Personal growth & parenting aren’t often words put together in the same sentence. Yet parenting provides the perfect opportunity for growth. And not just for our child’s growth, but for our own.

If we really want to bring out the best in our children, we need to call forth the best in ourselves. 9 Ways to Bring out the Best in You & Your Child is a brand new book that provides a blueprint for parents to empower their children & themselves, rather than struggling for control.

Nine chapters describe how you & your family can live together creatively, harmoniously & authentically. The principles are laid out simply, with plenty of humor & stories to help you put them to work immediately in your life.

1. The Way of Mutual Respect based on love, not fear, forms the basis of interaction with our children. Setting clear boundaries with children teaches them respect. We respect them by not crossing their boundaries & teach them to respect us by respecting our own time & boundaries.

“Politely tell a complaining child that he is welcome to eat what he likes from the dinner selection, but that you aren't making him a hot dog because that’s ‘all he’ll eat.’ Making his special dinner teaches him he doesn’t have to respect you & your time. Forcing him to sit & eat his broccoli crosses his boundaries & fails to respect him.”

2. Children will get our attention one way or the other! Many parents spend a lifetime reacting to their child’s misbehavior without really knowing what they want to create.

“Life is where we put our attention.” Stop focusing on misbehavior & give your attention to what’s working in your family. Step out of your reactive patterns for a moment, project yourself to your 90th birthday party & describe in detail what you would like your children to remember about you & what they learned from you.

The Way of Vision is about creating a vision for your family that inspires & guides your day to day interactions.

3. Turn power struggles into powerful relationships by focusing on what you'll do, not what you'll make your child do. For example, if your child has a tantrum in the store, instead of trying to make her stop, focus on what you will do.

Concentrate on controlling your own inner environment while you calmly carry her out of the store.

When we try to control children they resist. We can spend our lives in power struggles. The Way of Mutual Empowerment recognizes that real power lies within.

One mom told me as she focused on what she would do she did the only thing she felt like doing – she laid down on the supermarket floor beside her screaming 4 year old & screamed with her. Her child stopped immediately & said, “Mommy what are you doing? Mommy, stop!”

Apparently both tantrums ended abruptly! Whenever you start to feel hopeless or powerless in a situation, ask yourself, “What will I do?” instead of “What do I need to make my child do?”

4. How do we keep erupting emotions from destroying our relationships?

The Way of Emotional Grounding means addressing & safely releasing the emotions that drive behavior for both children & parents.

Trying to change the behavior without addressing the underlying emotions is like cutting the head off a dandelion & expecting it not to grow anymore!

Next time your child bursts into anger, stay calm inside yourself & allow her to drain her frustrations. Help her identify the emotions underneath her frustration & anger:

“I see how disappointing it is for you when you can’t have the toy you want.”

Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Instead of screaming at kids to settle down, settle down yourself & act from the calm state you want them to acquire.

5. “Why won’t these kids listen to me?” is the theme song of many a beleaguered parent. The key to having your child listen to you is to first listen to him, so that he feels understood & free to express himself.

Listen to yourself & stop using the phrases & statements that shut down communication. (If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you 1000 times… So what makes us think telling him one more time will help? I mean, honestly, who is the slow learner here?)

When your child misbehaves tell him how you feel about his behavior without blaming him or ridiculing him. Stop giving so much attention to communication that centers on conflict.

The Way of Communication means to make a concerted effort to increase the amount of dialogue that occurs in your home & watch the environment improve. Creating the time & space for meaningful conversation is perhaps the best thing you can do for your family life & for your child’s education.

Making after school, mealtimes or bedtimes inviting times for conversation can work wonders for everyone.

6. The Way of Encouragement teaches children to learn from their mistakes by seeing problems as “opportunities in work clothes.” That means that we stop punishing our child when she makes a mistake.

Instead, let’s help her to recognize the skills & qualities she has to correct the situation. Let’s allow our child to take reasonable risks so that she can develop the strengths & qualities she needs to meet life’s challenges.

Look deeply into your child & see the strengths & qualities within & like a mirror, reflect them back to her so that she may see & claim them for herself.

Focus on what your child does well & describe it specifically. For example, if she helps her little brother fix his toy, instead of simply saying, “Good girl!” tell her how much you appreciate her helpfulness.

