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Cyclothymia is a mood disorder like bipolar disorder that is characterized by mood swings from depression to hypomania. A mild level of mania is called hypomania. Hypomania may feel good to the person who experiences it and may even be associated with good performance and increased productivity. Thus, although family and friends to recognize the mood swings as a bipolar disorder, the person may deny that anything goes wrong.

Without proper treatment, however, hypomania can become severe mania in some people or can occur after a depression. The symptoms are never severe enough to be classified as major depressive episode. To diagnose cyclothymia, hypomanic symptoms and depressive symptoms should be rotated for at least two years. Longitudinal follow-up studies indicate that the risk of developing bipolar disorder in patients with cyclothymia is about 33 percent. While important, the rate remains too low to see cyclothymia as simply the early manifestation of bipolar disorder type I.

Symptoms

For at least 2 years (1 year for children and adolescents), the individual suffers from numerous periods with hypomanic symptoms and numerous periods with depressive symptoms that do not meet the criteria for diagnosing a major depressive episode.

Hypomanic symptoms include:

• Increased level of energy, activity, and restlessness.
• Euphoric mood.
• Great irritability.
• Thoughts and talks fast, jumping from one idea to another.
• Easily distracted, unable to concentrate. They need little sleep.
• Unrealistic beliefs about their abilities and skills.
• Poor Judgement.
• Spending too much money.
• Different from the usual behavior for a period of time.
• Increased sexual desire.
• Drug abuse, particularly cocaine, alcohol, and sleeping medications.
• Provocative behavior, intrusive or aggressive.
• He denies that something goes wrong.

Hypomanic episode is diagnosed if elevated mood state occurs with three or more of the other symptoms most of the day, nearly every day for four days or more. If the mood is irritable, 4 additional symptoms must be present.

The three aspects of human functioning major psychological thoughts, feelings and behaviors. These three aspects are interrelated, so that changes in one cause changes in another. If people change the way we think about things, the world or themselves, feel differently and behave differently.

For example, if after a failure on a task, think “I’m useless that does nothing well, not even worth trying,” your emotions and your behavior will be very different if you think, “Well, I failed this, but that does not make me useless, just a human being who makes mistakes like everyone else, see what I can do to fix it. ” In the first case, it is not surprising that feelings of depression appear and that your behavior is abandoned, while in the second case, some may worry or sadness, but these emotions are not intense enough to prevent you and disabling fix the problem, go ahead and learn how to do better next time.

Rational emotive therapy is, therefore, the causes of human emotions.

The principles of rational emotive therapy

1. Thought is the primary determinant of human emotions. Events or other people, although they can contribute, do not make us feel bad or good, but we do ourselves in terms of how we interpret events and things that go through your mind.

2. Dysfunctional thinking is a major cause of distress. That is, if one morning to go to work, you find that your car has a flat tire, you feel angry depends on (thinking how unfair it is, bad luck you have, etc..) Or anxious (thinking that you are late, your boss is angry, think to say goodbye …) or just upset (thinking “what are you going to do, I’ll have to change the wheel and face the consequences as best you can”).

Similarly, if, before the existence of any emotional problems like anxiety, agoraphobia, marital problems, etc. We analyze what happens in the mind of that person at all times, we will see what you tell yourself is causing you to feel one way or another while maintaining their psychopathology.

The death of a loved one, relationship breakdown, job loss, serious illness … All these are examples of really difficult situations in the life of a person. How do people deal with them? What is the best way to do without those situations end up with us? This article will try to answer these questions.

The key concept is resilience, since the most important is not what happens to us, but how we react and if we can recover. This capacity is not something extraordinary, as most people can recover after living situations of this kind, though, the more traumatic than the event itself, the more affected a person and the more difficult recovery.

Have a good resilience does not mean not feeling anything or indifferent. Emotional pain and other negative emotions are common and normal in people who have experienced such events and the road to recovery is often difficult and painful. Resilience is a trait that a person does or not, but involves a series of behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed.

Factors in resilience: psychological resources
There are a number of psychological resources that are helpful when facing a crisis or traumatic or stressful situations. The most important are:

a) Ability to tolerate and manage strong emotions

It is the ability to feel deep feelings, and intense emotional pain without causing permanent disruption of psychological balance. The intense feelings can frighten many people because they feel overwhelmed by them and have the impression that they can not endure such pain or destroy them. To strengthen this ability can do the following:

Explore the significance to you such emotions: why do you fear? What do you think would happen? What do you fear exactly?

Use metaphors to describe how you feel. For example, some people feel like they are in a deep, dark who can not leave, others as if they were holding a heavy wall will crumble on them at any time, and so on. Then try to transform this image. For example, you can imagine that you break the wall slowly and let it fall slowly, or can imagine you turn a torch into the well or hear the voice of someone calling you from outside, and so on. This will help you practice to tolerate and neutralize certain emotions. You can also imagine facing the storm, you get carried away by flood waters where they wish to take, and so on.

Look for objects, places or people that serve you for help and comfort. For example, hold in your hands an object (like a child with teddy bears), give a relaxing shower, etc.. Try to articles or safe places and not harmful (not to resort to alcohol, drugs or sex to get away).

Schizophrenia is a severe psychotic disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels and acts. Someone with schizophrenia may have difficulty distinguishing between the real and the imaginary can be apathetic and isolated from others, and may have difficulty expressing normal emotions in social situations.

Most people with schizophrenia are not violent and do not pose a danger to others. Schizophrenia is not caused by childhood experiences or neglectful parents, nor are the symptoms identical for each person.

