Wellness is all about frogs, canaries and dominos.  

The Pennsylvania coalminers, to detect poisonous gasses, used canaries.  When the canary stopped singing (it was having trouble breathing), it was time for the men and canaries to leave. 

Why weren't the men able to detect the poisonous gasses themselves?  Because it came on too subtlety, and after all, the men were busy.

Now frogs have the reputation,  that if you put one in cool water and heat the water up REALLY slow that he will just sit there until he is boiled to death, much like the coal miners without the canary.

We all have frogs in our life.  A frog would be something we started doing that seemed ok at the time, but if left unchecked could destroy other parts of our life and we would be very unaware of it.   Wellness is all about the balanced life.

So since we have frogs -- we need canaries.

Example:  Fiona would cheer herself by going shopping.  Previously she was always able to pay off the credit card purchases every month, but lately she could only make the minimums.  She will now have even less money because of the interest that happens when you don't pay it off each month. If she misses a payment the credit card company could increase the interest. She may even take out another credit card to make the minimum on the other credit card.   From here the dominion effect takes over and can make the entire situation overwhelming.  To make matters worse, Fiona is still running up her credit card to cheer herself up over not being able to pay her bills.

Dominos were little blocks of wood that you could set up and watch one knock down the other.  The world record involved 4,002,146 in 2005 http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/long134.html

 We need to identify our frogs and position our canaries to avoid the domino effect.      

Friends and spouses are good canaries.  They can point out what you don't see because they care about you and don't want to see your life get trashed.  What if you ignore their input?  Maybe they stopped talking about it because you get upset.  Maybe they think it's none of their business.  Maybe they have the same frog.

Don't give up:

find out the status of your frogs 

then find higher-powered canaries