by John F. Greden, MD

Shorter, darker days can trigger seasonal depressions and gloomy moods. Our expert gives practical advice on how to get the best from phototherapy.

There’s a reason people joke about hibernating in the winter. It has to do with the body’s circadian rhythms, also known as the body clock.

 On a cellular level, that internal clock responds to various cues, or zeitgebers. The most powerful cue in our environment is light, especially daylight.

Daily changes in light tell us when to be alert and active and when to settle down toward sleep. For some, the seasonal change toward winter’s shorter days leads to melancholy, trouble concentrating, lower energy levels, and more desire to sleep.

For those who have an underlying vulnerability to mood disorders, shifts in light or lack of light can precipitate depressions marked by sadness, negative thoughts, and irritability. For those who are especially sensitive, a gloomy day can trigger a gloomy mood and nihilistic thinking.

Phototherapy or light therapy has been shown to improve mood symptoms, motivation, sleep, and energy levels in people prone to seasonal depressions. It is often used in conjunction with antidepressants.

What is the best way to “apply” light therapy?

To be effective, you want exposure that is bright enough and long enough—30 minutes is an average time—ideally in the morning.

The therapeutic standard is a light source that delivers 10,000 lux. That measure of illumination is like being outside on a sunny day. If you have dimmer bulbs, they won’t have an effect on your mood and energy because they aren’t “activating” enough.

You also want full-spectrum light, which mimics the electromagnetic spectrum of sunlight, and not fluorescent bulbs. There’s some evidence suggesting lower-intensity blue light is also effective for phototherapy for seasonal depressions.

Check with your doctor and insurance company about getting a prescription for a light box, since some portion of the cost may be reimbursable. Your doctor may also be able to recommend reputable manufacturers.

It’s recommended to use light therapy at the same time every day if you can, for the same amount of time. See if you can get yourself into a morning routine using the light box. Morning works best because we have a built-in biological structure in the brain—the main timekeeper for our body clock—that’s designed to make us more active in response to growing daylight.

You’ll want to set up the light box as an indirect light source. Typically you’d get up in the morning and catch up on the news or check your emails with the light box set up several feet away. For example, you could have it on the kitchen counter while you’re eating breakfast at the table.

Are there risks to using a light box?

People who have glaucoma, cataracts, or certain other eye conditions are advised against phototherapy.  That is true of some skin conditions as well, or if you have a history of skin cancer. Antibiotics and some anti-inflammatory medications can make your skin more sensitive to exposure from a light box or sunlight.

The question of whether blue-spectrum light increases the risk of age-related macular degeneration has not been settled. If you have concerns, you may want to consult an ophthalmologist.

For eye health, don’t stare directly into the bright light and don’t get too close to the light source. If you’re squinting, feel discomfort, or develop headaches, chances are you have the light too close.

People whose seasonal depressions are part of an undiagnosed bipolar disorder may be triggered to hypomania or mania. As a precaution, educate yourself and those around you on the common symptoms of elevated mood and stay on the lookout for warning signs, perhaps by using a mood tracking chart or app.

Printed as “Ask the Doctor: Let there be light,” Fall 2019

The post Ask the Doctor: Tis the Season for Light Therapy appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by esperanza

The stand-up comic and author of Depression: The Comedy puts a humorous spin on her two-year depression to ease others into discussing mental health.

Stand-up comic Jessica Holmes has opened for the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, and Oprah, and was a frequent presence on Canadian TV. The mother of two experienced depression after her second pregnancy, and then a later, long-lasting episode that gave birth to both her memoir Depression: The Comedy and a new direction as a motivational speaker.

You’re an introvert in a career that demands you interact and be “on.” How does that work?

I have always found that when the adrenaline kicks in, I respond to the audience’s energy and I’m able to channel the necessary chutzpah for a great show. Then I make sure the schedule is empty for the next day or two. I have some “me time” until I’m ready to give my heart away again.

What was your experience with peripartum depression after your son was born?

