Psychology Articles

Millions of women in their 30s, 40s, and beyond are raptly following the romantic escapades of 18-year-old Bella in the teenage romance series known as Twilight. What, we may wonder, is the emotional yearning that drives them?

Feminists loathe the fact that Freud described many of his female patients as suffering from hysteria. Though I consider myself a feminist, I’ll take the risk of saying I think hysteria aptly explains grown-up women’s frenzy over Twilight. Recently I’ve been asked if the Twilight phenomenon bears any relation to The Cinderella Complex. In that book, published in the eighties, I documented women’s psychological fear of independence-their deep-seated wish to be saved. Feminists at the time took issue with my theory, and yet here we are, a quarter of a century later, with something akin to mass hysteria reflecting women’s fear that without the love of a powerful man their lives will be meaningless. Considering the enormous gains women have made, both professionally and financially, how could romantic illusion continue to be so powerful?

As a psychoanalyst I’ve begun thinking clinically about Twilight Twitter. One aspect of women’s identification with young Bella, I believe, is her self-abnegation. No sooner does Edward show an interest in Bella than she shrinks back. “I couldn’t imagine anything about me that could be in any way interesting,” she says.

“I know exactly how she feels,” accomplished women tell me. And yet Bella’s is the plaint of a girl with few interests and curiosities about life, much less herself. In spite of herself, she gets the boy (or, in this case, the vampire). Women find doubting Bella’s romantic success reassuring. Also, oddly, they’re compelled by the idea of her ungratified sexuality. (I can imagine Freud in his grave stroking his beard and saying, “I told you so”. Repressed sexuality, to his way of thinking, lay at the root of women’s hysteria.)

A core issue for hysterics, as psychoanalysts understand the phenomenon today, is the damaging experience of never having been taken seriously. It causes such individuals to be without an anchor, feeling “virtually weightless and floating, attracted here, repelled there, captivated first by this and then by that,” as the noted psychoanalyst, David Shapiro, wrote. Little seems rooted in deep interest or purpose. The resulting sense of insubstantiality can leave those suffering from hysteria vulnerable to the influence of others. Shapiro described it, way back in the 60s, as a “Prince-Charming-will-come-and-everything-will be- all-right view of life.”

Anyone who doubts that many women still think this way this has only to check out the OMG sensibility flooding blogs and chat rooms. OMG, Edward is too beautiful, too fabulously strong, even “gentlemanly”. Bella is so lucky to have snared him; now, Cinderella-like, the poor girl can look forward to a lifetime of happiness. Never mind the danger implicit in dashing Edward’s creepily long eye teeth, he is the prince.

When working in therapy with women who are preoccupied by adolescent dreams of romance, my hope is to spark in them a curiosity about themselves-to get them to begin wondering if there mightn’t be some powerful thoughts and feelings of their own lying beneath the surface brush fires that distract them. Eventually, if things go well, they come to experience themselves as substantial, interesting, and beautiful, and are no longer inclined to gravitate toward media images of male power.

If there’s a main reason for women’s preoccupation with Twilight’s young Bella, I believe it’s this: society still doesn’t take women seriously. As a result, many women don’t take themselves seriously.

The cultural conditioning of girls persists. Think of the madness surrounding “princess parties” if you want evidence that romantic notions continue to be foist on them. It’s Barbie reincarnate, only the princess is if anything more ephemeral, weightless, even less aware of her own substance.

In the seventies we worried about Barbie’s influence on our daughters and tried to diminish her power over them. Today’s mothers actually love the princess. They spend millions so their daughters can flit about in miniature gowns and tiaras looking and acting like one.

My concern is that as long as society keeps insisting on a de-fanged image of femininity, girls will continue finding it hard to connect to their own core and will grow up enthralled by “harmless” stories of romantic obsession.

In placing so much attention on romance, women only feed the fantasy that they need some idealized Other to make the world go ’round. In the end, they are left yearning, the glass slipper of adult love having utterly eluded them.

NY psychotherapist Colette Dowling, LCSW, has a private practice in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York Ciety. She can be reached at 718-594-0201, or at dowlingcolette@earthlink.net.

For more articles on women’s mental health visit Colette’s website: http://womens-wellbeing-and-mental-health.com/new-york-psychotherapist.html.

In a perfect world, school curriculum would include interesting, relevant and useful lessons that would inspire students to learn, develop and seek more education.

But, alas, we live on Earth where perfect exists only in our imagination. As anyone who has ever been to school knows, a lot of what’s taught there is boring, irrelevant and useless.

The result? Kids hate school. They hate it so much they quit. In the United States, 7,000 kids drop out of school each day. That’s one every nine seconds. One out of four American high school freshmen won’t graduate with his or her class. When you consider their frustration with our flawed educational system, it’s understandable.

Understandable but still regrettable. Because as twisted and irrational as school can be, it’s still good. It’s still important. It’s still valuable. Getting a diploma and getting a degree will always be better than not getting it.

The reason, although easy to understand, is just not communicated to kids as much as it should be – that battling their way through our imperfect schools inadvertently prepares them to battle their way around our imperfect planet.

Obviously, schools won’t promote this. “As bad as we may be, stick it out because we’re preparing you for reality.” Yet it’s true. Education, sometimes in spite of itself, works. For example, it reinforces Darwin’s major point: Adapt or die! Our less than ideal schools unintentionally teach students how to adapt in four ways:

1. Successful students learn how to adapt to different teachers with different styles, different rules and different expectations. Over the course of their school-age years, kids will be exposed to great, good, fair and poor teachers. Learning to cope with the weak ones may, ultimately, teach them more than what they learn from the strong ones. It’s the Knight effect. Legendary (and controversial) basketball coach Bobby Knight was so difficult to play for that, after dealing with him, his players could work with anyone.

