This is a guest post by Elaine Hirsch. Elaine is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and video games. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression experienced seasonally, usually in the fall and winter.

According to PubMedHealth, it often comes in periods of less sunlight and is most common in areas where the winter nights are long.

Women experience it more often than men, usually starting in their teens or 20s. Many times, a person’s seasonal affective disorder can be affected by stress from work or midterms from attending an online school.

The American Psychiatric Association says seasonal affective disorder is a real condition caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain. It affects 10 to 20 percent of the population. There are several ways to cope with seasonal affective disorder:

1Know the symptoms. If you have seasonal affective disorder, you feel depressed, unhappy and irritable during the fall and winter and feel better in the summer. You may be hungrier, especially for carbohydrates, and gain weight. You are likely fatigued and don’t feel like carrying out your daily routine or interacting with others.

2Talk to your doctor. While you may be tempted to skip this step, especially if you feel that you have all the symptoms, it’s important to talk to a doctor. He will discuss your symptoms, give you a physical exam and review blood work to make sure you don’t have some other problem.

3Get treatment. Because seasonal affective disorder is a form of depression, your doctor might prescribe antidepressants or refer you to a therapist. This condition is unique among depressive disorders because light therapy can relieve symptoms. Ask your doctor or therapist how to use bright lamps to replace some of the sunlight you are missing in the winter.

4Get active. You may not feel like it, but push yourself to go out and exercise, mingle with others and continue your job or other routine activities. Studies show being active eases symptoms of seasonal affective disorder.

5Do not self-medicate. Avoid drinking too much alcohol or overdosing on prescriptions as a way to deal with feeling poorly. This will only mask your symptoms. Moreover, because alcohol is a depressant, it can eventually make your depression worse.

6Try supplements. The Mayo Clinic suggests: St. John’s wort, a herb; melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate mood; and Omega-3 fatty acid, a substance derived from fish and some nuts.

Seasonal affective disorder is affected by your circadian rhythm, or body’s internal clock. Because you are not exposed to as much sunlight in the fall and winter, your body loses some of the cues about when you should sleep and this can lead to depression.

Experts also say having less sun reduces levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, which can contribute to depressive feelings. Seasonal affective disorder is not simply a light case of winter blues. Psychiatrists recognize it as a true mental disorder, so you don’t need to simply suffer until spring. If you think you have this condition, consult with your doctor and motivate yourself to get help.

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Britta Aragon is a cancer survivor and the founder of Cinco Vidas, Inc. She wrote “When Cancer Hits: Your Complete Guide to Taking Care of YOU Through Treatment.”

Photo courtesy of johanlb

I was scheduled to go through radiation as well, but after five months of losing my hair and suffering extra dry skin

and fatigue, tests showed the chemotherapy had done its job, and I didn’t have to go through radiation.

It’s Over, Right?

I didn’t have to go to chemotherapy treatments anymore. My hair started growing back (though more slowly than I would have liked). My energy gradually returned. But I felt guilty, because for me, cancer was anything but over.

Everyone expected me to be my “old self” again, or maybe to be bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. After all, I had gone through cancer, and I had beaten it. I was healthy. No more cancer. Yea, Britta! I was expected to smile and laugh throughout the day. But I just couldn’t do it.

Nothing was the same for me, or would ever be the same. How was I supposed to go back to school and think about volleyball games, Friday nights out, homework, and boys? Cancer had changed me.

I looked different. I felt different. Why had this happened to me, I wondered? And what was I supposed to do now? Everywhere I turned, people expected me to be “normal.” My parents even lost patience with my melancholy. “It’s over,” they said. “Time to move on.”

But how was I supposed to do that? I felt lost.

Post Traumatic Stress and Depression

Years later, I learned that what I was going through back then was completely normal, although I wish I had known that at the time. I thought something was wrong with me, and I’ve since talked to many other survivors who felt the same way.

Fortunately, modern medicine is starting to recognize what many doctors and therapists are now calling “post traumatic stress and depression.”

Similar to victims of a violent crime, cancer survivors go through a difficult period after the treatments are over. Many of us feel depressed, or out of sorts. We struggle to make sense of what happened to us.

While we’re fighting the battle, taking our medications, wearing our wigs and puking up our guts, we have little time to reflect. When it’s all over, however, we have to process the experience, and unfortunately, only few of us allow ourselves the time and space to do so.

Get All the Help You Can

Make no mistake, cancer changes us. It changes our entire world, and our sense of ourselves. We often feel out of control, and have no idea how to reestablish a sense of mastery over our days.

We have all these feelings: anger, resentment, confusion, fear, anxiety, sadness that we don’t know what to do with. Many of us find our bodies permanently changed, and we suffer grief over our losses. Meanwhile we don’t even know where to begin with our emotions.

I never attended a support group, linked up with other survivors, or talked to a therapist. Today, I encourage survivors to do all these things and more. If you don’t, you might end up finding unhealthy ways of coping. For me, it was food. I realized I could control what I ate, so I quickly fell into an eating disorder that took me another several years to conquer.

It’s much better to get the help you need as soon as you can. Following are several tips for how to cope with cancer once it’s over, for it’s not really over until you can process the experience, move through your feelings about it, and become the new person you’re meant to be.