Postnatal depression for me was high anxiety, feeling like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. “I can’t possibly take care of these kids, is there any way we can return them and they can find a better mother?” I could feel the anxiety was physical, that it was triggered by something in my brain. “This doesn’t feel like me, and it’s not the kind of person I am.”

What was different about your depressive episode a few years later?

The [subsequent] depression was marked mainly by bursts of anger and feelings of such low self-worth that I would feel like, “People are sitting around thinking about what a failure I am. I don’t have enough people who love me. I’m unlovable.” It got very dark.

I had energy for my kids for a few hours a day, and if someone was going to help pay my mortgage I would show up for an hour or two [to perform]. But other than that you could not pry me off the sofa. It was like trying to lift up a sleeping cat—more like 100 sleeping cats.

How do you handle regret over that inability to be a fully present parent?

That’s a tough one, but I’ve seen that my kids are resilient and thriving. I’ve also apologized to them to the point where they’re like, “Enough, Mom, move on! We’re awesome!” That’s all that I can do, apologize and make up for lost time.

You sought treatment quickly the first time. Why wait two years during the next episode?

I think with the postpartum depression, I worried it was going to affect the safety and well-being of my kids. With the other depression, it felt like I was the only one getting hurt, and so I was less prone to take action.… I have had to learn the lesson, and I remind myself of this constantly, to love myself like I was my own kid.

Wasn’t it pretty obvious something was wrong, though?

My husband would say to me, “Something’s not right.” I just kept saying, “You don’t know what it’s like to have the pressure of being a performer and crash for a couple of days after a show. This is normal.” I was trying to convince myself and him that it wasn’t depression.

I felt like as a capable, independent person, I shouldn’t need to rely on other people. I wouldn’t seek help for this place I was stuck in. I kept thinking, “I’m smart, I can figure it out,” or, “This is one bad day, I’ll get out of this tomorrow.” My husband is the best listener and I never opened up to him because I felt it would be admitting weakness, that I’m not Wonder Woman, just a sad lady who’s still in her pj’s at 3 p.m.

Is there an irony in writing a humorous book about depression?

I do these keynotes where I talk about mental health and I do it in a very funny way. There are always a few vulnerable folks who come up after the show and want to talk. I wanted a book I could hand to them, very accessible, very light, where they could see themselves and know they’re not alone.

I felt that if I can make people laugh, they can learn about mental health where normally they might say, “Ugh, depression. I’m already sad, I don’t want to read a sad book.” And I threw some pictures in, too, just for those of us with very short attention spans.

Being humorous about your depression seems to work for you, too.

For me, the darkest part of depression is (a) how did it affect my kids? and (b) am I going to be depressed again? So if I can describe depression as a cold sore—it might come back, you never know—that levity gives me a feeling of more control.

So what helps you stave off a relapse?

I had read the autobiography of [prominent Canadian] Margaret Trudeau and she talked about how she found a good medication, so I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll give it a whirl.” … I wanted it to be a fix-all, and it wasn’t. So then I used the antidepressants and talk therapy and lifestyle changes, and all of those things together have made me a healthy person.… It definitely takes more than a pill to make a lasting change.

What’s an example of a change you’ve made?

Here’s one simple paradigm shift: Instead of looking at, “Am I keeping up with my [comedy] peers?” I look at, “What’s the best part of me I can offer today?” Suddenly I don’t care as much about how I measure up to other people.

What makes me feel successful now is focusing on small, sustainable choices that I make every day. Choices about working on relationships, choices about not being a couch potato, choices about picking up the phone instead of just texting. I’m not chasing some grand success that’s going to make me feel like a failure if I don’t get it.

Are you better about asking for and accepting support?

I have a wonderful group of friends that give me support and understanding, and I told my husband and my mom, “Hey, here’s a little checklist. If you see me veer off into any of these things, you need to have a serious intervention.” I’m not ready to be depressed a third time, thanks!