“When you help your brother without even being asked, that helps me. I like it when you take the initiative like that”

Point out her strengths. “That’s very creative the way you put those pieces together to fix his train.”

We teach best by pointing out specifically what’s done well, not be pointing out everything that’s wrong.

7. We all need to learn The Way of Living Harmoniously with Others. Our relationship with our child teaches him how to listen & express his feelings & helps him learn how to get along sociably.

Siblings provide a testing ground for developing social skills. The well intentioned parent who intervenes to stop every sibling outbreak inadvertently fuels sibling rivalry.

Children often argue to get parents’ attention & to push their buttons! Stop reacting to your children’s squabbling. Be prepared, however, that the squabbling may at first intensify. After all, they used to be able to push your buttons.

If you don't react, they may naturally push harder at first! Stay out of it unless one child is in danger. Then, step in to remove that child. Without blame & remaining calm yourself, give both children time to settle down & help them to drain their frustrations.

8. The Way of Loving Discipline focuses on respectfully helping children to make amends & find solutions to problems they create.

Punishment creates feelings of resentment, revenge or guilt & isn't effective discipline. In fact, it can destroy relationships. So instead of sitting your child in the corner or lecturing him to make him feel so bad he wouldn’t dream of coloring on your walls again, give him soap & water & let him clean the walls. (Chances are good that while he’s sitting in the corner, he’s plotting revenge rather than feeling remorseful anyway!)

Show him where he can find paper to color on next time. Sometimes we focus so much on changing our child’s behavior that we destroy our relationship with him.

Building healthy relationships is the key to discipline, for the only real authority & influence we have with our child is that which they give us based on their attachment to us.

9. Your children need your presence, not just your presents. Remind yourself to stay in this moment, right now. Let go of worrying about the future & mauling over the past & appreciate this very moment.

Rarely is there a problem in this moment. Live this moment as you desire the future to be & the future will fulfill your desires. The Way of Parenting with Spirit means reaching deeply within yourself & connecting from the depth of who you are to the depth within your child.

That means that you must take time for you! You don’t do your family any favors by burning yourself out & working yourself into a frazzle. Treat yourself to a bubble bath (without the children!), go for a walk or a run, or do something else that nurtures you.

Be all that you are & you'll encourage your child to be all that she is. Teach her to know & to trust her own light & inner wisdom. Let your light shine & as you do so your child will feel free to shine her own light in this world.

© Maggie Reigh 2006

source: selfgrowth.com

Our Rage & Frustration: The War Within Us

By Gregory F. Treverton

This opinion article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 16, 2001.

The war against terrorism into which the United States has been plunged is also a frustrating war within us. We hurt & the hurt turns to rage.

We want to strike back. But rage is no guide to policy. Striking out in rage would make us no better than the terrorists - & ultimately would defeat us.

After Pearl Harbor, we instantly knew the name & address of our enemy. This time, the frustration is compounded because we don't.

The war within us will be all the sharper once we know the enemy - that it's Osama bin Laden, for instance, perhaps with some tactical help from Iran & from the radical Islamic group Al Gama, which has a foothold in Boston.

To us, the perpetrators of last week's events aren't rational. Previous terrorists were frightful but had goals. They used terror in pursuit of political objectives. They wanted something.

The new enemies seem to have nounderstandable objectives we can satisfy or spurn. They want revenge for acts of ours they can't describe & we wouldn't recognize.

We can imagine flying a plane into a building to kill Hitler. We can't imagine destroying the World Trade Center to exact revenge on the Great Satan.

Over & over in television interviews, Americans said as much: "I can't believe there are still people in the world who would do this senseless killing."

We can empathize with the Palestinians who have lived for a half-century under Israel's thumb - & boot. But such empathy ends when we see cheering on the streets of Palestine as people watch televised images of the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The frustration in understanding our enemies will soon be followed by frustration in retaliating against them.

President Bush surely was right to say that the United States would no longer make a distinction between terrorists & states that provide them sanctuary. But action is easier threatened than taken.

Pakistan, one nation that has harbored Osama bin Laden, is a longtime U.S. friend that now is at risk of coming apart at the seams. Other U.S. friends in the region, Egypt & Saudi Arabia, are terrified of terrorists but are equally terrified of the potential backlash among their people if the United States turns terrorists into martyrs.

