Psychology Articles

This isn’t a rhetorical question. ‘What’s the point of worrying about things?’ demands an answer. After all, worry can be a health risk. It can cause stress, high blood pressure and affect your digestion among other things. When all’s said and done, worry is the same as fear.

We worry because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re frightened because we’ve heard a sound around the corner, and we don’t know what it is. But then, in the same way as anxiety and panic attacks, worry has benefited mankind ever since the dawn of his history.

Without the ability to worry, mankind would have died out almost before it started. In those days on the plains and in the forests, we were the slowest and feeblest creatures alive. We had virtually no natural protection, and were food for any passing carnivore.

The one thing that prevented our demise was our brains.

They were better developed than the other living creatures around us, and we learned to use them. We were able to find out where danger lurked, or possibly lurked, and we’d therefore steer well clear.

The problem was, and still is, that if we simply worried about things and didn’t do anything about them, we wouldn’t progress very far.

In the old days, we’d worry about the possibility of a sabre toothed tiger hiding in a bush at the side of a path we wished to travel. If we didn’t investigate, then we’d never travel the path and we’d just stay in one spot.

So worry puts us on alert. But two things may happen. Either worry defeats us, or we defeat worry. In other words, we can worry to such an extent that we make ourselves ill and we can make ourselves ill to such an extent, that we suffer a nervous breakdown.

The alternative is to keep worry under control. It isn’t a bad idea to spend half an hour a day worrying. Take this one step further. Take out our journal and, yes, that’s right, write it down! I’m a great believer in the old saying, ‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’

Now writing things down on a piece of paper isn’t quite the same thing, but you’d be surprised how close it comes. Try doing it this way;

1. “I’m worried about…”

2. “The worst thing that could happen is…”

3. “The best thing that could happen would be…”

4. “Things I can do now…”

5. “Other factors to bear in mind…”

This brings all your concerns to the fore in an organized manner. You can write out what’s troubling you and then leave it alone for a while.

Up to the stage of writing down your worries, they were milling around in your head in no particular order, one piling on top of the next, so there was no chance of solving anything.

Now, at least, you have a plan.

I was always a terrible worrier. I’d worry about there being nothing to worry about! I do hope this article helps you to at least organize your concerns. There’s a wonderful free download on my Website about worry. All you need to do is to click on The Hypnosis Attraction and you’ll find it.

We had a look at our psychopathic friend, Fred, in the last article. When we left him, he didn’t seem too bad, did he? Yes, it was ‘his way or the highway,’ but we can all be selfish on occasion. Actually, the storm clouds of his personality gathered earlier than that when we found that psychopaths are amoral.

As we go through this article, we’ll be looking at the main symptoms of a psychopath. By the time we’ve finished, he won’t seem quite so jolly.

They use people without any compunction. It doesn’t matter how friendly they may seem, nor how long you’ve known them, if they think you’ll be useful to them in whatever endeavour they may be engaged in at that time, (and about which you won’t have a clue), they’ll simply consider you a chess piece in their ‘game.’

Feelings of guilt or remorse are completely foreign to them and they’ll always be able to explain away their behaviour in such a way that they’ll have no trouble in laying the blame for any subsequent disaster on someone else.

Now don’t forget the example of the chess piece. What happens to a pawn when it’s been taken? It’s discarded.

It comes as no big surprise that politics and showbusiness are considered to have more than their fair share of socialized psychopaths. The very qualities that make them psychopaths can make them extremely attractive.

I know this sounds contradictory, but when you think about it, it isn’t as contrary as it sounds. We realize that this friend of our’s seems without the same inhibitions, fears, doubts and uncertainties from which the rest of us suffer. Because of this, there’s a certain aura about him, one of confidence and self-sufficiency. Another of the main symptoms of a psychopath.

Indeed, they can have such charisma, (that word again!), that they almost seem like heroes to us. While we’re of use to them, they like to keep us with them and in turn, we feel flattered that such a person seems keen to associate with us.

If you do have an inkling of the sort of person they are, you’ll probably notice that while they have a marvellous sense of humour on the surface, nevertheless it tends to be cruel in nature.

They’re almost certainly risk takers, and to people who don’t know them well, they can be tremendous fun, and the way they seek out sensation, while perhaps tending to shock us, also increases our admiration for them. After all, we wouldn’t dare do what they do.

