FEMME LOUNGE ::: Young Women Doing Life Together | Tag Archive

If I Did It , You Can! – Adura Odesanya

Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

If you don’t know me, you’ll soon come to learn how much I love food.

I vividly remember being told by a friend in secondary school that although I was lucky because I could eat whatever I liked, one day things will change. I felt like she was threatening me by predicting I’d get fat if I continued loving and eating food the way I did – I rolled my eyes and kept on eating Well… a year later, after a summer holiday in England, I went back to school chubby *shock horror*! Luckily for me, I was almost back to my usual size after a term in boarding school.

I wish I could say that was my only experience with being overweight but if you love food as much as I do and you’ve been overweight once, it’s bound to happen again especially if you fall back into bad eating habits. Or worse. That is exactly what happened when I moved to London in 1998. I ate, ate and ate a little more. I worked in McDonald’s for 6 months and had a burger, chips and a milkshake almost every day. Sometimes I treated myself to a chocolate fudge or caramel sundae, it was all free so why not? Was I surprised when I realised how big I’d become? Yes! Did I do anything

about it? Yes because once in a while I remembered how slim I was in Nigeria and I was sad I’d gotten that big and No because I quickly got over my self-pity and carried on eating… of course.

I finally did something about it when I saw a picture of myself at a friend’s barbeque – I honestly couldn’t believe it was me! Yes I saw that same person in the mirror everyday, I’d seen pictures of myself from other occasions but they never had the same impact that this picture did on me (Note: This isn’t the picture but is from the same year).

Before After

To me, that was a life changing moment. Sorry if I sound dramatic but it was. I instantly made the decision to join Weight Watchers and I successfully lost 40 pounds in less than 4 months from eating healthily. Wouldn’t it be the perfect ending if I said I looked and felt good for ever and ever?… Yes but that’s not true.

Through my experiences, some even as recently as last year, I have come to learn, and still am learning; the right balance between healthy eating and exercise. Exercise is very important but healthy eating is even more important.

It doesn’t happen in one day. It has been 8 years since I initially lost weight and I am now coming to the point where I am much more confident with the decisions I make with my health and my fitness. Finally confident enough to provide help and advice to people who are in similar situations to where I was.

If you are where I was, I’m here to help as much as I possibly can.

Adura Odesanya is a Fitness Instructor and Trainer who works with Fitter London. Having been overweight in the past, she recognises the challenges that many people face in trying to overcome weight loss and fitness challenges. She will be sharing some of her experiences that have helped her achieve and maintain a significantly healthier lifestyle with us on Femme Lounge.

website/blog: http://www.adura-odesanya.co.uk/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/adura_odesanya.

Is Your Skin Hungry?

Posted on 15. Aug, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

Glowing vibrant skin is often envied because it is seen as a reflection of youth, and so we buy products and even buy some foods to put on top of the skin to keep it looking young. But we generally tend to overlook the fact that when it comes to our skin, the food we put into our bodies may have a bigger impact than what we put on our bodies. Here are ten great food options that help rejuvenate skin:

Low-fat dairy: Note the words “low-fat”. Dairy that is high in fat may actually contain fats that cause skin blemishes when consumed on a regular basis. The best options of low-fat dairy are skimmed milk and low-fat yoghurt because they contain just enough good fat, as well as lots of vitamin A. When searching for low-fat yoghurt, stick to yoghurt that is low in calories and sugars.

Berries: A lot of skin damage is as a result of prolonged exposure to the sun. With black skin, the direct effects of sun exposure are usually not as evident on our skin, but there are negative effects we may not see for a while, such as premature aging. Berries contain a lot of antioxidants that help to neutralize the effects of prolonged sun exposure. They also help the skin manufacture collagen. Collagen is a chemical produced by the body that maintains skin’s elasticity, and keeps the skin looking youthful. Some great types of berries are blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries (the one you eat, not your phone).

Fish and Nuts: Foods rich in Omega-3 and Omega-6 also have anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce the speed of skin aging. Great sources of Omega-3 and Omega-6 are fatty fish like salmon, sardines, and mackerel, and nuts like walnuts and almonds. Extra virgin olive oil: Extra virgin olive oil contains healthy oils that make it good for the skin, just like fish and nuts. However, it also contains vitamins A, E, and K that help the skin maintain its elasticity and helps to soothe skin irritations.

