Latest news with #coping
WebMD
01-08-2025
- Health
- WebMD
Post-Crisis Coping Strategies: Learning to Heal With Intention
After my most recent sickle cell crisis, I found myself grappling not only with physical recovery but also with the emotional and mental toll it left behind. In hindsight, I thought I fully recovered in a couple of weeks. Still, three months later, I only recognize that I have fully recovered. While finding my rhythm, I asked myself: What does healthy coping look like after a crisis? And, honestly, I didn't have the answer right away. In the early stages of recovery, my default coping mechanism was video games. Now, I enjoy playing video games without a crisis or recovery from a sickle cell crisis. However, during this period, I was playing these games excessively. They gave me an escape from the constant pain and fatigue. For a while, they helped. But soon, they became all I was doing – not just to manage pain but to avoid life. Even after the physical symptoms eased, I found myself still stuck in that virtual world, disconnected from everything else that made me who I am. And that's when I realized it wasn't just about how I was coping but about what I was neglecting. Getting back to a healthy routine was hard. The structure I'd once built of therapy, regular gym sessions, and social engagement had quietly slipped away. Without it, I didn't feel like myself. It took a lot of honest conversations and encouragement from my support system to help me start putting the pieces back together. I know I'm not alone in this. Many others struggle to reconnect with themselves post-crisis, unsure how to begin again. For me, the return to "normal" felt overwhelming. I was involved in my community, constantly giving of myself. So, when I stopped functioning at that level, it felt like I was letting people down. I retreated into gaming to silence those feelings and to silence myself. But silence isn't always healing. Sometimes it's avoidance. This reflection, in part, is a form of accountability. I need to remind myself of what truly helps me heal, not just physically but mentally and emotionally. That includes: One of the most complex parts was realizing I hadn't been honest, not even with myself. When people asked if I was OK, I defaulted to "I'm fine." But beneath the surface was a tangle of self-blame, doubt, and frustration that I hadn't fully processed. Things were happening emotionally that I didn't recognize until much later. Recovery from a crisis isn't just about the body. It's also about reclaiming the mind. And sometimes, when you're too deep in it to be aware, it takes the people around you to reflect on yourself: your strengths, your purpose, your joy. As much as I understand the fundamentals of healthily dealing with crises, I still have periods of succumbing to them. One important realization I had through therapy was that the problem wasn't gaming – it was the absence of boundaries. It wasn't the activity but how I let it consume the time and space meant for other parts of my healing. So now, I'm trying to be more intentional. Structure has always helped me, and I've started writing things down again – something I'd let slip. Setting time limits for rest, work, and even play helps me maintain balance. Slowly, I'm rebuilding routines, understanding that progress isn't about speed but direction. Some days, it's still hard. But I'm learning to give myself grace. Recovery doesn't follow a straight line, and coping isn't one-size-fits-all. What matters is that I keep learning, adapting, and growing. I do feel more hopeful about things and have improved my boundaries. Right now, I'm in a better place. I feel more grounded. I'm reconnecting with my mentoring, my faith, and the relationships that give me joy. While I'm still on this journey, I'm deeply grateful for the awareness, support, and tools that are helping me move forward.
