Anxiety: Common Treatments for Anxiety

Common treatments for anxiety include psychotherapy (especially Cognitive Behavior Therapy, or CBT) and medications, including antidepressants, Buspirone, and benzodiazepines. If you have anxiety that is intrusive, talk to your doctor about which treatments are best for you.

Autism and Sensory Issues: A Pop Quiz

Among those who have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, what percentage will also have some sort of sensory issue or impairment? It's high: 80%.

Pop Quiz: Which Part of the Nervous System Is Responsible for Fight-or-Flight?

Answer: Sympathetic Nervous System.

What is fight-or-flight? The fight-or-flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.

PARENTING: Family Therapy Is the Smartest Investment Any Parent Can Make

If your family is currently struggling, life can be challenging and downright draining. If one or more members of your family are dealing with mental health issues, a major life change or transition, or a lot of family arguing, seriously consider seeking out family therapy. You don't need to be rich, either, to do so because many types of insurance cover this service and low-cost mental health clinics often have a sliding scale based on parent income. If nothing else, consider going for at least one family session. You might be surprised by how helpful it can be to have an objective mediator in the room, guiding the family overall to greater peace. Doesn't that sound nice?!

RELATIONSHIPS: A Great Website for Dating Advice

If you feel like you could use some good dating advice, check out the go-to website for dating advice. Hayley Matthews runs the site and has offered a wealth of relationship advice in multiple media formats. Check out the website here!

RELATIONSHIPS: How to Become More Self-Confident - 4 Principles

In order to date successfully and find a good relationship, you have to feel good (enough) about yourself. While everyone has insecurities or flaws they wish they could change, you have to feel okay about yourself from the start of the relationship for the relationship to be a positive, lasting relationship. Of course, many men and women don’t feel so good about themselves, so I am highlighting four principles to keep in mind and live by so that you can improve your self-confidence and, by extension, have better romantic relationships.

Catch yourself when you say something negative about yourself.

Men and women who have low self-confidence often talk about themselves in a negative and judgmental way. They may refer to their unappealing body, reference specific parts of their body they don’t like, or talk about their bad luck in dating. Don’t let yourself speak badly about yourself. The first way to improve to your self-confidence is to stop saying negative things about yourself, and to say positive things about yourself instead. For example, you can say to yourself, “I have never loved my body, but I have always liked my sense of humor. (Remember, a good sense of humor is powerful in attracting dates.)

Do some activity that is good for your body at least once per week.

Ideally, you will work out (high aerobic activities) or engage in another physical activity (yoga, Pilates, dance) several days per week. But if that’s not who you are now – and it’s not going to be you anytime soon - at least force yourself to do something good for your body once per week. Working on your body or trying an activity that helps balance your mind and mood is extremely crucial in helping you to feel more confident.

Avoid spending too much time with people in your life who feel negative about themselves.

The people around us influence us every single day. If you have a friend or family member who is a Negative Nancy or a Sour-Puss Paul (that last one I made up, you can probably tell), that person often feels negative and they can bring you down with them. If you want to become more self-confident, hang out with others who feel positive about themselves and hopeful about the future. Spend time with people who build you up and make you feel good and positive. Make a mental note to spend a little more time with the people in your life who seem happy and healthy, and they will instantly start rubbing off on you.

Get organized.

Getting more organized in your life is a highly underestimated virtue. When your bedroom, closet, car and overall home are organized, for example, you feel like you have control over your life and you feel that things overall are manageable. Everyone – myself included – could take on some project in the next week to become more organized (say, dealing with a messy closet or garage). If you take on such a project and actually complete it, you already know exactly how you will feel afterward. When you think about it that way, why would you wait for a chance to feel better about yourself and your ability to manage things in your life? Plus, when you do have a new date in your car or in your home, your date will feel better about you if it looks you have your you-know-what-together.

Final reminders

I often tell my readers that getting a self-help book to deal with an issue is helpful and often even necessary to fix an emotional or behavioral problem. When it comes to self-confidence, however, you don’t need to spend ten or twenty dollars on a book. We all know exactly what we need to do to feel better about ourselves. It’s painfully simple, and only requires that you actually take the plunge and start putting healthy thoughts into action. Exercise, eat healthy stuff, hang out with positive people, get control over the messes in your life, and don’t say negative things about yourself. If you truly are committed to improving your self-confidence, you can notice a real change in a matter of three or four weeks if you stick with it and remain disciplined about a healthier, more positive lifestyle!