09-27-2023 Primtime Living - Flipbook - Page 5
A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, September 27, 2023
help patients understand and prescribe
medication when appropriate. “Your
doctor can also assist in connecting
you to a therapist if you are interested,”
he says. Marino adds that once patients
overcome the shame of asking for help
and see their primary care physician
and possibly a therapist, a later step
may be connecting to a support group,
which can be a benefit for the patient as
well as families. Sheppard Pratt’s website (www.sheppardpratt.org) has a host
of resources for finding a support group.
Further Treatment
In addition to medication, therapy
and support groups, educating yourself
is also important to better understand
what’s going on. Do not do a simple Google search on your symptoms
– believe me, I speak from personal
experience, this can only worsen your
anxiety – instead ask for resources from
your doctor or rely on trusted resources
such as Sheppard Pratt or the National
Alliance on Mental Illness (www.nami.org).
For me, in addition to the medication
prescribed by my doctor, a daily practice of meditation has done wonders;
however, for a beginner, sitting idle for
10-15 minutes can be challenging and
unnatural. Guided meditations available
on several apps can be very helpful. I
turned to Calm, a free app (although I
purchased the lifetime membership version that includes more features) to help
guide me. I have now meditated every
day for over two years.
According to Calm’s blog, https://
blog.calm.com, feeling anxious is “certainly not a sign of weakness or irrationality. The brain is built to anticipate
and to plan ahead. But sometimes,
thoughts can get carried away, and we
can find ourselves spiraling into worry,
or even panic.” In this case, I turn to
Calm’s four-minute “Panic SOS” guided
practice to help feel more grounded and
centered. Calm also recommends the
5-4-3-2-1 exercise: Pick out 5 things
you can see, 4 sounds you can hear, 3
textures you can touch, 2 scents you
can smell, and 1 taste. Doing this can
center you and get your breath back to
a normal state.
The Calm blog also explains the
difference between stress and anxiety,
which can be beneficial when trying to
differentiate between feeling stressed
out due to work or something greater.
“You know when you’re prepping for
a big presentation or dealing with a tight
deadline, and you feel a building tension
and/or pressure? That’s stress. It’s a
reaction to a specific event or situation.
The stress usually fades away once the
event is over or the problem is resolved.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is a bit different. It’s like this persistent sense of
unease that lingers even when there’s
no specific stressor present. It’s worrying excessively about what could happen in the future rather than responding
to what’s happening right now. So, the
key difference is that stress is tied to a
specific event, while anxiety often sticks
around even when the triggering event
is over,” Calm explains on its blog. “Like
Have confidence in
every conversation.
Do you find it difficult to use a standard phone? Do people ask you to repeat yourself
during telephone conversations? Do you miss important calls because you can’t hear
the phone ring? The Maryland Accessible Telecommunications (MAT) program is
here to help by giving Maryland residents the opportunity to apply for State-provided
telecommunications equipment to independently make and receive calls. Once you
qualify, a skilled evaluator meets with you to determine the best device to support your
day-to-day communications. The MAT program has a variety of equipment solutions to
support clearer communication, including:
•
•
•
Amplified phones
Tablets
Ring signalers
•
•
•
Phones with large and/or high contrast buttons
Captioned Telephones
And more
For more information:
800-552-7724 | 410-767-7253 (Voice/TTY)
410-801-9618 (Video Phone) | MDMAT.org
5
a sudden storm, stress usually passes
once the triggering issue or situation
is resolved. The clouds part, the rain
stops, and things return to normal.
However, anxiety is more like a constant drizzle, often continuing even after
the original stressor has disappeared.
It’s this lingering quality that separates
anxiety from stress.”
Raising Awareness
One of the ways to fight the stigma
attached to anxiety disorders – or any
mental health condition – is for more
people to discuss their own experiences, especially those who are in positions
of power or have notoriety.
In Congressman Adam Smith’s
(D-Wash.) honest, heartbreaking and
emotional new memoir, Lost and
Broken: My Journey Back from Chronic
Pain and Crippling Anxiety, the longtime congressman shares his yearslong
Anxiety disorder,
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