Whole Grains: Whole Grains are rich in vitamin B, which relieves dryness and itchiness of skin. Vitamin B deficiency increases skin dryness and sensitivity. Whole grains also contain a trace mineral called selenium, which is essential to prevent acne and acne scarring, and slowing down skin aging. Studies have actually shown that selenium may help to reduce the risk of certain types of skin cancers.

Green tea: In addition to all the benefits of green tea, it is also good for the skin. Just like most of the other great skin foods, it protects the skin from prolonged exposure to the sun, and contains other anti-inflammatory qualities to prevent skin aging. Also, green tea helps rejuvenate the skin, and can reduce the look of wrinkles, acne, and even dandruff.

Avocadoes: Yum! This is one of my favorites, and I’m certain several readers would be glad to see that avocadoes hold several health benefits for the skin. Avocadoes hydrate the skin, leaving the skin consistently moisturized and even smoother. It also contains B complex vitamins and antioxidants that may delay the process of skin aging.

Spinach: As your mom, and her mom before her said, eat your greens! Spinach is an example of a great green vegetable that contains antioxidants, vitamins A, C, and E, folic acid, and iron that help maintain the firmness of skin and even keeps your hair shining. Spinach also contains a mineral called lutein, which keeps your eyes healthy and sparkling. Soy milk: Soy products are not technically a dairy, but they contain vitamins A and B. As we have seen with the other foods listed here, these vitamins help to reduce effects of prolonged sun exposure on the skin. Additionally, soy proteins play a huge role in evening skin tone and texture, and reducing skin discoloration.

Water: This article would not be complete if we did not talk about the positive effects of water on the skin. Just like most objects in the world, our skin is made up of mostly water. Obviously, dry skin is caused by low moisture, and so in order to keep the skin hydrated and vibrant, it is essential to drink tons of water to replenish the skin. How much water we need is debatable and the statistics have been changed and re-changed, but a glass of water at every meal and a glass of water in-between meals is a relatively adequate amount to keep the skin looking hydrated. But just as certain foods promote skin health, there are foods that may cause the skin to grow tired and age quicker. Some examples are: coffee, excess salt, greasy foods, alcohol, and soda. Although we may not be able to completely remove these foods from our diet, we can certainly limit our intake to see glowing vibrant skin.

Writer: Suzanne Brume writes a blog about health and fitness, called Eights and Weights, and you can check it out here http://eightsandweights.blogspot.com. She was one of the last-minute nominations for the Best Health and Fitness category in the Nigerian Blog awards.

Photo Credit: Fuse

Drop Dead Diva? I Want It And I Want It Now!

Posted on 16. Jul, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

We live in a time where we can get almost anything we want in the drop of a hat. The fat can be sucked right out of you for the right price; you can have food delivered to your door if you don’t want to step outside; you can even access Facebook from your cell phone if you don’t want to wait till you get home. Because of this diva mentality, it frustrates us when we can’t control our health in the drop of a hat as well. Websites, sales people, and even pharmaceutical companies have preyed on this fact abundantly. To test people’s response to the quick health fix, I Googled the words ‘how to lose weight fast’ and came up with about 22 million responses. That’s how much we are being preyed upon. I found everything from diet pills to one-week boot camps.

Amidst the weight loss panic, people forget that too much of anything is not good for you. This includes dropping weight too quickly. Shedding pounds fast is a sudden change that can be too much for your body to handle. It can leave your heart and other organs too weak to handle the dramatic change, and as we talked about in a previous post, it can make you lose muscle as well. People with more toned muscles maintain a healthy weight more easily because muscles help burn fat.

But health is not all about weight, right? Even if you successfully shed those pounds quickly, and somehow manage to not damage your body in the process, your attitude towards food might change. For example, if you are on diet pills, you may think you’re invincible and eat whatever you want. I don’t need to tell you that eating everything every time is not good for you. There are so many foods out there that can harm your body when consumed on a regular basis. Another example is that if you cut everything out, you could begin to look at food as the enemy, and not get the nourishment that you need. And the arguably most important example is that if you work out stringently and cannot maintain the routine, you would probably fall back into your old lifestyle.

So what is the crux of the matter? Let’s set our diva attitudes aside when it comes to our bodies. If we consider our overall health, not just how we look, we will begin to understand that health is a process, not a target. Just as sudden changes in our situations and environments can have an effect on our blood pressure, sudden changes in our bodies can have a negative effect on our overall health. Plus, to be brutally honest, you can change the outside, but you can’t change your inside in the drop of a hat.

