Category: Mental Health

If you are feeling mentally exhausted, hurt, upset, and sad, then you just might be suffering from some kind of mental stress. You might not be able to understand what is causing this, but every effort of yours perhaps does not work. This is quite a traumatic situation for a lot of people who understand their situation, but is unable to find a solution to it.

Depression kills. No, really, this is one of the worst things that can happen to you, because it is a process of downward spiral. Feeling low is nothing new, but this is a state of mind that can happen due to a lot of different reasons. Have you ever figured out why you are feeling down? Do you know that your state of mind can be induced by malnutrition? That fat diet you have gone in, that supposedly would make you shed 20 pounds in a month can deprive you of much-needed essential nutrition that would have aided and abetted your mental health. Your mind functions because of your body, and depriving it can cause severe damage to the mind’s state.

The most common reason for depression is some sort of sad event. Death, divorce, job troubles or loss, sexual abuse, or other kind of sadness induces this state of mind. There are two types of depression — one is unipolar depression, which is a constant state of feeling low, without any change. Bipolar depression on the other hand is a state of depression alternated with feeling euphoric and happy, which often borders on madness. There are strong chances of this state of mind being transferrable from one person to the other, and it is noted that families with a history of this mental state are more prone to depression than most.

Another reason for this is the season. A lot of people in Scandinavian countries suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which is a state of mind that happens when you are affected by the season. For example, if you see constant rains outside, it would make you feel upset, enhancing your mental sadness, and projecting and blowing it out of proportions. This is a state of mind which is pretty alarming, and it is connected with sudden cravings for certain kinds of food, like sweets and starch.

Physical illness is often the reason for depression. If you are not fit and have ill-health, you automatically suffer from a bout of mental sadness, and this state is often responsible for slow recovery of the body. Influenza often brings with it a bout of this mental state.

Well, if you are trying to get rid of your state of depression then you should definitely consult your psychiatrist. You can also be with friends, share your troubles, and let someone know of your inner traumas. Talking and counseling helps, and if you can explain your mental state, it makes you feel much better inside, and a change of diet and travelling can help fight this as well.

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Panic attacks are not at all uncommon in today’s high tension world. Panic seems to come out of nowhere and then take control of the panic attack sufferer’s life. When sessions of panic are occurring they are the only thing that matters to the sufferer. He or she feels it is necessary to struggle just to hang on. Mercifully at some point the panic goes away, at least for a while.

The most important thing to know about panic or any sort of anxiety attack is that it is the struggle you put up that makes it powerful. Having the ability to go with the flow will lessen the severity of panic and can actually put an end to it altogether.

Tightening Up

Once a panic attack is perceived to be approaching, the panic sufferer tightens up in an attempt to brace him/herself for the brutal session about to take place. If this tightening up and bracing could be eliminated, the panic could be as well. This is true because without tightening up, nervous symptoms cannot be overwhelming like they can be to a tightened up, fully braced person.

Here is an analogy that is a very powerful tool in overcoming panic. Picture a cork in the bottom of an empty bathtub. If you come along with a fork in hand and try to stab it as you would a piece of food on a plate, you will easily succeed and you will be able to pick up this cork the same as you pick up your next mouthful during dinner.

However, what if the bathtub is full of water? In this situation there is no way you would be able to stab and pick up this cork. The reason for this is the cork in the water is totally un-braced. With no water in the tub the cork is braced against the bottom.

Learning Not To Fight

As a panic attack approaches, you are like a cork in a tub. The fork is an all out panic attack. The water represents whether or not you are bracing yourself and getting ready to put up a fight against the anxiety. Essentially, you make the choice if the tub is empty or full of water.

Realistically, all you can do is realize fighting off panic is what actually makes it come on. Learning how to give in to panic is tough at first. Still, by using the visualization of the cork in the bathtub full of water with the fork being unable to stab it gives you the proper visualization you need to learn not to brace yourself from perceived oncoming panic. In doing so, you will be taking away panic’s most powerful weapon; your fear.

Outsourcing your mental health and medical billing can save you money whether you are a professional that has been doing it yourself or whether you have hired staff to do it.