Yahoo
31-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
I Nearly Died From 'Broken Heart Syndrome' — And Here's Why You Could Be At Risk, Too
'I hope you're taking care of yourself.' That's the line that's been coming at me for years now –– across my texts, LinkedIn DMs and voicemails, across dinner tables and Slack messages, and haven't-seen-you-in-forever emails. I know people mean well. I can feel their complicated mix of sympathy, pity and thank-God-it's-not-me relief. But the words roll off tongues with an ease and frequency usually reserved for basic, mindless tasks –– not the truly daunting business of righting yourself after being pummeled by one (or more) of adult life's most stressful experiences. According to The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory, I've been through a whole host of those experiences –– some of them a few times over. My father and maternal grandmother both died of cancer the same year, I've moved more than a dozen times since graduating from college, and I've lost three jobs. In the past year alone, I've gotten laid off; had my 3-year-old son diagnosed with a rare, difficult-to-control epilepsy; and tested positive for COVID on my birthday. My friends have dubbed me 'a warrior,' 'a real-life superhero,' and 'the queen of coping.' And while I don't know if those are fully-earned monikers in a country where almost 38 million people are living below the poverty line, I've admittedly asked myself: Is this a normal amount of stuff to deal with? But at the end of the day, I know I'm not special. At the very least, we're all being subjected to the truly head-banging soundtrack of everything that's going wrong in this world, including deep-rooted racism, misogyny, gun violence, natural disasters, political turmoil, the aftershocks of a global pandemic, and more. And these chronic stressors –– in addition to isolated events –– are heavy contributors to any given person's cumulative stress level. But we keep on keeping on, right? After being repeatedly Whack-a-Mole-d by a few of life's most stressful events, I continued making plans where I could. I started my own business, and I scheduled an elective plastic surgery I'd been considering for a long time. I was excited about the expected results after staring at a postpartum body I barely recognized for three-plus years. So, on Jan. 17, 2023, at 5:30 a.m., I arrived at the hospital for my surgery. The night before, I half-jokingly said to my mom and my husband, Pearse: 'If anything happens to me, I love you!' 'You'll be fine!' They both replied in rapid succession. 'I know, I know,' I said. 'I'm just saying it.' They put me in bay number 13 for the surgery prep. I wondered aloud to Pearse over the phone if that was bad luck. We quickly chuckled about it and then it was time for me to go to the induction room. The anesthesia team gave me some medication to calm my nerves, wheeled me into the operating room, and put me to sleep. About 10 minutes later, everything went sideways. My medical team couldn't get a pulse on me –– femoral, radial, carotid –– nothing. They started CPR. After a few minutes, they were able to resuscitate me, and I was emergently transferred to the cardiac catheterization lab. When I regained consciousness later that day, I tried to take stock of my surroundings and my body. I was still out of it from the anesthesia, but I knew this wasn't the way I had expected to wake up –– with a breathing tube down my throat and a still-undetermined amount of lines coming out of my neck, arms and hands. I eventually learned I was in the cardiac intensive care unit, where I stayed for the rest of the week recovering from being brought back to life, undergoing invasive cardiac testing, and hosting a revolving door of medical professionals. 'Are you under any significant stress?' One of the cardiologists asked me during rounds the next morning. I stared at him blankly. I thought about all the days when even four anti-epileptic drugs couldn't stop our son from having close to 1,000 seizures. I thought about all the nights I'd spent picking up and putting down our resurrected baby monitor, in a constant panic that every breath, every shift, every groan from his room was a seizure. I thought about his medical ketogenic diet that requires us to painstakingly weigh every morsel of food to the tenth of a gram. I thought about holding him on his side time after time as he convulsed, staring at the stopwatch on my phone, silently begging some unknown higher being to make it stop. I thought about losing my job six months ago in the never-ending river of tech layoffs meandering through the workforce. I had vowed to myself I wouldn't lose my professional edge through parenting, the pandemic, and getting cut from yet another full-time gig. Was that happening now that I'm self-employed and only working part-time? And do I even care anymore? I thought about my dad –– a former pediatric anesthesiologist –– and how I wished he was there to tell me everything's going to be OK. I thought about how grief has a cruel way of forever siphoning off just a little bit of the joy that comes with every celebration-worthy event, every achievement. And I thought about how ironic it was that I'd coded on the operating table after getting anesthesia –– my dad's exact work. Ultimately, my heart function eventually returned to normal and my medical team ruled out every cardiac condition except one: stress cardiomyopathy, also known as 'broken heart syndrome.' It's a complex condition in which the heart muscle is quickly, but temporarily, weakened, often as a result of intense emotional or physical stress. According to my cardiologist, Dr. Anna C. O'Kelly, a fellow in cardiovascular medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, my case, like many stress cardiomyopathy cases, isn't clear cut –– and was likely multifactorial. 