Slow Down You Move Too Fast By R. Murali Krishna, M.D. R. Murali Krishna, MD, DLFAPA, noted and well respected Oklahoma City psychiatrist, has recently published his first book, VIBRANT: To Heal and Be Whole - From India to Oklahoma City which he coauthored with Kelly Dyer Fry, president of news at OPUBCO. For more information visit http://www.drkrishna.com.

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Slow Down
By R. Murali Krishna, M.D.
You Move Too Fast
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There is more to life than increasing its speed.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Away from work, you’re always on the run,
delivering children to appointments, doing grocery
shopping, taking care of household chores.
>> At work, deadlines are crashing down upon you.
>> The phone won’t stop ringing, and each call
brings still more things to be done. You are
overloaded and overwhelmed.
>> In response, you race through meals and rush to
appointments.
“ ”
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When forced to wait in lines of traffic on the highway or in
lines of people at a store or the bank, you are inpatient to
the point of anger.
>> You feel that no matter how fast you go, it’s not fast enough.
>> If this describes your life, you may have what medical researchers
are beginning to refer to as “time urgency.”
>> Time urgency, along with hostility, is typically a component of the
hard-driving type A personality.
>> You don’t have to be type A, though, to have time urgency.
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So how can you know if you’ve got it? Take a deep breath
and ask yourself these questions:
If you answered yes to any of these, you may have time
urgency. It’s not a healthy condition to have.
>> Do you dislike waiting or feel impatient with the rate at which many things
take place?
>> Do you have a deep-seated need to be on time, or conversely, are you always
late?
>> Do you find it difficult to linger at the table after eating?
>> Do you regularly do more than one thing at a time?
>> Do you suffer from “racing mind” and experience disturbances in your sleep?
>> Do you feel a chronic sense of time pressure?
>> Have you lost interest in activities away from your job?
>> Do you measure yourself by quantitative accomplishments?
>> Do you have difficulty accumulating pleasant memories?

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A study conducted at the University of California at San
Francisco Mount Zion Medical Center looked at 32 patients
with heart disease.
>> Thirteen of those patients also exhibited symptoms and signs of
time urgency and hostility, and often experienced episodes of
decreased supply of blood to the heart muscle.
>> These episodes are often a precursor to a heart attack.
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Beyond heart problems, the stress felt by people with time urgency
can also cause muscle pains, headaches, high blood pressure, irritable
bowels, insomnia, phobias, depression and anxiety. Your immune
system may be weakened as well.
In the Mount Zion study noted above, 10 of 13 patients with time urgency
and hostility received counseling for 14 months. They were encouraged to
change elements of their belief systems, and they did exercises intended to
modify their sense of time urgency. After counseling, the intensity of time
urgency of the 10 counseled patients dropped 53 percent, and the frequency
of episodes of decreased blood supply to the heart declined from 6.6 to 3.1
every 24 hours. The frequency of such episodes in the three uncounseled
patients did not change.
What can you do about it?

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The finding that counseling can help people with time
urgency is consistent with other findings on the value of
stress management in combating illness.
For instance, a study at the University of California at Los Angeles looked at
people recovering from melanoma surgery. Those provided education on
stress management and coping skills plus an hour and a half of counseling
each week for six weeks had almost half the rate of cancer recurrence and a
third fewer deaths than other melanoma patients in the next five-year
period that followed. Research conducted at the University of Massachusetts
Medical Center on a group of patients with psoriasis found that the skin of
patients who received relaxation training along with standard phototherapy
cleared more quickly that did the skin of patients receiving only the standard
treatment.

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This is not to suggest that if you have time urgency, you
need counseling. What should you do, then?
>> Be objective about your life
Time urgency causes us to lose objectivity about our lives. Moms and dads
who are running themselves ragged taking children to soccer games, piano
lessons and gymnastics practice can easily lose sight of their values. Stop and
determine why you are doing what you are doing and what steps you need
to take to reach your goals.
>> Take responsibility for your choices
God has given every human being ever born the same 24 hours each day.
What you do with yours is your choice. Every second of the day you make
choices about what to do a how to your spend time. Own the decisions you
have made.

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>> Set priorities
Drop the idea that everything must get done. Choose a small number of
things to do, from accomplishing specific on-the-job tasks to more
broadscale goals such as nurturing relationships with your spouse and
children. Having set those priorities, act decisively in pursuing them.
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>> Seek oneness
Most of us have experienced a magical moment
in which everything seemed perfect. You may
have had that moment while praying to your
creator, or when filling your lungs with fresh air
while looking at rolling hills carpeted in a forest of
green pine. You may have felt it while holding a
sleeping newborn, or when you yourself were
held in a warm embrace by someone who loves
you. You may have felt it when listening to music,
creating a work of art, laboring on a project your
truly believe in or finishing your morning run.
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>> These are moments of oneness with creation, times when every cell in
your body resonates with a sense of rightness, when every fiber of your
being says life is good. These moments restore us spiritually and recharge us
emotionally. They also do wonders for us physically, reinvigorating and
replenishing our immune system and making us feel more vital and alive.
“From such moments, we leave with our spirits refreshed, and ... move back
into the traffic of our daily rounds with the peace of the Eternal in our step,”
said theologian Howard Thurman.
>> In this century, we’ve seen our life spans almost double, from an average
life expectancy of 49 years for someone born in 1900 to about 80 years for
someone born this year. But with twice as much life to live, we’re living it a
pace considerably greater than twice as fast.
Those who came before us had an ability to savor life. For the sake of our
health, we need to learn to do the same.

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Dr. Krishna is president and chief operating officer of INTEGRIS
Mental Health, that provides adult and child/adolescent mental
health services in inpatient, residential, outpatient & clinical
settings; an employee assistance program; and crisis intervention
services.
He is also co-founder and president of the
James L. Hall, Jr. Center for Mind, Body and
Spirit, an educational organization devoted
to improving health through raising
awareness of the healing power of the
connection between mind, body, and spirit.

13. Author of VIBRANT: To Heal and Be Whole - From India to
Oklahoma City, Dr. Krishna reveals the secrets to living a
vibrant life while overcoming:
• Anxiety
• Trauma
• Sleep dysfunction
• Stress
• Obesity
• Emotional dysfunction
• Depression
• Addiction
• Substance abuse
• Loss
• Anger
• Unresolved issues
• Relationship stress
• Mental illness
• Alcoholism
www.drkrishna.com

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R. Murali Krishna, MD, DLFAPA
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Univ. of OK Health Sciences Center
Co-Founder & President, James L. Hall, Jr Center for Mind, Body and Spirit
President, Oklahoma State Board of Health
Founding President, Health Alliance for the Uninsured
President & COO, INTEGRIS Mental Health

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