Causes of Schizophrenia
The cause of schizophrenia remains unclear. There are genetic theories (inheritance), biological (biochemical imbalance in the brain), and possible viral infections and immune disorders.

Genetics (Heredity). Scientists recognize that the disorder tends to run in families and that a person inherits a tendency to develop the disease (but not this will necessarily come to develop). In predisposed individuals, schizophrenia can be triggered by environmental events, such as viral infections or highly stressful situations (eg, being raised in a dysfunctional and pathological) or a combination of both.

Similar to other diseases related to genetics, schizophrenia appears when the body undergoes hormonal and physical changes, such as those that occur during puberty and adolescence.

Biochemistry. People with schizophrenia have a chemical imbalance of certain chemicals in the brain (serotonin and dopamine) that are called neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters allow neurons (brain cells) to send signals between them. The imbalance of these neurotransmitters that affect how a person’s brain reacts to stimuli, which explains why a person with schizophrenia may be overwhelmed by sensory information (loud music or bright lights) that most people can handle easily. This problem processing different sounds, smells, etc. May also lead to hallucinations or delusions.

The first signs of schizophrenia
The signs of schizophrenia are different for each person. Symptoms may develop slowly over months or years, or may appear suddenly. The disease courses in cycles of remission and relapse.

People with social anxiety may have problems in your workplace, such as fear of attending meetings or parties of the company, difficulty getting along with co-workers, trouble speaking at meetings or lack of confidence to undertake certain tasks. Many times, your symptoms may be interpreted as lack of motivation or interest, which creates problems at work. The following may be of help:

The day to day. If you do not build relationships with your colleagues you will find it difficult to advance in your work. Furthermore, since you spend so many hours at work, not a bad idea to have friends there. Involved in superficial small talk with your classmates. For example, greet him with some general comments (such as, “Hey, how about the weekend?”), Or a compliment and exchanged a few words with them. It’s just say a few words (which can even be designed in advance), but if you do regularly will see you as approachable and friendly and, gradually, you will leave feeling more comfortable with them to have other talks.

Social gatherings. Depending on your job or position, you may need to go to parties, business dinners or similar. In these cases, prepare in advance, think about talking (to do this, read the newspaper or a magazine or look online). Avoid using alcohol to reduce inhibitions, it also reduces your ability to process information and keeps you from having a successful conversation. Remember that just being there as time passes, it will reduce your anxiety level.

Talking heads. If you need to speak with a manager thinks in advance what you will say, and try it as you would an actor.

Meetings. People with social anxiety, are challenged by new situations and are comfortable only in a few situations that dominate. If you feel anxiety in meetings, trying to reach for a while before finding you can go with people as they arrive gradually and go slowly becoming familiar with the situation.

Shy people usually do just the opposite, and being late to avoid chatting with others before the meeting. This makes you feel more alone. Remember that many people (up to 45%) are also nervous and will be relieved if you are the first to speak when they arrive or if you are there greeting them with kindness.

If you know look on the bright side of life, not only be happier, but also be healthier, live longer and be positive experiences less stress. The benefits of optimism are the following:

Major Achievements
Optimistic people perform better than pessimistic, more significant achievements. When you convince a person that has done something worse than it actually has, has a poorer outcome when you try again, research shows. Some U.S. companies looking to hire people pessimistic, and seems to work.

Better health
In a study with college students, those who were optimistic at the age of 25 years, enjoyed better health at ages 45 and 60. Other studies have associated the pessimism with higher rates of infectious diseases, premature mortality and ill health.

Persistence
Optimists are more persistent, do not give up as easily as pessimists, and for this reason are more likely to succeed

Better emotional health
The most optimistic people are more capable of coping with setbacks in life, without becoming depressed.

Reduced stress level
Optimists experience less stress than pessimists. They believe in themselves and their abilities and hope that good things happen. They see negative events as something that can be overcome and see positive events as evidence that more things will come good. By believing in themselves, are able to take more risks, bringing more positive events in their lives.

Alexithymia is defined as the inability to verbally express emotions because these people are not able to identify what they feel, understand or describe it.
It is estimated that 8% of men and 1.8% of women are Alexithymics and 30% of people with psychological problems.

Characteristics of Alexithymia

1. Difficulty in identifying emotions and feelings. These people have trouble distinguishing one emotion from another. For example, do not know for sure if what they feel is fear or anger. This failure does not occur only for those feelings, but also have difficulty identifying emotions in others (in their voices, facial expressions, posture).

2. Difficulty describing emotions and feelings. They can not describe what they feel and describe to others everything related to the subjective realm and affections.

3. Difficulty distinguishing feelings from bodily sensations that accompany emotional arousal. Emotions are often accompanied by physiological symptoms such as sweating, rapid heart rate, etc. Alexithymics physiological manifestations attributed these vague symptoms or mistake them for the emotion itself. When you feel strong emotions, this person simply describes a physical discomfort of a vague way.

4. Reduced capacity for symbolic thinking and fantasy. They usually have a concrete thinking problems in handling symbolic of emotions. His speech is monotonous, meager and without emotional overtones. Just enter changes in gesture or tone of voice, sitting rigidly and his face is expressionless.

5. Concern for detail and external events. In their language there are only abstract and symbolic references, but merely to describe specifics without an affective tone

6. Action used as a coping strategy in situations of conflict. The way to solve an unpleasant emotional state in these people, is the realization of direct behaviors. They have a practical guidance and a little contact with his psychic reality.