And so we are back to frustrated rage. The war within us will go on for weeks, trying our patience & our nerves. If we aren't to squander the high ground, we'll have to build a case against those who turn out to be our enemies & then build a broad coalition to punish them. Neither task is easy.

Last time around, after bin Laden struck our embassies in Africa in 1998, we opted for what Pentagon officials call "T-LAM therapy" - that is, cruise missile (T-LAM) attacks - on Sudan & Afghanistan. Nothing so antiseptic will do this time around, for this is war, not disciplining a miscreant. And winning the other war - the war within us - requires that we stay very tightly focused on those people who are our enemies.

If our response appears indiscriminate, we lose. In 1998, we managed to look both feckless & foolish.

Again & again since Tuesday, it's been said that we have entered a new world. Maybe not. If a year from now, Tuesday's terrorism has, in the world's mind, become as isolated an event as the Oklahoma City bombing now seems, Americans may return to old practices. They may decide security isn't worth spending several hours to board a short domestic flight.

The terror scenarios conjured up by people like me, whose business is strategy, have included planes used as flying Molotov cocktails. The tactic may have been part of the plans of those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.

What was astonishing this time was the terrorists' ability to pull it off 4 times in an hour, in coordinated efforts in 3 different airports. Even those of us who conjured the flying Molotov-cocktail scenario didn't quite believe any terrorists could really do it.

That's another connection to Pearl Harbor. We didn't believe that Japan could or would do such a thing & so we were slow to comprehend the signals that it might.

The terrorists' success this time suggests we haven't seen the last of their diabolical capabilities. They have won this round. They may win the next, though we surely will be better prepared then. But they can't win many rounds, for they know their own history better than they understand ours.

Their terror has roused us from the pleasant torpor of easy invincibility & they'll regret it. They can win the larger war only if we lose the war within us, only if they succeed at goading us into fighting on their terms - at home or abroad.

Gregory F. Treverton, an analyst with RAND, is a senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. His latest book, Rethinking National Intelligence for an Age of Information, has just been published by Cambridge University Press.

Active-duty milbloggers point out that they aren't speaking - or blogging - in any official capacity. Since April 2005, all blogging service members on duty in Iraq have been required to register their blogs & allow their content to be monitored.

"[Active-duty] bloggers are free to discuss a fairly broad range of topics, give their opinions on virtually anything, as long as they don't violate obvious security / personal info concerns," according to Mudville Gazette's "Greyhawk," one of the best-established milbloggers.

"Greyhawk," who is on active duty in Germany & his wife & co-blogger, "Mrs. Greyhawk," were the online moderators for the MilBlog Conference.

Most milbloggers, but not all, support President Bush's Iraq war effort & virtually all say they're pro-military. Many feel that "the truth" about operations in Iraq & Afghanistan has been distorted by what they deem the "mainstream media," or "MSM" in blogging terminology

In many cases, attendees at the conference got to meet others they had known only online. Jeff Nuding encountered friends who more than 2 years ago encouraged him to begin his Dadmanly blog, which is at http://www.dadmanly.blogspot.com.

"This is such a cooperative effort & because my passion is for bloggers, I feel closer to some milbloggers than I feel to many others," he said. "These were the people who got me started, motivated me to do it & in many ways, it's like meeting your long-lost parent."

Andi C. explained how the conference came about.

"Last August I had an idea [to] get some milbloggers together & discuss the concept of milblogging," she said.

"I thought the milblog scene was growing & expanding & it was time, particularly in the middle of a War on Terror, for us to get together in a formal setting. I also wanted a forum where we could meet & discuss issues that are important & sometimes unique to us."

The Veterans Foundation Inc. of North Carolina, a charity that supports the North Carolina branch of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, sponsored the conference, according to Tara Sue Clark, the foundation's executive director.

Clark said that the sponsorship was in cooperation with the Hidden Heroes Foundation, a non-profit organization that aids families of reservists & National Guard members deployed overseas.

She said the foundation was already planning the 2007 milblogging conference & she expected it would become an annual event.