Writer: Suzanne Brume writes a blog about health and fitness, called Eights and Weights, and you can check it out here http://eightsandweights.blogspot.com. She was one of the last-minute nominations for the Best Health and Fitness category in the Nigerian Blog awards.

Photo Credit: NVTI

How Much Calories Does Your Body Need?

Posted on 18. Jun, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

Calories can be difficult to understand because you hear so many different things from different sources. But the basic idea is that your body needs a certain amount of energy per day to function properly .i.e. to digest food, walk, talk, exercise, etc.The amount of energy your body needs depends on your weight, age, gender, and how active you are.

We get calories from food, and through metabolism, these calories are converted into energy. So the amount of energy your body needs is directly proportionate to how many calories you need.
If you consume more calories than your body needs, your body stores the excess as fat. When you work out, you burn the excess calories; which means you are essentially burning off the fat. This is how you maintain your body fat ratio. This is why it’s important to understand that there’s no magical way to lose weight. It comes down to two things: exercise and diet.
To lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you take in every day. Visit http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-burned.php for a tool to help estimate how many calories you burn per day based on your age, weight, gender, and level of activity. Note: it’s just an estimate. The amount of time it’ll take you to lose weight just depends on how many calories you eat minus how many calories you burn daily.

When this value – i.e. amount you take in minus amount you burn – gets to about 3,500 calories, you have effectively lost about 1 pound or 0.45 kilograms (since 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound of fat).
Different levels of physical activity burn different number of calories depending on intensity. Please visit http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/SM00109 for a summary of about how many calories are burned with different types of exercises.
If you have more questions, please leave a comment or start a discussion on the Eights and Weights Facebook page here. Also, if there are individual fitness topics you’d like to hear more about, please leave a note on the Facebook page.

My motto for the week: To truly live better, strive to understand what your body needs.

Photo Credit: JGI

A Young Woman's Memoir Of Madness

Posted on 14. May, 2010 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

The reason I am writing this is to help someone who is in the same situation where I found myself eighteen years ago when I discovered that my depression wasn’t clinical but manic depression, so they can benefit from my own funny, unique, sometimes hurtful, painful, uncomfortable and even humiliating personal experience.

I have lived with this debilitating, mysterious and deadly disease my whole life. I have struggled to overcome the stigma attached to this disease by people who are intimidated by things they don’t have any control over. It is a psychiatric illness also known as bipolar disorder.

This is my story.

I was brought up in a liberal household by parents who believed that love, happiness and peace where greater aspirations than prestige, position and status. I am part of only a lucky few. I was taught not to bear grudges. I was told when someone hurt my feelings to ignore him or her and see him or her for who they truly were. I was taught to be forgiving and understanding and that there wasn’t any difference between the rich and the poor children at the schools I went to. I was taught that the noblest profession in the world was being a teacher. My father is a community leader and my mother is a teacher, My parents taught by example re-enforcing values and excellence, as well as enriching wonderfully young lives filled with so much hope and promise.

I had no idea I was sick for a long time, even though there has been a history of mental illness on my father’s side including alcoholism, depression and suicide. In the early stages of my sickness, it defined who I was. My whole life revolved around hiding my disease. It was cerebral. There was no scarring, no wound, no stitches and sutures required. Sometimes it was easy to hide and sometimes it wasn’t.

The signs and symptoms of a hypomanic episode are as follows. You behave wild and free, have depressive slumps, spiraling depression. You don’t sleep. You don’t nap. You are the focus – the centre of the universe. You are beautiful, smart, determined but the reflection that everybody else sees is militant, horribly annoying and irritating. You feel humiliated in later introspection while others felt uncomfortable in your presence. You were Dr. Jekyll incognito and Mr. Hyde in the flesh.

Depression is a devastating illness that affects millions of people worldwide and unless a forum or a platform can be raised to break the silence, annihilates in one blow the stigma of mental illness and of prejudice, people who suffer from mental illness will keep thinking that they are a burden to society. The stigmatization of mental illness is never-ending.

Mental health seems not to be a moot point for people in government but to all the people that are still suffering in silence, I say, break the silence; add a visible, outspoken voice.

There are more of us out there than you realize!

Keep on fighting. I did. I do every day and as I take my first breathe for the day, I thank God I am alive. It’s not brave when you’re not scared and sometimes I am have both good days and bad.