• See a counselor or psychiatrist. Make sure the individual specializes in cancer survivors. Many medical centers and cancer centers offer survivor programs for free or at a reduced rate.
• Attend a survivors support group. Many cancer centers can give you access to area groups. Be willing to listen and share. People who’ve traveled the same road will be more likely to understand where you’re coming from.
• Consider an online support group. Though I believe that an in-person support group is paramount, an online support group can also offer assistance and a place to share feelings, particularly if you feel like ranting at 3:00 in the morning. Try Planet Cancer and Cancer Compass, among others.
• Get your feelings out. Many survivors journal or blog to make sense of their experience. You may want to try art or music therapy, long walks, talks with a good friend, or time away.
• Read the good books. Picking up the Pieces is a very helpful book for the new cancer survivor. I’ve also written a book that talks about all facets of the cancer experience, called When Cancer Hits.
• Realize it takes time. You’re not going to be able to process your experience in a week. Be patient with yourself. When the feelings come up, try to deal with them in a healthy way, and be proactive about your own self-care. Your family, friends, and colleagues might not understand, so take it upon yourself to get the help you need.

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This is a guest post by By Karl Pillemer, Ph.D. Karl is the author of 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans. The book was inspired by The Legacy Project, Facebook, Twitter.

When people seek happiness, they often think about big events: I’d be happy if only I could find a better job, make more money, find a mate, have a child – the list goes on and on.

In the Cornell University Legacy project, we’ve spent the past six years asking over 1200 of the oldest Americans for their advice to younger people on living a happier and more fulfilling life. And they see this prevalent attitude as a mistake.

When it comes to happiness, America’s elders urge us to “think small.” They believe that we must be aware and attentive to small pleasures in daily life, even as we may be waiting for something in our lives to change. They are consciously grateful for what they have, right now, rather than pinning their happiness on future achievements or possessions

On that note, here are five simple pieces of advice for happier living, from the oldest (and wisest) Americans:

Just take life in stride, I guess, do the best you can. Enjoy, if you can afford it, living; going out and treating yourself to a few luxuries, like maybe going out to dinner, going for a ride or something like that. (Abel, 77)

Be grateful for each day that you wake up. (Roman, 84)

Every morning when I wake up, I thank God that at 75 years old I’m able to get up, take my shower, go about my business, by my groceries or go to work or whatever I do, I’m very thankful for that. (Lavonne, 75)

Everybody says that you should make a goal in your life, but I don’t think that’s always necessary because you make a goal and the first thing you know, you switched over to something else. All I wanted to do was be a mother, and I did. I had three boys and three girls and my husband made a living for us, we did fairly well, all of our children are still living and they’re happy, so I’m happy. (Roseanne, 79)

To live a decent life, a comfortable life, and that basically makes me happy. (Luann, 81)

We don’t have to wait until we are old to use this knowledge. In our studies, the elders say that younger people can take this “savoring” approach to daily life now, and reap the benefits of it over the entire course of their lives.

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This is a guest post by Elaine Hirsch. Elaine is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and video games. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.
In addition to enhancing our job productivity and allowing us to have access to social networks on-the-go,

smartphones and tablets can also help us to improve our mental well-being and become more content and self-actualized.

It’s not really that surprising that self-help applications are becoming more popular than ever as buying apps from iTunes and the Android Market become increasingly available to professionals, academics, and master’s degree students. These applications help balance out the power of electronics today and their ability to distract us from our responsibilities.

MyThoughts+

Getting work done while you’re down in the dumps is a hard task to accomplish. Many people swear by the power of positive thinking. Noted cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, credits his uncanny ability to devise hilarious comic strips with his positive attitude.

MyThoughts+ displays positive affirmations on a customizable background, transitioning from one quote to the next while playing soothing music in the background. If you can’t afford a mountain retreat to the Himalayas, MyThoughts+ just might be the next best thing.

LiveHappy

One of the best ways to accomplish any goal or complete any task is to break it down into manageable, bite-sized pieces. LiveHappy is an application which helps cultivate optimism in your daily activities.

Based on the book, The How of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky, LiveHappy helps you to keep track of your personal progress as you work towards obtaining inner peace. It features a built-in personality test as well as plenty of tips and tricks on conceptualizing a happier you.

iStress

Not only is stress a detriment to your daily well-being, it is a contributing risk factor in illnesses ranging from heart attacks to strokes. iStress is a comprehensive stress management application which features a number of helpful exercises aimed at reducing stress and encouraging positive thinking.

It includes a compendium of motivational sayings and affirmations to help you reduce your stress levels when you feel overwhelmed. It also allows you to keep a journal of positive or negative thoughts and emotions so that you can identify stress triggers and avoid them in the future.

Gratitude Journal

Brought to you by the good people at Happy Tapper, Gratitude Journal is a fun way to give thanks for what you’ve got. Too often in life, we focus on the negative and completely forget about all the positive things that happen to us. Gratitude Journal gives you an easy way to keep a log of what you’re thankful for that you can turn to when you’re down.

The Habit Factor

Most of us are creatures of habit. We tend to perform at our best when we incorporate positive habits into our daily routine. The Habit Factor is a tracking app that allows you to set goals and commit to forming good habits.

You can use the application to monitor your adherence to your resolutions and check them off as you accomplish them. If you’re trying to form good habits in your personal and professional life and stick to them, it helps to have a constant reminder like the one The Habit Factor provides.

In Conclusion

We’ve often been told by self-help authorities that happiness comes from within. Despite being a cliché, the sentiment remains true. Getting your house in order has a lot of direct and indirect benefits. Happy people are more successful, tend to earn more, and have better relationships with those around them in general.

The best way to get to that happy place is to help yourself. After all, nobody in the world understands what makes you happy better than yourself. The applications listed above should help you in taking the first step towards achieving happiness.

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