'It is hard to know which came first,' said Dr. O'Kelly. 'Did you develop stress cardiomyopathy from all the many life stressors you have... which placed you 'at risk' for the cardiac arrest? Or did your body interact poorly with the anesthesia leading to your cardiac arrest, which then caused a stress cardiomyopathy?' The role stress played in my situation is a mystery I'm still very much grappling with. And a frustrating mystery at that, because while I probably had above-average stress in my life, I wasn't just letting it go unchecked. I've been seeing a therapist regularly since my dad died, I've test driven many stress management techniques over the years, and I'm hyper-aware of what I'm doing (or not doing) on a daily basis to fortify my mental health and well-being. I now take an hour-long walk every day, I just finished a 12-week cardiac rehabilitation program, I joined a gym, I'm on a beta-blocker, and I've finally let myself spend a few nights away from home to sleep without staring at the baby monitor all night. But fitting all that in on top of day-to-day life –– figuring out how to 'take care of yourself' today –– sure feels like a bonafide burden. Like that to-do list item you can never cross off. An extra responsibility that comes at you day after day with the cliché laundry list of yoga and just-10-minutes-of-meditation and daily exercise and weekly therapy and time with family and time with friends and time to yourself and time for the hobbies that help you feel like a person. And if I –– an upper-middle class, straight, white homeowner, with a master's degree, community support, a stable of resources, and an incredible amount of privilege –– can't take care of myself in America today enough to avoid stress-induced heart failure, then how can anyone? So, where do I go from here? Where do any of us go from here? After all, when it comes to stress, I'm certainly not alone. According to the American Psychological Association, 27% of Americans report they are so stressed they can't function. 'That's huge,' Dr. Lynn Bufka, associate chief for practice transformation at the American Psychological Association, and a licensed psychologist in the state of Maryland, told me. Dr. Bufka also says this type of collective, debilitating stress produces a ripple effect that seeps into just about every crevice of society. 'It's not about one person being so stressed they can't function,' she said. 'It means workplaces aren't functioning as well, students aren't learning as well.' This type of widespread underperformance as a result of our stress only adds to our stress level, creating a vicious cycle that's very hard to break. Plus, chronic stress –– the kind that comes from things like having your basic human rights stripped away based solely on your gender identity or sexual orientation, or caring for someone with a disability –– can impact almost every system in the body. And those resulting physical health issues (hello, broken heart syndrome) are, you guessed it, stressful. 'There is definitely a link –– which we are increasingly appreciating –– between our psychological and cardiovascular health,' said Dr. O'Kelly. 'The exact mechanism is not entirely clear, though it is likely bidirectional. For example, depression is a risk [factor] for heart disease, but you can imagine ways in which heart disease is also a risk factor for depression if you aren't able to be as active, or have shortness of breath, or frequent hospital admissions.' Nevertheless, many of us who have the means and wherewithal, try and try again to tunnel our way through the stress wall, doing our yoga and just-10-minutes-of-meditation and daily exercise and weekly therapy and time with family and time with friends and time to ourselves and time for the hobbies that help us feel like people. But this isn't something an açaí bowl or putting down your phone during dinner can fix. We need a lifeline. Because in the face of no federal bereavement policy, 12 weeks of unpaid family leave, average annual child care costs coming in north of $10,000, average bachelor's degree loan debt clocking in at $28,400, a health care system that will bankrupt most people at the first sign of a significant health complication, and much more, another thing is becoming abundantly clear: Even those of us with a roof over our head and food on our table are out here falling through a safety net that was already tattered and torn at best. Dr. Bufka acknowledges that constructing an adequate safety net –– in addition to pursuing the activities and boundaries that keep our individual stress levels in check –– is crucial in helping Americans manage their stress