Conference supporters included the USO, the VFW & Military.com, a social-networking & job-placement Web site for people with "military affinity," owned by Monster.com.

Military.com sponsored the luncheon, while Miltarywebcom.org, which is operated by the VFW, hosted the online forum & obtained the meeting space. Panelists & moderators paid their own travel expenses.

Many milbloggers, including some on active duty, expressed frustration with war coverage by "the mainstream media."

"[I] started reading the milbloggers & their accounts of what was going on over in theater & I was thinking to myself, 'What a contrast to what you read every day,'" explained ThreatsWatch blogger Steve Schippert. "It was such a bad difference that it really started to get me angry."

Several milbloggers said they thought the media doubts there is any prospect of military success in Iraq. As an example, they cited Time Magazine's April 7, 2003, cover, which asked: "What will it take to win?"

One participant pointed out that the famous toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square took place two days after the magazine's cover date.

Not all participants agreed that good news wasn't getting out.

"It's out there," said Nuding. "You can find it on Yahoo, [on the War on Terror discussion blog] Winds of Change & other places."

"People have to understand that there's a difference between having the news 'out there' & making people read it," he continued. "The mainstream media's real issue is one of reporting & analyzing in the context of some sort of bigger picture ... That's where the bloggers come in. It's really more about balance."

Conference panelists said they saw milblogging as a way for ordinary people to provide that balance.

"Technology is allowing ordinary people who are experts to get their message out much more efficiently," according to "Charlie", who along with his colleague, "John," runs a blog called "OPFOR." Both preferred to use only their first names.

Andi agreed with that assessment.

"Milblogs tell the good news, the progress on the ground," she said. "They also do a good job of introducing readers to heroic people that you might not get the chance to meet otherwise. Blackfive does an excellent job of this with his 'Someone you should know' series. Milblogs also keep the mainstream media in check, something badly needed."

Ward Carroll, news editor of Military.com, said that a good milblog "reads with a sincerity & an import that no mainstream media outlet can capture."

Not only do milbloggers use their blogs to tell "the good news," but they also use their networks to rally & organize in support of causes they favor, which can run from the fairly benign to the highly political.

Conference attendee Scott Swett, operator of the anti-John Kerry presidential candidacy Web site http://www.wintersoldier.com & president of New American Media Online Services, was also involved in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization that aired ads against Kerry during the 2004 election campaign.

Swett knows firsthand how quickly the blogging community can organize.

"There were thousands of Web sites that had links to the Swift Vets," during the height of the 2004 campaign, he said. "We were running 4 dedicated servers & we were processing terabytes per day of information. ... [There were] certainly in excess of a million people going to that site per day."

Both John Donovan, whose milblog is at http://www.thedonovan.com & "Beth," who runs Fuzzilicious Thinking, point out that connectivity is the key.

Not all milblogs get large volumes of traffic, but even the seldom-read are often connected to other blogs that have larger readerships or are in turn read by those with access to a greater audience.

Beth calls herself the "idea person" behind Project Valour IT, which provides voice-activated laptop computers to wounded military personnel unable to use regular PCs.

Her own blog gets "around 40 hits a day" & she credits her success to Donovan's contacts.

"He brought in people like The Indepundit... & Blackfive," she said. "It was John that made them take me seriously. I'm not a big milblogger, but I know the biggies."

"My daily traffic is less than that of my local newspaper, but my daily traffic includes people who read the National Review, who read Slate," said Donovan. "So when they come to my Web site & see Fuzzy's post & I chop it off to Jonah & [others] ... you got 43,000 visits for that post."

Milbloggers often make a distinction between supporting the troops & supporting the Iraq war, to the point where some completely shun terms such as "pro-war."

"I'm anti-war in the sense that any active-duty military person is anti-war," said Mudville Gazette's "Greyhawk." "I'm 'anti-war' up to the moment the shooting starts. I use quotes around the phrases 'anti-war' & 'pro-war' because 90% of the time, neither phrase is used appropriately when applied to the folks they're applied to these days."

One serviceman on duty in Iraq, stridently anti-war Arizona Army National Guardsman Spc. Leonard A. Clark, was demoted to private first class in 2005 for unspecified comments on his blog, which has since been deactivated.

