Healthcanc

It is summer, and you wouldn't think people are too down, but maybe it hasn't been the best summer for everyone. Hopelessness doesn't always flip with the seasons. A patient described panic symptoms, not knowing that she had suffered a panic attack.  "But I told myself," she went on, "that everything will be all right. And it was!" multiple meanings of spiraling  BALANCE   Therapists, friends-- we all say it with confidence: Everything will be all right . The reply, "How, exactly, do you know?" is the tricky part. How do we know? Emotions are temporary states, for one. We cannot stay in the same exact emotional headspace forever, wired as we are with homeostatic neurological and hormonal systems. Without therapy, we are changing all the time. And therapy has improved exponentially in recent years.  Interventions are tested and have proven empirically effective. Change is so likely that when hopelessness spirals out of control and patients talk ...

The Kotel, Western Wall It was a fast day yesterday, meaning no food or water from sunrise to sunset (we have 25-hour fasts, but this one, the 17th of Tammuz is considered a "minor" fast, less intense). FD and I woke up at 3:45 am to get in some breakfast before sunrise. This helps tremendously, a pancake or two, a cup of coffee, a couple of preventive Advil. But when you're fasting until 9:15 pm on a summer day, you get more than a little thirsty.  I traditionally tease my children with a text, a reminder of the joke about the old Jewish guy on a train in Europe. He continuously bemoans aloud, "I'm so toisty ," until someone finally listens to him. (There are variations , all with the same punchline.). It is my final text of the long day. Anyway by 9:00 that day I'm at work, where people are often talking about food, and their diets, how cutting out certain foods, white flour or sugar especially, helps them lose a couple of pounds and improves their sta...