Is Fear Running Your Life?

Fear rears its ugly head in so many places and it is accelerating due to acts of terrorism across the world. Should we be afraid of much of what we see humans being are capable of? Yes. There are many levels of fear and don't get me wrong, fear is a valuable way to monitor our environment. We have emotions for a reason and we need to honor that reason - but let's put things into perspective.

Look at simple decisions, for example, that you make at the grocery store. There are products out there on grocery shelves that are toxic. They poison the air you breathe. They poison clothing and furniture. They excite allergies. They excite emotional and hormonal disturbances.

Fear. Every marketing person knows that if you want to sell something excite fear in the person for not having your product. That line of reasoning sells products. Think about it. Commercials on TV set you up to be fearful that someone will walk into your house and turn up their noses at a smell, which most homes do not have, by the way. When was the last time you left a bucket of stinky fish sitting on your living room table or garbage spread out on your floor? Most people live in clean homes. They take out the garbage. They wash their clothes. They open windows. Fearing what others think can be irrational and makes you a target for being victimized.

Big companies spend millions of dollars researching how they can sell more. The result is that if they can excite the consumer to be anxious and fearful that something awful will happen if they don't buy their product, they organize their marketing strategy around that. They want you to be eager to buy their product to resolve a problem -- a problem you don't have. Buy products with fragrances, food with preservatives and just wait to see what kinds of problems you develop by smelling and eating toxins. Solutions come in natural and non-toxic ways too. Chemical companies how strong and powerful lobbyists. There is a huge amount of money behind what they can put on the shelves and legislation is not active in stopping it. There hasn't been regulations about the production and sale of harmful chemicals since 1976. And the power is in our hands. Stop buying and the companies will rethink what we want.

The next time you shop - buy organic foods. Eliminating pesticides, aspertame, and other chemicals from the foods you ingest will help your body and mental capacity.

Buy one organic product a month and within a six month period your home will be less polluted. Laundry detergents are a source of allergies and other physical symptoms. That 'smell good smell' is a combination of toxins to trick you into believing if it smells good it must be good. Wrong!

This change of lifestyle will not only help you and your family but the planet as well. People complain about big companies. They fail to see that we, the people, have the power and that power is the dollar. Spend it wisely, change the world, help the planet.

Until next time,
Jan

When Stressful Symptoms Won't Go Away!

Haunting and annoying symptoms of stress can persist for years and cause disruption in relationships, work, and health. Primary care physicians report that 95% of their caseload is due to individuals not knowing what to do with their stress and become prime victims for medication. Medication certainly has it usefulness but there are other ways to deal with stress.

For those with haunting symptoms such as nightmares, panic attacks, social fears, exploding anger for seemingly no reason, relationship issues that won't get resolved, a strong need to isolate, a stronger need to keep calm at all costs, substance abuse, these might be signs that this is not ordinary stress but stress that involves symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress.

Normal stress can be relaxed from a walk in the park, yoga, a hot bath but more intense symptoms need deeper healing. A course I have developed: Unveil the Wounded Self - Write to Heal is having stunning healing effects with my psychotherapy clients, writing students, and those who heard about me through word-of-mouth. I teach this 6-week course both on-line and in-person. The course involves two to five pages of writing a week. Some clients do more and some less. The amount of writing isn't the issue; the focus of the writing is the point.

Go to: www.JanMarquart.com and click on the link for Unveil the Wounded Self - Write to Heal link in the column on the right. http://janmarquart.com/wordpress/?page_id=622

Please don't suffer any longer. Take this course.
Jan Marquart, LCSW, CAS, author of 11 books.
jan_marquart@yahoo.com

When Feelings Stop

We can become the recipients of things happening to us that stops us from feeling our emotions. It is like being frozen in time. We think we are moving on but we honestly aren't. Some time, some where, in some form, the memory, the unresolved emotions will return and usually when they do matters feel worse. Sometimes we can get out of a situation, sometimes we cannot. Nevertheless, our emotional, physical, and psychological reactions have frozen so we can continue on as normally as possible.
Writing is a healthy way to get to the bottom of what we are experiencing. It helps us unlock the emotions that have frozen, the thoughts we don't allow ourselves to have because they might incite more pain, and the stress that is sending millions of Americans into doctor's offices for medication that only compounds the problem by suppressing the truth.
I recommend daily journal writing in order to allow yourself to express the numbed emotions and reactions. Write down the thoughts you have about the situation. This process can be overwhelming to do it alone. I highly recommend that you consult with a therapist to help you through this process. This is the state of PTSD and it needs healing and on some level we all have it. PTSD comes from many levels of abuse, either done to us or what we have done to others.
If you want more information on this, and my 6-week writing course on Write to Heal, please contact: jan_marquart@yahoo.com
Keep the pen moving,
Jan, LCSW, Author of 11 books, and CEO and Founder of About the Author Network

Writing Grief

Grief can be a paralyzing emotion as it takes us directly into the heaviness of a present moment. It is like a huge monster that eats up our energy pushing us down further and further into sharp pain. Anyone who has experienced such grief will tell you that it seems there is no way out. One tool to slowly help move the moments from the darkness of the present to a lighter experience is to write about the feeling of grief and what is causing it. Acknowledge it, express it, write it out in every detail on every level. I say every level because grief will hold anger, sadness, helplessness, and more depending on the reason for the grief. Although therapists speak to the seven stages of grief it would be more effective if you came up with your own stage as you write in the moment.