Printed as “Back Chat: Jessica Holmes,” Fall 2019

The post Jessica Holmes Brings Humor to Depression Treatment appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Donna Jackel

Anger attacks were college hockey coach Mark Wick’s biggest depressive symptom. For years, he let the sport’s macho culture mask his need for help.

Mark Wick had been skating by with his volatile temper for years. As coach of the men’s ice hockey team at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota, he usually saved his angry tirades for the team when they didn’t practice or play to his standards.

If he went home upset, he was liable to lash out at his family.

“My kids and my wife knew that if we lost, to ‘stay away from Daddy,’” says Wick, 56, whose three children are now in or through college. “I would be irritable, and there was a good chance I would holler at them. I took it out on the ones I loved most—my wife, kids, my team.”

Then came a night in January 2015, when the Saints lost the last home game of the season to a team they usually trounced. As the victorious visitors performed a stick salute to their fans—a gesture considered disrespectful to the home team—Wick erupted.

He began screaming at the opposing team’s coach. Players from both teams stepped in to restore peace.

Putting his job and his reputation at risk turned out to be the slap in the face Wick needed. His wife, Linda, had been urging him to get help for his irritability and moodiness for years.

Just a few weeks earlier, Mark Wick had become so distraught at losing an away game that he rocketed into fury, then dropped into despair.

 “I got on the guys hard,” he recalls, then went out to walk it off. Instead, “I could hardly breathe. I felt like I had a huge weight on my chest. I was crying.

“I was thinking, ‘I’m a terrible coach. Those guys don’t listen to me. Come to think of it, I’m a terrible husband, father. Everyone would be better off without me.’”

After his season-ender explosion, he was ready to accept an intervention. Linda Wick, who is a nurse, quickly arranged appointments for her husband with a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

Mark Wick remembers one of the first things his psychologist told him: “Depression is not your problem—it’s the fact that you don’t take care of your depression.” 

STEALTH SYMPTOM

Despite a strong history of mental health issues among relatives and in his immediate family, Wick had wrapped himself in denial for decades, refusing to recognize his verbal outbursts as signs of a depressive disorder.

While sadness and withdrawal are commonly thought of in association with depression, it also can express as increased irritability and anger, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health.

 When symptoms fall on that end of the emotional spectrum, it can be more difficult to recognize the underlying depression, even for the family physician. It may be harder yet when it comes to men because of male stereotypes, and hardest of all for men in contact sports like hockey, who are basically expected to be aggressive.

His wife had long been concerned about Wick’s excessive anger at work and self-isolating, testy behavior at home. Back when they were still college sweethearts, she suggested his moods were part of a depressive disorder.

“She saw it, but I wouldn’t admit it,” Wick says. “I didn’t like that word—depression.”

In retrospect, he can see early signs of perfectionism and self-criticism. As a young athlete in hockey-mad Minnesota, he had trouble accepting defeat. Academically, he would berate himself if his grades fell below his own expectations.

After earning a master’s degree in athletic administration, Wick joined the coaching staff for the hockey program at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.  By the time he left six years later, he was head coach. 

“It was something I was passionate about, college hockey,” he says. “I enjoyed the college environment, being around athletes.”

HIDDEN IN HOCKEY

In 2004, Wick returned to his alma mater, St. Scholastica. Under Wick as head coach, the men’s hockey team nailed their first winning season in 25 years during the 2005-06 season.

The Saints made it to their league finals in 2007 and 2014, and reached the NCAA national championship tournament in 2009. The Northern College Hockey Association named Wick coach of the year in 2009 and 2012.

Along with the accolades, however, came rising expectations.

 “I put more pressure on myself,” he says. “The year would start off great; I’d be very positive. I wouldn’t yell a lot. But as the season went on, little things would get me. I’d become more irritated.”

Over time, Wick became “notorious” for yelling in the rink and the locker room. One of his triggers: If a player arrived late to board the bus for an away game, or the team missed a play during a drill, he took it to mean that they didn’t respect him.

