for those of you that don't like reading ginormous small print articles, this one is worth reading to about 2/3 towards the bottom.
I haven't written in awhile and haven't been very motivated these days. Something weird happened to me yesterday. I went to the men's volleyball open gym to get some good practice in before my season starts. Their practice was much harder than I expected including a fair amount of running and sprinting. After warm-ups, we were on our second drill and I was standing in line when for some reason I started having an anxiety attack. I got a funny feeling in my chest and started freaking out. Obviously I was fine but I ran out of the gym and called my boyfriend to come pick me up immediately. I wasn't running or breathing heavy. I was just standing there in line waiting for my turn to partake in the drill. I may sound dumb saying this but my mom said that I should research anxiety coping mechanisms so that I am not reliant on my boyfriend to drop everything and come help me feel better. I'm sure there are lots of other ways to cope but my sure fire way of getting rid of anxiety is my boyfriend.
I learned an interesting fact in my communications class today. Kissing can significantly lower cholesterol, stress, and obviously increase your satisfaction in a relationship. But going further, communication in general increases your physiological health in general. There have been studies supporting the idea that chronic conflict, lack of showing affection, or isolation from people can have the same amount of negative health affects as smoking. So if your reading this, I highly recommend going home and giving your significant other a big smooch. And if you don't have a significant other, don't stress about it, don't isolate yourself, and say what's on your mind. Don't hold back.
I was reading this scientific journal article for my psychology class and discovered other interesting facts. Watching negative news stories affect your mood in a negative way, well duh. But going further, it can have significant effects on your anxiety levels and on the ideas you are currently worried about. The study showed high correlation between watching negatively portrayed news and (it's a word. google it) catastrophizing personal worries. Basically, catastrophizing personal worries is building up a negative thought in your head to become something much greater than it is. For example, if your sales at work are lower than normal, you may begin to build this thought up in your mind to oh my gosh I'm going to be fired when realistically you really only had a slow day for any miscellaneous reason. Maybe a better example is if you are a hypochondriac and you get a headache and it doesn't go away right away, you may begin to catastrophize and think oh gosh what if I have a brain tumor or oh gosh I'm going to die. And apparently watching something negative that makes you feel sad or other emotion can cause your brain to dwell on some negative aspect or worry in your life and turn it into a catastrophic event.
When I googled catastrophizing, I found some cool websites that talk you through how to recognize when you do this and how to train yourself not to in order to live a long, happy life because as we now know, stress can higher your cholesterol and cause heart disease.
Oh one more interesting fact. Heart disease is the number one cause of death for males and females in the United States. Maybe that has something to do with the competition between news companies and leisure television shows for air space. Apparently negative news stories that provoke emotion are more interesting and draw more people to watch than happy sunshine stories that make people's minds healthier.
