Mental Health

Anxiety is one of the most highly occurring mental health disorders and co-occurring disorders with substance abuse. According to the ADAA, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 18 percent of the population suffer from some kind of anxiety disorder. Anxiety is a misfiring of the survival system in the mind. When fight or flight takes place the body goes into a natural state of panic or anxiety. Firing adrenaline and cortisol, the brain and body are put on high alert in order to survive. For anxiety disorders, even the thought of anxiety is threatening enough to trigger off a chain of reactions which can become debilitating. Some believe that anxiety is triggered by fear alone. Fear is a complicated process in our minds which can take many forms. What we experience and how we experience it contributes to what we fear and how we fear it. Not all anxiety disorders are the same. General anxiety is different from social anxiety, for example. Different triggers create different kinds of anxiety, thusly requiring different methods for reducing anxious symptoms and returning to a state of calm.

Have you ever been shown a picture or been told a story about the past or your childhood so many times that you start to remember it like your own memory? One day, you’re telling the story to someone else and the memory is alive, practically vivid. You find yourself saying you can’t even remember if you were told about this memory or if you remember it yourself. The experience can be quite disorienting. When looking at the deeper implications, it can be quite terrifying. Understanding the way the brain reacts to false memories is important for understanding mental health and substance use disorders in which the brain is vulnerable.

Depression is the leading mental health diagnosis worldwide. Over 300 million people suffer from depression around the globe. Though your depression may be leaving you feeling isolated and disconnected in your thoughts, you are not alone. Even people without a diagnosable depressive condition experience depression. Chronic depression and major depressive disorder is common in all walks of life. To all those thoughts telling you that you are alone and the only one feeling this way-- tell them they are not true. There are others, just like you, struggling with their emotions and working toward living their lives.

There is an odd notion upon getting sober that once we are through withdrawals and the drugs have left our system we are immune to any negativity. All the wonderful things of the world we have been missing out on should come rushing in and gather at our feet. No more pain, no more addiction, no more being broke, and no more sadness. Unfortunately, this just isn’t so. No matter the recovery we are in, life still happens. As human beings, we still continue to respond emotionally to life. Life is not always happy and neither are we. Negative emotions like sadness are just part of the deal. The true gift of recovery is learning to live life on life’s terms. Essentially, learning to live life on life’s terms means taking all of life in stride- the good and the bad- then showing up to it. “Showing up” to life means meeting life as it demands to be met- dealing with negative when there is negative without being consumed, altered, or destructive. The work we do in recovery equips us to stand strong through all of life’s ups and downs. More importantly, recovery teaches us how to rise to all of these challenges without picking up drugs, picking up a drink, or reverting to old behavior.

Obsessive compulsive disorder is a psychological disorder commonly misunderstood. Mainstream media depicts OCD as being about having to repeat patterns and attain to a very specific lifestyle so as not to induce anxiety. OCD is not about being out of control of one’s behaviors as it is about being in strict control of one’s behaviors. OCD is often stemmed out of trauma, which is a violent event in which one feels out of control. OCD develops as a coping mechanism to create calm, order, and control. Definitively, OCD is “a pattern of unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions).” At its worst, OCD can mean not being able to leave the house unless a certain pattern of behavior is completed. OCD can interfere with the quality of one’s life and create more chaos than calm.

The average person thinks about sex about 15 times per day. Having a sudden sexual thought at a deemable inappropriate place and time can feel quite embarrassing. Sexual arousement during a serious meeting or conversation feels out of control and out of place. When it happens there are feelings of shame, even guilt, mixed with an odd and unsettling sense of pleasure. Imagine that situation occurring all day long, coupled with an inability to let the sensation pass. Meet the sensation with troubling behaviors which can lead to negative consequences, then continue doing that behavior regardless of the negative consequences. This is sex addiction. Sex addiction riddles people’s lives with constant sexual compulsions from pornography to sex services, to texting. What is Sex Addiction? Currently, sex addiction is labeled as a process addiction. Process addictions are different from substance use disorders in which there are chemicals involved that alter the brain. Instead, a process addiction involves a process or activity, like gambling and sexual activity. However, numerous studies have shown that process addictions stimulate the brain in a manner very similar to chemical addictions. The production of dopamine, the pleasure communicator in the brain, is not exclusive to chemical substances. Sex is pleasurable and brings the brain pleasure, which, as in chemical dependency, it can become dependent upon. Signs and Symptoms of Sex Addiction One of the key signs a sex addiction has developed is the need for more sexual activity or more extreme sexual activity to achieve the same feelings of pleasure and/or relief. What starts out as an innocent exchange of pictures with a partner can quickly develop into paid prostitution, hours of pornography, and calls to sex hotlines. An alcoholic or addict is taught that there is danger in the first drink because it always leads to more. Other signs and symptoms include:

A personality disorder is defined as “a deeply ingrained and maladaptive pattern of behavior of a specified kind, typically manifest by the time one reaches adolescence and causing long-term difficulties in personal relationships or in functioning in society.” According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth edition), a personality disorder is “an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it.” The National Institute of Mental Health reports that in a 12 month prevalence, 9.1% of US Adults will experience a personality disorder. Personality Disorders are separated into three categories: Suspicious personality disorders, Emotional and Impulsive personality disorders, and Anxious personality disorders. Suspicious Personality Disorders and Characteristics

What If I Don’t Have The Time To Practice Mindfulness? “Ego says: Once everything falls into place I will find peace. Spirit says: Once I find peace, everything falls into place.”- Marianne Williamson “Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.” - Henepola Gunaratana Making Time When You Don’t Have Time Leadership speakers, spiritual gurus, and organization lovers alike all agree that if you don’t have time to (insert action or behavior here) then (insert action or behavior here) is the most important thing you need to do. If you don’t have time to make time, making time is what you need to spend your time doing. Mindfulness practices are an important tool in anyone’s recovery toolbox for mental health. Practicing mindfulness helps us to connect to ourselves, calm down our heart rate, get grounded into the present moment, and regulate our emotions. For anxiety, depression, panic, OCD, and PTSD, mindfulness can help ease any uncomfortable moment. Making time for mindfulness practice each day is a way to keep maintenance over yourself spiritually, physically, and mentally. Life gets busy when we make our way back into it after treatment. Treatment for mental health is a special time where all time revolves around you, your needs, and being taken care of. Outside of treatment, we have to put all our new knowledge, strength, and tools to the test to live life manageably. Mindfulness practices don’t have to take up large chunks of time, like getting lost in a two-hour meditation. Quite the contrary, mindfulness can be effective in as little as one minute. Short, Simple, Impactful Mindfulness Practices Two methods of mindfulness that are powerful ways to get connected to the present moment are checking and scanning. At any point in time during the day, you can take even ten seconds to close your eyes, focus on your breath, and turn your attention inward. Noticing your emotional state helps you to keep a gauge on what you are experiencing. For more than just a check, try being with your thoughts in a mindful way for one whole minute. Body scanning is a practice to help separate physical sensation from emotional sensation and find peace in between the two. Depression can cause us to feel lethargic, heavy, slow, and unmotivated. Anxiety can get our adrenaline pumping, causing us to feel antsy, edgy, and squirmy. A body scan can take just five minutes. Starting from your toes, mindfully notice the physical sensations in each part of your body. Actively and gently tell your body it can relax. Your mental health is our priority. We make the time to meet your needs as you uniquely need them to be met. Avalon By The Sea offers premiere mental health treatment as one of Southern California’s only mental health treatment facilities licensed to treat psychiatric issues as a primary diagnosis. For more information on our program and a confidential assessment, please call 1-855-464-8409.

The road to long term recovery from mental health disorders is long, but not without reward. As we learn to manage life on life’s terms while coping with our diagnoses, we are able to witness first hand our remarkable development. If you find you’re being hard on yourself for not doing well enough, see if any of these small (and not so small) victories are making themselves apparent in your life. Remember how far you’ve come and use that as inspiration for taking each new step forward. You can do this! Showing Up (and on time!) Our depression kept us depressed. Our anxiety kept us anxious. Our paranoia kept us paranoid. Whatever our diagnosis, we let the entirety of our mental health disorder control our lives. Without the ability to cope and the tools to manage, we missed out on life day after day. Doing life was just hard. Some days, it is still hard. Treatment and recovery for mental health helps us learn how to take life on and show up. Being present for ourselves, for our families, and for the demands of life is a victory in mental health recovery. Showing up on time consistently may seem like no accomplishment for others but a huge success for us. Staying Clean and Organized… Depression can leave us without the motivation to get anything done. Studies have shown that a clean and orderly environment that is welcoming can help alleviate some stressful depression symptoms. Try mustering the inspiration to clean on an especially down day and be left with mess. Recovery for mental health means being able to get out of bed and clean our rooms or our houses; not just once, but day after day. ...Or Allowing For Mess While pervasive mess might be a symptom of mental health disorders like depression, it is the bane of others. Obsessive compulsive disorder, for example, thrives on rules, lines, exactness, and tidiness. Recovery for mental health from OCD means allowing a little bit of mess in your life without feeling completely out of control. Managing Finances Financial management starts with getting a job. If we are able to get, and hold, a job, we are already in a tremendous victory. Learning how to tackle finances one step at a time is a victory with each move. Paying bills, having groceries, putting gas in our cars (having cars) are all major accomplishments. Personal Hygiene Daily practices of personal hygiene can be challenging in different ways for different disorders. We might be too obsessed with hygiene or we might not practice hygiene at all. A balanced hygiene practice is important for self care as well as general health. Avalon By The Sea proudly boasts the title of being one of California’s only licensed facilities for treating mental health as a primary diagnosis. If mental health is preventing you from feeling victorious in life, help is available. For a confidential assessment, call Avalon today at 1-855-464-8492.