According to Wick, elsewhere on campus “everyone loved me. They thought I was fun and caring. When I got with my team, that’s when I would lose my composure.”

His sport offered the perfect cover for his depression-fueled anger: “I wasn’t the only coach acting like that,” he says. “It was kind of the culture in hockey, so it didn’t really raise the red flag.”

There’s been some give in the rink-side stigma about mental health in recent years, such as NHL teams tagging onto Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk campaign. As Wick’s diagnosis became public knowledge, he started hearing from other coaches who also were dealing with stress, anxiety, or depression.

ON THE OFFENSIVE

Wick and his wife relocated to Minneapolis in 2018, after several more seasons coaching the Saints. He still has a toe in college hockey, helping out the coach at Augsburg University, but Wick’s true passion now is speaking about mental health to high school and college athletes.

Wick, who has a certification in mental health first aid, tries to give his young audiences tools to assist teammates in trouble.

“I felt there was really a need out there for education,” says Wick. “Many students were struggling but not getting help. Coaches were concerned. They didn’t know what to do.”

In April, Wick offered advice to about 120 attendees at an American Hockey Coaches Association conference on what to watch for and how to approach a young player.

By sharing his story, Wick hopes to challenge shame, ignorance, and the macho culture of the sports world—all factors that prevent young athletes and their coaches from seeking mental health care.

What not to do, he says: Ignore emotional distress, “hoping it will go away.”

Adds Wick, “We have to look out for each other. There are a lot of successful people who live with a mental disorder, as long as they control it.”

• • • • •

What works for Mark Wick

Seek out those who “get it.” Wick attends an all-male peer support group. “I can tell if one of them is not doing well and they can tell the same about me. It’s honest conversation where you can get your stuff out to get out of that hole.”

Arrange for reality checks. “I need people close to me let me know when I’m going back that way,” Wick says, referring to a spike in his depressive symptoms.

Find tools for emotional release. Wick’s therapist made him an 11-minute meditation tape that he listens to before getting out of bed and at the end of the day. Wick has also experimented with mantras, deep breathing, and a technique called tapping that is derived from the principles behind acupuncture.

Printed as “Everyday Heroes: Delay of Game,” Fall 2019

The post Mark Wick & Depression: Delay of Game appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

by Elizabeth Forbes

After years of insecurity and emotional distress—plus a health scare—the multitalented global celebrity is minimizing stress and finding peace.

Delve into the published record about Selena Gomez, worldwide celebrity and quadruple threat—singer, actor, producer, fashionista—and a trend emerges. In interview after interview, year after year, she comments on feeling “more centered and secure in who I am.”

In fact, when asked if she has any personal advice for her devoted fans—known as Selenators—her first response was, “think very hard about who you are and who you want to be in life. Those are the hard questions that we all deal with, but it’s better to face up to them than [to] let yourself keep making mistakes and becoming disillusioned.”

It’s an ongoing challenge for anyone, especially those launching into independent adulthood: to grow ever more confident, more authentic, more in control of life decisions. But it’s maybe a little more complicated for Gomez, who turned 27 in July.

This is a young woman who got her first regular TV gig at age 10 and grew up cocooned within the show-biz industry. A young woman who evolved from Disney teen star to entertainment idol and most followed person on Instagram—all while most of her peers were finishing high school, perhaps attending college, and settling into their first “grown-up” jobs.

Not to mention that for the past six or seven years she’s been living with lupus and its common companions, depression and anxiety. Going through a kidney transplant with life-threatening complications at age 25—as Gomez did in summer 2017—definitely gets a person thinking about what’s important and what isn’t.

It’s unclear how many Americans have lupus, an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks its own tissues, joints, and organs. However, Gomez is part of the prime demographic: According to the federal Office on Women’s Health, nine out of ten people diagnosed in the US are women between the ages of 15 and 40.

Lupus attacks come and go in episodes called “flares-ups.” In general, Gomez doesn’t talk much about her physical symptoms: debilitating pain, fevers, headaches, fatigue.

