Source: Vagner-Xaruto / Pixabay

You’ve seen the photos and videos in the news. You’ve seen the Facebook posts. A newly implemented policy of the current presidential administration is to separate kids–little kids–from adults at the border. If a family is trying to get into the US illegally, our government is now detaining the parents and separating them from the kids–often putting the kids in cages. Yes, this is really happening. Today. Here.

Some people are claiming that this is an old policy that was put in place by one of the prior administrations and that this is really nothing new. A detailed and in-depth examination of this question by Snopes, which works as a premier investigatory power with such questions, emphatically concluded that such claims are false. In the words of their report, the following claim, “A 'law to separate families' was enacted prior to April 2018, and the federal government is powerless not to enforce it” is unequivocally false.

Importantly, this is not a political post–not by any means. This is a post about human psychology and how it connects with the current state of our world.

Attachment between Child and Caregiver

Going back to the early work of such pioneers as Bowlby (1969) and Harlow and Suomi (1971), it has been clear that human infants and adult caregivers show a broad array of features that primarily function to solidify a bond or attachment between them. Babies cry and parents respond. Parents pick the child up, and the child relaxes and is happy. A mother nurses her infant, and both are deeply at peace. Scents, voices, and facial expressions become stamped into the minds of one another.

Further, they become stressed when they are separated from one another.

This is normal. Humans, like many primates, evolved a broad array of attachment-related behaviors largely because human infants are deeply helpless (or altricial) for an extended amount of time - and such an attachment process helps provide the infant with a secure base by which to develop in a healthy manner.

When Attachment Goes Awry

Given the foundational nature of attachments with adults during development, it is not really surprising that infants who are not provided the opportunity to develop healthy attachments have social and emotional problems later in life. In his famous work on the social development of non-human primates, Harry Harlow discovered that young rhesus monkeys that were separated from their mothers early in life consistently had major problems in their social development, displaying inappropriate emotional and social responses and, ultimately, not being able to bond with other monkeys when given the opportunities later in life.

In a series of studies that I conducted with my former student, Sara Hall (Hall & Geher, 2004; Hall & Geher, 2003), we examined teenagers from across the US who showed signs of “Reactive Attachment Disorder” (RAD)–a condition rooted in a failure to have at least one strong attachment relationship formed with an adult caregiver early in life.

In our first study (Hall & Geher, 2003), we compared kids with RAD with a matched sample of kids without this disorder in terms of several psychological outcome variables. Kids with RAD emerged as having all kinds of problems compared with the kids in the other sample. For instance, the kids with RAD were more likely to:

• Have social problems.
• Have issues with delinquency.
• Have attentional problems.
• Have “thought problems.”
• Be withdrawn.

In a second study that specifically focused on the emotional outcomes of a separate group of RAD kids with another matched sample, we obtained similar results. Kids with RAD, compared with a matched sample, emerged as having all kinds of emotional problems, including:

• Reduced ability to identify emotions.
• Reduced ability to describe emotions.
• Lowered empathy levels.
• Poor control regarding aggression.
• Poor impulse control.

In short, kids who are separated from adult caregivers in substantial ways early in life are at risk for a broad array of psychological problems later in life.

Parent/Child Separation and PTSD

Given how ubiquitous the effects of separation between child and caregiver are in terms of psychological development, it should not come as a surprise that such separations are stressful to children. Given this fact, it is little wonder that significant separations early in life can actually be traumatizing to children, with separation from an attachment figure being a major factor associated with the onset of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in children (see Fletcher, 1996). And PTSD famously leads to all kinds of adverse outcomes in life.

Bottom Line

By many reports, the United States is currently engaging in a practice of separating children from adult caregivers when detaining adults at the border. From the standpoint of the behavioral sciences, this practice is inhumane. Such separations have the capacity to lead to a broad array of long-lasting adverse effects for those kids. Such separations can lead to problems with emotional, cognitive, and social functioning. Such separations can serve as traumatic incidents, affecting those kids in adverse ways for years.

