Dr. Marty’s New Year’s Resolution for 2012

This is the last working day of the year for me and I am going to encourage you to write your New Years’ Resolutions for your relationship.  Below are 10 resolutions that if you follow will really give you a chance for a loving caring relationship.

I ‘ll work at doing them with my partner and you can do them with yours and as 2012 goes by letting me know how these resolutions are working out for you. :-)

Happy New Year,

Dr. Marty

Resolutions for 2012

1. I will remind myself every day what I like about my partner
2. I will touch my partner in a not sexual way 2 times a day
3. I will call or text my partner once a day just to see how they are doing.
4. I will have a date with my partner at least every other week.
5.  If I am angry at my partner I will work hard at calming myself down before I approach them.
6. I will do random acts of kindness for my partner once a week.
7. I will do something romantic for my partner once a month.
8. I will remember to say thank-you when my partner does a “little” thing for me
9.  I will take care of myself in a special way

10. I will spend time on a regular basis remembering  why I choose to be    with my partner.

Pregnancy and Bipolar Disorder: Can they go hand in hand?  Part II 

By Isabella Scott

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Medicinal precautions

Although it is not a common to appear the bipolar disorder first, it is advised to pay vigil on the medicinal courses you are adopting. If the disorder occurs, it is mainly because of the change state of your earlier illness. Hence it is recommended not to use your regular medicines during pregnancy. It is usually seen that people suffering from bipolar disorder prefer to intake mood stabilizing drugs. Drugs like lithium and valproate are highly used in the mania, depression and also are heavily used for maintenance. Consult your doctor before going to use any of these medicines.

Breastfeeding

After birth, mother loves to feed her child through her breasts. But, mothers suffering with bipolar disorder, need to have extra care while breastfeeding. The breastfeeding courses must be monitored carefully to avoid any insurgence of problem. As lithium is present in huge amount in the breast milk and this may cause toxicity in the babies; it is recommended to avoid breastfeeding.

The way out: Generally both women and the psychiatrist often seem to be over shadowed by fear and anxiety the moment the pregnancy things come out. However, a proper action plan can be chalked out in coordination with a physician. This can be achieved with proper discussion regarding the unplanned pregnancy. The medications for pregnancy along with the bipolar needs to be properly analyzed and then a proper strategy should be chalked out to deliver the baby the best along with having this disorder. This can only work when both the psychiatrist and physician work in a proper coordination. It may sound a difficult task, however, a must to have a safe pregnancy along this disorder.

You may find it difficult to manage your pregnancy along with the bipolar disorder, but with proper care and action plan you can certainly embark with a right solution. With this article you can have some basic ideas about the disorder and certainly can find ways to move on during your pregnancy periods. In case you are such situation, don’t just panic, instead act in calm way along with your near ones and come out with a tangible solution. Remember it’s difficult but not impossible.

About the author: Isabella Scott is a blogger and painter. These days she is working on designing marvel action figures for kids. When not working, she prefers spending time in NGOs who are working with patience dealing with schizophrenia symptoms.

Pregnancy and Bipolar Disorder: Can they go hand in hand?    (Part I)                                                                                                                   By Isabella Scott

According to a research, the number of women suffering any kind of depression is more than men. Hence more number of women is reported with this disorder than men. When women are reported with depression like bipolar disorder, it is certainly not good news; especially when they are pregnant. During the entire nine months of pregnancy, a woman with this disorder has to ensure to care herself the best of her body. Despite all care and proper treatment they may encounter a number of risks associated to this problem. Secondly, the drug suggested by health professionals for bipolar disorder treatment can complicate the child birth process and even can hamper the baby inside. This is the reason why doctors do not recommend women suffering from bipolar disorder to plan children.

The bipolar disorder and pregnancy: The pregnant women having bipolar disorder or the newly turned mothers are at higher risks as compared to non pregnant ladies having the same disorder. This is due to the fact that during pregnancy, the medication for bipolar disorder can complicate child birth process and even can hamper the baby inside to a great extent. Therefore a majority of such ladies discontinue the medication which makes them reach at the danger bay of bipolar disorder. And women who leave the medications abruptly are more vulnerable to face lethal consequences to the bipolar disorder.

You need a plan of action: If you are pregnant and unfortunately also encounter the bipolar disorder, it’s time to plan things the best for the road ahead. A proper plan can help you to alleviate the risks and symptoms to the baby in your uterus. You should begin the plan much before the conception considering the first four weeks after conception as the most important and sensitive period. This should then continue in your entire pregnancy along with postpartum and the breast feeding time. However, the fact is that all such pregnancies during such disorder are unplanned, hence its best to discuss the psychiatrists to chalk out a proper plan for your during your entire pregnancy period. The important things you must consider are:

Measures to be considered during pregnancy

Holiday Stress

The holidays have an effect on all of us in someway or another.  These

feelings touch our personal and work lives.  This newsletter is to offer insight and strategies about dealing with stress and the holidays.  As the holiday stresses become more manageable the quality of our performances both at home and at work will improve.