The cult leader Jim Jones was extremely magnetic. After all, he attracted a very large number of followers to his ‘Jonestown’ settlement. However, it was discovered that as a child, he used to enjoy dissecting live animals. This is a common indicator of future psychopathy.

We’re having another look at psychopathy, this time the main symptoms of a psychopath. This is Mike Bond, inviting you to come along and have a good look at my Website. I know you’ll like what you see. And don’t forget to grab the free downloads once you’re there, by clicking onto http://www.wealthyoldman.com

Students in many public and private schools will likely be experiencing the results of teacher training in the area of Quantum Learning this year or in years to come. Schools as well as business leaders are being trained to implement this powerful, research-based system that uses brain studies and physical movement to enhance the core components of education and/or the work environment. It has been proven to increase teacher/leader effectiveness and improve student performance.

One of the key components of Quantum Learning, and there are many, is the idea of “living above or below the line”. This “line” is a level of responsibility or, as the program defines it, respond-ability, and it is very similar to the Covey “habit” of being proactive; taking control of choices, and therefore taking control of outcomes. You may hear your children talking about this, so this article will address the general idea of “the line” and where you and they are living. This is a great lesson for people in general and specifically parents as it lends itself well to positive discipline.

The basic premise of “living above or below the line” is that we are running our own show, and must take ownership of how things turn out based on the choices we make – good or bad. There is a lot of power in that understanding.

Living “below the line” is defined in Quantum Learning as the message we send when we lay blame, justify or deny. For example, laying blame on someone or something else for our own choices sends the message “I have no control over my life – other people control my life”. Is that true? Of course not – we make the ultimate choices in what we say and do in the moment. When we justify, or make an excuse, we are sending the message “I have no control over my life – outside circumstances control my life”. Again, is that really true? No, it isn’t. Although outside circumstances do affect us, they do not have to control us unless we allow them to. When we deny, or are just flat out dishonest, we send the message “I am a liar and cannot be trusted”. Ouch! We have all lied at some point in our lives, but we don’t ever want to send the message that we are chronic liars. The last “below the line” response is that of simply quitting. This is displayed in the negative and/or apathetic “I don’t care and can’t be bothered” attitude. Quitting, dropping out, or giving up all send the message “I don’t have what it takes”; also, not true. Living below the line is simply living the victim mentality – poor me, look what life is doing TO me.

How do we live “above the line”? We decide that we have the ability to respond in ways that give choices, power and freedom. When we recognize that we choose our response, we begin to understand the power we have in creating the life we want to live. When we actively seek more choices instead of laying blame, justifying, denying or quitting, we ultimately end up with freedom. This is ownership or “living above the line”.

So, parents at home, other adults in the workforce, students in school and all of us as we interact daily, the question is… where are you living?

http://www.examiner.com/x-22164-Nashville-Parenting-Examiner?showbio

I remember watching a television programme a year or two ago, about this man who’d been a hit man for the Mob. He was known as the Iceman. Some of you may well have watched it too. It was incredibly chilling.

A psychiatrist was interviewing him and at one stage, the Iceman said;

“You’re beginning to make me angry.” His tone was absolutely calm. His voice wasn’t raised.

“Would you kill me if you could reach me?” asked the interviewer.

“Yes, probably,” the Iceman replied. “Let’s change the subject.”

Then he started to tell the psychiatrist about his childhood. How he loved to torture animals in various ways, which I have no intention of repeating. The psychopath’s mask of sanity. Yet was he insane?

Now, I love animals, and if I found someone being cruel to one, I’d do them serious harm. The awful part about this interview was that when he was recounting the ways he used to hurt animals, I didn’t really feel any hatred towards him. I do now, looking back, but he’s dead, thank God!

But he told of his cruelty in just the same tone of voice as you and I would use if we were chatting about generalities over a couple of whiskies in the club.

He was a physically huge man and had once been handsome. He told of various times how, when he was having dinner with his family, a Mob boss would ring him and say that a certain person they wanted killed was at a particular location, would he kindly do the honours?

He’d ask his wife to keep his dinner warm, go out, kill the individual, come back home and finish his meal.

Psychopaths have this incredible, ineffable charm about them, that they’re capable of making even the most shockingly outrageous deeds seem quite normal and understandable, as he did when he was recounting the ways he used to ill treat animals.