Perhaps it is time to use the mountain of research in the behavioral sciences to help benefit people and to help shape relatively humane policies and procedures. It seem that the current situation, in which little kids are being separated from their families and are being put into cages, right here in the United States of America, might be a good place to start.

An intimate relationship between two people who are each incapable of true emotions may seem completely out of the realm of possibility. When one partner is a psychopath and the other is not, there may be some hope that a basis for intimacy can be established, particularly if the non-psychopathic individual is willing to make endless compromises and has a strong (if not unrealistic) sense of optimism. It’s just as likely, though, that the optimism will be ill-founded and the psychopath will walk out, leaving behind shattered hopes of a partner who thought that true love would conquer all.

Some of the optimism you might have, if you’re in such a relationship, can stem from your belief that your partner has had a tough life as a child and teen. Your partner’s parents were extremely harsh if not abusive, causing your partner to have to grow up in conditions that could not possibly have fostered the development of a healthy personality. These conditions would, furthermore, have made it difficult for your partner to trust others, even someone as caring as you who shows unconditional love.

When a psychopath becomes involved with another psychopath, however, neither partner is able to provide this type of emotional support. Manipulative and unfeeling, both members of the couple lie whenever it’s convenient to do so, and take advantage of opportunities for personal gain. Their personal goals outweigh their goals as a couple, even if puts the other person at risk of material or emotional loss. According to University of Georgia’s Brandon Weiss and colleagues (2018), citing previous studies, people high in the trait of psychopathy“desire and/or experience less intimacy in their relationships and are more likely to engage in sexual infidelity… psychopathy is negatively associated with overall romantic relationship quality as well as lower relationship satisfaction and commitment” (pp. 239-240).  With all of these factors stacked against them, it’s hard to see how two psychopaths could stay in a relationship very long at all. The research by Weiss et al. was intended to investigate whether this prediction would hold true.

Using a longitudinal design, the University of Georgia researchers followed 172 couples over the first 10 years of marriage. At the beginning of the 10-year period, both partners completed ratings of themselves and their partners on a measure of psychopathy. This procedure allowed Weiss and his coauthors to study “homophily,” or correspondence between psychopathic traits as well as the agreement between self and participant on ratings of psychopathy. Additionally, at the beginning of the study, couples engaged in discussions about conflict in their relationship. Four years later, the couples were once again studied; this time, they completed measures of marital satisfaction. Finally, at the 10-year mark, the researchers obtained information about whether the couple had divorced or not.

This ingenious design made it possible for the researchers to examine the extent to which both self and partner ratings of psychopathy, and their agreement, predicted how well couples would resolve conflict and then subsequently, whether their initial psychopathy ratings of self and other would predict long-term outcomes.

At the outset of the study, there was a small degree of homophily in that self-ratings of psychopathic traits were slightly (but significantly) correlated. Interestingly, as the authors observed based on previous research, homophily in psychopathy is stronger in dating than married couples. While dating, people high in psychopathy may therefore find that they cannot form long-term commitments. Some of them do make it to marriage, but the odds are against them. A second and more striking finding among the married couples was the high self-other correlations observed for both husbands and wives. In other words, if a partner was high in psychopathy, the other partner was able to accurately make this judgement.

Once married, the Weiss et al. study showed that people high in psychopathy start to show relationship problems very early. At that 6-month point of the investigation, wives high in psychopathy were less likely to show positive approaches to conflict resolution such as humor, affection and interest. They were more likely to show the negative conflict approaches of anger and contempt. These negative behaviors during conflict were also reflected in the behaviors of their husbands. As the authors concluded, those high in psychopathy “may not be concerned if their communication approach causes their partner distress, and even if they are, they may be less capable of detecting these affective states and changing course so as to mitigate these experiences, resulting in the more aversive emotional states (more negativity, less positivity) observed here” (p. 246).