There is one thing that I have learned during the past eighteen years. The future is still in my power, even though the past cannot be changed. Mental illness is not a human stain.

Currently I am working on an anthology of my poetry, a collection of short stories and I am beginning work on a novel co-authored with my father called ‘From Hell To Eternity: A Memoir Of Madness’.

Earlier this year I also received a grant from the National Arts Council which not only encouraged me to begin to write again – this time with both my survival and my experience in mind – but to put together some of my earlier poetry in a collection entitled ‘Africa, Where Art Thou?’

Yes, my life has turned out rather unconventionally from who, what, where I’d envisaged myself being but not a day goes by now that I am not thankful for. I do not question why I am here or what my divine purpose is. I am not driven by fear and uncertainties anymore or if I behave self-consciously. Although there is still a sorrow here I cannot reform, that yields stillness in quiet moments of reflection or contemplation, every event in my life composes furious life anew.

Through all the infinite wisdom of my mistakes that came before, the love of my family still remains. It is both a reminder of what came before and what lies ahead in my future.

Writer – Abigail is a young woman that has been suffering from bipolar disorder for eighteen years but has learnt to live triumphantly against all odds.

Click the link below to know more about this Bipolar Disorder/Manic Depression

http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/bipolar-disorder-manic-depression

Join Erase The Stigma That Challenges “Mental Illness Group on Facebook

32 Things Women Are Afraid Of

Posted on 05. Dec, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Everyday Living

According to the American Psychiatric Association, a phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of an object or situation. In most cases, the phobia involves a sense of endangerment or a fear of harm. This list offers a glimpse at the phobias that are especially particular to women and can have a serious impact on their lives. These are just few of the over 500 phobias that has been identified!

What Are You Afraid of?

Achluophobia – Fear of darkness.

Agraphobia – Fear of sexual abuse.

Androphobia – Fear of men.

Anuptaphobia – Fear of staying single.

Arsonphobia – Fear of fire.

Bibliophobia is the fear of books

Cacophobia – Fear of ugliness.

Chrematophobia is the fear of money

Decidophobia is the fear of making decisions

Eleutherophobia is the fear of knowledge

Gamophobia – Fear of marriage.

Genophobia – Fear of sex.

Gerascophobia – Fear of growing old

Glossophobia is the fear of speaking in public

Hypegiaphobia is the fear of responsibility

Kakorrharphobia is the fear of failure or defeat

Lockiophobia – Fear of childbirth.

Mechanophobia is the fear of machines

Melanophobia – Fear of the color black.
Necrophobia – Fear of death or dead things.

Ophidiophobia – Fear of snakes

Opthalmophobia is the fear of being stared at

Peniaphobia is the fear of poverty

Pentheraphobia – Fear of mother-in-law

Phabdophobia is the fear of being severely punished or criticized

Pocresophobia – Fear of gaining weight

Quatophobia is the fear of being an insignificant and worthless person

Socialphobia is the fear of social situations

Venustraphobia – Fear of beautiful women.

Wiccaphobia is the fear of witches

Xenophobia is the fear of foreigners

Zeusophobia is the fear of God or gods

On the causes of phobia, latest studies show that there is likely a complex interaction of factors including genetics, brain chemistry, environmental triggers and learned behavior. Treatment ranges from the use of self help advice to seeing therapists

For a longer list of phobias, the causes and treatment please go to the sites below

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/phobias/DS00272

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Phobias/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Bed Wetting at 30!

Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

If children feel embarrassed when they wet their beds, imagine what it is like for an adult who does. Yet there are adults who experts say probably number in the millions, who are bed-wetters. Because of their problem, they often live in constant fear of embarrassment, afraid to share their beds and rooms with loved ones and guests.

For those adults, bedtime is not as simple as ABC; it is in fact another time of dread and a reminder of a problem most people have outgrown at an earlier age.

For 30 year old Ogechi, who suddenly started bed wetting as a teenager, it has been a devasting nightmare, she wakes up each morning hoping to see dryness and words can’t express how what she experiences affects her social and emotional life.

She says, “I constantly think that I am a “blemished piece” because I have often been rejected and mocked by people around me. It’s been hard to keep a relationship with a guy, who wants to go to bed with a bed wetter? I have never known what it means to be self confident; it affects my self esteem and all areas of my life.