The military wouldn't specify what got Clark in trouble, other than to say he failed to obey orders & placed other service members in jeopardy.

Clark, championed by prominent left-wing blogger "Daily Kos," himself a veteran, is now running for U.S. Senator Jon Kyl's seat as a Democrat.

Carroll, who said Military.com is attracted to blogs because of their "killer content," thinks that the next 4 years will see some thinning in the ranks of milbloggers.

"There will be a natural attrition & caste system that will happen," he said. "Your 'rock stars' will grow in import & the people who aren't there will shrink. There will be no middle class in milblogs. ... Every once in a while, one of those who's in the shadows will be discovered."

Carroll thinks that money will become a real difference between today's blogs & the blogs of the future.

"There should be a lot more revenue potential just from a strict business model for the bloggers themselves," he said. "Advertisers are starting to embrace the idea of blogs ... businesses are getting smarter about what a blog can do."

Charlie, whose OPFOR site has just ventured into podcasting, wants the military of the future to embrace bloggers more closely & make its content accessible over a wide variety of platforms.

"I'd like to see a unit blogger," he explained, "some sort of central Web site where we get to see the combined blogs of each brigade combat team ... that can go out over podcasts, the Internet, etc."

For now, milblogs seem to be gaining in popularity because, in John from OPFOR's words, "The military art is largely a language & there's a tremendous appetite in America for people who are fluent in that language."

Michael Lawhorn is an active-duty Army major with nearly 20 years of service. He will be soon be deploying to Korea. His blog can be found at www.kosovodad.blogspot.com.

FOXNews.com's Kelly Beaucar Vlahos contributed to this report.

The Sex Lives & Sexual Frustrations of US troops in Iraq:

An Ocean of Ignorance

by Stephen Soldz 

Well over a hundred thousand American men & women, most younger than 30, spend a year or more at a time in a foreign country where they're almost totally isolated from the indigenous population.

Are all these troops really chaste for those long periods, as called for by military regulations?

Strategies for Managing Frustrating Behavior

Following Directions

If your child doesn’t follow directions, it’s easy to believe he’s being stubborn or ignoring you on purpose. But his behavior may be covering up problems remembering or understanding directions. Perhaps you’re talking too much - giving him more than he can handle verbally.

Next time, see if these strategies help him:

• Get his attention & eye contact before giving directions.

• Show him what you want him to do.

• Make a picture chart or list to serve as a reminder. Ask him to explain directions or show you what’s he’s supposed to do before he gets started.

• Reduce the amount of talking (lecturing) you do to him.

Tackling Homework

If your child doesn’t start homework until the last minute, you may think he’s being lazy or defiant. But maybe he doesn’t know how to get started. Perhaps he has problems with the concept of time or can’t decide when his work is good enough. Some kids think the "due date" is the day they’re supposed to "do" the project.

These ideas may help to make homework time a little less frustrating:

• Have him set a goal for quality & amount to do on an assignment before he begins.

• Get him started on his homework to make sure he understands what’s expected.

• Set a timer for a certain amount of time to help him get a sense of how long things take.

• Teach him to use a daily, weekly, or monthly planner so he can plan assignments & their due dates.

• Help him break long term assignments into smaller parts so he has less to do at deadline time.

Sitting Still

If your child just can’t seem to sit still to get anything done, it’s easy to believe he’s just being difficult. But he may physically need to move more than his brothers or sisters because that’s who he is.

Here are some ways to help:

• Make sure the chair & desk heights are right for him - feet flat on the floor & writing arm supported by the desk surface - when he’s doing homework.

• Be sure all necessary supplies are handy for him so he doesn’t have to jump up & down to get things he needs.

• Make sure he knows what he’s supposed to do & when he’s supposed to do it.

• Build in opportunities to move - get a drink of water between activities or show you the project when it’s finished.

Working On His Own

If he never seems to get anything done unless you’re sitting right next to him, it’s easy to believe he wants all your attention. But maybe he’s unsure of himself & doesn’t want to make a mistake. Or he might need a little extra help keeping his attention focused.

These may build confidence & increase independence:

By Family Caregiver Alliance

Frustration is a normal & valid emotional response to many of the difficulties of being a caregiver. While some irritation may be part of everyday life as a caregiver, feeling extreme frustration can have serious consequences for you or the person you care for.

