How to Overcome Depression Without Using Any Drugs

In today's society there are so many people dealing with depression and this statistic is growing at phenomenal rate. Why do you think that is? Could it be because of the current state of the economy, perhaps. Could it be because of the huge amount of stress that we are dealing with on a daily basis, maybe. Or could it be because of the violence that we constantly see on our televisions or read about on the internet or newspapers..

These are all valid reasons why someone could easily fall into depression. But my question is what are we doing to keep someone from falling into a state of depression or breaking free from the depression chains. Some may say that there are prescription drugs that will help. But I disagree, many of this drugs if you read the fine print or listen to the person reading on the commercial at an extremely fast rate. May say that it could increase the chance of suicidal thoughts.

Also some of the violent acts have been linked to persons that have been taking medication for depression. Whether you believe any of this or not it is definitely your choice and I urge you to do the research yourself. But you must find out the reason for the depression, if not then you will just be putting a bandaid on the scar and not treating the scar itself.

So how do I overcome depression or better yet keep from falling into a state of severe depression without using any drugs. The first thing you have to do is try to find out what the root cause of your depression and face it head on. This may not be easy but it is necessary,

Then you must ask for help. I think many people fall into depression because our pride alot of times does not allow us to ask for help or we just do not know who to ask. I have been there. I have been in depression and did not ask for help and this was a very dark and lonely place.

But what brought me through my depression without having to use any drugs was my relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I could go to him without any shame or embarrassment. Because I knew that he loved me and already new how I was feeling.

As I began to pray and asked God to heal me he began to make a change in the way I was feeling and in time I was no longer depressed. But what makes this so awesome is the fact that the situation that caused the depression did not immediately change but I had peace in the situation. As long as you live there are going to be things that come that could cause you to get depressed.

But I guarantee that if you get a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that he will help you deal with and overcome what ever life brings you. I am a witness to that.

If you are ready to be free of depression and accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior just say these words.

Heavenly Father:

I come to you in prayer asking for the forgiveness of my Sins. I confess with my mouth and believe with my heart that Jesus is your Son, And that he died on the Cross at Calvary that I might be forgiven and have Eternal Life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Father, I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and I ask you right now to come in to my life and be my personal Lord and Savior. I repent of my Sins and will Worship you all the day's of my Life!. Because your word is truth I confess with my mouth that I am Born Again and Cleansed by the Blood of Jesus! In Jesus Name, Amen.

Breathing Tips For Panic Attacks - The Most Important Things You Should Know

Finding the right approach to relieving the symptoms of panic attacks might not be as easy as you might think. The main problem is that the causes that trigger the condition of sudden and strong anxiety are different from person to person. However, most of the symptoms are common in all cases, so you can use techniques that will help you reduce their negative effect and the overall one as well. Here is some useful advice on correct breathing and tips for panic attacks associated with it.

Restoring your breathing to its normal state is crucial when experiencing this type of condition. By doing this one of the tips for attacks, your heart beat rate will also slow down and return to normal and the blood pressure will decrease. You will not feel dizzy and your muscle pain will also be relieved. Through the better blood circulation you will not feel your hands and limbs numb and you will stop shivering. Overall, breathing is the key to relieving a large part of the symptoms associated with panic attacks.

Before performing the breathing technique it is important to be in the correct posture. Straightening your back will help you expand your chest. In this way all your body organs will feel relaxed and you will be able to use your lungs optimally. You do not have to stand up - sitting comfortably in your chair will do just fine when applying this one of the tip. You have to inhale fully, but trying to stay as relaxed as possible.

Exhale slowly without pausing in between. Closing your eyes will also help you concentrate on your breathing. You have to repeat this technique over and over again until you start feeling better. One of the best tips for panic attacks is to actually use this method whenever you are in a stressful situation as it might help for the prevention of the condition itself.

Panic Anxiety Attack - Critical Steps to Take in Order to Effectively Cure Your Anxiety Panic Attack

Panic anxiety attack currently affects about 40 million Americans, with many of them not really knowing what is wrong with them. Anxiety panic attack is that very sudden, discrete period of intense anxiety which often mounts physiological arousal of fear, stomach problem and unnecessary discomfort. Some its symptoms includes but are not limited to trembling, light-headedness, tingling sensation, shortness of breath, chest pain or chest tightness, hot flashes, cold flashes, feeling of burning sensation especially on the face and neck area, nausea, dizziness, sweating and so on.

Step 1

The first step to take towards the effective cure of your anxiety panic attack is to actually find out if what you are experiencing is panic anxiety attack. The reason is that some of its symptoms are common to symptoms experienced by someone who is suffering from mental disorder and heart attack. Ascertaining that someone is suffering from panic attack would go a long way in helping the victim to actual seek effective ways to address it.