I wouldn’t have missed this interview for the world, because it shed such light into the mind of this type of person. As you may imagine, they also have this ability of feigning empathy.

There’s a mild form of Autism known as Asperger syndrome. Those unfortunate enough to suffer from this condition find great difficulty in empathizing with others, because they’re what the psychologists term ‘emotion blind.’ The emotions of other people are virtually a closed book to them.

They find it very difficult to read the feelings of others and at the same time, what they themselves have said or done is also difficult for them to fathom. Now, it’s only natural that because of this, they seem cruel and to possess a couldn’t care less attitude at times, but they simply can’t help it.

To their minds, other people view the world in just the same way that they do, and they struggle hard to understand that there are different points of view. This makes the Asperger sufferer far less likely to try to deceive someone, because they see no need for it.

Not so the psychopath.

Hello again. Mike Bond with another little adventure into the mind of the psychopath. I do hope you come to visit my Website to see everything I have on hypnosis and psychology. Don’t forget your free downloads, of course, by clicking onto http://www.wealthyoldman.com

Schools’ jobs are to educate, not to promote eating disorders -Rebecca Tishman

High school students have a fascinating perspective- being on the front lines of school culture, they can certainly help us to understand the pressures of being a teenager today. Rebecca Tishman, a high school senior in New Jersey, knows what she thinks. As someone recovering from an eating disorder, she points out some of the major pitfalls that schools may be falling into inadvertently- even when they are trying to help their students live a healthy life.

Well just about everyone who meets me eventually finds out I’m recovering from an eating disorder. It’s been a constant struggle for many years now, and, while I don’t blame my disorder on the school system, I have found many of the subjects discussed in health classes, and other similar classes, to be triggering. Many of the topics covered over the years have fueled my ED and many others’.

Since the fourth grade, teachers have been drilling the food pyramid into my mind and the minds of my peers. I can’t remember going even a day in school without receiving a faulty message like:

“Only eat healthy foods. Fat is bad.”
“‘Junk food’ is the root of all evil.”
“Diet and Exercise are the keys to success.”
“Eat foods in moderation.”

Believe me, I am constantly catching myself thinking in these black and white statements and have to “reframe my thinking,” as we like to call it in therapy. After three years of tense therapy sessions, weekly nutrition appointments, semi-weekly check-ups, and even more I’m finally starting to realize it may be beneficial to resist the messages and even fight back against them. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure my peers, who haven’t had the “benefit” of all of these resources, can decode the messages.

What I wish the schools would tell me and my peers is that:

All food, whether deemed “healthy,” by societal standards are necessary when trying to have a healthy diet. A diet deficient in fat is also unhealthy for you. The key is balance!

It’s important to learn how to eat “junk food” appropriately from a young age so as not to grow up with distorted views of what food does to you.

Diet and exercise are important, but overdoing it is just as bad, if not worse, than not doing enough exercise-just this month I fractured my ankle by over-exercising. People’s bodies can only take so much and I encourage each individual devise a healthy diet and exercise plan with his/her doctors. There is no reason to go it alone.

And one of my biggest annoyances with the food clichés taught in school is that moderation implies eating less than what your body wants/needs. Instead, balance is the way to do it.

And seriously if I see one more eight year-old looking at nutrition facts to see how much fat she is consuming, I really might just scream! Schools’ jobs are to educate, not to promote disorders- except that is exactly what happens when they show films like “Supersize Me” in conjunction with nutrition units in health classes, and encourage books like Wintergirls for some “fun, summer reading.” Um, did I miss the memo that it’s better to be lying in a hospital bed with a feeding tube uncomfortably shoved up your nose and down into your stomach than to allow your body to be its natural shape?

At the end of the school day, I am left wondering are schools doing all they can to empower students, teach them how to fuel their bodies, and to love themselves, or, are they giving students the tools they need to have an eating disorder? I think it’s time the schools start teaching us to love ourselves as we are and reverse the inappropriate thoughts we kids are having. I encourage parents to get involved:

Don’t let the schools take over your responsibilities as parents-teach your kids how to eat and exercise appropriately

Look into your family history of psychological problems-often, but not always, there is a familial component to eating disorders. Previous family members with depression, drug abuse, etc. can often be linked to potential eating disorders in future generations. Find out what’s been happening over the past few generations and educate your children so they are prepared to fight back against their genetic predispositions.

