Or is it?  According to one of the central dialectical tenets of DBT, change is the nature of life.  Everything is in a constant state of change.

I can accept the idea of constant change and see it in the world all around me.  Seasons change, children grow, friendships strengthen or grow more distant.  We move, get older, experience health problems, fall in love, recover from sickness, lose loved ones, graduate from school and so on.

But sometimes those things we most wish to change, seem to stay the same.

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Depression can be a factor in the treatment of an array of different health problems.  It has an impact on the treatment of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.  Depression may not be the cause of these diseases, but it often co-occurs with them and can influence whether patients follow through on treatment recommendations.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction training can help breast cancer survivors in their struggle with depression.

The number of women who survive breast cancer has increased in recent years.  However, side-effects of breast cancer treatment, including sleep problems and depression, can disrupt people’s lives and interfere with their treatment. According to a study conducted by Mary Jane Massie (2004), depression may impact as many as 50% of women with breast cancer.

In a recent study at the University of Missouri Jane Armer and other researchers found that breast cancer survivors’ health improved after they completed mindfulness-based stress reduction training that incorporates meditation, yoga and physical awareness.

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Changing problem behaviors requires that you understand and investigate what is happening when the behavior occurs.  When you discuss problems in therapy, it’s critical to know if you are sad when you have the urge to self-injure or feeling threatened when you take a drink.  Information about how you think and feel when you are most vulnerable is essential to the therapy process.

Most often behaviors such as self-destructiveness, aggression, substance use problems and other impulse behaviors happen at times of high stress and intense emotions.  And stress and emotion both have a significant impact on memory.  They interfere our ability to accurately remember events and skew what we do remember.

Diary cards, in DBT, are central to investigating and understanding problems that are being targeted in individual therapy.  They are completed during the course of the week–as emotions, events and problematic behaviors occur—with the intent of improving memory. If targeted behaviors have occurred, they are discussed in therapy.  If patterns emerge, they are investigated in therapy.

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What does your to-do list look like?  Is it filled with household chores and work obligations?  Is much of your time spent taking care of the needs of others—children, a partner, elderly parents?  Are you someone who says ‘yes’ to helping out with the PTO fundraiser, putting together that extra presentation at work or organizing the family get together?

These are all valuable things to do and many of them may be essential to the people that you care about in your life.  Some may bring you pleasure and satisfaction, while others are chores that suck away precious time and leave you off of your own list of things to do.

Women are especially prone to putting everyone else’s needs before their own, but with today’s pressures, men often find themselves in the same predicament– caring for others, while neglecting themselves. In the midst of daily demands it’s easy to lose ourselves.

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It’s the time of year where many think about making changes, renewing efforts to improve our lives and resolving to feel better this year.  It’s also a time of reflection.  Reflecting on the past year, where we’ve been, what obstacles we’ve overcome and which we still struggle with.

As I considered the past year, I looked back over posts I had written and found 5 that captured some of the struggles and strategies people identified with and found helpful.

In Can What You Eat Impact How You Feel? I discuss a review of over 160 studies that suggested that diet and nutrition impact mental health. These studies found that principles of eating, such as eating a wide variety of colorful vegetables, can have a positive impact on your mental well-being. They also found that deficiencies in our diets, such as a deficiency in vitamin D (a widespread problem in the US) can impact mental health.

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Do you grip the arm rest during take off and landing when flying, break into a cold sweat at the thought of a long car ride or avoid trips and vacations that involve any sort of travel?

I am an anxious flyer.  I don’t avoid trips, but I think twice before booking one.  I have all sorts of techniques to take my mind off the flight, particularly during take off and landing, which always feel like the most vulnerable parts of the flight.

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We all have a holiday story: Uncle Joe who drinks too much and tells offensive jokes at dinner; old sibling rivalries revived; our own sudden reversion to childhood behaviors the second we walk in through the front door.

We might love the holidays, but find ourselves trapped in a recurrent family drama year after year.  A romanticized version of family life promoted in holiday songs, television ads, magazines and stores throughout the country would have us believe that “home for the holidays” involves crackling fires, roasting chestnuts, warm embraces and comfort.

But, in reality, during this season of family gatherings many experience tension, conflict, shame, embarrassment, irritation and disagreement. And, for better or wore, what we remember about holidays is usually more about family, gathering together and spending time with loved ones, than about any one particular gift that we receive.

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Walk into any store or watch advertisements on TV and you might think that the only road to giving this season is through a diamond necklace, a new electronic gadget or a plastic toy.

But greater happiness is not closely correlated with getting things.  It’s our experiences that increase our happiness over time.  And many experiences are free.  Below are suggestions for giving this season that don’t cost anything and just may be the gifts that are remembered long after the hustle and bustle of the holidays has passed.

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This is a time of year when we hear a lot about peace and forgiveness.  These are important values and vital to our ability to function in society, in our communities and with those we care about the most.  But often it is very hard to admit wrong-doing and ask for forgiveness, when we have been the one who has behaved poorly.

We’ve all seen how failure to admit wrong-doing and mistakes can impact public figures.  Martha Stewart, for example, went to jail, not for her original actions, but for trying to cover them up.  On the news this morning, I heard another case of public figures who had mishandled allegations of sexual abuse. They are now the subject of a grand jury investigation—not for their mishandling of the allegations, but for their attempts to cover up (with lies and by perjuring themselves) their original mismanagement.

We’ve all made mistakes and blunders, have forgotten or failed to act at important moments or unintentionally or callously hurt others at some point or another.  Sometimes our errors in judgment are small and relatively inconsequential, while at other times, such as in the mishandling of sexual abuse allegations, there are considerable consequences.

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We’re surrounded by information about the benefits of exercise, but many of us still have trouble incorporating regular exercise into our lives.  Although we know it’s good for our bodies and more and more studies point to the benefits for our mental health, we often still don’t make it a habit.

The following are 4 tips to start an exercise program that you will stick to.

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