Not surprisingly, the problems related to high levels of psychopathic traits early in relationships only worsened over time, but more so when wives rated their husbands as high in psychopathy. The 4-year follow-up showed that wife-rated psychopathy in husbands predicted a steep decline in the husband’s own level of marital satisfaction. It is possible that when wives saw their husbands as unfeeling and impulsive, they found it increasingly difficult to sustain a positive relationship with them, causing the husband to feel unsupported. The authors suggested, further, that men high in psychopathy may just be less interested in maintaining an intimate relationship over time, finding it increasingly less gratifying.

In any case, those early difficulties in conflict resolution strategies seemed to play out over the course of that initial study period. These findings add weight to the “enduring dynamics” pathway of long-term relationships which proposes that whatever difficulties exist in a couples’ interaction patterns in their first months of marriage continue to play out over time. Couples who get along well early in a relationship are likely to do so throughout, and those who don’t will continue to show poor conflict resolution over the course of their time together.  The divorce statistics from this study bear out these proposed mechanisms in that, here as well, it was the wives’ rating of their husbands’ psychopathic traits at the beginning of the study that predicted the ending of the marriage.

This well-conducted investigation shows not only that psychopathy (particularly in men) predicts the evolution of problems in marriages, but that the way you view your partner ultimately influences the course of your relationship. Self- and other-ratings did correspond quite highly to each other, indicating that the belief that your partner has certain personality traits is likely to have some basis in reality. If you’re not yet committed to your partner, the Weiss et al findings suggest you might want to reassess the future of the relationship. If your relationship is one that you would like to see continue, though, it may be advisable to take a good hard look at how you can make a course correction so things don’t come to an what would be an unfortunate end.

You might have read my blog on the topic of why our screens don't make us happier from several weeks ago. I followed that up with this video on my Tech Happy Life YouTube channel. This should be the last video in which I'm covering the territory as in a written blog. So, if you didn't read my written blog or you just prefer some of that content via a video, here it is! I look forward to covering many more topics in future video episodes, and I hope that you will join me for those!

Transcript of Tech Happy Life YouTube Episode 3:

Why Don't Our Screens Make Us Happier?

Hello! This is Tech Happy Life, with Dr. Mike Brooks. In today’s episode we’re going to be talking about why our screens don’t seem to be making us any happier.

The "Before"

Since you’re watching this, you probably remember the “Before,” just like I do. What am I talking about? The “Before” I’m talking about is before we had constant connection to the internet, before we had smartphones, before we had social media. In some ways those seem like simpler times, but we clearly benefit from all of our devices and our access to the internet.

Yet, with all the benefits that or screens provide, they don’t seem to be making us happier. But how can that even be?

Consider a smartphone for just a moment - in this one device, we have access to just about any song we want, at any time, any movie, TV show, book, video game. All of our friends and family we can contact in this one device. If someone had described such a device when we were kids, we would think, “This is a dream come true!”. And if someone had asked, “If you could have such a device, would that make you happier? Would it make other people happier?” - We would have said “Yes!” in such a resounding way! How could it not?

Hedonic Adaptation

One of the reasons our devices might not be making us happier [is] a concept called “hedonic adaptation” or the “hedonic treadmill”. Hedonic adaptation is the idea that when we experience positive events or something negative, that we have a bit of a set point in our happiness, and that soon after we experience the positive or the negative event, our happiness will return to baseline, or its set point. Consider when you got a new car, or a new handbag, or a new TV, a new smartphone - how happy did it really make you? How quickly did you return to normal? So it’s an idea that despite the benefits and the power of the technologies we have, we’ve just gotten used to them.

Pros and Cons Cancel Each Other Out

Another reason that our screens may not be making us a lot happier is because the pros and cons of our screens in a way cancel each-other out. For instance, let’s take a look at our social connection, with our smartphones and our social media, we have access to our friends and family, so that’s a positive. However, through social media, that can foster social comparison which can be a negative on the way we feel, and then also cyber-bullying.

