Good Lifestyle

Ed Note: This story initially ran in the April 2009 issue ofBetter life.

Located early on January 5, Steven Good, aged 52, husband, father of three son and head of one of the largest real estate sales companies in the nation, took his red jaguar for a rotation. The car was hot and well insulated from the cold air outside. It was Suburban Chicago, after all, the first week of 2009 and the temperature was in teenagers. Good attention to its route that morning. He could not use the home driver at home that he would normally be in another day of work, because that would not be quite possible. Instead of heading to the south of his house in Highland Park at his office in Chicago, he went to the west in Kane County. When he reached his destination, the Max McGraw Wildlife Refuge near Elgin, the car park was deserted. Peaceful. He put the car in the park and closed it.

The next time is a mystery. Perhaps he expected that the first ghost of winter light comes, taking the time to examine the ramifications of his plan. Maybe he did not expect at all, knowing that hesitation could dissuade him. But at some point in the winter morning, this real estate broker, a lawyer, a lawyer and a hypersidue family, well respected, shot a rifle on the driver's seat, armed, positioned in the single effective way that you can in a car, and shot down. A maintenance worker discovered his body at 8:20. That day.

Why is it good? Nobody knows. He left no note. What we know: the national real estate market has been a crusher of soul. And while we hear bad news every day on all things financial, a new trend has appeared almost impossible to believe: some of the richest men in the world, successful in everything they have never done, choose to take their own life .

The same week of a good week itself, billionaire Adolf Merckle, number 94 on the list of forbes of the richest, committed suicide walking in front of a train. On December 23, 2008, Financial Rene-Thierry Magon of the Villehuchet took sleep pills and climbed his wrists with a cap box at his desk in New York. He would have lost more than $ 1 billion in the money of his investors - and millions of family members in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi. The Wall Streamers were Abuzz on two other recent suicides: a 27-year-old seller with two children, the other a 50-year-old hedge fund manager and a father.

This slowdown, or recession, or depression - or whatever the historians will call it when it is excessive - has not simply been screened, it killed. He gave us a new phenomenon that can be called post-traumatic financial stress disorder, and the condition is good. "This is a good term because it accurately described the consequences of a first catastrophic experience," says Psychologist Leslie Mayer, PhD, a leading man of the School of Business and the founder of the Mayer Leadership Group, An executive coaching company. "Financial loss can trigger feelings of self-catering, deep shame, broken dreams and uselessness. In the case of very busy businessmen, this is amplified by the fact that the trauma binds. only to a fundamental fear, but also to a main piece of their identity. Works and intelligent in business does not necessarily apply to managing its own emotions. We could even argue that the same quality that has created success - A high concentration on victory - is the quality that is mostly interfering with the adjustment to fail. "

"The trauma is very real," said Thomas C. Scott, CEO of Scott Wealth Management in Orange County, California. "I saw my customers lose money and my own pension was cut in two. You spend 20 years on a path of success and you have a sense of accomplishment. It becomes part of you. To see it Escaplio in the blink of an eye is shocking. There is a feeling of betrayal, like everything you have worked on all your life has been a joke. "

How much did you lose? What value has evaporated from your home, your retirement accounts, your collegiate funds from your children? Everyone lost something. But how well are you equipped, emotionally, to handle this loss? Successful men are not used to losing. Not like this. And when you are one of the most successful men - one of the guys scheduled to win - an eviscerating loss is the equivalent of an ego amputation without anesthesia. Some really believe that there is no better answer than the commercial end of a firearm, a few pills and a box cutter, or a one-off train. In their minds, like George Bailey, it's a wonderful life, they are worth more than living. What remains for the rest of us who are not so tragic with our adaptation methods?

This: a new way to approach not only stress, but also the deep and dark anxiety that comes with major losses both in cash and career.

When a type-A takes a big shot

J.R. is a lot like you: intelligent, driven, serious. Nothing was more important for him than the success of his career. He worked hard and nailed that Sweet Gig: CEO of a manufacturing company in San Diego. Even in this case, chronic success has remained the goal. "I could not give up my board or my staff," he says. "I could not drop my family. I just could not fail."

Yet that's exactly what it looked like the three-year-old father when he was withdrawn from his position several years ago.

"A big part of my self-esteem was related to my position," he remembers. "I plunged into depression. It was like I had a weight attached to my feet and that it pulled me under. I contemplated suicide."

Even after J.R. got a new position as a president of a company, he had always dreamed of directing, his depression did not raise. It was irritable and his negative mood showed his relations at work and at home. His wife pleaded for weeks before having agreed to see a psychiatrist in the Mental Health Program of the University of California in San Diego Medical Center, which is exclusively for professionals of the main corporate roles.