And take your kids out of the classes that you find inappropriate-I rarely sit through every class of the day due to how readily the inappropriate messages are being thrown around.

Schools and families need to work together to put a stop to the devastating universe of eating disorders.

by: Rebecca Tishman

Hello everyone, my name is Rebecca Tishman and I’m an aspiring artist who writes poetry in my free time. I often upload my recent work to http://www.enigmaticartwork.blogspot.com so please take a look and let me know what you think. In addition, I am in recovery from an eating disorder and write about my experiences as a guest blogger for http://www.DrRobynSilverman.com I hope you enjoy reading my articles and viewing my work.

Many people believe that FEAR decreases creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. In fact, there have been many psychological research studies on this, which would seem to indicate that this is indeed factual. However, judging from my own personal experience I disagree, and I’ve actually found that in times of fear my creativity goes up, and my ability to reason and innovate also becomes hypersensitive, and to me the difference is like night and day.

The only thing that I can reason is that those who have been seasoned athletes respond to fear in a different way. Other people explain that when they get frightened, they make mistakes, say the wrong thing, or cannot perform, in sports we call this; choking. Many people who are seasoned speakers, say that a little fear helps them speak better, and many actors say the same thing. Even performers on Broadway believe this to be the case.

Still, the psychological studies show that this isn’t the case for everyone, and for most people and that fear decreases brain activity, inhibits your ability to reason and think on your feet. That may be so, but it certainly isn’t for me, and I can tell you that any really good athlete or superstar likes to have a little bit of fear prior to competition. And you will find that in the heat of battle that fear helps their brain to focus, and get the job done.

In fact, I have noted that when I compete in sports, and feel an adrenaline rush coming, I am more than hyperaware, everything is crystal clear, and I can remember it as if it was yesterday – even events which I competed in over two decades ago. Therefore, I completely disagree with the findings, and I think the academic researchers are finding too many weak individuals in society to study when they do these tests, and I have a theory on this.

The superstars of humanity are busy doing stuff, and the depressed individuals who cannot perform under pressure, generally can’t perform any way, they have low self-esteem, and since they are not doing anything they are available to help with the test and research. The winners and doers in our society are too busy doing and wouldn’t dream of participating in some clueless and senseless psychological study in some pseudo science. Until the academic psychological researchers figure this out, they are completely misreading the human psyche. Of course, from my research and study of these types of researchers, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you’ve enjoyed today’s discussion and topic. http://www.WorldThinkTank.net – Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.

Before beginning to explore the self-awareness, we must first create a distinctive difference between what “I” and “self” are. Starting from the “I”, we find that it cannot be what it is expressed as to be, since the expressions we use from the “I” are representations of it, not the actual “I”. Why? When we consider that we observe a feather, the representation we have of it in our mind cannot be the actual feather. If it were, that would mean that when we perceive the world around us, the world would be as if teleported into our minds rather than that the sub-conscious has generated a visual representation we observe as the environment. It is the same with “I” and the descriptions we use of it. Entity A (“I”) cannot be entity B (representation) however we would want to believe this fact to be otherwise.

Self is our physiological being. And although it is the same in the case of the self, that it cannot be the description of it, the self is founded on neurology, and what the self actively exists as, is defined by what is actively present in the neurological level in combination. We know this for example when we consider how we experience ourselves as and act as is different when we are seducing someone, when we are in a fight-or-flight situation, when we are acting in a leadership position and so forth, as what they need in the physiological level of human neurology to exist are different in active combination. If we for example considered that all the characteristics mentioned above were actively present all the time, they would without a doubt reduce each other from existence as they are distinctively different characteristics, just as we cannot walk, run and sit down at the same time.

We know how experiences shape the self. “I” remains as it is, undefinable, but the timely self as it emerges from the neurological foundations of the sub-conscious becomes natured through repetition and is alterable because of neuroplasticity (since without neuroplasticity, an individual would be unable to learn or adapt to fit the circumstances). Thus, as the self is founded on the neurophysiology of an individual, our self-awareness is founded on the representations of our self, wherein we can consider the authentic self as if being what one is like the night follows the day. Hence as self-awareness is the awareness of one’s own existence in the form of experiences and representations, reflections, self can be thought as problematic, but can also be clarified by thinking it less problematically or by perceiving the reflections of self as less problematic, i.e. as the reflections are. Because of neuroplasticity we also know that our own self is dynamic in both ways, we can begin to think against ourselves or we can think constructively for our own good, thus increasing the self-awareness in the contrast of our own choice. And from parallel perception, that how different brain interpret the phenomena in the environment differently, thus producing different semantic content to phenomena than the other, we know that none observes us the same way as the other, giving you the question of how do you perceive yourself as?