Then if we take something like productivity, there are many apps and tools that we have to enhance productivity. We have access to all the information we could ever want. However, on the computer we can easily get distracted and go down rabbit holes, and then that interferes with our productivity. And then we have the entertainment options which I have described before - the songs, the music, the games, wonderful options - yet on the negative there are so many options it can be overwhelming and it can be hard to decide what to pick. And then, we can spend so much time on these things that it can interfere with things like exercise, sleep, and our in-person connections - and our productivity.

Sleep Deprivation

Another reason our screens might not be making us a lot happier - and this is a really big, important one, and I can’t emphasize it enough - is sleep deprivation. So there’s a lot of research that shows that all of this time and all these options we have to look at entertainment and be busy on our screens is encroaching on our need for sleep. Now, our need for sleep hasn’t changed in tens of thousands of years. We still need about 8 hours of sleep as an adult, and teenagers need 9 or 10. And basically, we’re not getting it. Sleep deprivation can wreak havoc on our physical and emotional wellbeing,  and that’s from staying up too late, and also the blue light from our devices suppresses melatonin, and melatonin is an important hormone involved in the sleep-wake cycles. And for children and teens,sleep is particularly important for physical and cognitive development. There’s research to show that kid’s brains do not actually grow as well as they should if they’re suffering a sleep deficit. Not only that, there’s a huge amount of research to show that our physical and emotional well-being take a huge hit when we’re suffering from sleep deprivation.

Loss of In-Person Connections

Now the last reason I want to go into is the loss of in-person connections. So there’s a lot of research to show that a good chunk of our happiness comes from the health of our in-person relationships. And, that isn’t just verbal communication. If we think about it, it’s touch, kisses, caresses, hugs, the warmth of a smile. All those things are something we can’t get through our devices, not even with emojis.

So if you think of - you might have heard of “attachment theory” - but he way we attach a parent to an infant is so critical to their long-term development and that’s the touch, the caress, the holding of infants, the smiles. All those things are built-in. But sometimes our eyes are on our devices, more than they’re on our kids. And if it’s too much, then what can happen is that can interfere with their development and their overall happiness.

What to Do About It?

So these are some of the reasons why our screens might not be making us much happier at a societal level. Now, as a parent, at this point you might be wondering “What am I supposed to do about it?”.  Well there’s good news. So, my colleague Dr. John Lasser and I, we developed a model that we call the “Tech Happy Life Model”. It is designed to help you and your family get more of the benefits of technology while minimizing some of those negatives. In the next episodes, we’ll be taking a deep dive into that model so that you’ll get some practical strategies on what you and your family can do.

So, this has been Tech Happy Life with Dr. Mike Brooks, and I hope to see you next week.

Source: Satyatiwari/Pixabay

Today most mothers and fathers face the juggling aspects of work and family life trying to achieve that ever-elusive work-life balance. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, has his own view: He thinks work-life balance is a “debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off. And the reality is, if I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy.”

However you view it, working and raising children is a struggle. An analysis of 350 studies, involving more than 250,000 subjects by researchers at the University of Georgia, confirmed that both fathers and mothers deal with work-family conflict.

Most mothers work outside of the home these days. According to Pew Research Center, “seven-in-ten moms with kids younger than 18 were in the labor force in 2014, up from 47% in 1975.” Consequently, fathers are more involved with their children than the archetypal American dad, a la Ward Cleaver from “Leave it to Beaver” or Don Draper from “Mad Men.” The Pew Research Center tells us that today’s dads spend almost three times the hours a week tending to their offspring as compared to dads in 1965. They’re involved in the childrearing from the beginning, including reading pregnancy and baby-care books. But, are mothers or fathers more content with their dual roles and why?

Who is Happier?

The Boston College Center for Work and Family points out that most dads—be they Baby Boomers, Generation Xers or Millennials—feel split between their families and jobs, even though they want to care for children as much as their spouses do. The researchers note a refreshing shift from the dads of eras past: “The old stereotype of fathers being career-centric parents and somewhat emotionally detached from family does not describe today’s fathers.”