She’s been more open about the emotional burden of the disease. According to the Lupus Foundation of America, depression affects up to 60 percent of individuals who have lupus or another chronic illness.

“I’ve had a lot of issues with depression and anxiety, and I’ve been very vocal about it,” Gomez told Harper’s Bazaar after recovering from her transplant surgery, “but it’s not something I feel I’ll ever overcome. There won’t be a day when I’m like, ‘Here I am in a pretty dress—I won!’

“I think it’s a battle I’m gonna have to face for the rest of my life, and I’m okay with that because I know that I’m choosing myself over anything else.”

PEOPLE PLEASER

Putting herself and her health first doesn’t always come easy in her profession.

As a child actor, she naturally deferred to her mother, who managed her career until Gomez was 22. As part of the Disney machine, her image and opportunities were tightly controlled. When she crossed over into pop music, she had her record company to answer to—and her fans, too.

“I let people pull at me in every direction, and I want everybody to be happy,” she told radio host Ryan Seacrest when she was 22. “Eventually I would be in the bathroom sobbing right before I would go onstage. And then I’d just go onstage, and I’d want to be there for those people.

“I never took a moment to just go—go away and be myself and figure it out.”

By that point, Gomez had hit the number one spot on Billboard’s top 200 albums chart with her debut solo album, Stars Dance. She’d also been subjected to sordid speculation in the media when she canceled the final two legs of her worldwide Stars Dance Tour in December 2013.

Celebrity watchers were abuzz when Gomez entered a rehab center specializing in addiction and trauma in young adults. It wasn’t until nearly two years later that she revealed she’d needed the break to get medical treatment for her lupus.

“I wanted so badly to say, ‘You guys have no idea. I’m in chemotherapy.’ … But I was angry I even felt the need to say that,” she explained to Billboard magazine in fall 2015 while doing the rounds for her second album, Revival.

“It’s awful walking into a restaurant and having the whole room look at you, knowing what [the tabloids are] saying. I locked myself away until I was confident and comfortable again.”

ROLE MODEL

Of course, media coverage is a two-way street for celebrities—or perhaps a double-edged sword.

When an album drops, a movie comes out, a TV show starts a new season, the machinery of the entertainment business gears up to chase publicity. Gomez does her duty charmingly and with a surprising amount of honesty, whether the forum is press pool interviews, late-night talk shows, radio programs, or magazine cover stories.

Gomez’s enterprises extend into the fashion world, too, so it’s to her benefit to be seen in photo shoots for Coach or Pantene or Vogue looking stylish and sexy. Yet there’s an inherent irony: Despite how good she looks to us or how comfortable she appears, Gomez says she falls prey to the kinds of self-conscious insecurities shared by many other young (and not-so-young) women.

It doesn’t help that every aspect of her life, from her looks to her health to her romantic relationships, is seen as fair game by the entertainment media. The relentless press scrutiny can be especially tough on someone who describes herself as “maybe too sensitive” to critical comments.

Gomez’s ancestry—Mexican through her father, Mediterranean through her mother—shows in her luxuriant dark hair and olive skin tone. She told the teen mag Twist that while growing up in Texas, she was surrounded at auditions by “girls who had blue eyes and blond hair and I thought, ‘I want to look like them!’”

She even confessed to Vogue that blue-eyed Hilary Duff was her one-time idol. (When she was younger, it was Judy Garland.) But, Gomez continued, by age 15 or 16 she recognized that being as successful as she is while being who she is makes a powerful statement to today’s Latinx little girls.

Even as confident as she strives to be, Gomez admits her self-esteem took a hit after a “weight-gate” flap in spring 2015. Paparazzi snapped her in a bikini while she was on a working vacation in Mexico. The tabloids loudly decided she wasn’t looking svelte enough.

It was her first experience with body shaming and she didn’t let it slide. She threw her own swimsuit photo up on Instagram with the caption, “I love being happy with me yall #theresmoretolove.”