I have visited so many doctors, even a psychiatric and psychologist; they have all suggested different reasons that could be responsible for the condition. Ranging from emotional trauma I faced as a child, to my deep sleep pattern, and environmental allergies. And someone actually had the guts to suggest that I wet my bed because I was lazy to go to the toilet at night!

There has been lots of improvement over the years but I still look forward to when I will never have to worry about waking up wet anymore”.

There are several medications and medical conditions which can cause adult bed wetting. Fortunately, there are aids and treatments that can minimize the incidence and impact of bed wetting in adults.

Please see more guide on the causes and treatment of adult bed wetting at

http://www.nafc.org/bladder-bowel-health/bedwetting-2/adult-bedwetting/

She’s Pretty, She’s Young, She’s Got Cancer!

Posted on 18. Oct, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

Survivor Story

You’re too young for breast cancer, my doctor told me in a most confident tone when I pointed out the lump in my right breast.

“Besides,” he continued. “You don’t have any of the risk factors. You’re not obese and you have no family history. Plus, you breastfeed your baby. It’s probably just a plugged duct. This isn’t breast cancer.”

I love my doctor. He has been a faithful guardian of my health for nearly a decade. Moreover, he recently helped me deliver my precious baby, my most beautiful son, my gift from God. He has always had my best interests at heart, and I readily place myself in his care.

But he dismissed my concerns based on statistics (most lumps are benign and most young women do not get breast cancer) and the fact that he couldn’t feel what I could. I knew in my heart that this lump was something bad. Having massaged away plugged milk ducts in the shower nearly every day since my son was born six months prior, I just knew this lump was different. Yet, I wanted so much to believe him. After all, I was only 32. Who ever heard of a 32-year-old getting breast cancer? Breast cancer is for old women. So, I clung to my doctor’s assurance, put aside my misgivings and ignored the lump.

It wasn’t until six months later, at my next routine check-up, that my doctor felt the lump himself. (Note to all women: You have the benefit of being able to feel tissue from both the outside and inside. Your doctor does not.)

Still sure of his assessment, but, perhaps, hedging his bets, he sent me for an ultra-sound. An ultra-sound led to a mammogram (a most amusing experience if you are lactating, I found) and a mammogram led to a biopsy. This led to a lumpectomy, which confirmed without a doubt that it was cancer. And, ultimately, a breast cancer diagnosis led to a mastectomy and several months of aggressive chemotherapy.

Despite all this, I am alive and here to tell you: Young women can and do get breast cancer. Forget the risk factors. They are not causation and nearly 80 percent of women who get breast cancer have no family history. Make no mistake; if you have breasts (and yes, this means men, too), you can get breast cancer.

Young women diagnosed with breast cancer face dying from the disease much more often than their more mature counterparts. Women over 40 have the benefit of recommended routine mammography, which can identify cancer in its earliest stages, giving these women the greatest chance of beating the disease. For those of us under 40, our youthful breasts seem to conspire against us. The firm, dense tissue hides lurking abnormalities from the mammography machine’s x-ray eye and makes the films very difficult to read. This is why mammography is not always a very effective diagnostic tool for us.

We don’t know what causes breast cancer, so we cannot prevent it. For a young woman, the most important thing she can do to survive a breast cancer diagnosis is conduct monthly breast self-exams. A young woman needs to get to know her breasts intimately. Once she knows the topography of her body, she’ll know which lumps and bumps are normal and can differentiate them from those that are not.

Furthermore, a young woman must be her own best health advocate. If you find a lump, insist on a diagnosis. FYI “You are too young” is not a diagnosis. If you can point to a specific area of your breast, you can request a diagnostic test a mammogram, ultrasound or biopsy.

Admittedly, the under-forty breast cancer crowd is not large. But we exist, and we face a whole different set of issues than do older women with breast cancer. Not only do we face a higher mortality rate (which some attribute to the more aggressive nature of young women’s cancers and an often later stage of diagnosis) but we also have fertility issues. Many are the young women who cannot conceive because chemotherapy has thrust them into early menopause.

Then there are the studies and clinical trials. By far and away, most of them focus on women over 40. We die of this disease more often than older women, yet we are not studied with the same frequency and intensity.

And, let’s not forget support groups. While I found the women in the group I attended to be wonderful and supportive as I cried and cried, it was difficult for me to relate to them. They were all at least 15 years older than I am. Some were more than 35 years older.