Step 2

The second line of action which is about the most effective step that someone can actually take in a bid to effectively cure his anxiety panic attack and to forever stop it from coming back is to seek cognitive behavioral therapy. This therapy is structured in such a way that its first part is largely informational; a very great number of people have been helped to cure and prevent panic anxiety attack from ever re-occurring in their lives by simply making them to understand what panic attack truly is and how many other people are suffering from it.

The mere fact that a sufferer has been told he is not suffering from a mental disorder or heart attack is enough to shoot up his morale and position his mindset in such a way that he will positively respond to the next phase of the therapy. Cognitive restructuring i.e. changing one's way of thinking helps people replace those thoughts with more realistic, positive ways of viewing the attacks. After which you will be shown effective ways of actually stopping and preventing these ugly and embarrassing episodes from ever showing up in your life again.

Step 3

The last step would obviously be taking action, your bouts of anxiety and panic attacks can never be stopped and or prevented if you do not work towards that direction. There are many effective cognitive therapy resources online and with just a token you can acquire any them and rid yourself of such embarrassing situations.

Anxiety Panic Attack Symptoms Manifest in a Variety of Ways

Panic and anxiety attacks are defined as an onset of intense anxiety followed by excessive amount of fear and uneasiness and usually has the symptoms of palpitation, hyperventilation and sweating. Causes for panic attack can vary from person to person; it usually takes place in the proximity of public and open spaces. There is a sudden feeling of fear and apprehension; one feels as if there is no escape from the place or situation they are in. Stress plays an important role in panic attack and fear also plays an unconscious role too. Panic Attacks usually follow after a period of time which can be measured in days, weeks and even months. If panic attack is not treated, then it can lead to panic disorder, social phobia and agoraphobia. Usually the panic attack will cause people avoid certain places and situations.

Anxiety panic attack symptoms are comprised of a smothering sensation and sudden shortness of breath, a feeling that brings on a sense of helplessness because you feel intense pressure on your face and your chest, as if your body is dying for oxygen, but your breathing passages are being choked off. Additionally, an accelerated heart beat and heart palpitations, due to the anxiety felt by the person, causes the body to start releasing adrenalin which makes heart beat even more rapidly, a feeling that can definitely lead to uncomfortable chest pains. At other times, one may feel that their heartbeat has slowed as if their heart might even stop altogether, even though this scenario is more imagined than real. These types of chest pains, which is usually caused by muscle tension, is often confused with the symptoms of a heart attack.

With relaxation exercises one can ease the pain. Difficulty in swallowing is another common ailment during a panic attack. This condition is known as 'Globus Hystericus'. The muscles in the throat react in a similar manner to the muscles in the chest, when experiencing extreme forms of anxiety, they contract. It is not a harmful condition, just very unnerving. Another malady is the blanching or loss of skin color. This occurs because the blood rushes to the muscles due to the 'flight or fight' situation the person feels during severe panic attacks.

Other conditions that can be seen in anxiety panic attack symptoms is, sweating, shaking and shivering, neck and shoulder pain along with numbness in the face due to tension in the nerves and blood vessels, rapid gastric emptying, indigestion, constipation, constipation, diarrhea, sexual dysfunction, symptoms or urinary tact infection (but this is caused due to the medication given in case of such attacks), skin rashes, weakness in the arm and tingling in the arms and feet, where this is also another reaction to the 'flight or fight' situation.

The whole circulatory system, blood oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and muscle tension undergoes a change in order to prepare for the situation and tingling is caused by the high levels of carbon dioxide in the limbs. Electric shock feeling anywhere in the body, dry mouth, insomnia, nightmares, fear of losing control and sanity, depression and suicidal feelings, aggression, flu like symptoms such as weakness, sweat and pains, distorted vision, disturbed hearing also known as tinnitus, here one experiences whistling or screeching sounds in both ears.

In fact, there are many variations of symptoms caused by anxiety and panic attacks, so it's very much aids the treatment process to know what they are as they occur.

10 Essential Tips For Landing Your Next Job

We’ve noticed recently on Twitter that a lot of people are talking about having been laid off over the past couple of months. TechCrunch reports that there have been almost 80,000 layoffs in the technology sector since August, and entire blogs have been started about web and tech people losing their jobs. But even with all that doom and gloom, many companies are still hiring. If you find yourself looking for work, or trying to find some freelance gigs on the side to supplement your income, here are some tips to help you stand out, stay organized, and ultimately land a job.

