Health practitioners offer panel on today's life issues

Are you concerned about your child's emotional well-being? Are you worried about the stability of your marriage and escalating arguments, or financial hardships you are uncertain how to solve? Are any of those or other issues such as the stress of holidays causing you to have panic attacks?

If your answer is yes to any of those questions, members of the island's Professional Consultation Group will be on hand to help on Tuesday, December 2 at a free panel discussion in the library's Lower Gallery from 7 to 8 p.m. The talk, with a question and answer period, is entitled "Dealing With Holiday Stress During Difficult Times," but will cover a variety of topics. It will feature nurse practitioner Anne Kronenberg, who will discuss panic attacks and other forms of anxiety; Dr. Robert Weaver, who will talk about what adolescents face today; Richard Ross, a licensed marriage and family therapist who will discuss tools to manage personal relationships and Christine Smith, a licensed independent clinical social worker, who will focus on "Priceless Gifts."

Weaver's subject is geared to children aged 11 to 18. While he said children and adolescents everywhere are struggling with matters relating to peers, drugs, technology and societal and family issues, the youth on Nantucket may feel those pressures and confusions more acutely because they have limited resources for assistance and outlets to ease the stress.

He explained that when stress causes parents to feel they have lost control over their lives, they may want to exert more control over their children, who at the same time are desiring more control over their lives. The combination can easily lead to conflict.

"External stresses are often played out in the family," said Weaver, who will present strategies and the importance of understanding as ways to minimize increasing family conflict at a time of rising economic difficulties, a situation that results in extraordinary stress children do not comprehend.

He plans to talk about the following topics: effective ways for parents to talk with their children; putting coping methods in place before conflict and crisis occur; helping to implement appropriate choices for youth; supporting a partner or managing without one when dealing with children's issues; taking advantage of existing resources; and seeking counseling.

"Any challenge is an opportunity, too," said Weaver. "It is a time when we all have to readjust and it's going to be tough on kids. Kids aren't used to this."

Ross specializes in couples' therapy, and said one of the top five issues couples face is money.

"With the economy as it is, it's going to be worse. I will focus on that and how it drives couples apart and they can blame each other," he said. "It's different stressors for different people, but money comes in that top five."

Ross will offer ideas on relieving relationship stresses that may include counseling, but may also be eased through improved communication, meditating, taking walks and other emotional vents that do not cost a penny.

"You've got to keep the connections under all conditions. When people are under stress they want to find exits," he said, explaining that couples should avoid talking when one or both are in bad moods, instead seeking to deal with troubling matters when they are in "the kindling" rather than the "roaring flame" stage.

His four indicators of a relationship heading for problems are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling.

"I tell couples to watch for these four negative factors and try to give them some antidotes to counteract them," said Ross.

Kronenberg will speak on how unproductive worry can spiral into panic attacks and sometimes cause people to become afraid of leaving the house because they fear an attack might trigger in public. Often, panic attacks are associated with heart attacks because some people sweat or have chest pains when the panic sets in. She will talk about ways to subdue the excessive feeling of fright through certain types of deep breathing, as well as outline what a panic attack is, how they are caused and other types of anxiety such as compulsive/obsessive behavior and general anxiety many live with because they believe everyone else must experience it, too.

"Everybody gets apprehensive [if they lose their job] and anybody in that situation would become somewhat anxious, but there are ways to cope," said Kronenberg. I