She later spoke more forcefully on the topic:

“I have never wanted to try to be skinny because that’s not really my body type…. Women should not be pressured into conforming to any one body image. We’re not all alike, and we women shouldn’t be made to feel bad or ashamed about our bodies.”

INSTAGRAM OR OUT?

Gomez’s savvy use of Instagram to preempt the “Hot or Hefty?” headlines grew out of migrating to the social media forum as a way to stay in touch with her friends long-distance.

She also discovered its potential to make an end-run around the media and deliver “my words and my voice and my truth” directly to her app-friendly fans—all 156 million of them at latest count. In 2016 and 2017, @selenagomez was the most-followed account on Instagram; the star has remained in the top three since then.

Gomez has backed off from Instagram in recent years—both posting and scrolling. As early as 2015, she was expressing reservations about cyberbullying and warning women and girls about the emotional damage they risk when comparing themselves to what they see and read on social media.

Although Gomez admits that some of the photos she puts up no doubt inspire envy, she herself isn’t immune to feeling “kind of depressed” when she spends too much time on Instagram. She now advocates for setting time limits on using social media and getting offline altogether periodically.

“I love having a platform to communicate with people,” she explained as the first guest on Coach’s Dream It Real podcast earlier this year. “However, I just don’t think that it’s healthy to spend too much time on it.”

She continued that for herself, “looking at these people who look beautiful and amazing … would just get me down a lot, so I just think taking breaks is really important.”

Gomez goes on to confess that she was “very insecure” when she was younger. She created a persona that reflected an imaginary ideal, someone who in her mind would be likable and inoffensive and seem to have it all together. When she talks about being authentic, she means “not minding being myself anymore.”

She’s especially worried about the effects of social media on rising generations because “they’re exposed to so much information, and I feel like that causes a lot of anxiety.… I think you should really [be careful about] what you’re seeing, and you should be really mindful of how it makes you feel.”

Taking her own advice, she’s deleted Instagram from her phone, borrowing a friend’s phone when she’s in the mood to post something. That way, she has a lifeline before she ventures into the quicksand.

TURNING POINT

Gomez learned a lot about maintaining her mental health during her 90-day stay at a psychiatric center in Tennessee.

Once again, she broke off an international concert tour—this one for her hit album Revival—to address health issues. She was up-front about needing the break to deal with emotional distress triggered by the pressures of touring.

“I’ve discovered that anxiety, panic attacks and depression can be side effects of lupus,” she explained in a statement when she pulled out of the tour in August 2016.

“I want to be proactive and focus on maintaining my health and happiness and have decided that the best way forward is to take some time off.… I know I am not alone by sharing this. I hope others will be encouraged to address their own issues.”

Later she spoke with Vogue magazine about her symptoms while on tour: loneliness, low self-esteem, panic attacks before or after her performances, feeling like she was giving weak shows and her fans knew it—“which, I think, was a complete distortion,” she said in retrospect.

The small inpatient program she attended was a safe bubble for Gomez. She shut down contact with the outside world during her stay, even with close friends. The other young women in the program came from ordinary backgrounds. They all attended individual and group therapy sessions, along with other healing activities.

The intensive psychotherapy was a game changer for Gomez. And she’s not shy about promoting its benefits, such as nurturing “a good inner dialogue.”

“I think [therapy] sounds a lot scarier to people than it actually is,” she mused to radio host Zach Sang. “Honestly, what I think it’s like is holding a mirror to yourself and acknowledging the things you don’t really want to acknowledge about yourself, about the situations you put yourself in.”

LOWER PROFILE

In addition to regular therapy sessions, Gomez takes the occasional inpatient retreat as needed. In January 2018, after a few months of media focus and interviews about her kidney surgery and recovery, Gomez checked into a New York City facility for two weeks of counseling, meditation, Pilates, and healthy meals.

Since then she’s kept a relatively low profile for a world-famous entertainer and fashion entrepreneur.

“I’ve stepped back a bit,” she explained during the publicity tour for Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. “I’m enjoying my life and I don’t think about anything that causes me stress anymore, which is really nice.”