1. Get Your Resumé in Order

Your resumé is a record of your entire professional life condensed on a single page (or two). 95% of the time, it will be the second thing a potential employer will see (first is your cover letter, which we’ll talk about next), so that makes it supremely important that everything is in order.

First and foremost, that means making sure your resumé is up-to-date. Double check that all of your contact information is correct, and that all of your prior work experience, including your most recent position, is accounted for. Try to emphasize the positions that best relate to the jobs you’re most interested in finding, and remove the ones that don’t relate, especially if your resumé is getting too long (a lot of HR people won’t both with resumés over two pages in length).

Remember to give a brief synopsis of your responsibilities at each job because job titles don’t mean much. A product manager at one company might do less than an assistant at another.

2. Never Reuse Cover Letters

The cover letter is the first thing a potential employer will see when you apply for a job. It will often determine if your resumé even gets looked at, so it is vitally important that you put proper time into crafting a good one.

Your cover letter is your chance to tie in the work experience detailed on your resumé to the actual job you’re applying for. Go into detail about why your past experiences will help you excel at the position you’re gunning to land.

You should always tailor your cover letter to the specific job you’re applying for. You may not have to do a full rewrite each time, since you’re likely to be applying to similar job opportunities, but you should never send out a form cover letter that’s the same for every application.

3. Network (Offline)

Networking is essential to finding a new job. Neither of my last two jobs were advertised via traditional channels — I happened into them by meeting the right people, letting them know what I was good at, and making a positive impression.

You should set aside some time to become a regular at the local tech meetups (most cities have a few these days, even the smaller ones), join the local user groups about the technologies you’re interested in — and present at them, and attend nearby conferences. For the unemployed, conferences can be an expense that’s hard to justify, but if you can manage to afford the cheapest pass (the one that gets you into just the expo hall usually), you can meet some great people hanging around in the lobby and hallways.

4. Network (Online)

Remember that networking happens both offline and online.

Online it means developing and maintaining a network of active professional acquaintances on services like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, and making positive contributions to professional discussion communities like Hacker News and SitePoint Forums.

5. Start Blogging

Blogging is an excellent way to raise your visibility. Blog about the things you hope to be doing at your next job and start to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Along with all that networking you’re doing, blogging will help raise your profile and could attract recruiters. It’s never a bad thing when you apply for a job and the person on the other end reading your cover letter thinks, “Where have I heard this name before? … Oh right, he wrote that great article about unit testing!”

And who knows, blogging might even land you a job interview at Google.

6. Check Job Boards Often (Like, Right Now)

You’ll never find a job if you don’t actively look for them. Very rarely do jobs come to you — yeah, it happens sometimes, but it’s the exception, not the rule. In October, we published a list of 20 job boards that can help you find a job in web development or a freelance gig. These are a great starting point, and while you’re conducting your job search you should live on these sites.

Many of them offer RSS feeds of new jobs. Those RSS feeds are your new best friend. Subscribe to them all, set your RSS reader to check for updates as often as possible, and be the first to apply for new jobs and gigs as they go up. For sites that don’t have any RSS feeds, don’t be shy about using a service like Dapper to create your own. Staying on top of as many job opportunities as possible is essential to finding a new job — this is a marathon, not a sprint.

7. Know Your Price

Especially for freelancers, knowing your price is very important. It’s not enough that you can beat the other guy to the pitch, you have to be able to quote fast as well. As more and more people are pushed out of work and into the job market, and less and less jobs are available to go around, competition is getting really stiff for each new open position. Being able to quote quickly and accurately will raise your chances of landing that consulting gig.

8. Don’t Stop Learning

How many programming languages do you know? How good are you with CSS? Photoshop? Dreamweaver? Can you set up Apache in your sleep? That’s not good enough. Someone else out ther knows more, and knows it all better. The job market is competitive and you shouldn’t rest on your laurels and assume that what you know is enough to get by. Staying on the bleeding edge of web technology is a great way to set yourself apart from other job applicants, and honing your knowledge of your current skills is important to standing out in the crowd (also, why not blog about all the new things you’re learning, so recruiters can bone up on what you’re boning up on?).

You want to be the guy telling your potential next boss about new technologies even he hasn’t heard of and why he should be using them. That’s the sort of passion that will make an impression on employers.

9. Follow Up with Past Clients

A perhaps overlooked source of potential new jobs is past clients. Just because they haven’t contacted you recently, doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t work to be done. Be proactive and ping past clients about what you can do for them. If nothing else, it’s a great way to reconnect with people that can act as potential references or talk you up to others in their industry that might be looking for help. Keep yourself on the radar screens of those who do the hiring and you’ll be rewarded for the effort eventually.