How unfair, I thought selfishly. They lament their disease, but they have had much fuller lives than me. I have a 12-month-old son and fear that I will not be able to help him grow to be a man. What if I die in the next few years and he doesn’t ever know who I was and how very much I adore him? And what of my husband, who, at 23, watched as cancer, attacked and then consumed his father in less than a month. Is he destined to be a widower with a young son before his 35th birthday? He certainly thought so. Oh, yes. I would give anything to be these older women dealing with this disease.

For me, salvation came not in the form of a support group, but from a group of activists’ The Young Survival Coalition. These women, all diagnosed with breast cancer in their 20s and 30s, are striving to make the voices of young women with breast cancer heard.

It is our mission to educate young women about the very real risk of breast cancer and how to protect themselves, to meet with legislators to direct attention and funding to our needs, and to virtually jump up and down in front of the medical community to get them to study us and stop dismissing their young patients who present with breast lumps. This group is exactly what I and many other young women living with breast cancer need. It is our way to affect change and give young women a fighting chance against breast cancer.

I told every doctor that I saw that I wanted nothing more than to dance at my son’s wedding. It became “and continues to be” my ultimate ambition. I focus on this daily when tears threaten as I consider my fate and as I help other young women deal with their diagnoses.

My mother promised me, when I was just beginning to come to terms with my disease that I would indeed dance at my son’s wedding. “You and I are going to do the silliest dance at Jason’s wedding,” she told me. “Even if we both have to use a walker to do it.”

I’m holding her to it. I plan to do the chicken dance.

By: Tracy Pleva Hill, as shared on http://www.youngsurvival.org

Are You Killing Your Depressed Loved One?

Posted on 28. Aug, 2009 by Lounge Lady in Healthwise

Are You Killing Your Depressed Loved One With Kindness?

Throughout my years of living with my wife Sharon’s debilitating depression, I learned a great many things.

One of the most difficult lessons was to be able to tell when my attempts to help her were actually making things much worse. Most often when there is depression in the home, the one who has the depression imposes their will and their illness on the entire family, and the rest of the family walks on egg-shells all the time so as not to set the depressed person off. Such was the case in our home.

For the first several years of our marriage, I ended up being highly subservient, not to Sharon but to her depression, I would spend my life doing everything I could possibly think of to make life as easy as possible so that she wouldn’t be depressed anymore.

I would make sure the kids were quiet all the time, that everything in the house was exactly the way Sharon wanted it. I would spend enormous amounts of money to buy Sharon anything she said she wanted that might help her be happy.

I would cancel obligations that she made on her behalf and make excuses for her.

Basically my life purpose was to make Sharon happy, so that our family could be happy and in so doing I lost myself.

After several years of this constant and persistent pressure to keep Sharon happy so her depression wouldn’t win, I began to release that not only was I not helping her, she was getting obviously worse.

It wasn’t until we had lost our home, all of our savings, our investments, our friends, our happiness, our hope and now my health that I clued into something important, I was killing her with kindness.

All of my efforts and focus to try to make her happy only made things worse

This phenomena is known as ‘’enablement”. By providing Sharon with an environment where she didn’t have to be responsible for ANYTHING in her life, all I was doing was proving her illness with a perfect environment in which to grow.

Once my eyes were opened a little, I began to do things a little differently, I began to allow Sharon to take responsibility for her own actions, and face the consequences of her decisions while shielding myself as much as possible from those consequences.

I began to refuse to make excuses for her, she had to make herself, I began to allow myself to do some of the things I loved to do in life and if she objected, I allowed her to object but did not allow her to manipulate me, if she didn’t like some small thing I left it for her to change instead of taking ownership of it myself. Of course, all of this in the most loving and supporting posture possible.

After a very short time, and some resistance from Sharon, I began to notice that she was starting to take responsibility for her own life on a much larger scale. This made life so much easier for everyone in the family

Of course I didn’t always get it right but I got it right enough of the time that it made a huge difference in our lives.

If you feel that your depressed loved one has control over your life or if you fell that they depend on you far more that they should consider your actions. Try to identify those actions that might contribute to the enabling of the depression.

Essentially a depressed person is not a disabled person and for the most part they can accept responsibilities just like everyone else can. In fact they need to in order to allow themselves to take control of their life back.

Stop killing your depressed loved one with kindness, and watch your life at home change for the better!

Writer – Steve Lowell is the Author of the audio Program ‘’Victory for the Silent Victim: A Survival Guide for those Whose Loved Ones Suffers from Depression or Anxiety at www.victoryforthesilentvictim.com