The culture of individual workplaces is crucial to whether families feel balanced, but parental leave still favors mothers. Researchers at the University of Michigan and California State University Channel Islands found that both parents see work-life balance as necessary. Yet, when men’s workplaces are not flexible, the researchers say, “These sanctions devalue men who engage in activities synonymous with femininity, discourage men from using leave and flexible work accommodations to help carry the childcare load, and reinforce the traditional gender division of labor that serves as the basis of employers’ stereotypes about mothers.”

A recent article at Fatherly.com underscores the predicament fathers face: “While paid leave increases for dads, many don't take it”…“men feel pressured not to use this benefit.” This in spite of the fact that the average amount of paid paternity leave time increased from four weeks in 2015 to 11 weeks in 2017, according to Fatherly.com data.

Although more speak up for equitable father benefits and fathers are more involved with their children—in terms of parents’ happiness and wellbeing, it turns out that mothers are more stressed, less happy, and more tired than fathers. An American Sociological Review report notes that the differences, though small, can be attributed to the types of activities mothers and fathers engage in with their children. For example, the authors of the report concluded that “mothers spend more time with children in relatively onerous activities like basic childcare, childcare management, cooking, and cleaning, whereas fathers spend more time in activities high in enjoyment and low in stress, like play and leisure.”

In spite of the frustration of parenting’s push and pull between needing to be at work and wanting more time with their children, both mothers and fathers enjoy being parents, but there is difference between how each experience his or her parental role and time spent with their children. Mothers are still far more likely to engage in the drudgery and more traditional aspects of parenting that their mothers and grandmothers assumed. Until that changes, dads will have an edge on overall happiness and contentment.

Copyright @2018 by Susan Newman

Source: NetZeroMax

In my first post for Changeable, I described some of the foundational thinking behind the Collaborative Problem Solving approach that my colleagues and I teach. I pointed out that when someone exhibits challenging behavior, we typically resort to conventional methods aimed at motivating better behavior from them, safe in the assumption that what is getting in their way is a lack of motivation. Motivational procedures can make the possible more possible, but they do not make the impossible possible. if challenging behavior is the result of a lack of skill, not will, as I suggested in my first blog, then relying on rewards and consequences might be barking up the wrong therapeutic tree! However, I sometimes find myself less concerned about the fact that motivational procedures don’t work with the most challenging behavior and more concerned about their side-effects. Not only may motivational procedures not work if challenging behavior is caused by skills deficits, but I often see them make matters worse.

There are two primary dangers to focusing on external reinforcers like incentives or rewards and consequences:

1.     Decreasing internal drive

2.     Damage to trust and self-esteem

 A very clear finding from thousands of studies in this area is that the more you rely on extrinsic rewards to motivate behavior, the more you eat away at a person’s intrinsic drive to achieve those very goals. I have seen this time and time again in my work with some pretty tough children and adolescents, and Daniel Pink and others have described what this looks like in the workplace for us adults. The more we rely on a carrot and stick approach, the more dependent we get on constantly producing shiny new objects for people to be motivated by. In the worst-case scenario, over-reliance on extrinsic rewards actually encourages unethical behavior when people we are trying to motivate become focused solely on how to get the rewards as opposed to the goals we are trying to get them to achieve with those rewards in the first place. Much research has confirmed the negative correlation between extrinsic reinforcement and intrinsic motivation. The more we try to incentivize someone to do something, the less internal drive they will feel.