2. Smart students adapt to their classmates. In our public schools, kids are randomly thrown together into incredibly diverse clusters. I’m always amazed at how well my socially successful students adjust to the idiosyncratic propensities of their peers. Again, perfect classmates are nice, but learning how to deal with the exasperating ones may spur more growth.

3. Strong all-around students – and, right or wrong, kids can’t get into college without being sound in all subjects – must adapt to their different courses’ requirements. Some kids are math/science kids. Others are English/social science kids. But the best students are industrious, and that enables them to adapt and make the grade in any class, from art to P.E.

4. Tough students gut it out and adapt to the lousy physical conditions in which they’re supposed to learn. They have to endure uncomfortable chairs in crowded, too hot or too cold classrooms. Too often, their bathrooms are disgusting and their campuses are ugly. The working conditions at most fast food restaurants are better than the learning conditions at most public schools.

Think of the thirteen years of California public education as boot camp for life, because that’s pretty much what it has become. (This is called seeing the glass as half full).

Abstract:

What does your patient (client) expect from you? Their life is in turmoil, problems ascend from the sky and land squarely at their feet and they need answers. The danger here for therapists is to become everything for that person, father figure, sexual object, confessor, adviser and most of all the only person who has ever really listened to them and understood! In this paper we will explore the dangers to both therapists and to clients when both parties start to see the therapist as a God – the know all – see all – understand all, a being who will magically whisk away all those terrible feelings and leave a well-adjusted happy person behind.

Introduction:

From the time therapists began in the early 19th century patients have idolised their doctors as someone special amongst all the people they know, whether that be male or female it does not matter but the relationship structure of the powerless under the spell of the powerful. Freud and others recognised that patients often transfer their needy emotions to the therapist (counsellor) in the form of a love object. Most after some period of therapy actually find their feelings for the therapist actually diminish to one of respect or care but not as intensive as the early sessions. This bell-shaped graph of emotion shows the early mistrust to dependency to eventual co-dependence and finally disengagement from the carer to an independent self supportive state of mind. Of course these same therapists realised that dependency works the other way in counter-transference where the therapist becomes dependent on the patient (client) and finds disengagement fearful and experienced as a loss.

In order for therapists to deal with the problem elaborate rules were devised over the years by societies and expressed as boundaries of behaviour (ethics). In these rules the therapist should be aware of transference in both directions and deal with the situation by gentle rejection and assurance to the client that these feelings are normal and will pass. However for many therapists and clients these intense emotional feelings do not always go away and ethical lines become crossed by the therapist who allows their need for worship and to be treated in a God like manner to blur their judgement for the patient’s well-being and on-going treatment.

God Like Worship

What entices the therapist to slip so easily into the God complex? One definition is that the therapist themselves have a needy personality from childhood. Where maybe from a large family of siblings where parents have to share out the love available – where competing for attention often results in frustration and feelings of being alone even in a house surrounded by others. As adults they often search for people who are giving in nature to satisfy their need for attention that was sadly lacking in childhood. So when confronted with an attentive client the therapist can find themselves feeding off their loving worship, enjoying the attention, the worshipfulness of the client that allows the therapist to feel powerful, loved and above all needed.

A second area is that of the therapists self -esteem. The therapist may have feelings that they are not fulfilling there own professional standards, that they are failing their clients through lack of knowledge, professionalism and so constantly look for clients to assure them through their God-like worship that they are doing a good job, that they are succeeding in helping them feel better. The therapist is constantly asking the client questions such as, “are you feeling better?”, “have things improved?”, and “are these sessions helping you?” All are genuine questions for any therapist to ask from time to time to check or measure progress but when asked to often can indicate that the therapist is looking for approval or commendation for the work so far. In other words they want to hear they are doing a good job for the client. Here the therapists self-esteem can be boosted and help them to continue to treat clients with a new-found confidence. However this confidence is only temporary as the self-doubts creep back in over time and further reassurance is needed from the client to boost the ego once more to its God-like heights. When one particular client is constantly praising the therapist then in turn the therapist creates a need for that client that makes it imperative they continue in treatment. To achieve this the therapist is constantly searching for new reasons to continue the sessions not for the sake of the client but in fact for their own needs.

A third area is professional snobbery, here the therapist has a reputation to keep, a need for recognition both by the client as an expert but also the adoring public for their outstanding work or achievements. Here the therapist becomes the centre of the counselling process in which they are magnanimous in their Godly status amongst fellow colleagues and the public arena. This dangerous self-importance can lead to recklessness on behalf of patients who believe this person to be that all-knowing God who will answer their need to be treated by the best – the one with the outstanding reputation amongst his peers – that therapist who is hard to see (get an appointment with) as they are so busy and in demand. Of course this same therapist has the largest fees to pay and so the client perceives they are getting the best as they are paying the most.

The Crisis Trap

Every therapist is aware of the trap of transference and counter-transference and despite this knowledge can find themselves sucked into an unhealthy situation even without realising what is happening until a crisis emerges where the patient and therapist meet at the junction of an emotional precipice where decisions have to be considered about the continuance of therapy itself and the disengagement from those emotions that have crept up so silently. Once in this situation the therapist has the difficult task of repairing the relationship either by toning down their own responses to the client or recommending the client see a new therapist. However for the therapist who is addicted to the attention of the client this is a hard decision – to send away the very person who is giving them the need they have become drawn too. For some therapists there are other concerns such as being found out, a professional complaint, an incidental family interference or crisis of confidence about their own skills in counselling. This can lead to a fear response effecting other client’s sessions and outcomes. A therapist in emotional crisis cannot be effective in helping clients when they are more concerned with their own welfare than that of the patient.

Outcomes

Is it so surprising that as therapists we are any less than anyone else in need of love, attention, to have needs met, to feel wanted and appreciated by others. So it is not surprising that given the opportunity to feel worshiped in a God like manner that so many therapists fall from grace and into the trap of hero-worship by the very clients whom they should be looking after for their emotional needs and helping them to grow so as to deal with their own (the clients) real life problems and to move forward being able to cope with life.