levels. To be sure, that's a daunting challenge all around. Just to lay a strong nationwide foundation, we're talking universal access to annual mental health check-ups, improved distribution of stress management resources in communities across the country, every workplace and school being equipped to take on mental health challenges, and fixing complex systemic issues –– like racism, sexism and food instability –– that contribute to chronic stress. Of course, there are many dedicated professionals already working to make progress in these areas. But when 76% of people nationwide have stress-induced health problems, doesn't it seem like our leaders' urgent duty to help us move the needle? Shouldn't their main responsibility be to hold fast to the ideal of having a country full of people who are in a position to achieve contentment? Can we really say we're the home of the American dream –– the land of equal opportunity for success –– if we don't address the stress elephant in the room? The simple fact is that a bunch of us are out here not functioning or literally coding on operating tables, because no matter how hard we try to chip away at our individual stressors, our country isn't meeting us halfway. I'll happily relinquish the 'queen of coping' crown and the 'real-life superhero' cape in exchange for more systems and policies that take a little pressure off everyone. After all, I'm just one member of an army of stressed out soldiers who I can only imagine are waving their white flags, ready to openly admit that a few weekly down dogs and sun salutations will never fully combat the stress that comes from living paycheck to paycheck, worrying your child is going to catch the next bullet, or grappling with medical trauma. We're all warriors. We're all resilient. We can move through hard things. We can withstand the blows life deals us. We just need a little help stopping the bleeding along the way. This story was originally published in September 2023 and is being rerun now as part of HuffPost Personal's 'Best Of' series. Melisse Lombard is a writer, editor, content professional and former journalist, now running her own editorial content production company. She lives outside Boston with her husband, Pearse, their son, and their pup. Melisse is also a co-founder of and singer in award-winning professional a cappella group, Sound Off. Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch. Related... I'm A Doctor Who Almost Died Because My Own Doctors Refused To Do This 1 Basic Thing My Doctor Offered Me A 'Modern Medical Miracle.' Then A Side Effect Changed My Life Forever. If I'd Listened To My Doctor, I Would Be Dead Right Now
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Newton Aycliffe girl, 9, writes book to help children with grief
A nine-year-old girl has written a book to "help other young children cope with grief" after her dad died in a superbike Blu Mathison, from Newton Aycliffe in County Durham, was three years old when her dad Daley died in the opening race of the Isle of Man TT in & Hugsy - The Missing Star tells the story of a magical bear who learns to navigate life after his best friend - a wise old star - disappears from the and her mum Natalie want the book to provide comfort to other children dealing with losing someone they love. Mrs Mathison said when Daisy was growing up she felt like she was on her own a lot because "she was the only child that had lost somebody"."And then she got a little older and realised that she wasn't alone and saw it happen to other children," Mrs Mathison said."That kind of inspired her to say, 'right mam, can we actually make it a reality and shine a bit of a light on other people's darkness?'" The idea began as a drawing by Daisy of a cuddly bear with a glowing heart and has now developed into a self-published Mathison said her husband would be "really proud" of their daughter's work, helping to brighten up other children's thinks her dad would be first in line to buy a copy."If he could, I feel like he would have got one," she said. If you have been affected by the issues raised in this report, support and advice are available at BBC Action Line. Follow BBC Tees on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Health Line
06-05-2025
- Health
- Health Line
Caring for Yourself Through Depression and Weight Gain
Here are six common reasons why depression can lead to weight changes, along with supportive, realistic tips to help you care for yourself through each one. Depression can change the way we eat, move, sleep, and feel about ourselves. For many people, these changes can lead to weight gain over time. This is not a sign of failure or something to feel ashamed about. It is a common and very human experience. Weight changes during depression are often a reflection of the ways our minds and bodies try to cope. Below are some explanations for why weight gain may happen during depression, along with supportive tips to care for yourself if this is something you're experiencing. Eating for comfort and emotional relief When emotions feel heavy, food can offer comfort. Eating might bring a sense of calm or distraction. This is especially the case with foods that are rich in sugar or fat. Eating for comfort is a natural coping mechanism, and it's