A related side-effect of over-using external motivators, is something my 101-year-old grandfather describes best. He often says: If you give a dog name, eventually they will answer to it. This is his way of describing how when we treat someone as though they are lazy, unmotivated or just not trying hard enough, that we should not be surprised when over time they start to look like, and talk like, and act like someone who is lazy, unmotivated and not trying hard enough. I like to think that none of us would want to consciously try to make someone else feel as if there are lazy, unmotivated and simply not trying hard, but the cold reality is that whenever we use reinforcers to try to motivate better behavior we are indeed sending the not so subtle message that we think things would go better if they just tried harder. This is a dangerous message to send, and I have seen its impact firsthand in homes, schools, treatment facilities, and workplaces all around the world. When someone is constantly subjected to external reinforcers, they really have no choice but to come to one of two conclusions: (1) either the people trying to motivate me are right – I must not really be trying very hard; or (2) the people trying to motivate me are missing the boat and don’t understand me at all. I am not sure which conclusion is more damaging – to one’s self-esteem or trust in others.

As a parent, teacher, clinician, manager or leader, I hope this blog gives you pause before you design your next sticker-chart, demerit system or employee incentive program. In my next blog, I have some good news. There is a whole field devoted to how to foster that elusive thing called internal drive. So if you want to foster internal drive and steer clear of the side-effects of external reinforcers I described above, I will walk through what to focus on instead. Together, we will dive into the fascinating field of what is called self-determination theory to highlight what actually does foster sustained intrinsic drive. Stay tuned!

It has become a sign of legitimacy to call a personal problem “medical.”  This aims to distinguish the problem from those of morality or character.  It implies both that the problem is serious, and that it is unbidden and largely out of the suffer’s control.  Unfortunately, it isn’t clear what exactly qualifies as “medical,” so this label serves more as a rhetorical device than a scientific finding.

Alcoholism is the paradigm and perhaps least controversial example.  Through the 19th Century, alcoholism was variously declared a disease, or a matter of will and character.  The disease model gained prominence in the 1930s and 40s with the “powerlessness” identified in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as researcher E.M. Jellinek’s descriptions of progressive stages and subtypes of alcoholism.  The American Medical Association declared alcoholism an illness in 1956 and has endorsed the disease model ever since, partly as a strategy to ensure insurance reimbursement for treatment.

The model expanded to include other abused substances with the formation of Narcotics Anonymous in the 1950s, and as a result of widespread recreational drug use in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The specialty of addiction medicine was first established in 1973 in California.  The American Society of Addiction Medicine now states: “Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry.”  Proponents of the disease model of addiction cite many documented brain changes and a plausible neuropathology, as well as the presence of genetic risk factors, cognitive and emotional changes, impaired executive functioning, and disability and premature death.  The model purportedly destigmatizes addicts — they are no longer “bad” or “weak” people — thereby making it more acceptable for them to seek treatment.

Nonetheless, the disease model of addiction remains controversial.  In addition to the existence of alternative models, the disease model itself has been criticized.  Some believe it removes personal choice and responsibility, and actually contributes to the problem of addiction.  Others cite surveys of American physicians who consider alcoholism more a social or psychological problem — even a “human weakness” — than a disease.  Critics note that about 75% of those who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, and that the most popular and recommended treatment, Alcoholics Anonymous, is a fellowship and spiritual path, not a medical treatment.

Behavioral addictions to gambling, sex, pornography, the internet, video games, and food are described in language that explicitly parallels addiction to alcohol and drugs.  The same brain pathways are implicated.  Accordingly, these problems are called medical as well.

Addiction is not the only domain that has been declared, often somewhat stridently, as medical.   Depression has been deemed a medical issue for several decades now, using much the same rationale.  The push to frame all psychiatry as neurobiology is a larger matter.  But here, too, documented brain changes, genetics, and characteristic signs and symptoms underlie a rhetoric that may, or may not, decrease stigma and facilitate treatment.  Moreover, a number of other behaviors and traits, formerly considered bad habits or personality quirks, are now reified as discrete psychiatric disorders (not the same as diseases, but close): shyness is now social anxiety disorder, misbehaving kids have oppositional defiant disorder, and so forth.  What are the risks in subsuming more and more of human experience into nosological categories?