There is no easy solution to this phenomenon of transference and to offer a simple guide to avoiding the situation would be futile as every situation brings differing dynamics that each therapist has to confront and deal with as professionally as possible. However it would be unfair not to point out some obvious rules of thumb for therapists who succumb to God Worship, at least to think about.

First once you realise as a therapist that boundaries have been crossed a general discussion with a peer professional may help to reassert their personal perspective about themselves and the client involved. Secondly the therapist should consider breaking with the client and so end the unhealthy situation by recommending another therapist (usually of the same sex as the client). Third if the transference is one-way (from the client only) then to explain to the client the reasons for their feelings towards the therapist and how in counselling a inverted bell like pattern of emotions can be seen as a healthy progression through stages of the sessions towards a healing process in the end. That mutual respect is a far healthy outcome than God-like worship that in fact may colour the outcome of the treatment. To take the I’m OK – Your OK position in that both parties to the transference have needs to be met and acknowledge those needs but within the boundaries of good ethical practice. Fourth is to realise that to be appreciated by the client for doing your job is a worthwhile reward but that there are limits to that praise that have to be tinged with realism about the therapist’s role in counselling as a guide and not a God-head for the client to worship at.

Conclusion:

I started out in this paper warning therapists about the trap of transference and how it can become addictive to have clients worship you and hold you in unnatural high esteem. That it is natural for all humans and not just therapists to seek love have needs met and feel wanted. However therapists are unique to our society in that they must be trusted to keep boundaries and professional standards when offering treatment to vulnerable clients who often desperately need to have answers to their problematic lives with an atmosphere of trust, respect and humanitarianism Magic may be expected from the client but realism and genuine support and understanding is the real magic offered by therapy to the client.

END…

Dr. Stephen Myler is from Leicester in England, an industrial town in the Midlands of the United Kingdom. He holds a B.Sc (Honours) in Psychology from the UK’s Open University the largest in the UK; he also has an M.Sc and Ph.D in Psychology from Knightsbridge University in Denmark. In addition to this Stephen holds many diplomas and awards in a variety of academic areas including journalism, finance, teaching and advanced therapy for mental health. Stephen has as a Professor of Psychology many years teaching experience in colleges and universities in England and China to post 16 young adults, instructing in psychology, sociology, English, marketing and business. He has been fortunate to travel extensively from Australia to Africa to the United Sates, South America, Borneo, most of Europe and Russia. Stephen’s favourite hobby is the study of primates and likes to play badminton. He believes that students who enjoy classes with humour and enthusiasm from the teacher always come back eager to learn more.

Confused, anxious, mixed, and obsessed are often expressions of those who feel that they need sex as often as possible. Sexual addiction is a disorder characterized by compulsive sexual thoughts and acts. Like all addictions, its negative impact on the addict and on family members increases as the disorder progresses. Over time, the addict usually has to intensify the addictive behavior to achieve the same results.

For some sex addicts, their behavior remains in the realm of compulsive masturbation or the extensive use of pornography or phone or computer sex services. However, addiction can involve illegal activities such as exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, child molestation or rape. It is less often than likely that the disorder progresses beyond legal activities, but when coupled with other issues, an addict can go beyond the legal boundaries.

The DSM IV for Psychiatric Disorders, describes sex addiction as “distress about a pattern of repeated sexual relationships involving a succession of lovers who are experienced by the individual only as things to be used.” According to the manual, “compulsive searching for multiple partners, compulsive fixation on an unattainable partner, compulsive masturbation, compulsive love relationships and compulsive sexuality in a relationship” is a constant in the addict’s life.

The above description is the psychological description of a sex addict. How one becomes a sex addict isn’t so easy to understand. Usually, there is a void that needs to be filled. Loss of a parent, difficulties in socializing, wrong or little proper information regarding sex, or some other stress induced situation where sex creates an outlet to cope with the matter. And this is where the physiology of sex addiction plays a role.

The release felt from ejaculation produces endorphines and enkephlines, which are chemicals released that produce a relaxed and satisfied feeling. This “release” is similar to what an alcohol or drug addict feels. Their issues become numb and the feeling of “coping” with the problem is experienced. Herein lies the physiological result of the addiction. Even more, the physiological aspect reinforces the psychological issue to the point that it becomes a vicious cycle.

The problem, as with every addiction, is that the “coping” is merely a deferral of the problem. The underlying issue is never addressed. Until someone is willing to heal the underlying matters, the addiction will continue. Healing doesn’t happen overnight and requires intensive therapy treatment and insight by the addict. However, it isn’t impossible to control and create a healthy outlook that resolves pains of the past and present in order to create a future that promotes healthy sexual experiences and relationships.

Dr. Christy Wise is the CEO of San Diego Family Services and a licensed clinical psychologist. To find out more, please visit http://www.sdfamilyservices.com She is also a national speaker on relationship conflict resolution and sex therapy.

Follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/drchristywise

With every major invention, every technical ratcheting forward human history has been irrevocably altered. Some of the most pivotal alterations have been the result of the least dramatic and perhaps least glamorous discoveries, such as the toilet and interior plumbing. Massive changes followed the introduction of those little white bowls in the average home, most notably the decrease of acute epidemic disease and the increase in the human life-span, which, in turn has had a ripple effect on everything we think and undertake.

If we have 80 years to live instead of 40, well, then we have more time to get educated, we can wait to be married, we can pursue more than one career. Perhaps the most notable effect of our recent longevity has been the illusion that somehow life can (even should) go on indefinitely if we can only get a hold of that slippery little gene or remember to take that new antioxidant.