nothing to feel guilty about. But over time, emotional eating can lead to changes in appetite, energy levels, and body weight. Tips Notice patterns without judgment: Keep a journal to explore when you tend to eat for comfort. Are there certain feelings or times of day that feel harder than others? Have other tools ready: Try to gently introduce other ways to feel comforted, like listening to music, taking a warm shower, drawing, or resting in a cozy space. Bring presence to meals: Eating slowly and with attention can help you reconnect with your natural cues for hunger and fullness. Give yourself grace: You are doing your best with what you have, and every small effort counts. Feeling too tired to move Depression can drain your energy, making it hard to get out of bed, let alone exercise. Even everyday movement can feel overwhelming. This shift in physical activity can affect how your body uses energy, but more importantly, it can make you feel disconnected from your body and your usual rhythm. Tips Start small and slowly: Taking a short walk around the block, stretching while you watch TV, or even just standing and swaying to music can be a beautiful start. Let go of the 'shoulds': Movement is not about burning calories or changing your body. It is about reconnecting with yourself, even just a little. Celebrate effort, not outcome: If you showed up at all today, that matters. Even if it was for 2 minutes. Rest when you need to: Rest is not lazy. It's part of healing. Sleeping more or less than usual Depression can often lead to sleep disruption. Some people sleep much more than usual, while others have trouble sleeping at all. These changes can affect levels of hormones that regulate hunger and fullness, which can influence when and how much you feel like eating. Tips Create a sleep routine: Try to wake up and go to bed at the same times every day. It's OK if it takes a while for this to settle in. Soften your environment: Dim lights, soft music, or a calming bedtime ritual can help signal to your body that it's safe to rest. Reach out for help: If your sleep difficulties persist, a healthcare professional or therapist may be able to provide new tools or options. Be patient with yourself: Sleep is complex, especially when emotions are involved. Try to remind yourself that you're doing your best. Dealing with medication side effects Some medications used to treat depression can affect appetite, metabolism, or water retention. These effects may lead to weight gain even if your habits have not changed. This can feel confusing or frustrating, especially if you're doing your best to care for yourself. Tips Speak openly with healthcare professionals: Let them know how you're feeling about any changes you experience. There may be other options or small adjustments that can help. Focus on nourishment and balance: Try to eat in a way that feels sustainable and kind, not restrictive. Be kind to your body: Your body is adapting to healing, and that's a big job. Remember that you are more than a number: Your well-being is about so much more than weight. Experiencing disruptions in daily routines Depression can make it hard to keep up with routines like meal prep, grocery shopping, regular meals, and physical activity. Without structure, it becomes easier to skip meals or to snack frequently, especially when your days feel unpredictable or overwhelming. Tips Create a soft structure: Try adding just one gentle anchor to your day, like a morning cup of tea or a short walk after lunch. Simplify meals: Keep easy, nourishing options on hand, such as frozen veggies, canned soups, and precooked proteins. Use gentle reminders: Visual notes, phone alarms, or a checklist can help support routine without pressure. Be flexible and forgiving: Some days won't go as planned. That is completely OK. Feeling alone or disconnected Depression often brings a deep sense of isolation. When we feel alone, it becomes harder to reach out, ask for support, or stay connected to habits that make us feel good. This loneliness can sometimes show up in our eating habits, sleep patterns, or energy levels, potentially leading to weight gain. Tips Connect in small ways: A text, a comment in a group chat, or even a smile at someone in public can be meaningful. Find community without pressure: Online support groups, creative classes, or peer spaces can offer connection in low-pressure ways. Remember your worth: You are not alone, even when it feels that way. You deserve connection and care. Talk with someone: A therapist or counselor can walk with you through this experience, gently and without judgment. Takeaway Weight gain during depression is a common and natural response to the emotional and physical challenges you may be facing. Try to remember that this is not something to be ashamed of. Your body is trying to care for you in the best way it can. What matters most is that you offer yourself kindness. Small steps like gentle movement, balanced meals, and manageable routines can help support your well-being. There is no need to do everything at once. Go at your own pace. If things feel overwhelming, mental health counseling can be a valuable tool. Talking with a therapist can help you understand your experiences and feel more grounded and supported.