Frustration & stress may negatively impact your physical health or cause you to be physically or verbally aggressive towards your loved one. If your caregiving situation is causing you extreme frustration or anger, you may want to explore some new techniques for coping.

When you're frustrated, it's important to distinguish between what is & what is not within your power to change.

Frustration often arises out of trying to change an uncontrollable circumstance. As a caregiver of someone with dementia, you face many uncontrollable situations. Normal daily activities - dressing, bathing & eating - may become sources of deep frustration for you.

Behaviors often associated with dementia, like wandering or asking questions repeatedly, can be frustrating for caregivers but are uncontrollable behaviors for people with dementia.

Unfortunately, you can't simply change the behavior of a person suffering from dementia. When dealing with an uncontrollable circumstance, you do control one thing: how you respond to that circumstance.

In order to respond without extreme frustration, you'll need to:

• Learn to recognize the warnings signs of frustration

• Intervene to calm yourself down physically

• Modify your thoughts in a way that reduces your stress

• Learn to communicate assertively

• Learn to ask for help

Triple-Column Technique

One helpful way to practice using more adaptive thinking processes is to use the "triple-column technique." Draw two lines down the center of a piece of paper to divide the paper into thirds. When you're feeling frustrated, take a personal "time out" & write your negative thoughts in the first column.

In the 2nd column, try to identify the type of unhelpful pattern from the 6 examples above. In the 3rd column, talk back to your negative thoughts with a more positive point of view.

See below for examples.

Communicating Assertively

Good communication can reduce frustration by allowing you to express yourself while helping others to understand your limits & needs.

Assertive communication is different from passive or aggressive communication. When you communicate passively, you may be keeping your own needs & desires inside to avoid conflict with others.

While this may seem easier on the surface, the long-term result may be that others feel they can push you around to get their way.

When you communicate aggressively, you may be forcing your needs & desires onto others. While this allows you to express your feelings, aggressive communication generally makes others more defensive & less cooperative.

When you communicate assertively, you express your own needs & desires while respecting the needs & desires of others. Assertive communication allows both parties to engage in a dignified discussion about the issue at hand.

Keys to assertive communication are:

• Respecting your own feelings, needs & desires.
• Standing up for your feelings without shaming, degrading or humiliating the other person.
• Using "I" statements rather than "you" statements. For example, say, "I need a break" or "I would like to talk to you & work this out" instead of "You're irresponsible" or "You never help out!"
• Avoiding "should" statements. For example, say, "It's important to me that promises be kept," instead of "You should keep your promise."

The Critical Step: Asking for Help

You can't take on all the responsibilities of caregiving by yourself. It's essential that you ask for & accept help. Discuss your needs with family members & friends who might be willing to share caregiving responsibilities.

People will not realize you need help if you don't explain your situation & ask for assistance. Remember, you have the right to ask for help & express your needs.

When to say "Yes"

Don't be afraid to say "Yes" if someone offers to help. Say "Yes" at the moment a person offers to help rather than saying "maybe" & waiting until you're in a fix. Have a list handy of errands or tasks you need help with. Keep in mind that people feel useful & gratified when they're able to help others.

When to say "No"

Often, caregivers are pulled in multiple directions. In addition to the demands of caregiving, you may feel compelled to meet the demands of your immediate & extended family, your friends & your employer. Learn how to say "No" to the demands of others when you are overwhelmed or need a break. It's your right to say "No" to extra demands on your time without feeling guilty.

Learning Effective Communication Techniques for Dementia Caregiving

Many families find it frustrating to communicate with a loved one who has dementia. The person with dementia may repeat questions over & over or mistake you for someone else. It's important to remember that the person with dementia can't control behavior caused by their disease. They don't need to be corrected or grounded in "reality." You can distract them or just agree with them as a way to reduce your frustration.

It can be helpful, however, to learn more about dementia & effective communication techniques which will ease your frustration. For example, use simple, direct statements & place yourself close when speaking to a person with a cognitive disorder.

Try not to argue about unimportant things such as what the date is. Allow extra time to accomplish tasks such as dressing. Remember, people with dementia often react more to our feelings than our words.