This dynamic – technology permuting culture – is pervasive throughout our collective experience. As our technology has changed, our lifestyles have changed. And as our lifestyles have changed our expectations, our strategies for living and our psychologies have changed. War has been no exception to the rule. The way we wage it and the battles we choose to fight have been similarly transformed. However, this time not only has the nature of war changed, but our very battlefields have been moved and we barely noticed.

New Terms of Engagement: Media-Driven Battle Grounds

For thousands of years, when one group wanted to conquer another (for whatever reason – land, power, revenge or pride) the protocol was for one group to ride, walk or run over to the desired territory and storm the castle or plunder a village. Whatever the strategies, whether the generals chose to fight with one standing army confronting another standing army or it was a surprise attack in the middle of the night, guerilla-style, it always resulted in hand-to-hand combat of some kind.

Even the Roman armies with their chariots, horses and war dogs (e.g., mastiffs) eventually met their enemies face to face. Killing was personal. Even if it didn’t start out that way, a soldier sooner or later had to use a spear, a knife, a fist or a club. The implement of death had to be wielded by hand and in almost all cases the person wielding it had to confront the grisly death of the other.

Then came gun powder and the laws of physics changed the rules of war. Now balls of lead could be hurled over or even through walls, traversing long distances to explode and expose the viscera of once impenetrable fortresses. War was still a bloody mess and a last resort for any society that valued its own, but it was now feasible to conduct one with substantially less personal involvement.

Not too long after that came the bomb. Not just the bomb, but all bombs that could be dropped from airplanes, fired from rocket launchers or detonated on delays. This once again changed war. Populations that had once been protected by flanks of soldiers who were prepared to give their lives to defend their women and children were now as vulnerable as our most primitive ancestors. We could be reached by air. There was nothing that could stop the invasion any longer.

Now, there is the danger of invasion by organism and bio-technology. We can’t see it, smell it, or fight it. But there it is, knocking on our collective unconscious, silently altering the psychological and eventually the genetic make-up of our entire culture.

The War of Words and Ideas

Which brings us to the state of war in which we currently find ourselves: the war of information in which the primary weapon used is viral fear. There are other weapons used in the information war that are no less serious, of course, such as identity theft, cyber-viruses, misinformation, EM pulses etc… But the war the average civilian is engaged in is tragically one of which he is wholly unconscious.

The war is fought in our living rooms, our bedrooms, subliminally in our movie theatres, on our phones, in our cars, on highway billboards and in shopping malls. We are utterly surrounded.

By What are we Surrounded? What’s the Enemy?

First and foremost the enemy is our own sedation. We are unconscious, made so and kept so by endless entertainment, comfort and complacency. From its inception, televised entertainment, which is intricately enmeshed with corporate and product advertising, has taken many if not most families from having dinner together at the table to dinner in shifts on the couch. We don’t face one another for after-dinner conversation or sit down for a game of chess over which we can proclaim our own world-politic. Instead we go each of us to the privacy of our own rooms, to the cyber-reality of our own headsets, to the seclusion of our own i-pods. We connect less to one another and more to electronics, conducting our lives in varying degrees of dissociative trance. We see the world (to some degree) but we are not fully there.

This is a wholly non-partisan issue. Whether one is radically right, lopsidedly left or somewhere in between, real national security is at risk and our missions will never be realized if we do not become minimally aware. And where there are real threats, America has become a sitting duck.

Secondly we are surrounded by an innumerable quantity of messages both subtle and gross given to us by the media. “Media” as I am using it here includes everything that is transmitted via newsprint, air wave, film, radio wave and optic cable. All of it, without exception, is involved in promoting an agenda. Most often it is a corporate one, even if it is embedded or disguised. (Mind you, this is not any sort of blanket condemnation on self-promotion or vigorous sales efforts. It is a commentary on our state of thoughtful awareness, or lack thereof.) Whether it is corporate or not, whether it is intentional or not, it is almost invariably fear-based and promotes a pathology of inadequacy.

In this last season, how many advertisements did you see where happy families opened lavish and glamorous gifts, where meals were presented in soft candlelight as though Martha herself were in the kitchen? I couldn’t even begin to count the ones I’d seen, not to mention the ones I didn’t. If there were one single message coming through loud and clear it was that happy families are made happy by constant and creative consumption. The irony of the way these holidays are presented is that millions are left feeling lost and lonesome. And even those who have intact families and multitudes of friends with enough money to buy gifts the way they do on television, they never, ever reach the level of perfection they see in the media. Whether we have family or not, we can never measure up. Which is both the promised land for advertisers and the problem for us.

I would like to clarify something for those who think I have an issue with shopping besides personally not loving the process of walking from store to store, sifting through too much stuff and hauling bags for hours. Philosophically speaking there is absolutely nothing wrong with shopping. So long as we exist in a complex society, we will have producers, traders, and consumers. We will always have wants and needs. However, what I do worry about is how we are unconsciously using it as a way to fill in the empty spaces in our soul or because we have nothing else to do. When we give up thinking for shopping, we are in very real trouble as a culture. And as a country at war, it is an act of suicide. It is insane.

A while back my publisher said, “When I was growing up shopping used to have something to do with comparison, with finding the appropriate item at the right price. Now it’s an automatically assumed consumption.” What an extraordinary idea. Our shopping has gone from an activity that required some consideration and thought to an impulse run wild, a substitute for self-worth or a way to shut out the world and shut off our own thoughts.

If we have gone from a production economy to retail economy as many have claimed, then consumption is indeed a critical issue. How does the media perpetuate this purchasing frenzy? The media pushes fear and inculcates inadequacy in us because in order for the economy to grow we must always need more. We must crave more, not just want it. We must not only pursue happiness, we must be willing to buy it. And, naturally, we can never really buy it either. We can only lease it. The happiness lasts only as long as the fad. And then we must have the next thing and then the thing after that and the thing after that ad infinitum.