One risk is that medicalizing problems may hide political or other bias.  The most shocking historical examples include drapetomania in the U.S. and the misuse of psychiatry in the former Soviet Union.  Yet even well-meaning efforts to highlight a social problem, give it gravitas, and impart a clinical, impersonal air to one’s opinions can result in this sort of over-reach.  Examples include the “politics is part of pediatrics” antiwar stance of famed physician-author Benjamin Spock, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group that opposes nuclear arms from a medical perspective.  Most recently, some mental health professionals have published impassioned statements characterizing President Trump’s behavior in medical/psychiatric terms.  Such statements have no medical purpose: they neither clarify Mr. Trump’s behavior (which is well known to all), nor change it.  Their effect, if any, is solely on electoral politics.  Medical language can thus amount to little more than grandstanding.

A related risk of medicalization is that it may lurch toward absurdity.  Suicide, that profoundly personal matter studied by poets and philosophers as well as scientists, also may be deemed a disease.  This confuses disease with symptom — as if “headache disease,” for example, were touted as a new diagnostic entity.  No doubt there will soon be measurable brain findings that distinguish suicidal people from non-suicidal people; no doubt such findings, too, will soon distinguish the state of having a headache from the state of not having one.  In this nascent era of functional brain imaging, is it sufficient to see something “light up in the brain” to call it a medical problem?

Doing mental arithmetic is detectable by fMRI.  Is math a medical issue?

A plainly medical disease such as diabetes results from nature and nurture, genetics and environment.  What makes it medical are not its causes.  The effect of diabetes on the human body, the fact that it historically has been treated by physicians, and to a lesser degree the nature of its treatment make it medical.  Addiction also appears to result from genetics and environment, to have consistent effects on the human body, and for a few decades at least, has been treated by physicians.  Its treatment, though, is mostly non-medical in the usual sense of the term, i.e., not pharmacological or surgical.  There are strong behavioral and psychological aspects to addiction, and often sociocultural ones as well.  It is thus not surprising that its status as medical remains, to some, a matter of debate.  However, by the time we get to war, nuclear arms, a heretofore unimagined presidency, or suicide, we are talking about matters that have no consistent findings in the human body, are not historically treated by physicians, and respond almost exclusively to non-medical solutions.  The phrase “medical issue” can’t stretch to cover this territory, no matter how fervently physicians would like to weigh in.

In the future, more and more brain function will be open to scrutiny.  As our brains mediate all human behavior, advancements in functional imaging and similar technology may tempt us to declare any and all products of the human mind “medical issues.”  Problems such as prejudice, racism, violence — or, from other viewpoints, liberalism, collectivism, and the like — may be claimed as the physician’s to treat.  It will be hard to resist this temptation; doctors like to fix things.  But the cost of succumbing is to reduce medicine to threadbare rhetoric, weakening our moral status as healers of the human body.

©2018 Steven Reidbord MD.  All rights reserved.

It has come to this: child abuse is now an official policy of the US federal government. I am speaking about the immigration policy known as Zero Tolerance.

Under Zero Tolerance, instituted in May, 2018, families presenting at the border without proper papers, including those following established protocol to seek asylum, are charged as criminals. The parents are detained, and because their children cannot legally be imprisoned with them, they are separated from their parents and entrusted to the tender mercies of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). These are children as young as toddlers, literally taken from their parents by force.

The government assures us that there is no intent to harm these children. They are merely the collateral damage of Zero Tolerance. How many children? What has happened to them? Will they ever see their parents again? No one knows for sure. ORR does not give out information about the numbers or whereabouts of these children.

Source: PrazisImages/Shutterstock

Whether or not harm is intended, it is beyond dispute that separation from parents and caregivers is traumatic to children. Numerous studies, beginning with Anna Freud’s observations of children separated from their parents during the London Blitz, attest to the long-term harms of separation. Most recently, the well-known ACES survey, conducted jointly by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente, documented the consequences to both physical and mental health of what they named adverse childhood experiences. Along with physical and sexual abuse, any prolonged separation from a parent in childhood, whether because the parent was physically or mentally ill, or because the parent was incarcerated, was powerfully related to many of the ten leading causes of death: heart, lung, and liver disease, as well as alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide attempts.1

