Resource Articles

Building Resilience: Turning Challenges Into Success Attitude Our attitude drives our behavior. This is the foundation for resilience; the way we view the world. Six ways to build a resilient attitude include:

All of us at some point or another have put off a task we needed to complete. Those tasks can range from doing the laundry or cleaning the bathroom to revising a grant application or finishing a manuscript. A little procrastination is to be expected, however, recurrent or chronic procrastination can have significant effects on work and relationships.

Most of us have times when we feel frustrated, irritable, or grouchy. People tend to prefer these terms to describe how they are feeling rather than acknowledging the actual feeling – anger. People can be so afraid of the word that they deny, avoid, and minimize their actual experiences. All this does is postpone and intensify the eventual expression of this feared feeling.

According to National Eating Disorders Association, as many as 10 million females and 1 million males in the United States suffer from anorexia or bulimia, and millions more struggle with binge eating disorder.

E-mail is a convenient form of communication, but it has its limitations and associated problems.  For example, it can be stressful to receive an e-mail from someone that has a “tone” that feels harsh or attacking.  The sender may not have intended to convey his or her message in that way, but the receiver may misinterpret or puzzle over the actual intent of the message. Here are 12 easy to follow tips for sending professional e-mails and reducing the potential for miscommunication:

​Work/Life Connections-EAP coordinates Crisis Intervention Services and Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) Services for the VUMC community. Definition: A Critical Incident is "any event which has the potential to produce unusual or distressing emotional symptoms such as an accident, injury, death, disaster, threat or act of violence, or other traumatic event at the workplace."

If your spouse or significant other displays a combination of these behaviors, he/she may be a potential batterer:

Decide to save some money and resources.

Few stressors in life are more distressing than having creditors calling and then feeling out of control because your spending has exceeded your income. It is overwhelming! Trouble with debt cuts across all social strata from doctors, professors, lawyers to clerks and food service employees. Those who make over $100,000 annually and those who live below the poverty level may owe beyond their ability to pay their bills. Debt is debt.

Stress is inevitable. Whether it's triggered by an attacking lion in a pre-historic jungle or by the sales quotas of the "corporate jungle" of today, it is a fact of life. Today's stress may even be more intense and unrelenting than that felt by our ancestors.