And the fear is everywhere. This last week had an amazing roster of shows on the History Channel to celebrate the holiday season with “Armageddon Week.” A sampling: Mega Disasters, Siberian Apocalypse, Global Warming, The Last Days on Earth, Nostradamus, Meteors, Asteroids, Tsunami, Comets, Antichrist, Aftershock. And what followed this week of doom? The History of Sex.

The media’s approach to the news is not much different. It is sensational, scandal driven, high-pitched and partisan. I grew up in a home where we watched the news every evening before dinner (at which point it was turned off) and I can’t ever remember seeing people on television yelling at one another in an interview or round table discussion. When Khrushchev slammed his shoe on the table and yelled at the U.N., it was shocking as it well should have been. Now, to get our attention everything has been kicked up a notch. And the danger is that while we’re running around afraid of catching a cold or not making the perfect Christmas dinner, we’re tuning out on the issues that will profoundly affect us all. Very little is presented in a rational way about what America is actually facing and what we might do about it, only what might one day happen.

What It Does and What We Can Do.

What does a brain do with all that?

I would imagine that it starts to grow scales. Whatever it ultimately will do, we can’t tell yet, but what we do know of this endless assault of disjointed, anxiety-inducing visual and auditory stimuli is that it is lighting up certain areas of the brain more than others. The parts of our brains that respond to aggression, fear and sexuality become ignited while the cortical areas, the frontal lobes and other more sophisticated, executive areas of the brain are dimmed. What the human being has struggled to become over the course of millions of years is being reversed.

Another way of understanding this is working one group of muscles more than another. Say I go to the gym four days a week and all I do is work my upper arm muscles. I don’t bother with forearm, back, chest, abdominals, or legs. What happens is fairly obvious – one day I’m going to look in the mirror and see big arms on a small, perhaps atrophied frame.

What should we do? How can we reverse the current downward trend on the evolutionary scale?

1. Start with awareness. If we wake up and see the media’s message for what it is, we can become less susceptible, less automatic in our responses and hopefully more thoughtful. When an ad comes on or you see a product being promoted on a show or in a movie, remind yourself who and what put it there and why they’re spending so much money to do that. Awareness limits the impact of the messages that bombard us. If a sentence in an advertisement starts with “could,” “would” or “should” we can safely assume there’s an incoming fear missile. “Could it happen here?” “Could there be a bomb on New Year’s Eve?” “Should you get the vaccine now?” “Would you know what to do if…” Grammar is an extension of intent. Listen to what’s being said critically.

We can then remind ourselves that the way products and services are presented (as image, as icon, as identity or extension of self) is illusory and speaks to our fears and inadequacies more than our good judgment. They will never satisfy us in the way we are told they will. Be conscious of the truth and you will recognize the lies.

2. Do the obvious. We can limit the amount of time we (and particularly our children) spend with television, i-pods, game-boys or cyber-tennis and make a conscious effort to spend more time with one another. I do not for a second imagine that Americans will all start taking up Buddhist meditation, but having a few minutes a day without having our senses assaulted might be a good idea. The other day I met a friend at a place called the Hyatt Tamaya. It is a resort of sublime beauty, filled with roaring fires in handmade kivas, Native American artwork, sensual flute music and captivating views from every angle. I had to wait for her a while and sat near one of the fires when a man and his wife sat across from me. Presumably they’d come to the hotel together, but she sat in one corner of the couch reading a book and he sat in a chair with earphones blasting percussive music I could hear from more than 10 feet away. Why bother spending $300 a night to tune out the place you’re paying a fortune to be in doing what you do at home?

3. Ask yourself: What drives you? And spend some time with that question before you answer it. Think about what motivates you to buy, what you buy and when you buy.

4. Spend time doing things that are diametrically opposite to what is promoted in the media, such as being still, being with your family without electronic accessories, pray, walk, think, read. Live slowly, breath deeply, linger.

5. Be present. Don’t pursue anything. Especially happiness. It’s a waste of time and will only serve to make you frustrated. The only place you can really have what you long for is where you are right now with exactly what you’ve got.

Judith Acosta, LISW, is a licensed psychotherapist, crisis counselor and homeopath in private practice in New Mexico. She is the co-author of The Worst Is Over: What To Say When Every Moment Counts, hailed as the “bible of crisis communications” and Verbal First Aid for Children (Penguin 2010). She lectures around the country on Verbal First Aid, trauma, stress, and intuition development. She may be reached at http://www.wordsaremedicine.com .

A secret means information that you try to hide from others!

This definition contains important features of secrets:

1-Info: You are not considered crazy if you keep a secret. When you ask people what secrets are, then they often think of things like cheating, something stolen or a strange happening in youth period. Of course these issues are often kept secret, but other innocent subjects are kept as secrets too like your salary, smoking habits, your admired movie star and so on!

2- Unconsciously or intentionally: You keep secrets either accidentally or intentionally. You know exactly which secret you want to keep, and from whom. Sometimes you can even spend effort in order not to let the secret out! Having secrets is a conscious decision by itself. It costs too much mental energy to keep a secret. Secrets are a cognitive load.

3-Keep it hidden: Having secrets is certainly not without difficulty. You have to do your best not to tell it. So you must be careful that you talk about it, and you can set up a poker face when you come into a situation where your secret is in danger. You can not show that you caught or uncomfortable. These situations have to be judged in advance. Finally you can act quickly to repair any mistake if necessary: you must have therefore in advance ready excuses. In other words, having a secret is a socially conscious process where effort need to be done.

4-From others: Secrets are by definition social in nature. That means that there are always other people involved. No one has ever kept a secret from a stone, a table or water. We keep secrets from other people. This may be one person, or almost everyone. These people may be also already dead or even imaginary!
Tips

What can you do if you have a secret that is emotionally stressful for you? Do you share it with someone? It is important to realize that when you tell your secret to someone, you get a different relationship with the person to whom you tell. Sometimes this goes deeper and deeper. Sometimes however, the friendship or relationship undergoes serious pressure, and you may loose that person. In that case the result of sharing the secret is more emotionally stressful than having the secret!