Copyright © 2010 Henry M. Piironen

Henry M. Piironen is a contemporary European author and philosopher of consciousness, cultures, religions and reality. To purchase his latest books, visit amazon.com now.

Last time, among other things, we discussed how the poor people who suffer from Asperger syndrome think. You may remember that while they may seem cruel and insensitive on occasion, they simply can’t help it. It’s all because of the wretched condition beneath which they labour.

Now we’ll have a look at how the psychopath thinks in comparison to the Asperger sufferer. The answer? Very differently! We said last time that the Asperger victim is ‘emotion blind.’ Not so the psychopath.

Not only are they quite capable of reading other people’s emotions. Their minds are always working out how they might use those emotions to better whatever little game they may be playing at the time.

The only times when they may show emotion themselves is when things aren’t going their way. Perhaps more accurately, when they don’t manage to have what they want.

With the real psychopath, you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t have any fear, guilt or remorse. Neither an easy nor pleasant individual to be around. If someone they know suffers a tragedy, they can show sympathy and act out the motions of distress as well as the people who genuinely feel such emotions. All the time, though, their minds are working coldly and dispassionately as to how they might turn this tragedy to their advantage.

They’re such good actors in this respect that their true natures are very difficult to uncover, to find out how the psychopath thinks. If you have any suspicions about someone, you would have to watch him or her over an extended period of time to see how they behave.

Occasionally, we’re all capable of saying one thing and doing another, but does your ‘friend’ tend to do this all the time? Do you personally feel that this person uses you, or have you noticed them using other people? It can be on a professional level, or of course sexually or emotionally.

Then, once they’ve managed to squeeze all they can out of someone, they simply discard them like empty containers. They’ve had their uses. Time to move on.

And what about something utterly unspeakable like 9/11? Personally, the visions that still haunt me today are of those poor innocents being forced to jump out of windows, ninety or more floors from the ground.

While the psychopath is quite capable of eliciting shock and horror at such terrible sights, he or she doesn’t really feel it. They can watch the images on television, or indeed while they’re physically present at the event, and as long as no-one else is around, they’ll simply take in these sights without showing any feelings of the horror we feel

Another little article on psychopaths from Mike Bond. I do hope these are proving interesting and if you suspect you’re ‘friends’ with one, that the articles are useful. I do urge you to visit my Website where you’ll find so much more of use. Simply click on http://www.wealthyoldman.com and grab your free downloads

Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, 23rd. August, 1973. Armed men charged into the Kreditbanken Bank and kidnapped the employees. The employees were in grave danger and they knew it. Outrageous, yes, but people had been kidnapped before and it would no doubt happen again.

But this proved the be one of the examples of the Stockholm Syndrome.

The extraordinary part about this particular incident was that on the 28th. August, when the employees’ captivity ended, several of them stated that they had no wish to be rescued and added fuel to the fire by refusing to testify against their captors.

Nils Bejerot, the renowned psychiatrist and criminologist, who assisted the police throughout the affair, explained the behaviour of these employees on television, and used the term ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ for the first time. The name stuck, and came to mean the peculiar behaviour of kidnap or hostage victims who come to sympathize, even to love, their oppressors.

We saw this again on Monday, 5th. May, 1980, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher invoked the Special Air Service, (S.A.S.), to rescue the hostages from the Iranian Embassy, located at Prince’s Gate, South Kensington, London. Little did we know that we’d see another of the examples of the Stockholm Syndrome.

Up until that date, negotiations had been continuing fairly satisfactorily with police, but there was a noticeable change in the terrorists’ mood. Then they signed their own death warrants by killing a hostage and throwing his body out in the street.

The S.A.S. immediately launched Operation Nimrod and entered the building from two points; a skylight in the roof, and using frame charges on the first floor windows. The whole operation took less that 15 minutes.

There have been many versions told latterly of the raid, but the day following, there was a story by a journalist, himself a hostage, in one of the national newspapers, saying that up to that time, he’d been dead against the S.A.S., looking on them as hired thugs. This changed his view completely. Without them, he said, he wouldn’t be writing that article.

