Anxiety and Me

There is a feeling out there that can really change the way we think. Sometimes it’s really good to be stressed out over certain things. If you have four papers due the next day you need that sense of urgency to get it done. When this stress becomes a constant, it is called anxiety. You can be anxious over the simple things like school, friends, family, and just stressful times. Anxiety isn’t all bad though because it can save you from bad situations.

When it’s Good it Helps



Figure 1

Anxiety in small amounts can really help you when things could be bad. Right before a test, anxiety helps you focus on your notes and helps you zone out distractions. On the football field, it can help you find the tacklers and avoid them with hyperfocus (Figure 1). It also alerts you when things just seem a bit weird. Anxiety was meant to be a good thing for us to utilize to protect ourselves. Our bodies have natural triggers and filters to protect us from too much of it. These natural reactions that give us anxiety happen more often than you think. It can happen when you see big bugs, walk by yourself, or even right before you read a book. Anxiety helps in a lot of everyday activities, we just don’t feel anxious because of the natural walls. A little bit of anxiety helps us get through our challenges throughout a long day.

Too Much Can Hurt

Figure 2

Anxiety has its natural borders that we talked about already. These borders can be broken by a terrible thing called disorders. These disorders come in a huge variety and effect you in a billion different ways. These disorders have huge effects on not just your mind but sometimes your body too. When the body does to much of anything it tends to be bad. This is an extreme case, when anxiety is overflowing it can be really bad for you. It can cloud the way you think about basic stuff. Instead of laser sharp focus your thoughts are all over the place. The person in the picture has tons of thoughts and he can’t seem to focus (Figure 2). I know of a disorder called a phobia that means you’re really afraid of one thing. Arachnophobia would be the fear of spiders and Claustrophobia would be the fear of tight spaces. These are examples of your body having anxiety over something that you should be worried of but just too worried. Some other disorders involve social anxiety. This disorder is very special, it makes you think a lot about people around you. The people in your head can be all good or all bad depending on your mood, this can lead to some problems when you’re making new friends and going out for jobs. Anxiety can really hurt people and is a very under talked about topic amongst our kids.

Try to Help!

Some kids have enormous troubles trying to get around their own anxieties. Whether they have a disorder or not, we should really try to help out people who are having a lot of stress. Anxiety isn’t something you can just ignore. It gets really deep under you skin, and can come out with a lot of problems. Friends, family, and just talking about it can help you get over a lot of the struggles that come with anxiety (Figure 3). If you have a disorder, you can go to your doctor and he will help you get past your problems. Anxiety isn’t meant to be a bad thing and you can easily overcome anything it throws at you!

Figure 3

CalmClinic. (n.d.). The Origination of Anxiety. Retrieved from http://www.calmclinic.co m/anxiety/is-it-all-in-your-head

University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry. (n.d.). Anxiety. Retrieved from http://www.psych.med.umich.edu/mental_health/anxiety.asp

NATO Geography

There are a lot of countries out there in our world. Believe it or not, there are actually 194(1)! NATO. This group helps keeps people safe in North America, Europe, the Middle East and even some parts of Africa! Our world really is big and full of a lot of people( Figure 1). Sometimes these people have the same ideas and want to keep each other safe, so they join groups to do so. One of these groups is the North Atlantic Trade Alliance, but most people call them NATO. NATO has 28 of the 194 countries part of it, and today you're going to learn which of those countries they are!

Figure 1 Our Big World

The Original Countries

When your grandparents were little, this organization was made 70 years ago! There were 12 countries that wanted to keep themselves safe from these mean people called the Soviet Union, so they made NATO to do so. These 12 were important countries in Europe and North America, and would eventually add even more countries to their organization. These first twelve were the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Canada(2). Together, these countries would help protect each other from the Soviet Union, and try to keep each other from going to war.

Newer Countries

 

Figure 2 This is what Europe looks like

So over time people in Europe liked the idea of NATO, and wanted to join it so they could keep their friends safe too. Through these past 70 years, 16 countries have joined the organization. These countries are all over Europe, and some were even brand new countries that became free after the Soviet Union broke apart. The first two that joined were Greece and Turkey. Turkey isn't the kind you eat for Thanksgiving though, it's the funny looking country sticking out to the right of Greece. The last 14 then were Germany, Spain, Poland, Hungary, the Czech (pronounced check) Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Croatia(2). That's a lot of names, and can get pretty confusing, so you can see where all of them are on the map to the right(Figure 2)!

People Who Want to Join

Some people out there really want to join NATO so they can be safe from mean people around the world like ISIS and pirates. Some of these countries are Cyprus, Georgia, and Macedonia. Right now though, NATO isn't letting them join though. Why is that? Well NATO has certain rules a country has to follow so that they can join. These rules are in what's called a MAP, or a Membership  Action Plan. Pretty much, a country has to be nice to everyone else, especially the ones in NATO right now, they have to be able to make the group money, they have to give an army to NATO if needed, and they in general have to be able to help them in the long run(3). For most of these countries, they have problems with who they're friends and not friends with. Cyprus and Turkey don't like each other, and neither do Greece and Macedonia. Georgia probably would be in NATO, but Russia doesn't like them, and the group doesn't want to fight Russia.

NATO Today

NATO today is helping to keep us safe from mean people all over the world. When people in the Ukraine were being attacked last year, they stepped in to protect them and are still there today. They fought in the Middle East in Afghanistan against terrorists who attacked the United States. In Africa they're getting rid of pirates out there who steal stuff from nice people. Overall, NATO just wants to keep us safe and keep our world secure for a long time.

 References

Children's Map of Europe [Photograph] (n.d.) Retrieved  from http://sisap.newenglandwm.com/docs/simple-map-of-europe-for-kids

Deluxe Earth With Edited Clouds [Photograph] (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.shadedrelief.com/natural3/pages/textures.html

(2)NATO. (n.d.).A short history of NATO. Retrieved from NATO’s website: http://www.nato.int/history/nato-history.html

(3)Tomiuc, Eugen. (2002, March 7). NATO: What does it take to join? Retrieved from http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1099020.html

(1)World Atlas. (2015, August 13). How many countries are in the world? Retrieved from http://www.worldatlas.com/nations.htm