Writing out experiences does not make unwanted experiences disappear. Writing can, however, lighten up the power grievous experiences have on us so the pain can lessen or be suspended until healing begins.

Keep the pen moving,
Jan
author of Write to Heal  www.CreateSpace.com/4333170

Are Your Decisions Making You Sick?

Pesticides -- everyone has used them for decades. What is it about pesticides that you don't know? They are full of harmful toxins. They cause disease in humans. They are sprayed on your food and don't come off well. They get in the soil and follow water into your food. If chemicals kill anything, you can count on them harming you. Even so-called non-toxic products are not totally healthy. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of sites that promote non-toxic ways to deter bugs without chemicals. Please google chemical free solutions to . . . then fill in what you are looking for.

When you get sick what do you do? You stop your life until you find a way to get well, right? Do you think about the products you have used in the last two - twenty years that might have contributed to your illness. Do you think maybe the preservatives in your food have caused you problems or spraying insecticides and pesticides in your home along with perfumed products has caused you problems? Probably not! I am here to tell you that you should do this. If you have young children and pets crawling on the floor, please check the ingredients you use. All companies must offer MSDS sheets that list the ingredients and their harmful effects. Can companies skim on necessary information? Yes, they can.

Until the Toxic Substance Abuse Act of 1976 gets amended, you will have to be more diligent. Here are some of my tips and they work and have worked for the last three decades:

Sprinkle baby power where ants are coming in and/or on their pathway. You will not see another ant.
Spray red wine vinegar in places where bugs come in -- they hate it.
Plant spearmint where mice are getting in -- they hate spearmint oil on their fur.
Put a line of Borax around your home. Most bugs won't walk over it.

I lived in the desert for 6 years and I rarely had a bug, even in the summer when they were prolific.

Keep you and your loved ones healthy. Do not believe the commercials on TV. Products might kill bugs but they might be slowly killing you too.
Jan

The Power of Thoughts

I've read that one positive thought can antidote 1,000 negative thoughts. Love is more powerful than hate. Generosity is more desired than greed. Think about these sentences. Our thoughts matter. Our philosophy matters. Our actions matter. I've heard dozens of stories from people who changed situations with prayer. Prayers are a union of thought and feeling and the belief that there is hope for the result to come about. It is giving up struggle, believing in a higher power and prayer is powerful. But everything changes from within first.
The world is losing its sanity but we can help even though we are one person sitting in America listening to the horror around the world on our TV. Trouble exists here, at home, too. It has to start somewhere and that somewhere is in the minds of the people who are behaving like madmen.
Start the change you want because we all enjoy peace. Several times a day think peace, feel it in your heart and send it out as soft pink or vivid green or whatever color resonates with that feeling for you. Imagine sending it out in ripples across a pond to cover the entire world. There are too many people suffering.
Think peace, feel peace, send it out across the world. Imagine everyone doing this. Wouldn't we then create the world we want? There is plenty of room for our differences but that doesn't preclude peace. It is when we force others to live our differences that we destroy peace. Let's rebuild it together --
Blessings,
Jan

Environmental Illness

He tacked aluminum foil to his walls to keep the smells out. She couldn't use her shampoo or perfume. He couldn't stand his new carpet and had it ripped up and replaced with tile. Their bodies become fatigued, were plagued with horrible headaches, lost their ability to digest, along with a variety of other life-changing symptoms. They found life unbearable avoiding people and buildings and soon became homeless trying to survive. He couldn't be around electricity. She couldn't stand being near wifi. What do you think about this behavior? Do you think it is crazy? Well I have news for you. It is more real than you can ever imagine. What these people have, the medical profession doesn't consider real, in fact, they don't know what it is and despite their knowledge they claim to know that these symptoms are imaginary. It is no wonder that 46% of environmentally ill people commit suicide?
Here is another astounding statistic: 65% of the population has environmental illness. Currently some of the symptoms are considered "allergies" and these people are given chemicals to ingest that only make them sicker.
Healing from this illness, not unlike other illnesses, require physical, emotional, and spiritual decisions. Remember the so-called Yuppie disease of the 70's that is now diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue or Fibromyalgia? Environmental Illness, too, is an immune condition. Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia were once considered imaginary.
So if chemicals make you sick including perfumes, cleaners, new building materials, plywood, and the like, you probably have a variation of Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. If wifi and electricity gives you a headache or other symptoms you might have Electrical Magnetic Frequency problems. These are considered environmental illnesses. There are more included but I won't go into the details in this short blog.
So, if you know anyone with crazy-making and unexplained physical symptoms, please be compassionate. Go to a holistic healer and get help. It is highly likely that an M.D. physician won't know anything about this.
I am the only licensed counselor I have met who works with environmental illness. And I should know about this: I have been able to heal enough to re-enter the world - but not without it turning my life upside down first. Write to me:
jan_marquart@yahoo.com