Coping With Osteoporosis, Anxiety and Depression

Beat Back the Stress

The stress of osteoporosis is likely to stay for a while.  Because of this, having a plan to reduce stress and improve overall well-being will help your ability to limit the influence of anxiety and depression on your life.  Here’s how:

• Target self-talk. You have seen the powerful effects of self-talk on your life.  Anxiety and depression need a steady supply of negative self-talk to maintain their corruption.  Begin changing the process by taking note of your self-talk.  Ignoring the problem does not change it.  Make mental notes, or even better, write down your thoughts during the day.  Pay attention to the messages your give yourself and track the feelings that accompany the thoughts.  Negative thoughts lead to negative feelings.  The good news is that the opposite is also true.  Do not take a backseat to your self-talk.

• Aim for success. Stress makes it harder to take care of yourself and poor self-care increases stress.  Make yourself the priority by focusing on the trio of diet, sleep and exercise.  Making appropriate diet choices, allowing enough time to get eight hours of sleep each night and exercising more often will improve your physical health and boost your energy throughout the day.  The three are related to fewer osteoporosis symptoms which will result in less stress.  More importantly, the influence on your mental health is incredible. Your moods will be less depressed while your concentration and problem-solving skills improve.  The routine you build will fight against anxiety and isolation
• Shrink the negatives. Take an inventory of your stressors beyond your osteoporosis and rank their impact.  Work to eliminate or modify these to reduce stress.  Be cautious, though.  Spending too much effort trying to change something that is unchangeable only leads to increased stress.  Choose to battle some of the smaller negatives initially.  Doing so will give you useful information about productive methods for fighting stress.  Once you build momentum, you can target bigger stressors.
• Magnify the positives. You can never eliminate all negatives.  Adding positives helps add balance to tip the scales in your favor.  If your positives can outweigh the negatives, you will feel more empowered and optimistic about the future.  List positives and be sure to differentiate them from the neutral life experiences.  Rather than being glued to the couch, go for a walk outside or meet a friend for dinner.  Scheduling your positives will make them easier to complete.  The sense of accomplishment you receive will minimize your stress.

• Strive for relaxation. One of the best positives you can add is relaxation.  Too many people take relaxation for granted, but it can actually be confusing and challenging at first.  Explore your options.  Relaxation techniques begin with deep breathing and end at complex meditations.  Refuse to give up on relaxation before you find success.  Repetition and experimentation throughout the day is a must to achieve the desired result.  You should be no different.
• Seek the professionals. Putting too much pressure on yourself to improve your thoughts, feelings and behaviors can lead to more stress while feeling that you have to combat osteoporosis alone builds frustration and hopelessness.  Therapists, counselors, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists are available to help you.  They have the experience and the training to accomplish your goals of decreased anxiety and depression.  Moving to a point of acceptance with osteoporosis means that you have a full awareness of your situation.  Stress cannot live in an accepting environment.

Conclusion

Combat depression and anxiety at the root: stress.  Stress is a simple concept that carries huge weight in the world of physical and mental health.  Understand the role that stress plays in building anxiety and depression and then crush it.  Beat back the stress to show it you’re the boss.