Where the Stockholm Syndrome comes in is that the S.A.S. had the hostages lie on the floor so they could count them. One of the sergeants recognized a terrorist posing as a hostage. He shot him in the head.

A short time later, one of the female hostages, who’d become sympathetic to the terrorists, managed to take the S.A.S. to court for ‘murder.’ The judge fined them a hundred pounds and the whole business melted away.

It was just a year after the Stockholm case when Patty Hearst decided to become an urban guerilla, following her kidnapping by members of a group calling themselves the ‘Symbionese Liberation Army.’

We’ll look at this later and delve into why certain people show such sympathy towards their captors.

Mike Bond again. I thought we’d have a look at the fascinating subject of the Stockholm Syndrome. There’s lots more of interest on my Website and I do hope you’ll pay it a visit, if only for the free downloads. Just click on http://www.wealthyoldman.com

A Fairy Story for the Chinese Female Single Patient:

Introduction

Often in therapy a story can help the client to understand their own emotions and feelings about their own situation. At first they just hear the story as a narrative but soon as with most good stories the client puts themselves into the action and associates with the plot line, as they try to make sense of how they can assimilate the underlying psychological message to their own lives.

In China many young girls under 27 years old are obsessed with finding Mr. Right, the boy who is from the good family, with a good education, with a good job with good prospects and has a good character. I use the word “good” here many times because it is easily understood by the girls themselves to mean a boy (young man) that can offer them a future that contains security for her, her family and material wealth. Love is always low on the list of requirements prior to marriage in China but woefully regretted later when actually betrothed.

After the age 27 in China girls go into panic mode, Mr. Right has not appeared and the range of available bachelors has narrowed considerably particularly as a myth about baby health in a woman’s 30’s is wide-spread and believed to be true. At this stage many girls despair and find themselves under considerable family pressure (and peers) to get married at any cost. Many rush into loveless marriages to men they hardly know but are willing to “take them on” so to speak.

So why did many of these older girls struggle to find a Mr. Right? Partly the problem was expectations and partly the belief that their purity (virginity) would be attractive to a suitor and that by remaining a good girl they have a better chance of a high alpha male prospect. A second aspect is education, as girls become more educated and so see any man below their own achievements as excluded from their ideal.

The Fairy Tale

The aim of therapy here is to enable girls to be more realistic about what boys actually have to offer. In the story we relate Mr. Right to a Prince Charming and to the girl as the perfect Princess. We see all other men as “frogs” those who are just the everyday normal young men who are starting out in life with average jobs and average ambitions. All stories are, “once upon a time” and end, “they lived happily ever-after” if only real life was so simple!

A Tale about a Princess:

Once upon a time there was a Princess who was looking for a Prince to marry. In the land Princes were rare and hard to find. So many frogs came to call for the Princess to spend time with and consider but none could match her ideal of her Prince (Mr. Right). Although some frogs had some of the attributes of Princes, good looks, money, education, high family connections etcetera none could bring all the gifts of her perfect Prince. After a while many frogs stopped trying to woo the Princess and in fact avoided her as unattainable and not worth wasting time on.

Meanwhile at her castle her parents (the King and Queen) reminded her that only good girls find Princes and that bad girls will fall prey to frogs and bad men. So the Princess held her purity in high esteem and often told frogs how perfect she was.

A long time has passed and now the Princess is over the age of marriage and finds that many Princess’s she knows about are married to other Princess’s and she is still alone. Her parents now constantly berate her for her poor judgment in not accepting earlier offers of marriage. They talk about her not being wanted soon as she reaches thirty and that she should start to consider many of the frogs she had once rejected. Some of those frogs have now changed into Princes and have good posts, material wealth and spoiled wives. How had she not seen these frogs had potential at the time? Her married friends worry about her, they have babies (just one) she will soon only be able to birth a poor sickly child as she ages. The Princess reflects on the wasted years of searching for the Prince that never existed to her standards, that was perhaps a frog in disguise, a frog that became a Prince perhaps.

However not all is well in the Kingdom. Many other Princesses married what they thought was a Prince who offered the good job, with the good prospects, with the good family and appeared to be the good boy for many a Princess. As these young men grew many did not reach their early ambitions, settled for an everyday life, accumulated some possessions and saved some income for the future but never enough for a castle. The girl’s Prince was in fact just a frog. Had always been a frog if she had just realised. Deep down many Princesses knew they married a simple frog but hoped over time they could change them to become a Prince and give them the dream they had been told was theirs by right of passage into marriage and motherhood.