It is recommended not to share your secret with others, sometimes it is better to hold something for you. The U.S. expert and psychologist Anita Kelly says for example that you have to think twice whether and to whom you tell your secret. You need to be sure that the person is reliable and is not going to tell your secret. Therefore, Kelly made the following decision tree:

1. Does the secret causes much load to you?
( For example because you get anxiety, depression, physical ailments like headaches or strange experience, or because you can not live your life because you see certain places or people affect you in a certain way) NO, then it is not necessary to share your secret. You can not then be damaged by telling it. YES, then you can ask the following question:

2. Is there a counselor in your immediate surroundings who is available that you tell discretely, a good listener, not judging and who can help you with new insights? NO? Then it is better not to share it with anyone in your immediate environment but rather share with a professional counselor such as a psychologist, social worker, counselor, a church man, imam or an agency. If you find it difficult to talk about your secrets with professionals, then you can write about it in a diary. You can also write a letter to yourself or the person of your secret, without ever sending the letter.

YES? Then talk about it with that person

In this short article I have made use of a very good book from the Netherlands about the subject but the most researchers are from the united states. From my practise I have been confronted with simple and difficult secrets and confessions from my clients. In deed I was busy for years with difficult cases. People wanted to tell about their deeply hidden secrets. In my position(together with a team), I managed to help many persons. When we used a certain approach and made a person speaks, he/she got great relief. In our situation there was a good degree of trust that made the people speak. A lot of cases were really suffering from extreme anxiety and suffering.

I recently built a website (a forum) where the visitor can tell about a secret or a confession. If you like you can try it too. You can leave your secret or confession anonymously. You will not only get relieved but you will meet people who will be ready to interact with you. It is sure not a therapy but I say give it a try. Good luck.

http://www.humansecretsonline.com

You have to care about your dreams if you want to remember them. Before sleeping think about dreaming, and tell yourself that you have to remember your dreams because they are very important, trying to fix them in your conscious memory as soon as you wake up, without thinking about anything else.

You can keep your dreams in a file on your computer, which will help you be more organized, especially if you have a laptop that you can easily use at any time, but I advise you to first of all write down your dreams in a notebook that you keep near your bed, without depending on your computer.

Make notes by abbreviating all words, so that you can write quickly, before forgetting the details of your dreams. The details escape from your memory as time passes, and this is why it is important to quickly fix them in your memory when you wake up, and write them down the soonest possible.

If you cannot care about your dreams when you wake up because you usually are already too late, and you have to run to go to work or to another obligation, I advise you try going to sleep earlier, so that you may have enough time to see many dreams, and so that you may have a clear mind when you wake up, which will help you remember your dreams very well.

It would be better if you go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier too, so that you may have a few minutes at your disposal to care about your dreams.

But if you really don’t have any chance to write down your dreams as soon as you wake up, never mind, because the unconscious mind is very generous, and sends you the same messages in many dreams, showing you different aspects of the same reality in each dream.

Write down whatever you remember of your dreams, and you’ll see that only by writing down a few details, you’ll remember more easily your next dreams, besides being able to more easily understand their meaning. Writing down your dreams is very helpful for your memory, and for your capacity to decipher their symbolic meaning.

Through dream interpretation according to the scientific method, which accurately translates for you the meaning that the unconscious mind is giving to the dream messages, you’ll pass through free and safe psychotherapy as you follow the wise guidance of the unconscious mind that keeps trying to save your mental health, and teaches you how you can develop your intelligence, using all your capacities.

You’ll become familiar with the dream language as you keep your dream journal, learning how to exchange the dream images and scenes with words. You’ll soon be able to immediately understand the meaning of all your dreams after seeing them.

Read all the dreams you wrote down with time, because their general meaning will show you how your future will be, and give you a general image of the meaning of your life. Your dream collection will give you a huge vision of the importance of the meaning of all your dreams together, since they are like chapters of a novel, or pieces of a puzzle.

Each dream gives you a new lesson, more information, new warnings, and so on.

At a certain point, you’ll see all the dreams you have kept in your dream journal and you’ll finally understand why many things had to happen to you, why you should behave in one way or another on many occasions, and many things more, because you’ll understand that your life follows a program of development, depending on the characteristics of your personality.

You’ll understand why the unconscious mind showed you that you had to do one thing or another, after verifying what will happen in the future.

The unconscious lessons are better understood with time. When you have a warning about something you may not be able to evaluate the unconscious’ wisdom, exactly because you ignore many things that you will learn only later.

Only after seeing the development of reality, and verifying that you really did what was better for you thanks to the guidance you received in your dreams, will you understand from which troubles the unconscious guidance has saved you.

This is why you have to study your dream collection. The various chapters of the novel of your life reflected in your dreams will give you the final message of the entire story; you’ll see the design formed by the puzzle, with all pieces together, and understand why you had to follow this path.

Then, another story will begin, and you’ll make many new discoveries, always attaining higher levels of knowledge.

Christina Sponias continued Carl Jung’s research into the human psyche, discovering the cure for all mental illnesses, and simplifying the scientific method of dream interpretation that teaches you how to exactly translate the meaning of your dreams, so that you can find health, wisdom and happiness.
Learn more at: http://www.scientificdreaminterpretation.com

Click Here to download a Free Sample of the eBook Dream Interpretation as a Science (86 pages!).

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a method for treating those people who have Bipolar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) that combines both traditional Western and non-traditional Eastern psychological concepts. The method was developed by University of Washington psychological researcher Marsha M. Linehan and she has experienced considerable success whenever implementing her plan of therapy.

