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Showing posts from September, 2011

Trying to Eliminate Anxiety & Stress Part II

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Let me first start off by pointing out that the term, “eliminate” may be too much of an expectation. Better words to use are coping and managing. The other day while Madelene and I were home, we were watching The Wendy Williams Show , (yeah, how U doin’??) and she had Jennifer Grey as a guest. While roaming around the house, I heard Jennifer say something that stopped me right in my tracks. She was talking about all the surgeries she had and Wendy had asked her if she was still in pain. Jennifer replied, “I’m always in pain.” Wendy was about to console her, until Jennifer interrupted her and said, “We as humans are all in pain, it’s whether or not we learn how to manage it.” I then thought about my own situations, my anxiety, depression, all emotional burdens, etc., and it hit me: manage your pain before it manages you. (Pain can be replaced with anxiety in my case.) She is absolutely right and of course, easier said than done, but most importantly ----possible and very realistic. A

Trying to Eliminate Anxiety & Stress

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The past week or so I’ve been suffering from insomnia. As you probably already read, I suffer from anxiety disorder and depression. I’ll sleep one night, and then be up the following two nights. The thing is, when I’m about to go to bed, I’m exhausted. Right when I start ‘falling’, is when I get these shots of adrenaline, like a ‘fight or flight’ response and jolt up as if somebody used a defibrillator on me and yelled, “CLEAR!” I sit straight up in my bed and try to catch my breath again, before returning, or better yet, hoping to go back to sleep. I’ll get about ten jolts before I finally sleep, and sometimes, I’ll be up all night too frightened to go back to sleep. Of course I scanned every online health article and ‘what it could be’ site, and I came up with a few things that made sense. Oddly enough, there was a huge message board with tons of people on it complaining about the same exact thing. I was surprised I wasn’t alone. One suggested it may be due to indigestion and acid r

Conspiracy Theories: Do You Believe Them?

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Sometimes we need a little stir in our news stream opposing to what we think and know when it comes to the world, and other times, sometimes those little ‘stirs’ are taken too far in my opinion. For instance, remember when the swine flu was going around? Everyone was so scared about this flu that it nearly left me paralyzed with anxiety. (What doesn’t though?) Even my wife was hesitant to shake her clients’ hands and I wouldn’t dare open a doorknob without my sleeve. Then, when the swine flu did hit me, it was in fact...the flu. Nothing more, nothing less. I got through it with no medication and I treated it like any other flu. When all of the hype simmered down and the swine flu was somewhat of a distant thing, the government was adamant about having everyone get the swine flu vaccination. Wow, what a good idea, but lemme’ Google it first. I always, always Google anything ‘new’ or questionable. They had tons of videos out saying that the H1N1 vaccine was giving people nerve damage, an

"It Gets Better, I Promise" ...Does It?

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You’ve probably already heard or read about Jamey Rodemeyer. He was a 14 year old freshman from Buffalo, NY who was being bullied in school and on the internet. From an article on the Washington Post , they stated that on a Formspring account, which many kids have, he received messages such as, “JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!” an anonymous commenter said. “I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!” said another. Jamey then put a video up called, “It Gets Better”, giving kids around the world a positive message about preventing suicide and how things do get better, but unfortunately, he ended up taking his own life last Sunday. In the video, you can see the hurt, the pain, the agony of this boy and how he was still struggling, yet still giving a positive message to everyone out there listening. This video breaks my heart. I’m going to come clean about something in hopes that both these young girls, (my

Why Did You Decide to Become a Lesbian?

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Yesterday morning as I was checking my email, I came across an old friend from high school who befriended me on Facebook. We batted a few emails back and forth, and with the last email she had sent me, she asked, “Why did you decide to become a lesbian?” At first, I wanted to respond quickly, swiftly, and of course without thinking. I then paused and wondered if this woman had any type of exposure to any of the LGBT community, or at least knew someone who was gay or lesbian. She was brought up in a very rigid Catholic household. That in itself tells me where this bizarre question came from. She’s also raising her new family with her husband the same way. Nothing wrong with that. So I sat and thought about it, and instead of flat out saying, “Are you serious”, with a sarcastic slap in the face, I decided to slap her in the face with a joke she can either think is serious or not. I replied with, “Well, I thought I’d get more guys that way.” I was wondering how serious she would have take

Mom's Unconventional Healing Methods

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Over the years I’ve written about my parents, mostly about my dad and his botched up Brooklynite accent and slang, but mom is a whole different can-o-beans. And despite her claims of being honest and how she never lies, I’d like to take this time out to dedicate this lovely post to my dear, sweet mama. Her mission: to take care of everyone she loves, even if it may be an unconventional route. She means well. She lies for the ‘good’ and never intentionally tries to deceive anyone. She’ll even convince you that all the “bad things” in life are supposed to be good for you. And sadly, she wins out and you just have to go by her set of rules of what’s best for you. So here’s a little post about my mom... It’s a cold winter day and my sister and I rush over to our parents’ house to warm up by the fire and have some of her famous pasta fagioli soup. I notice that the soup is thicker than normal, but still delicious. Normally, whenever I see mom make the soup, she gives me the first cup, usual

Stop. Stoppen. इसे बंद Fermarlo. Dejar Que.

