Coping With Women's Problems

Chronic Illness, Infertility and Reproductive Problems, Women's Cancers, Sexual Conditions, Divorce, Grief, Caretaker Issues

Women face situations unique to their gender in dealing with many stressors. These stressors test our usual coping strategies and we may feel our emotions and life are out of control.

Life changes such as divorce or the death of a loved one can be particularly hard for women, with increased stressors to family life and financial stability. Personal challenges arising from our careers, strained marital relationships, sexual trauma, reproductive issues, caretaking for others can test the limits of our emotional strength. All of these concerns require enhanced, adaptive coping strategies. In addition, health issues such as chronic illnesses, like fibromyalgia and arthritis, affect not only the health of the patient but often place limits on the roles we fill in our homes, careers, and our outside interests. A serious illness such as cancer can rob women of their normal energy and strain their ability to cope with their responsibilities.

All of these situations, and many others, create a need for support when our personal strengths and coping mechanisms are challenged. At the Center for Educational and Personal Development (CEPD), we provide behavioral health therapy for clients whose job, family or marital conflicts cause increased stress and anxiety, aggravate medical problems, or interfere with medical treatment. Our program helps clients to realize the importance of the mind-body connection, learn how personal problems can lessen ability to cope, and what to do to strengthen personal self confidence and discover adaptive coping strategies.

What Do We Do?

At CEPD, our treatment program includes cognitive techniques, which focus on changes to attitudes and thought patterns, teaching breathing and relaxation techniques, and mental relaxation techniques such as mental focusing, imagery and hypnotherapy. Counseling around areas of stress, such as work or family stress, and problem solving skills are also integral to our treatment programs. Therapy may also focus on health related behavior changes that may be indicated.

Effectively enhancing skills to increase the ability to cope and reduce stress are essential to managing trying times. Clients are taught stress reduction strategies using several methods including the use of psychophysiological biofeedback systems. For example, the interactive program HeartMath is a behavioral feedback system that measures heart rate variability. Heart rate variability shows up as different patterns when a person is in a stressed state or a relaxed state. We use the feedback from the HeartMath system to teach valuable relaxation skills.

Another system uses brainwave biofeedback (also called EEG biofeedback or neuro-feedback) and enables the client to "see" and "hear" the physiological aspects of stress and pain on their body and to use these cues to learn to reduce them. Neurofeedback is used for a variety of conditions that appear to be associated with irregular brain activity, including sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, learning disorders and attention deficit disorders.

We Treat the Whole Client

	assessment: objective tests and personal interviews offer baseline measures of problem symptoms
	behavioral strategies: effective methods to address your specific problem behavior areas
	stress reduction: relaxation training and coping strategies to enhance the client's ability to cope with the anxiety and stress of their symptoms or problems
	personal counseling: to address the personal stressors, manage feelings and provide coping strategies depression, anger and stress management
	marital and couples therapy: to identify partners' assumptions, values and expectations of themselves and their partner, to communicate effectively, to listen, and to negotiate to resolve differences
	family therapy: to provide an opportunity to clarify the roles and responsibilities of all family members and to enable the family to function in a healthy manner

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