Those with BPD have an extremely difficult time coping with any crises that may occur in their lives and they are also highly emotionally unstable. BPD is thus somewhat similar to Bipolar Disorder but the extremes of emotion experienced by BPD sufferers don’t usually last as long as those of manic-depressives. Linehan’s breakthrough came when she realized that BPD sufferers were all invalidated as children and that it is this self-destructive behavioral pattern that should be changed instead of the crises being removed.

There are two parts to DBT and both improve a patient’s mental health: group therapy and the one-on-one consultations between a BPD sufferer and their therapist. These methods are also used for bipolar patients. The group therapy sessions concentrate on teaching the patient four very specific skill sets, which are: core mindfulness skills, distress tolerance skills, emotion regulation skills and interpersonal effectiveness skills.

Mindfulness skills comprise the Eastern part of the therapy and pay homage to Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation techniques that teach people to calmly accept whatever happens to them without reacting emotionally to any crises. Distress tolerance skills are specifically aimed at changing behavior patterns for dealing with incidents that create stress, while emotion regulation skills help a patient control the level of their emotions by, for instance, identifying and labeling emotions and identifying obstacles that they put in the way of altering their emotions. Interpersonal effectiveness skills, on the other hand, include teaching patients when to resist changes they don’t want to happen and how to assert themselves.

The weekly individual therapy sessions put the skills learned in the group sessions to work by trying to change specific long-standing negative behavioral patterns, which behavioral patterns are always dealt with in the exact same order.

Given top priority are the parasuicidal – mild to extreme self-injury – and suicidal behavioral patterns and these are closely followed by the patterns that interfere with the patient’s therapy program and then with those that negatively impact on the patient’s quality of life. Patients are also given a chance to practice positive, life-affirming, behaviors including ways to improve their self respect and self-esteem, and ways to set and achieve their own goals.

DBT is a viable alternative to traditional ways of dealing with BPD and Bipolar Disorder by stressing crises management over self-improvement.

Author is a freelance writer. For more information please visit skyland trail.

I was recently doing some research regarding criminal mindset when I stumbled across an article in Psychology Today on bullies. I have seen several news stories over the past few years about children being harassed so much in school that they chose to take their own lives to end the misery. This is terribly heartbreaking. I gained some insight not only into the mindset formation of bully and victim, but interestingly enough, how this behavior gets reinforced over the years and shapes the individuals as adults. Without some kind of intervention, bullies continue to bully into adulthood, and are more likely to engage in antisocial, i.e. criminal behavior. Equally so, victims tend to get victimized over and over again. This dynamic of predator and prey is created fairly early on, and without something to divert their paths, it is a dance that is perpetuated throughout life.

How and when exactly does it begin? Believe it or not, aggression begins at as early as age 2. Think preschool! The child-parent relationship at this tender age is the most important relationship, and the article argues that bullies are made. A parent may be dealing with a particularly difficult child who acts out and is frequently disobedient. If the parent engages in what is called non-contingent parenting, the adult yells at the child with threats of punishment and only follows through at the point at which his or her hostility has reached a critical point. Then the parent coerces the child into compliance with force. Unfortunately, if this behavior becomes a pattern, the use of ineffective and/or intermittent punishment ultimately rewards the child’s defiance. If the parent engages in harsher punishments over time, the child tends to become more and more aggressive. This is a terrible cycle, indeed, and one that can have very bad consequences for many. Other factors play into the formation of bullies, also: not monitoring youth behavior (especially towards other children); children modeling adults’ negative behavior towards others (bullies beget more bullies), children using aggression to demonstrate power or control the environment, and lack of verbal fluency. The last one is really interesting; the better the verbal skills, the better children function in the social environment of their peers.

What does bullying entail? It can include physical or mental abuse. Aggressive youths may begin to control specific peers with physical punishment, but compliance may eventually only require a threatening word, facial expression or gesture. Bullies tend to be physically stronger and in turn, select targets who are weaker and smaller, more sensitive and quiet, and who display a fear of confrontation. In other words, bullies pick on more submissive children. In a large percentage of cases, bullies are themselves the victims of bullying, and lash out due to their own hypersensitivity to confrontation or provocation. If they are emotionally sensitive, they may always be looking for a battle. Some bullying types have a very high threshold for stimulation and are motivated by the reward of arousal; these are usually sociopathic in nature. A sociopath is perpetually bored, has no empathy, and cannot cooperate because he or she cannot relate to others. I am currently reading an interesting book entitled the sociopath next door, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., that will hopefully give me further insight into the psychological aberration of sociopaths, as well. Bullies may use ridicule, and if the bully is a girl (yes, they can be girls), she will use social relationships as a weapon against a target and engage in behavior that isolates the victim from the pack such as social exclusion, spreading nasty rumors, etc. All of this stuff, of course, occurs mostly under the adult radar, at a gathering of peers (like school). The relationship between predator and prey causes a downward spiral for both parties; bully behavior is rewarded and reinforced, and victim behavior causes a child to have less and less self-esteem. Kids usually believe their victimization is their own fault, and bullies believe they have to solve every problem through aggression. The bullied children are often rejected by their peers because their submissive behavior is “unsettling” to other children. The entire peer group gets locked into negative patterns, and without adult intervention, those roles can keep both predator and prey on a very dark path, well into adulthood.