Similarly, if you haven’t heard back from them, it’s a good idea to follow up on jobs you’ve applied for a week or two after emailing your application. Ask if they’re starting interviews soon and reaffirm your interest in the open position. A well-timed follow up and move your resume to the top of the pile just as the employer is sorting through, and often times that sort of ambition will be looked upon favorably and rewarded. More than once in my past that type of follow up has led to an interview.

10. Keep it all Organized

Finding a new job rarely means just applying for a couple. I’ve read more stories than I care to count about people who had to apply for 15, 20, 40, or even more jobs before they landed just one interview. That shouldn’t be discouraging — finding a new job is hard work and could take months — but it does illustrate why you need to be organized about your job hunt.

Applying for the same job twice, or accidentally addressing a cover letter to the wrong employer would be major faux pas that you definitely want to avoid. We recommend Happy Job Search, a application written by web developer Daniel Higginbotham after he found himself laid off from work twice in the span of three months.

Happy Job Search is a very simple application, but it’s an exceptionally useful one. It lets you quickly log information about jobs that you come across in your search, and then keep track of the stage of your application — whether you’ve applied, heard back, have an interview scheduled, etc. When you’re applying to tens of jobs each week and scanning hundreds of job ads, an organizational application like Happy Job Search could quickly become your new favorite piece of software.

Five Things I Learned for The Year 2009

1. People are People

No matter how much you love them and they love you, sometimes they could hurt you. Learn how to understand and forgive them. That should help you strengthen your relationship with them. Try to tolerate some of their attitudes if it's not necessary to change it.

2. If You Can't Find It, Create It

How often do you get frustrated about not finding the best utensils, the best books, the best food, the best friend? (lol, I'm kidding about the last one), then create it! Perhaps it's a sign to start a business with the need to create something that people need but simply couldn't find. Most commercial products nowadays are simply too commercialized that value is often compromised. Start working on a project or a business that will change and even set as a standard for all others that currently exist.

3. Everyday is a Wonderful Day

Always tell that to yourself in front of a mirror first thing in the morning and you will really have a wonderful day. Sometimes there may be unexpected circumstances that you can't manage but as you stay true to your positive outlook, everything will be alright and you'd be surprised at how fast you've settled things.

4. Love and Be Loved Back
Do I need to say more? I've learned that in order for you to gain someone's love, you gotta love them first. This is not usually the case though. Sometimes the one you love simply can't or won't love you back. Whatever the case is, be sure to give love, and someone else, you may never know, at the right time will love you back.

5. Family
Our family will always be there for us no matter what. Love your family as much as you love your friends and treat your friends like your family.

Those are just five things I've learned for the whole 2009. Of course there are still some more but let me save them for 2010, haha.

Making Greeting Cards is Easy

Making Greeting Cards is Easy, Here's How.

Making greeting cards is a wonderful hobby to enjoy with your family and friends. In fact, card making is becoming more and more popular and it's now a novelty to send handmade greeting cards.

Have you ever look at a handmade card and thought to yourself, "So beautiful! I wish I know how to make my own greeting cards." Well, now you can! Imagine people receiving your homemade greetings with your name on the back!

Making greeting cards is easy. Many people are making cards and so can you. Make you own greeting cards and sign them by rubber stamping "Handcrafted by (YOUR NAME)" on the back of every of your handmade cards. Cool!

Taking up card making as a hobby is not expensive since you should have most of the supplies for making greeting cards in your home. For a basic homemade card, all you need is paper, cutter, glue and some color pencils.

But though inexpensive, making greeting cards has many benefits.

Creating beautiful homemade cards is such a rewarding way of spending time with family and friends. The joy of gathering cardmaking ideas, paper, embellishments, and other card making supplies to make the cards and the joy that the handmade greeting cards give to the recipients are just feelings that cannot be purchased. Receiving a handmade greeting card is so special, isn't it?

So start making greeting cards in the comfort of your home by following the instructions on this card making website.

Specially For You Who Feel That You Are Not So Crafty

To you who just are not the paper, scissors and glue kind, don't despair. Making greeting cards as a hobby is still a possibility. Yes, you can also make and send yur own homemade greeting cards to your friends. You could design your own greeting cards using a graphic software, or take a photo with your digital camera and upload it to your computer. Add an appropriate poem or quote and print it. Voila! A Personalised one-of-a-kind greeting card.

So whether you are a die-hard crafter or the digital designer, making greeting cards is a great way to relax, be creative and connect with others.

Interesting Celebrations and Events for September 2009

September 22nd (Tuesday) - First Day of Autumn

Make some cards with designs that are relevant to the events above and send them out to surprise your friends.