Three of the main reasons that we are upset during the holidays are:  we feel poorer; there is the expectation that the holidays should be a happy time; and we remember holidays past and think about people and things that we miss.

1. Instead of using money to say what we are afraid to say, remember:

The perfect gift doesn’t have to be expensive to show caring and love.  Sometimes the small gift that shows that someone close to you has noticed a special need or desire is the one that will touch you in a special way.  Would’nt you rather get a few simple gifts with loving words attached to them or one very expensive gift?.  Let the people close to you know that it is really the thought, not the price tag that matters to you.

2. Action is the best antidote for depression and can also help you meet your expectations:

When you find yourself getting the holiday blues, get involved with a charitable organization or local senior citizen center, or just be on the lookout to try and be more available to your co-workers and family members who look like they need help.  Send a letter or make a call to some friends that you haven’t been in touch with for awhile.  Decorate your home in a simple way and ask relatives and neighbors to come and help you make holiday magic.  Meditate on the theme of thankfulness.

3. Bring the past into the present in a new way:

Instead of letting go of the past, I prefer to invite us to hold on to the past in a new way.  Memories are precious and make up whom we are.  Loving memories should be celebrated and cherished.  You might consider lighting a candle each evening to celebrate the memory of loved ones and just have it glowing like a silent presence as you go about your meal and evening activities.  Setting up familiar holiday decorations and attending services of worship is another way of being thankful and celebrating the past.

Above all, be gentle with yourself.  Practice the “Sabbath Principle – allow yourself some down time to simply sit and sip some tea by candlelight or listen to your favorite music in the evening,  Inner peacefulness is an important emotional and spiritual goal.  Holidays have the potential to generate more depression than any other time of the year so we have to work extra hard to reach our goal of feeling peace and serenity.  Remember, the holidays were created for people, not people for holidays.  May you find peace, joy, and love during this time.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Holiday Stress and How to Cope With It

There are three triggers of stress that happen in the holidays: relationships, finances, and physical demands.

There are a number of strategies that can be used to handle these stressors.

1. Acknowledge your feelings.  As much as the holidays can be a joyful time they can also be overwhelming, with family obligations and buying gifts and your regular responsibilities. All of these demands can feel overwhelming and some times you need to slow down or stop entirely and regroup
2. Look for support – Don’t try and do every thing yourself.  Don’t volunteer to help others when you haven’t taken care of what you need to do.  There is such a thing as taking the holiday spirit too far.
3. Keep a routine - Just because you are busy you still need to remember to watch what you eat, exorcize, and getting the sleep you need.
4.  Don’t try to be perfect – Because we want everything to be just right, we try too hard. Remember it’s not about having everything in place it’s about being in the right space emotionally.

   In my next blog, I will talk about dealing with money issues, depression and the holidays and how to create new traditions.

By Susan Pease Gadoua, LCSW (Social Worker)

I have devoted 3 blog entries to this book because I think it is extremely valuable information that is well written and can provide a blue print for one who is contemplating divorce and needs help in exploring the many highly emotionally charged aspects of this decision.

The author starts this section with focusing on what the person has learned about them selves and their feelings.
In this process, once the person is moving toward divorcing they focus on the feelings that have brought them to that point. This focusing is designed to help the individual to deal effectively with the “flip flop” phenomenon where the person goes back and forth never being able to make a decision that they feel confident enough to follow-up on what they’ve discovered they need in their lives.

In this section Whether deals with the legal nuts and bolts of the divorce process, talking about the different types of divorce processes from collaborative, to mediation, to litigation. Issues like: finding a good attorney, the emotions that occur during the proceedings, and setting goals for what to do after the divorce is final. In this section the author outlines how to deal with children of different ages and adolescents
And how to approach them based on their age and maturity.

Let’s hope your relationship can be saved and strengthened but if that’s not possible: Contemplating Divorce: Whether to Stay or Go would be an excellent resource to guide one through the process.

Contemplating Divorce: Whether to Stay or Go. (Part II)                       By Susan Pease Gadoua, LCSW (Social Worker)

In this section of the book: Contemplating Divorce Whether talks about how “Thought Habits” create feelings. She gives a number of suggestions and exercises so that the reader can discover for themselves how to respond to these feelings when they experience them.

The book then talks about how to make a plan of action. Good ideas and understanding is great, but what really helps is “doing” and doing things with a goal and a direction.  Whether understands that and tailors her writing to help the reader move forward.

“Contemplating Divorce” then discusses how a relationship can be analyzed and understood and possibly corrected.  Again there are specific exercises to help the reader with this effort.