Finding ways to be calm can help you to gain cooperation. See FCA's Fact Sheet: Behavior Management Strategies (Dementia) for more helpful strategies.

Self-Care to Prevent Frustration

Caregiving can be tiring & stressful. When you're caring for others, it's easy to forget to care for yourself. While it may be difficult to find time to focus on yourself & your needs, it's very important that you do so to prevent frustration & burnout. FCA's Fact Sheet:Taking Care of YOU: Self-Care for Caregivers offers additional information.

Here are 3 steps to taking better care of YOU:   Make Time for Yourself

You may feel guilty about needing or wanting time out for rest, socialization & fun. However, everyone deserves regular & ongoing breaks from work, including caregivers.

"Respite" providers can give you the opportunity to take the breaks you need. Respite breaks may be provided by in-home help, adult day care, "friendly visitor" programs, friends & neighbors, or other means.

The important point is to allow yourself to take a break from caregiving. See "Resources" at the end of this fact sheet for organizations that might help you give yourself time off from caregiving.

Take Care of Yourself

Although caregiving may make it difficult to find time for yourself, it's important to eat well, exercise, get a good night's sleep & attend to your own medical needs.

When you don't take care of yourself, you're prone to increased anxiety, depression, frustration & physical distress that'll make it more difficult to continue providing care.

Seek Outside Support

Sharing your feelings with a counselor, pastor, a support group, or with another caregiver in a similar situation can be a great way to release stress & get helpful advice.

You may want to contact the organizations under "Resources" at the end of this Fact Sheet or look in the community services section at the front of the Yellow Pages, under "Counseling" or "Senior Services" to find services to help you get some caregiver support. The FCA Fact Sheet on Community Care Options also offers information.

source: strength for caring

see credits below

Frustration

We've examined one of the most important kinds of stress, that is, conflict. In this module we shall define & analyze another stressful situation, the kind brought about by frustration.

Reactions to frustration are readily observable in everyday life. They range all the way from a child's temper tantrum to a mature adult's intensified striving to reach a difficult goal. Before we can examine these effects, however, we need to be familiar with the main sources of frustration & with some of the conditions that determine the strength & the form that reactions to frustration may take.

As you read the text, try to answer the following questions.

• What is frustration?
• What kinds of obstacles can cause frustration?
• Does everyone react to frustration in the same way?
• How do you react to frustrationn?

Frustration can be either a process or a feeling

The word frustration has come to be commonly (& often loosely) used in everyday speech. By "frustration," psychologists usually mean the blocking of the striving behavior of a motivated organism toward a goal. The blocking or thwarting may be caused by an obstacle or by a lack of something the organism needs in order to attain a goal.

A condition can't be considered an obstacle unless it actually inhibits the striving directed towards a goal. The obstacle may be in the form of a condition which really exists or it may be purely imaginary. In either case, frustration will result.

Quite commonly, however, frustration has taken on another meaning. When we say we "feel frustrated," we're usually referring to the various unpleasant feelings that result from the blocking of our striving behavior.

Hence, frustration refers both to the blocking of the striving behavior & to the feelings which accompany or result from the blocking.

SOURCES OF FRUSTRATION

Physical obstacles, both man-made & inherent, exist in our environment. Both time & distance, i.e., serve as obstacles to attaining a goal. We think there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish what we set out to do, or we simply can't reach the place where we need to be.

Both the natural & the man-made world abound in obstacles. Poor soil & climate frustrate most of the world's people who are striving to grow food for their survival. Factors in a depressed economy act as obstacles to attaining a livelihood.

Small, everyday things constantly frustrate our goal attainments: a flat tire or a traffic jam prevent us from being on time, lack of a pencil prevents us from writing down a message.

Both individuals & society in general block our strivings toward goals. These are social obstacles. The child who is prevented from grasping a dangerous object, the adolescent who isn't allowed to date a certain boy & the young couple who can't find a babysitter on the evening they want to go out are all encountering social obstacles. The list of frustrations caused by other individuals is endless.

Society, too, restricts & blocks our efforts to attain certain goals. The black man's efforts to buy a house in a desirable neighborhood may be blocked by prejudice. The individual's acquisitive motives are blocked by laws which prevent him from stealing.