She went on: “I don’t pay to attention to trying to get people to like me so much anymore.

“When you feel more secure about yourself, it carries over into everything you do. You don’t give in to your doubts or anxieties as much and that frees you to be true to yourself … and that’s a pretty liberating feeling.”

Gomez surfaced again this past spring at events for The Dead Don’t Die, including the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. As of press time, fans are waiting on her long-anticipated third album. Meanwhile, she’s been popping up with singles, mostly collaborations with other artists.

In May 2018, her song “Back to You” was released as the lead single off the soundtrack from the second season of 13 Reasons Why. The Netflix original series, based on the book Jay Asher, was shepherded onto the air by Gomez and her mother as executive producers. The show has been renewed for a fourth and final season.

A “passion project” for Gomez, the series initially stirred interest (and controversy) for its central plot element, a teen suicide—complemented by high-school bullying, sexual assault, and depression. Before the premiere in March 2017, Gomez said she hoped to “make young people aware of all the fears and anxieties that are part of growing up and which often lead to mistakes and bad decisions.”

“MY OWN PATH”

Over the past year two years, Gomez has downsized and “simplified,” including moving out of Los Angeles to nearby Orange County, where she’s somewhat insulated from the paparazzi and other unpleasantries of the Hollywood machine.

She also put her heart and time into volunteering with A21, a global anti-human-trafficking nonprofit. She was drawn into the cause by A21 co-founder Christine Caine, a fellow congregant from the Hillsong Church.

Raised a Catholic, Gomez has been attending Hillsong services in New York City and Los Angeles since her early twenties. The millennial-friendly global ministry, known for its music-rich services, could be classed as “liberal evangelical.”

Gomez talks frankly about how important her faith has become to her.

“I encourage all people to [believe in] a higher power. I believe in faith and a relationship with God. And I know that if I didn’t have the faith that I had it wouldn’t have gotten me through some of the hardest times in my life.”

Gomez has appeared onstage at several Hillsong conferences, surprising the crowd by performing an original worship song and testifying about her spiritual journey. From the stage at one such event, she summarized her growth over the past few years:

“The most critical lesson I’ve learnt is that my identity and my happiness [have] nothing to do with my work or whatever success I have.

“I also know that I can’t live my life according to what people expect of me and that I have to follow my own path,” she continued. “That was a very liberating kind of realization.”

• • • • •

What works for Selena Gomez

In various interviews over the years, Selena Gomez has talked about what sustains her mental health:

BEING PRESENT: “I’ve learnt to be more present in the moment instead of thinking that, ‘Once I get there, I’ll have it all.’ … I’m trying to enjoy my journey as much as I can.”

SELF-AWARENESS: “It’s also important not to try to pretend that everything’s great when it’s not. I’ve found out that that doesn’t work for me…. I’ve learnt to be honest about my feelings and with myself.”

SETTING LIMITS: “I kept pushing myself and I think the biggest thing I learned is, ‘It’s okay. I’m going to stop when I need to stop, I’m going to feel when I need to feel, and I don’t care what comes with that or what people want to say.’”

COUNSELING: “I am a believer [in] therapy…. It’s hard for people to open up, but I think it’s just one of the most important things—to get to know yourself. Not saying everyone in the world has to do it, I’m just saying it’s helped me understand myself and my childhood a lot better.”

Printed as “Selena Gomez & the simple life,” Fall 2019

The post Selena Gomez Finds Her Personal Power and Peace appeared first on hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression.

via hopetocope.com | Hope To Cope With Anxiety & Depression
(This and our other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

Relatable Reels: My Bipolar Life on the Big Screen

November 08, 2019 at 08:00AM Brooke Baron
(This and other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)

What Is Acceptance of Bipolar Disorder? And Can It Really Help Me?

November 07, 2019 at 08:13AM Laura Fisher
(This and other articles are provided by some of our curated resources. We encourage readers to support them and continue to look to these sources in times of need and opportunity.)