There is also an in depth discussion of people understanding their needs (i.e. survival, safety, love, etc…)  and then sorting out where (in or outside of the  relationship) those needs can be satisfied.  The question of how much can be expected from a partner and how much someone needs to find for themselves is looked at in some detail.

After her “Needs Assessment” section Whether explores how to get those needs met though discussion and completion of exercises she has created.  The goal of this section is to determine who can satisfy which needs and how to handle the reality that certain needs can’t always be satisfied and how to effectively relate to that reality.

At this point Whether helps the reader reexamine the basic issue of the book whether to stay or leave the relationship.

The last part of the book is focused on what to do to leave the relationship if that is the conclusion the reader has come to.  This is appropriate, as in the prior two thirds of the book, the reader is given guidelines as to:

How to understand themselves as well as what to do to rebuild a satisfying relationship, if these attempts are not successful then the next step is dealing with letting go of the relationship and all the implications of that decision.

My last entry will give a brief over view of that section of the specifics of divorcing.

Contemplating Divorce: Whether to Stay or Go. (Part I)

By Susan Pease Gadoua, LCSW (Social Worker)

I want to start off this entry with stating strongly I am in favor of helping couples stay together whether they are marriages or committed relationships. My hope is that folks can get past their difficulties and learn how to rebuild their connection.  Unfortunately, there are some circumstances where things have gone too far in the wrong direction and the option of divorce (whether formally in the case of a marriage or situationally in the case of a committed relationship) is necessary.  Also sometime folks who are very frustrated in their relationship, may out of desperation, threaten divorce or leaving their partner.

Having started with my disclaimer, if divorce is a possibility, it is important to understand what is involved in the process and if necessary what to do if that is the choice that needs to be made.

In her book “Contemplating Divorce” Ms. Gadoua starts appropriately with the process of thinking about divorce. She starts with the “Pre Contemplation Stage” where folks are realizing that they are unhappy and vaguely thinking about the possibility of leaving their partner.

The author talks about how to constructively deal with that stage and how Pre Contemplation can evolve to her next stage of “Contemplation”.

In the “Contemplation” stage the person is seriously thinking about not being in the relationship.

Ms. Whether identifies what she intelligently calls “The Marriage Indecision Cycle” She then goes on to talk about how to handle that cycle.  The author gives exercises and examples through out the book to guide the reader into deciding what their next step should be.

Ms. Whether though out this section relates what can and should be done to try and save the relationship.  Clearly her goal is not to help people get divorced but to help them to think through their decision and those decisions’ implications and action steps.

The book also talks about the Grief Progression.  This Progression helps the reader understand the various emotions involved in the different stages of this process.

For example there are discussions about feelings of loss, “self protest” (why you should stay) as well feelings of despair and detachment.

Ms. Whether’s position first is you should work at understanding and changing your relationship and only after you have really tried using guidelines she offers, then it is time seriously consider the option of ending the relationship.

In my next blog I will talk about:

• What Ms. Whether suggestions about how to effectively handle  emotions;
• How to gain deeper understanding about your relationship and things that can be done to deal with unresolved issues.

In my last entry on Thursday I gave the first part of my: “Positive Partner Awareness Inventory”(PPAI).  I’m going to start off this week with the second part of the PPAI.   Remember that it’s great to be able to get past arguments and difficult times, but the better we know our partner the stronger we’ll be able to make our relationship.

Please print this out and fill in on the lines provided

1. A special thing that I did for my partner was

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2.  I tell my partner that I am proud of him/her: daily, weekly, monthly, I can’t remember.  What did you say?

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3. I tell my partner that I care for him/her: daily, weekly, monthly.  I can’t remember.  What did you say?

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4. The gift that would put a smile on my partner’s face would be:

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I’m wondering if you just read this quickly or actually spent time thinking about these questions.  A relationship is like a bank account; the more you put into it the more you are likely to get out of it.  You may want to give yourself an assignment of seeing what other things you know about your partner that can help them to feel as though you really care.

Learning about your partner is an on-going project.  When you take them for granted they will feel that and when you make an effort to show you’re sensitive to what’s important to you’ve added something very valuable to your relationship.

Positive Partner Awareness Inventory

In my manual “Healing from the Trauma of Infidelity” I emphasize not only healing but on the positive side of relationships, for example I ask the question: “How well do you know your partner?”

I have included this in the blog because knowing your partner well is a wonderful way of rebuilding a relationship, from the damaged caused by infidelity, but also a way to prevent a relationship from falling apart.

Below are five questions let’s see how many of them you can answer:

1. My partner is happiest when …………
2. My partner’s favorite song is ……….
3. My partner is most influenced by ….
4. My partner likes it most when I  ……….
5. A positive memory that my partner has of us together is ………….

In my entry for next week, I will give you five other questions let’s see how well you really know your partner.

It’s important to really know your partner.  Couples stray because they don’t pay attention to the details.  One way of showing that you really care is to care enough to remember.