Changing Your Own Drinking Habits

If you drink when out with friends or at home with the partner that drinks, you make have to make a change if you want the alcoholic to stop. An alcoholic cannot stop drinking if they live in a house with someone that drinks even one cocktail a week. They see you drinking and determine that if you are happy with your drinking, you should accept their drinking. If they want to stop and you drink in front of them, they will not be able to do it. An alcoholic that wants to stop cannot around someone that drinks in front of them or that goes out and comes home smelling of alcohol.

You might have to stop drinking. This is the only way that you can show your support for the alcoholic that is trying to stop drinking. It is also the only way that you can make your point that you do not want them to drink. You cannot tell someone that they cannot do something if you do it. Remember that the alcoholic does not think that they have a drinking problem. They are just drinking as you do. You have to make some changes with your own drinking habits if you want to make an appeal for the alcoholic to stop drinking.

Maybe you can go with friends somewhere else to drink when you are gone for the weekend or overnight. However, this is just another deception in your relationship. Some alcoholics do not want to stop, but if you sit and drink with them, they think that you accept their drinking. If you sneak out to drink, you are just doing what they could do. If you want to enjoy a night out, you may want to drink non-alcoholic drinks. If you do drink, you should not be preaching to the band even if you only drink occasionally.

Talk to him or her and see how they feel about your drinking. In some cases, the alcoholic knows that they have a problem and they know that you only have a few drinks here and there. They may not have a problem with this. However, if they think that because you drink, this means that they can drink, you may need to stop even if they have no problem with you drinking. This sounds ridiculous, but it can happen. Many alcoholics know they have a problem and they know that their spouse or partner does not.

Should you be supportive and hide your drinking from the alcoholic in your life? This should never be done if you want to keep the lies out of the picture. An alcoholic lies and hides their drinking when their family wants them to stop. You would be doing the exact same thing. You may want a drink sometimes, but if you do, you must not hide it. This can only cause more problems in the relationship.

If you have problems understanding why you cannot have a drink, you may have to reexamine your own feelings for the person. Sometimes a person finds it hard to change because they are not the one with the problem. This might be true, but if you live with an alcoholic, you have to make changes and sacrifices. This is just part of the problem. If you feel that you should not have to give anything up, then maybe you need to think about what you want.

If you think that giving up drinking is hard, then maybe you should. If you think that you cannot change the way you live to be with an alcoholic, then you might not be in the right relationship. Sometimes you have to make a decision that means that you cannot have a drink or you cannot go out with friends. This is a choice that you have to make. You have to be sure of what you want. Sometimes to be right, you have to stop drinking so that the alcoholic knows that you want them to do it as well.

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Panic Attacks Out With the Myths

Misinformation does not only create vague pictures of a condition but will also likely cause people to believe things that do not actually exist. Among those conditions that typically receive serious amounts of myths are psychological and behavioral disorders, partly because psychological conditions are often hard to understand and seem mysterious. In this article, we would try to debug the myths of one of the more common behavioral conditionspanic attacks.

People with panic attacks are crazy. Crazy is never a good term for people with psychological conditions and people with panic attacks are hardly crazy. They may seem deranged and a bit psychotic for some people when they experience attacks of panic and terror but this does not suggest that they are.

As if to add to the insult, people with panic attacks are sometimes perceived to have schizophrenia, the most advanced form of psychosis which is marked by severe auditory and visual hallucination as well as aggravated delusions and dysfunctional thoughts. Clearly, there is no relationship between people who feel like they are “going crazy” when undergoing attacks and people who have advanced (and even minor) psychological conditions.

People with panic attacks lose control. Wrong. Panic attacks do not rob a person his sense of control. While a person’s thoughts may seem distorted for a while during attacks due to physical symptoms that lend themselves towards this possibility such as shortness of breath and heart attack-like symptoms, this does not mean that the person is losing grip of the reality. Anxiety which normally accompanies panic attacks is a body’s way to tell you that something is going wrong. Since this is a defense mechanism, it is not dangerous to anyone, not even the person undergoing the panic attack.

It is good to remember that panic attack happens only in the mind, it may, in fact, be unnoticeable for people surrounding the person during the attack. What exacerbates the attack is the person’s conscious thought that it could cause embarrassment or harm to other people. It is the sense of losing control of one’s self that makes the condition worse, a thought that is manufactured in the brain, never the total lack of sense of control.

People with panic attacks have chronic heart disorders. While this may be partly true due to the link between mitral valve prolapse and panic attacks, this does not make the assertion entirely valid. People have good reasons to believe that they are having heart attacks or heart failures when they experience episodes of panic attacks since some of the symptoms of both conditions are similar. But such symptoms are perfectly rational when seen from the viewpoint of elevated fear.

For example, people subjected under conditions that stimulate fear experience tightening of the chest, faster heart beat, profuse perspiration, shortness of breath and increased respiration. All these signs are also symptoms of heart attacks which make it easy for most people to believe that instead of having a disorder of the mind, they are having dysfunctional hearts. But then again, similarity in symptoms does not make two completely different conditions alike.

Myths often offer a semblance of the reality that is not hard to believe in. But do not be fooled. Knowing what is the exact truth and not the half lies may serve you well when dealing with conditions that root from and are aggravated by thoughts.

Picking Up Bad Habits from Others

You may feel that you have evaded the bad habits that many people have. That is, you feel that way until you catch yourself picking up the bad habits of others around you. The other person may pass on their habits intentionally or not, but they affect you all the same.

You can pick up bad habits from others in the way they eat. If you spend enough time around a person, you will often begin to eat the same way. It is just easier to make one meal and split it. It is easier to go to one restaurant instead of stopping at two. If that restaurant happens to have only greasy foods, you will end up eating things you would not otherwise eat. You are picking up your companion’s bad habits.

Smoking cigarettes is another bad habit you can easily pick up from other people. You sit in the room with your companion evening after evening as they puff away. You gradually either get very sick from it, or you get used to it. You may even come to enjoy it. That is when you are in danger of picking up the bad habit.

Fighting is a bad habit that many couples get into in a relationship. Your spouse may start a fight. You may have no intention of getting into the argument. You may get up to walk away from it. However, your spouse may not let you go. A fight ensues and pretty soon, you are both in it. This may go on over and over until it becomes a bad habit.

In the workplace, carelessness seems to be contagious. If one crew member is irresponsible with the heavy equipment, his attitude can contaminate the attitudes of the other workers. Before you know it, they all have bad habits at work.

Also, if one employee gets in the bad habit of telling everything he knows, the habit can spread. If one tells information about his pay, soon they all will. If one tells private company business, the gossip mill will start churning. The bad habits can get out of control.

If you have the bad habit of practicing one-upmanship, you can lead others to pick up the bad habit from you. A person tells something they did, and suddenly you are telling the better thing you did. Some people will fall into the trap of following your lead and trying to one-up you. This can go on ad infinitum.

Pessimistic people have the bad habit of looking on the negative side of everything. This can rub off on anyone who spends a good deal of time with them. You can only hear about the worst things in life so long before it has an affect on you. You may be next to predict bad times ahead.

Of course, you cannot blame the other person for your choice. That is all up to you. If you want to avoid the bad habits of others, you can do it if you stay strong. Remember that you do not have to always conform to those around you.