"Due to long hours and excessive stress, a corner corner leader is more vulnerable to anxiety, sleep disorders, weight change, drug addiction, depression .. Department of psychiatry and Director of the Program. "For one, an executive has more responsibility and more to lose. Second: he believes he is immune. And three: it's too busy or too frightened to look for help. "

Although the stigma surrounding mental illness is raised, many men still believe that depression or anxiety means weakness, declares Dr. Soliman. "Our goal is to be preventive and proactive - in a highly confidential framework - and to help executives develop a safety net of behaviors that will allow them to manage stress before turning into chronic or depression anxiety."

The economic slowdown was a boon for Dr. Soliman and the four-year center. The clinic is part of a national tendency to provide tailor-made health assessments and treatment on stressed experts who do not have time (or inclination) to better take care of their health mental and physical. Many clinics offered in places such as the Mayo Clinic, the Life Life Center, the Cleveland Clinic and the Canyon Ranch offer a multitude of medical services, including advanced blood tests, vascular analyzes and whole body. , stress management courses, and executive coaching. But the UCSD's Mental Health Program of the UCSD is unique in addition to these health assessments, they focus on proactive psychological well-being.

There is clearly the need for such an installation. Large suicides In addition, last year's CEO Trust Index, a survey of nearly 2,400 senior executives, revealed that 50% of executives reported having felt more stressed stress in 2008 than the previous year. The financial crisis has also led to an increase in mental health cases, according to the US psychiatric association, and the calls to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline increased from 412,768 in 2007 to 540 041 in 2008. The phrase "Methods of Suicide "has recently hit a high multiplayer on Google Trends, which follows the frequency at which words or phrases have been sought on Google. A sudden failure or catastrophic humiliation through the foreclosure or economic loss can leave desperate people, deeply depressed and unable to see a way out, according to Robert Simon, MD, a member of the APA Working Group on Suicidal Behaviors . Although the current economic turmoil is certainly a factor, many stress-related disorders simply come with the high pressure territory of the big job.

A new way to regain control

As a person suffering from depression, the executive's mental health program is hiding one view in a professional park of Nondescript from the suburbs of San Diego de la Jolla. It is nestled between a Mexican restaurant called El Torito Grill and, believe it or not, the brewery of the rocky background. Customers enter a door and let a separate anonymous output pass to ensure confidentiality.

At the first visit, a client meets a team of integrative physicians, therapists and nutritionists in one piece to speed up the complete evaluation process and avoid duplicating information. Experts seem to appreciate the effectiveness of the approach all over once at once and the conference room, says Soliman, as it uses the mentality of the direction of "Let's do it". After the meeting and completed evaluation interviews, a personalized holistic program is manufactured, combining Western medicine with non-traditional approaches. This means that you could find yourself on appointments with acupuncturists, massage therapists and healers as well as internetists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists from Harvard. Depending on the results of your evaluation, you can be examined for hormonal imbalances and vitamin deficiencies. If you need pharmaceutical help, doctors will prescribe antidepressant and anti-anti-antite antidepressants, but never without exploring natural treatments that target the root of the problem, such as conversation therapy, nutritional approaches, The modalities of energy medicines such as Reiki and the practice of meditation to accumulate your Chi. The Center can also organize executive coaching to develop conflict management skills and repeat better ways to interact with subordinates.

"We are looking at the whole person and say," Let's discover what makes you feel that way ", because it can be a number of components," says Roya Kohani, MD, a certified board of the Council trained in integrative medicine. Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine. A molecular biologist in training, Mr. Kohani earned his medical degree in Harvard, then spent eight years working with integrative medicine-medicine Guru Andrew Weil, MD. "Depression and anxiety are just symptoms of other problems," she says. "Our goal is to identify imbalances that accumulate, both physical and lifestyle imbalances, then allow innate healing capabilities of your body." An individualized center typical of the center lasts five days over five weeks, with a one-minute session once a week, as well as telephone follow-ups and additional workshops. For patients outside the city, the initial program is completed on five full days.

Interest in such an integrative approach to stress-based health problems in relation to strict psychopharmacology is a growing movement that is fueled by both the financial crisis and advanced neuroscience that reveal why personalities type - a personality are More sensitive to stress, declares the psychiatrist Gabriela Cora, founder of the Executive Health Institute and Heritage, a program similar to Miami. "The current health care paradigm does not deal with real stress problems," she says. Anti-antically pills are only a temporary solution. "The root of the problem is usually a misalignment of personal and organizational life. That's what you stand at night. And that requires prioritization, organizational planning, repositioning all that people do in their lives. "

Another useful weapon: Look for new research to determine why these misalignments have put in place for so much intense anxiety.

Understand the new science of stress

You have probably heard along the way there is a good stress (the kind that motivates you) and a bad stress (the kind that paralyzes you). The trick is to know the difference. "The type of management tends to be very good with a productive stress to excel and reach," says Dr. Soliman, "but there is a point at which the stress submerges and becomes destructive." Dr. Soliman says that, being aware of how your brain treats fear, you may be able to handle the stress before it crosses this fine line and becomes a disease.