Alas in our story we learn a simple truth, a frog is just a frog and with the best will in the world will probably remain a frog forever and ever until the day they die. So our lonely Princess has passed the magically age and around her are the frogs who are left. The mostly unwanted, discarded (divorced), despicable and unworthy. What is she to do – what happened to that dream of a handsome Prince to whisk her away to security, comfort and happiness? Now she felt regret, how could she had been so foolish to believe that she was so special and above those around her for so many years.

Fairy stories should have happy endings – after all they are meant to give us hope and a positive feeling. However this is real life – not every story has a happy ending and so through change we can only hope to adjust to a new reality that we misjudged our future prospects and around us live many many frogs – content with their lives, maybe not the best, but not alone and forgotten.

Discussion:

In the above tale of course our princess is the girl who is waiting so long for Mr. Right but rejected so many suitors as not ideal. Many of the other Princesses decided to marry the frog in hope that through a kiss and encouragement they could become a Prince but most if not all just wanted to be happy frogs and not become something they were not. So when the girls chose to wait for the cultural ideal they of course missed the thought that some are late developers. Some girls realised that Mr. Right (the Prince) was in fact a myth and decided instead to marry Mr. Good-Enough, someone not perfect but acceptable. When these girls lowered their unrealistic expectations of young men they actually found that a good enough young man (frog) could be the right one for them.

The above story and analysis is a fair reflection of Chinese society as far as young girls from about 22 to 27 years old pursue their likely marriage partner and the post 27 dilemma of being alone and unwanted. It is this cultural outlook that leads to many girls losing out on the chance to find suitable partners and fooling themselves that a Prince actually exists and will rescue them from their dull lives in the castle with baba and mama. What does the girl do when that time has passed, still pure, still at home, still inexperienced in the ways of men, still stubbornly believing that even at this late date a Prince will appear and save the day?

Therapy

In therapy this tale is often told to young women (27+) who complain of no relationships, that there must be something wrong with them. That they see no future now with no marriage and a child. They come to therapy hoping to learn about why they are alone, unhappy, rejected now by men as too old to be wanted. Depression is the usual presenting issue with anxiety brought on by an unsure future. By telling them the fairy story of the lonely Princess we hope to get them to realize that their own unrealistic expectations led to their current position and that cognitive faulty thinking about young men and societies pressures to a material goal was perhaps misplaced and that where love, passion and natural curiosity took no part in their youthful outlook towards what men want and do not want led them to reject many perhaps good enough young men earlier in their 20’s. It is not the therapist place to tell the women directly this but allow her to explore the tale from her own perspective and make her own conclusions. Some patients whole heartedly accept the comparisons other reject the idea (mainly as they still cling to the hope of a Prince) and open up other areas of dialogue that can by the provocation of the tale help them to explore their historical behaviour more objectively than perhaps they had done previously before coming to therapy.

Conclusion:

Although therapy can take many forms the use of mythology, stories, tales, metaphors can all help a client to see more clearly their own story and relate to the characters in the fairy tale and make some sense out of the confusion of depression and anxiety. Of course other tales can also make for good therapy bases, such as the Princess in the Tower, whose long hair dangles down for all the frogs to see. This is the woman who wants rescuing from her dull life thinking that a Prince will save her and give her the life she thinks she deserves, there is the Princess whose finger is pricked and falls into a deep sleep. Here she is the woman once bitten twice shy, that rejects all suitors in case she is hurt again. The lowly girl who lives in a dysfunction family with half sisters who hate her and a mother determined to treat her as a servant. She runs away, lives with several men and hopes that the Prince will come and find her but when she does meet one she is rejected again by his mother as not good enough. (Every Chinese girl’s fear of the mother in law). She perhaps is not so Snow White or a Cinderella, as she leads others to believe?

I hope that Chinese girls will read this article and feel free to comment about its cultural implications and insight. Perhaps there is more to learn here and for some girls they will help themselves by realising that the Prince is just a frog after all and that for a real happy ending then perhaps Mr. Good-Enough is just around the next corner?

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. Currently Dr. Myler is head of clinical psychology at St. Michael Hospital, Shanghai.