We hear this term “self-care” a lot in recovery from both mental health disorders and substance use disorders. We have to learn how to participate in self-care. Self-care is important. Having a healthy self-care practice means we are able to self-soothe and make time for taking care of ourselves. Self-care also means that we have learned about our personal wants and needs. We can overexert ourselves sometimes. Forgetfully, we take our new found strengths and run with them. Our disabilities are no longer debilitating and we are liberated to live life more fully again. We can do too much. Self-care is a nonjudgmental, and proactively not self centered way to make time for taking care of ourselves in exactly the way we need to. Self-care can be hard to do. Shame, guilt, and self-loathing make a pretty decent argument in our minds when we think about doing something for self-care. We might tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, we aren’t worth it, we haven’t earned it, or we’re pathetic for needing it. Ouch! Such moments more than others require a little extra self-love and self-compassion. Each person’s self-care regimen will be different. Finding and developing your unique methods for self-care is part of the journey of recovery. Try these suggestions for guiding your way to being a self-care specialist. First, remind yourself it's OK to practice self-care and that it’s good for you. Second, ask yourself what it would take for you to completely enjoy time you spend with yourself. Do you need pampering? Would you like to work on a relationship or part of your relationship with yourself? Would self-care involve spending time on a favorite hobbies, activity, or exercise? Spend self-care time with yourself. Try to put down your phone, stay off of social media, and even out of contact with people for even just one hour. You aren’t isolating, but taking necessary time to reboot. Validate yourself. It would be nice if we could get a gold star for every difficult thing we did in recovery from mental health and substance use disorders. Buy your own sticker set and pat yourself on the back. This journey is completely yours. Own it and be proud! Avalon By The Sea offers premier primary diagnosis treatment for psychiatric disorders as well as dual diagnosis and co-occurring issues. For a confidential assessment and more information on our programs of treatment call 1-855-464-8492.

70% of adults will experience a traumatic event in their life- over 220 million people. Of those 220 million, PTSDunited.org reports, 20% of them will develop PTSD as a result. PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, affects 8% of Americans at any given time, according to the website. That percentage of people, they compare, is equal to the population of Texas. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a rare development in response to trauma. Mistakenly, people assume that trauma is followed by the development of PTSD. While people can have aggravated emotional responses to trauma that may look similar to PTSD, it isn’t PTSD itself. Symptoms of PTSD include

You’ve heard it described in different ways. There’s a statistical chance you’ve experienced it. Some say they can hear their brains powering off and witness their bodies dying. Others say they float in the corner of the room, watching their bodies from afar as their souls have left. According to the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, “Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137%.” Not every overdose results in death. Many come back for a second, third, fourth, or multiple times chance at life. Experiencing temporary death or a close interaction with it can leave a permanent mark. Near death experiences have been studied within a range of scientific disciplines. From psychology to neurology, scientists are fascinated by the before, during, and after effects of a near death experience. A universal experience of near death involves two scenarios: the floating in the corner of the room or seeing the body from above scenario and witnessing the ubiquitous “light at the end of the tunnel” scenario. Science has an answer for both. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, writes NDE survivor JR Thorpe, “appears to be a product of restricted oxygen flow to the eye.” As a whole, out of body experiences “seem to involve confusion in the right temporoparietal junction in the brain; stress hormones released in a traumatic moment may stimulate emotional memories…” Many feel that these near death experiences have a spiritual component and end up in spiritual transformation. One bad overdose that results in one good spiritual experience is not always enough to convince someone to get sober. There are after effects of a near death experience through overdose that can last. Recovering addicts and alcoholics have recalled waking up from an overdose and wondering why they were still alive. Referred to as “survivor’s guilt”, some feel burdened by what they have woken up to when they rise from their overdose. Still addicted, still in pain, still lost, they are left to reconcile with the life they left for a period of time. An idea of deservedness makes survivor’s guilt conflicting for alcoholics and addicts. Believing they deserved to die, it is hard for them to understand why they didn’t. The shame and stigma that surrounds the illnesses of alcoholism and addiction contribute to this negative effect of an overdose. Avalon By The Sea provides detox and treatment for addicts and alcoholics seeking recovery. Certified for dual diagnosis treatment, Avalon is able to provide comprehensive treatment by concurrently treating co-occurring mental health disorders. For a confidential assessment and more information about our programs, call 1-855-464-8492.