"We have to crop how we look at anxiety. It's not something to flee, but something that can be used as a productive energy," says Robert Rosen, PhD, author ofJust anxiety: the hidden driver of the success of the company. Rosen interviewed and consulted hundreds of better CEOs over the last 20 years. He cites an undisputed scientific truth: "Fear is the way the body is to prepare for action."

But why do some men consume this fear as fuel while others are simply consumed? New research offer indices. According to the latest brain slag, high-performance frameworks are at an increased risk of stress-induced health problems, especially when their status or control is threatened. Last year, the Cognition Researchers of the National Institute of Mental Health identified, for the first time, parts of the brain that are activated when a person moves or drops into the order of picolat.

In the study, 72 participants played an interactive computer game in which they participated in money and social status; While playing, their brains were monitored using functional MRI scanners. When a player did worse than a "lower" and risky loss status, the known brain circuit for treating intense emotional pain and frustration showed a high activity. "People who like to be in the high-level position have had the strongest activation, suggesting that it made them much more to lose," says Caroline Zink, Doctorate, a member of the research in NiMH. "This type of response in emotional pain circuits can mean a greater risk of stress in high performance."

The man confronts modern-ruin threats, the termination of jobs - with a response of fear that is more appropriate to live in the pleistocene era. In other words, when HR asks for an unforeseen appointment for tomorrow morning, your body reacts as if a big hungry animal sniffs around your cave gate.

For all these nebulae fears that wake you up in the middle of the night (neurologically, we have evolved to be sensitive to fear at night, because it is then that bad things happened to our ancestors), you can thank your tonsygdala. Steemming of the Greek word for almond, this pair of nuts shaped nuts lies on each side of your brain. The amygdala is a vault for your emotional memory and a central station to trigger physiological responses to fear (neuro docs called the Department of Internal Safety of the Brain). He has evolved to help animals survive in hostile environments, explains the neuroscientist of the University of New York Joseph Ledoux, PhD, a pioneer of the search for amygdala and the author ofThe emotional brain.

The amygdala reacts with the speed of a trigger thread to a perceived threat, whether it is a sudden bark of an angry dog ​​or your declaration Emaciated 401 (k) landing in your mailbox . This complex structure and neural connections in the center of the limbic brain command each part of your gray matter to deal with a crisis. One of these areas is the hypothalamus, which secretes hormones that activate the body's emergency response substance, which triggers the combat or theft reaction. This activates the nervous system: the blood rushes to the great muscles of the members to prepare for flight, dilating students and heart rate and breathing accelerate. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine flood the brain to compete your attention to the source of fear. "Things that make rats and people who are afraid are very different," said Ledoux, "but the way the brain deals with danger seems to be similar."

While the silver stress dissipates when the dog reaches the end of his chain, the fear of losing a business or safety of a job creates chronic concerns, triggering chemical changes in the brain and affecting the whole body: the heart , the immune system, the gastrointestinal tract and your sleep habits. Covers in stress hormones Adrenaline and cortisol can affect reasoning and cognition and paralyze the critical abilities of the mind. Short-term memory, creativity and planning functions evaporate the stressed human brain. With their answer for paramount fear on indefinitely, some men reach a fifth of Bourbon or sink in chronic anxiety or depression. About 50% of the mental problems are anxiety disorders and many of them are related to the system of fear of the brain, said Ledoux.

As Dr. Soliman says and tells the executive mental health program - understanding how this process works is the first defense against it. Nevertheless, as a man-oriented man, an even more important weapon includes this: admit that you are negatively affected by stress is not a failure. Do not ask for help either.

Continue the results. . . Do you always do

The pocket now familiar! We echo through the yard as a well-struck land tennis ball inside the line. This one is a winner, but all the shots of J.R.'s are not more numerous, he does not win every game, every set, every game. Tennis has become one of its many antidepressants. The hunger of victory is always there, of course, but he has a realistic assessment of defeat when it happens. Our stressed and depressed CEO has learned to regain its approach to life after six months of therapy in the Executive Mental Health Program. Its treatment began with a prescription for a literal antidepressant drug. It was a crucial first step. "It allowed me to clean my obsessive minds so that I can understand where I made bad judgments," he says

Dr Kohani also prescribed nutritional supplements and DHEA, a precursor of male hormonal testosterone because it found that J.R. suffered low level of testosterone. (How did the man knew this is a problem, unless he finally calls on a doctor of aid?) And he credits a daily meditation with the help of becoming more conscious of himself and His relationship with his wife and children.

J.R. also reassessed his career motivation and regularly leave the office early evening. Tennis, meditation and family time are all new additions to its schedule. And guess what? He is always successful. However, he is no longer a candidate to take a tragic detour through a wildlife reserve on his way to work. "Do not let your self-esteem to be completely attached to your work," JR "advise if I learned something about this experience is that I'm not perfect and someone else does not is not. I'm not trying to control the world anymore. "

To discover more incredible secrets about the life of your best life, Click here Register for our free daily newsletter !