Outsourcing your billing vs. Do-It-Yourself billing

Many mental health professionals start out their practices doing their own mental health billing. It is not a bad practice for someone in private practice to learn how to do their own billing in order to have a better understanding of the whole business. But is it really cost effective to continue doing the billing yourself after you have some clients and understand the billing process?

One thing a professional needs to figure out is how much is the professionals time is worth? If you average $100 per client session, your time should be worth at least $50 per hour. If you can hire someone to do your billing for a fraction of that, it makes far more business sense for you to spend time learning inexpensive ways to market and build your practice with paying clients, rather than to personally take care of the administrative hassles involved in billing insurance companies.

Once you find an effective biller who uses the best technology, you can get paid faster with much less time spent on billing. You can spend time building your practice and in the long run will make far more money than doing the billing yourself. To build a successful practice, you are far better off developing an efficient system for working with a good biller than to continue doing the billing yourself.

Outsourcing your billing vs. hiring your own staff:

Hiring your own staff is expensive and time consuming. You are likely to need extra office space to accomodate your billing staff. Hiring staff will require you to spend time and money on payroll and payroll taxes, as well as requiring you to comply with additional laws regarding employees/employers. To find and keep an experienced biller you will need to pay the biller far above minimum wage, and then staff retention may still be an issue.

When you use an effective, efficient medical billing service, you get the benefit of the billers specialization and experience. Your billing service learns things from other clients, not just from you and is independent enough to require little training on your part. You can hire a billing service as a “business associate” paying per claim, per service, or as a percent of what is collected. You can control your costs.

Presentation skills are in use continually in today’s business world as we are presenting ourselves on a daily basis to our colleagues and clients. The same underlying principles can be applied to interpersonal presentation as formal presentations. First impressions are everything and highly developed confidence and communication skills are required to a make a success of both disciplines.

The first thing to note is that great presenters aren’t born, they’re made. Anyone can develop the presentation skills to deliver a confident, clear and impactful presentation with the right training, practice and feedback.

The starting point for many presentation skills courses is building confidence and controlling anxiety. Even top professionals, who might be dynamic, efficient and confident within their comfort zone of business relationships, can crumble at the task of delivering a formal presentation. The fact is, most top presenters also feel nerves, however they channel them to their advantage using techniques grounded in a solid foundation of presentation skills.

There is no magic elixir that can take away the fear of presenting in front of an audience. In fact many leading presentation skills consultants will testify to the fact that a certain level of nerves is a good thing – those jitters just need to be controlled and galvanised to create a dynamic and engaging presentation.

There are, however, certain techniques that can be used to control nerves and help the presenter feel more relaxed and confident. Some of these are simple physical exercises and include: standing up straight, with your feet firmly grounded; literally shaking the stress and tension out of your body; breathing deeply and in a controlled manner.

Mental preparation is also important and centres around a positive focus. Making sure you go into the presentation visualising success is really powerful. Take the time to run through a ‘movie’ of the presentation in your mind before starting and conclude this movie with a successful outcome where you’ve done a great job.

Ensure that any self-talk going on in your mind is positive and that you’re affirming your own ability, rather than listening to a host of self-criticism. It is also important to keep several things in mind: that it’s normal to make mistakes, that the audience is on your side and that they don’t know what you’re going to say anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you go a little ‘off-piste’.

These simple presentation skills will help you go into your presentation feeling positive, confident and in control. The two things which will ensure this more than anything though are preparation and practice. The more prepared you feel and the better you know your material, the more relaxed you will be and the more confidence you will project.

Visible nerves put an audience on edge and will dilute the strength of your presentation. By implementing presentation skills such as ‘shaking out the nerves’ and positive mental projections you free yourself of the negative nervous energy. Once you’re up there, act like a confident person: maintain steady, non-intrusive eye contact, use bold definitive gestures, open body language and a strong voice.

Most importantly, be real. Being yourself, rather than putting on a performance means you have less to worry about and fewer reasons to slip up. Being natural will also make you look more confident.