Black Bean Sauce

"Symptoms of Inner Peace"
Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace.The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions.This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.
Some signs to look for:

* A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
* An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
* A loss of interest in judging other people.
* A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
* A loss of interest in conflict.
* A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)
* Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
* Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
* Frequent attacks of smiling.
* An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
* An increased susceptibility to the love offered by others as well as the
uncontrollable urge to extend it.

*** My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life. ~ Chrissy Hamilton

"salutations" - james browne, artist