What can be done to prevent bullying? Make no mistake–neither the bully nor the victim is engaged in character-building exercises. Based on several psychological studies (in various countries), some examining kids from an early age all the way into their 30’s, the problems associated with bullying do not just work themselves out as many might believe. Adults have to get involved; this not only benefits the lives of the children, but the lives of everyone they come into contact with as they age. Looking at the very big picture, society at large benefits from adult intervention. So, what exactly can adults do? Here is a list of things to try:

* Teaching children avoidance of bullies–this is exactly what we teach adults in self-protection regarding predators on the street.
* Helping children with their social skills–facilitating social groups and social opportunities. Both bullies and their victims are often socially isolated.
* Teaching children self-confidence and assertive behavior.
* Helping children improve verbal skills (a “pro-social” skill). Many bullies are lacking in this area.
* Inquiring how peers are treating children. This may take some work, since children may not readily admit to having problems socially.
* Helping children become more adept in activities that are valued by their peers, including martial arts!
* Controlling consumption of violent programming. This is a big issue–Lt. Col. Dave Grossman talks a lot about the problems associated with violent video games and other forms of entertainment.
* Instilling empathy in children.
* Staying involved in children’s lives, but without being so over-protective that it hinders their ability to deal with confrontation.

The criminal mindset begins to crystallize even earlier than I thought. The victim mindset does also! All the more reason we need to be involved in the lives of young people, giving them proper models to shape them into well-functioning adults that respect the rights of others. I also see this article as a great endorsement for the martial arts in helping kids develop confidence, assertiveness, self-respect, and respect for others. Those are the qualities we all need to accomplish our goals in life, right? Instill those things in a child, and you have given them a gift for a lifetime.

References
Marano, Hara Estroff. (1995, Sep). Big. Bad. Bully. Psychology Today, 28(5), 50-57, 62-69, 73-79, 82.

Steven Mosley is Head Coach and co-founder of Combat Hard Fitness & Fighting, LLC. He has over 20 years experience in law enforcement and martial arts. Steve has over 25 years experience teaching firearms and defensive tactics, holds black belts in Chinese Kenpo Karate and Filipino Kali, is a Senior Instructor under the British Combat Association and is an Apprentice Instructor in Filipino Martial Arts & Jun Fan Gung Fu under Guro Dan Inosanto. Within the fitness arena, Steve’s accomplishments include IKFF Military Advisor, USA Weightlifting Coach, Advanced Boxing Fitness Trainer, AKF Lifting Coach, Crossfit Level One Trainer, ISSA Certified Fitness Trainer, certified Battling Ropes Coach and certified Warrior Diet/CFT Level Two Instructor. Visit Steve’s website at http://www.combathard.com or contact him at combathard@gmail.com. Also check out the Combat Hard weblog at http://combathard.wordpress.com.

Back in the 1950s, Professor Jensen – a leading authority on intelligence – concluded that nothing could be done to improve our IQ level – that it was fixed from early childhood. This was the scientific consensus. Numerous studies investigating the effect of different types of cognitive training over the past 40 years have not done much to change this view – that is, until 2008 when a team of cognitive psychologists from Bern, Switzerland and Michigan, United States, demonstrated that a very specific type of cognitive training can improve IQ dramatically.

Why has it taken 40 years to discover how to improve IQ?

It is only thanks to recent insights from cognitive psychology about the nature of short term memory and its importance in cognitive functioning have at last enabled a training exercise to be engineered that improves IQ. As cognitive psychologists, we have now uncovered many underlying information processing systems of intelligence. It is this understanding that has enabled us to design the task to be effective to improve intelligence, regardless of starting IQ level. We will now look at how these mechanisms work.

We can improve IQ, but how does it work?

Our short term memory is a big part of the story. We use our short term memory all the time for any storage of information that is short term – perhaps over a matter of 10 or 20 seconds – for example, while remembering directions have have just heard while driving.

The Magical Number 7

The amount of information most people can hold in short term memory (numbers, food items, directions) is limited to around 7 items – plus or minus 2. This short term memory capacity or ‘memory span’ has been called the ‘magical number seven’ in one of the most famous papers in cognitive psychology, by George Miller at Princeton University.

Working memory

But more important than just remembering information by rote is being able to do mental operations on that information – to solve a problem, to figure something out, or reason through something to find an answer. For instance, while figuring out a 15% tip, or how much currency is worth while you are in another country. The ability to hold information in mind for brief periods, and manipulate it mentally is a type of short term memory called working memory. You have to do mental work on the information, not just store it. That is why it is called ‘working memory’.

The capacity of working memory

Most people have a working memory capacity of about 2 or 3 – much less than the memory span of the ‘magical number 7′ for just storing information without doing any cognitive operations on it.

The working memory-IQ link

People vary widely in their working memory capacity. Ä°t is now known that these differences predict IQ level. General intelligence – measured by standardized IQ tests – depends on working memory because working memory affects a wide range of complex cognitive tasks besides figuring out a tip, involving reasoning problem solving, and making sense of things. We use working memory every single time we reason, plan and problem solve. Even comprehending long sentences (like the ones in this article) requires working memory!

Working memory and the intelligence behind our IQ level both share the same brain circuitry – part of the frontal cortex of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. (‘Dorsal’ means up, and ‘lateral’ means to the side – hence ‘dorsolateral’). This is one of the most recently evolved parts of the brain.

How to improve IQ – the logic

The logic is simple: If you can improve your working memory capacity by training it directly, you can therefore improve your intelligence level. There is, in technical terms, a ‘transfer effect’ from working memory training to gains in intelligence and IQ.

Intelligence can now be improved by 40% – as a side effect.

In 2008 cognitive psychologists at the University of Bern in Switzerland and the University of Michigan in the States, demonstrated that by training on a specifically designed working memory exercise you can increase working memory capacity by over 65% over just 19 days of training.

This improvement in this type of short term memory capacity had a remarkable side effect: a 40% gain in intelligence – as measured by a version of the time limited Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices IQ test – one of the most valid and highly regarded IQ tests for culture fair intelligence.

The author, Dr. Mark Ashton Smith, is a cognitive neuroscientist. Between 2000 and 2003 he was a Lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge. His most recent position has been as Assistant Professor at Bilkent University, Turkey. His current research is in fluid intelligence and how it can be trained.

To find out more of what is known about intelligence and how to increase IQ, visit his website: http://www.highiqpro.com/about/how-to-improve-iq-working-memory