I don't know if you're as exhausted this month as I am; but, if you are yer smiling!

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Feeling a bit glum this Valentine's Day? Need cheering up any time?

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

-Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Martin Sheen recited this poem on "The Tonight Show" on 8/16/02. Click to hear his recitation at a rally in Appalachia....

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Our humble gratitude goes to the esteemed Skippy the BUSH Kangaroo for reciprocating links with Joe Six Pack's Elegant Blog!

    Anxiety alerts our mind and body to the presence of danger. The danger may come from internal or external sources, and it needn't be identified precisely or it may not actually materialize at all in most cases. The perception of peril manifests itself in our metabolism by increasing anxiety. We feel the press of living through the stresses we experience. Stress is cumulative, as it draws upon our personal and physical resources.

    Individuals have different tolerances for tensions. Some have 'higher-than-normal' coping levels for stress and anxiety. Others have 'less-than-normal' levels of tolerance for stress and are more vulnerable to accelerated heightening anxiety. Excessive stress and heightened anxiety can lead individuals to lowered self-esteem and depression. In such situations, the goal of psychotherapy is to validate the subjects' emotional experience, adjust the negative self-assessment engendered by emotional overload, and help them find the path of support and positive developmental change. Often, anxiety and stress are heightened by individuals being caught between actual or seemingly untenable choices in life, or between people we love (or people we even fear, sometimes).

    Uncertainty and instability and change also induce heightened anxiety levels. These problems can often be more effectively explored and understood in psychotherapy. You are capable of appreciating the definition and symptoms of heightened anxiety, and you are also able to identify many of the causes of stress and anxiety in your own personal milieu and you may wish to address those identified root causes of stress in order to take more control of anxiety levels in your own life. Below are some useful coping skills for healthier living with stress and anxiety. They are not foolproof. If you are feeling on the verge of being overwhelmed, and your life is suffering, there is no substitute more effective than talking with a professional.

Be flexible. Know what you can change and what you can't, go with the flow, be more open to changes.

Laugh more. Watch a funny movie, tell a joke, read the comics. Visit the Heightened Anxiety blog occasionally.

Breathe slowly, deeply, and well. Relaxation begins with slow, deep breathing from your diaphragm. You can actually assert calmness upon your psyche at your very whim! Recent findings suggest that meditation, long promoted as a technique to reduce anxiety and stress, might produce important biological effects that improve a person's resiliency.

Learn to say "no". It's hard to say no sometimes, but recognize you can't do everything, pace yourself. Prioritize. Be less eager to let others set your agenda so frequently.

Go ahead and make mistakes. No one's perfect. The only way we really learn is from our mistakes. "Mistakes" is just another term for "lessons". Accept them as the natural process of growing in wisdom.

Play... with a lover, a friend, a child, a pet. Having fun is the natural way of lowering the body's stress hormones. Stress tenses; play loosens.

Get active. Exercise brings out the body's endorphins, natural pain-killers and pleasure-producing substances residing inside each and every one of us.

Eat well and avoid stimulants. A healthy diet makes the body strong and increases a sense of well-being. Watch those double-lattes. Caffeine and nicotine put more stress on our musculature and nervous system. If you're a creature of considerable habit, consider decaffeinated beverages and smoking a pipe as substitutes for breaking old habits.

Talk to others. Sharing life's difficulties and problems with another person, whether a co-worker, friend, spouse, lover, or counselor, allows one to shed the weight of burdens shouldered alone. Providing a shoulder helps bring much needed perspective to our own personal troubles.

Face your difficulties. Problems have a tendency to mount quickly, until there can seem so many as to be overwhelming. Tackle them one at a time. Set achievable goals. Your day will seem appreciably lighter after even one dreaded task is tackled once and for all.

Plus. . .

Allow yourself to mourn. Changes, even good changes, can bring a sense of loss for how things used to be. You have the right to grieve this loss. In fact, everyone needs that time. . . to adjust, to reminisce, to care, to process.

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  You can easily find signs of heightened anxieties in others without any trouble. How do we recognize when our own anxiety levels are escalating? What causes it? If you feel periods of tension with accompanying headaches, freeze up at public speaking obligations, or have sporadically higher blood pressure readings at certain times, or if you occasionally harbor a compelling urge to cast your boot directly through the television tube in reaction to its constant dispension of utter banality, disinformation, and propaganda, then you're presently 'on the right page'. If you can relate to Joe Six Pack's experiences yourself, then you're probably already experiencing some degree of relief. Believing that you're experiencing something altogether unique to most other people only fuels the escalation of anxiety. It helps to know that you are 'far from alone'. A multitude of regular folks are undergoing similar experiences confronting their own heightened anxiety. Indeed many more people are facing problems relating to anxiety than ever before.

  By visiting Joe Six Pack's Heightened Anxiety blog on a regular basis, you'll gain a better understanding of the heightened anxiety syndrome, how it manifests itself in the characteristic behavior - and web content - of the afflicted (the famous, powerful, and Six Packs alike) and what needs to be done in order to eventually succeed in reducing high anxiety levels again, individually as well as collectively. An honorable pursuit; particularly in the advancing age of nuclear arms and the new doctrine of preemptive war as articulated recently by once-popular unelected Present-resident-tenant George W. Bush.

  Welcome! I'm sure most of you have brought along your own cushy chairs, fortunately. What you should proceed to do straightaway is sign-up to begin authoring your own blog . It's a much more constructive form of therapy than rhetorically or physically bashing Regressive-publicans, it's by far more dignified than primal screaming in the contemporary urban environment, and it's one of the rare activities one can participate at alone - which is far more than you can say about the majority of pursuits these days. Well... masturbation immediately springs to mind. At any rate, blogging and masturbation are two of the most popular pastimes in America at the moment. Surely it's no coincidence that they're both virtually free or at least exceedingly inexpensive to do, one could conceivably engage in both of these activities simultaneously, and they're also heartily endorsed by Joe Six Pack and the Christian Right's new abstinence doctrine. You can't go wrong! Just what the doctor ordered during a long economic recession and mass emotional trauma: that ever elusive affordable health care stimulus package! It's my hope that you'll pop about to see what the day's topic will be from time to time here at Heightened Anxieties and we'll share a tear or quite possibly even a laugh once in a while as we heal. Keep your chins up; all of them. It can always be worse, and it quite probably will get worse too! Learn how to avoid letting heightened anxiety paralyze you in the challenging times ahead. Enjoy!

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