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Sometimes certain friendships are easily obtained, maintained and can last through the roughest and toughest times, but have you ever had to reel it in and draw back from one for whatever reason? To have a friend, you must be a friend, but what if that one friend constantly does things to disrespect you or your relationship with inappropriate sexual talk or constant digs? First time, no problem. “Please stop” should be enough for the inappropriateness to cease. When you find yourself asking the same person to stop taunting you a million and one times with sexually explicit innuendoes or any chatter alike, isn’t it time to walk away? I can be a tough cookie with my opinions and being bluntly honest to a fault, but I’m very quick to forgive and understand people. I don’t usually “fire” my friends or just make rash decisions in cutting ties. I tell it like it is and if they cannot handle that, then I’m not a good match. If a person goes above and beyond their call of rudeness, and disres

It's Just Too Much...

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Have we grieved enough, New York? Is it out of our systems or do we have to keep going on until one day, our own name is written on a plaque ...or tombstone? Ten years gone by and it still feels as though it happened yesterday. In my honest and strong-minded opinion, many people are recreating the disaster, more so than just a visit to their resting place. Most survivors of 9/11 have PTSD. Some have been in therapy for ten years, and others keep it in recreating that day over and over inside their minds. On Sunday morning, I turned on the TV to notice every single local channel dedicating it to the 9/11 memorial. It’s nice to see that. But some channels decided to display those awful images and footage of what took place a decade ago. They kept showing the plane going through the second tower over and over again. They also played clips of people falling - jumping out of windows. Enough! Each time I see those images, my stomach starts to hurt and I get a huge lump in my throat. It’s

Talk to Me

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This week from Sept. 4th - the 10th is National Suicide Prevention Week. The Trevor Projec t is running a “ TALK TO ME ” campaign, where they encourage people to be available to those who need emotional support, especially if they’re thinking about suicide. They’ve asked people to place the “ TALK TO ME ” logo onto their Facebook accounts as well as embed them onto their blogs if they have one for one week. While that’s all find and good, to be honest with you, I don’t know one person who has put this logo up onto their website(s) who would actually sit down and take the time out to help someone in need of emotional support. Most who I have seen are only putting it up just for self-promotion and the sense of “looking like a good person”, when in fact it’s utter bullshit. Place it up so people can know you’re genuinely interested in helping them. Place it up if you care about another human being’s life in jeopardy. Place it up if you have the time and patience to care for another person

Accepting Disappointments

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"Sometimes we expect more from someone than they are able or willing to give. It’s easy to see who we want a person to be and ignore all the signs that point to who they actually are. Give people enough time and they always reveal their true selves. Whether you choose to accept the truth is up to you. Ultimately, you can't blame someone for being who they are. The fault lies with you, for believing they were different." ~ 5 Degrees of Comedy ~ Carlos Wallace My friend Carlos said it so perfectly this morning. (Thank you Carlos.) There are many facets to people to which we sometimes fail to see for many reasons. Speaking for myself, I personally like to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to those I care about. I want to believe that their intentions are good. I want to believe that they would never hurt me. I want to believe they would never betray me ...and so on and so on. Then after a few disappointments, I realized something: they’re human. They’re like m

Tiptoeing Around Time Bombs

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Sometimes I hear people saying, “Well today it seems more accepted than it did years ago”, or perhaps you get someone who blurts out, “Years ago they didn’t have this type of thing.” Whether they’re talking about people who are gay or lesbian, I’m directing this post toward the transgender community. With all communities, nothing is “new”, it’s just more exposed to society. It’s not like one day somebody realized this “man” isn’t really a man, but because our LGBT community has fought so hard to become part of society; part of everyday interaction because they are people, plain and simple. We’re done hiding. Not all of us are ‘in your face homos & transgender people’ - we simply want the same rights as every other human. We may not get the respect of everyone and we certainly don’t expect it - but we would like to have a peaceful life with the equality of any heterosexual God-given gender born person on this planet. Maybe that’s not realistic thinking, but we’ve come this far than