A distinction must be made between social obstacles externally imposed on the individual & social obstacles which have become internalized by the individual. In the latter case the internalized obstacle may be a motive that's incompatible with other motives, thereby causing conflict.

i.e., a woman with very young children may wish to get a job. She may have internalized society's disapproval of turning over the care of her children to someone else & therefore feels ambivalent towards the goal of obtaining a job. Her stress in this case is a result of conflict as well as frustration.

Finally, all of us have certain characteristics or deficiencies which act as personal obstacles. We may dream of having a certain career but lack the talents or intelligence needed to attain that goal. Our wish for acceptance & affection may be frustrated by personality characteristics we have that irritate people.

INTENSITY OF FRUSTRATION

There is a great difference between the frustration one experiences as a result of a jammed window & that resulting from social prejudice. In the latter case the frustration is likely to be much more intense. The intensity of frustration seems to depend on 4 main factors:

• the strength of the frustrated motive,
• the distance from the goal,
• the nature of the obstacle,
• the number of obstacles.

We're only frustrated when we find ourselves prevented from achieving a goal that has some value & the value we place on the goal determines the strength of our motivation to achieve it. A man may be perfectly satisfied with is old car until his neighbor buys a new convertible.

In the last century, people felt no frustration over the lack of central heating & air-conditioning or many other things which we feel we couldn't do without now.

Many people in underdeveloped countries were relatively satisfied with the status quo until they became familiar with the way of life in the more highly developed countries.

Then they began to miss the things we associate with a high standard of living. This is also illustrated by the frustration experienced by the very poor who see products which are beyond their financial means advertised on television.

Thus motive strength may reflect the way one perceives the difference between goals he has achieved & those that have been achieved by others.

However, motive strength is a very personal phenomenon. Some motives, such as social acceptance or sexual experience, tend to be stronger than others, but still vary considerably between individuals.

Also, a goal that is important to one person may seem trivial to another. A student who hopes for a professional career will be more frustrated if he fails to be accepted in college than one who is going to college with no definite plans.

Frustration is also more likely to be intense if a goal is nearly reached than if an obstacle appears when a goal is far away. This is the underlying reason why riots & civil-rights agitation are more prevalent in the North than in the South.

The goal (equal rights & opportunity) seems much closer in the North. Therefore, obstacles which thwart attainment of the goal are likely to be met with responses that indicate an intense degree of frustration.

We shall consider this further when we examine some of the constructive & destructive effects of frustration. To be frustrating, a condition has to be perceived to be an obstacle

The more capricious or arbitrary an obstacle seems to be, the more we're frustrated by it. A reasonable explanation for an obstacle makes us much more tolerant of it. We wait patiently in the doctor's office because we see the waiting room full of people & we know our turn will come.

We may feel much more frustrated if the sales clerks in a store are idly gossiping when we're ready to make a purchase. Generally, we tend to feel more frustrated by obstacles set up by people than by physical obstacles such as mechanical failures & quirks of nature.

The sheer number of obstacles between an individual & a goal also increases the intensity of frustration. The first few obstacles may have little effect, but, finally, one more obstacle will be "the last straw."

TOLERANCE OF FRUSTRATION

Among children as well as adults, tolerance of frustration varies from individual to individual. We wonder why, i.e., some men can't handle the relatively mild frustrations of boot camp, while others can hold up under the more severe frustrations of war.

The fact that this may partially depend on adjustment is indicated by Hutt's experiment (1947) on tolerance of frustration among well-adjusted & poorly adjusted children

Two groups of children, one judged to be well adjusted & the other poorly adjusted, were given the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. The test was administered first in the usual form (items getting progressively more difficult). This progression was deemed "frustrating." The test was then administered with the difficulty of items determined by the responses of each child (returning to an easy item if the child failed).

This was considered "nonfrustrating." It was found that the scores of the well-adjusted children hardly differed from one test to the other. The poorly adjusted children, on the other hand, made much higher scores on the "nonfrustrating" test. This seemed to indicate that poorly adjusted children were more easily frustrated.

Finally, an individual's tolerance of frustration also depends upon his physical condition. Someone deprived of sleep, food, or sex is likely to experience higher degrees of frustration than someone who isn't so deprived.

source: click here