When hurt or frightened, children cry for their parents. The cry of a frightened child has a powerful effect on mothers and other caretakers, who ordinarily respond by enveloping the child in their arms. When the child’s separation cry is not answered, fear magnifies into terror. This is the attachment system, evolved for human survival, first described by John Bowlby,2 and since confirmed by contemporary investigators. We are all hard-wired to seek the embrace of familiar caretakers in response to danger. The reciprocal response of caretakers, to comfort a frightened child, is equally hard-wired, as most parents can attest. On the foundation of secure attachment is built our ability to form trusting relationships and our basic sense of security in the world.

Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association have condemned this policy. According to a statement by Altha Stewart, M.D., President of the American Psychiatric Association, “Children depend on their parents for safety and support. Any forced separation is highly stressful for children and can cause lifelong trauma, as well as an increased risk of mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The United Nations human rights office has called for an immediate halt to the practice of separating children from migrant families, calling it a “serious violation of the rights of the child.” (The US is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.)

Zero Tolerance is a policy that will harm its perpetrators as well as its victims. This is a classic example of what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton famously called an “atrocity-producing situation.”3 Members of the border patrol who tear crying children from the arms of their parents may themselves suffer lasting consequences. The rationalization of “following orders” will not help. Long-term follow-up studies of Vietnam War veterans find that some of the most severe and persistent cases of posttraumatic stress disorder occur among soldiers who harmed civilians or prisoners.4 Children taken from their parents are both civilians and prisoners.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court, calling for an immediate halt to this policy and for reunification of families. Mental health professionals, who understand the harms inflicted by separating children from their families, should similarly call for an immediate end to the policy of Zero Tolerance.

I’d known Jeff (not his real name) for many years, as a client and as a friend, but I’d never seen him so thrown. I could feel his fear, his sense of uncertainty. And it was with good reason.

Jeff was the head of sales for a company whose product was, more or less, impossible to sell. His company, Golden Global (also not its real name), is an active fund manager. Active funds invest in particular stocks that they think will do well, as opposed to passive funds, which track an established index, such as the S&P 500. Today many investors are pulling their money out of active funds and putting it into passive ones. In January 2017 alone, investors withdrew $13.6 billion from active funds and invested $77 billion in passive ones.

It makes sense. In addition to charging dramatically lower fees, passive has outperformed active 92% of the time over the past 15 years. Like the rest of the industry, Golden Global’s fund performance has lagged.

Jeff was facing ridiculous odds even if his only goal was to keep cash from flowing out of Golden Global’s investments. But that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to increase total investment in Golden Global’s strategic products. By $2 billion.

So Jeff and his team were working harder than they ever had before, going to the clients they knew, making a case that had previously worked for their funds, selling their hearts out doing the things that they’d had success with in the past.

But it wasn’t the past. They were looking for their lost keys in the same pockets they’d checked again and again. Their frenzy of activity was getting them nowhere.

Here’s the dilemma: The only way you can solve an impossible challenge is through innovation and experimentation. But fear blocks innovation and experimentation. Meanwhile Jeff — and his entire team — was terrified. They feared falling short of their goal and losing their bonuses. Ultimately, they feared losing their jobs.

So here’s the question: How can you inspire your team to achieve the impossible when you yourself are feeling afraid and uncertain about how — and whether — you can achieve it?

When Jeff and I first spoke, he thought he had a sales problem. But that wasn’t quite right. What Jeff really had was a leadership problem. He needed to inspire people to loosen up, try new things, and experiment. He needed to get people thinking out of the box at the precise moment that they were huddling together in a small corner of it.

How do you get out of this conundrum?

Build Emotional Courage

Your first step is to build your emotional courage — your ability to act thoughtfully, strategically, and powerfully while feeling afraid.

Why not just overcome your fear? That’s what most people try to do (and what many coaches and therapists try to help people do), but it’s a huge mistake.

In our conversations, Jeff called himself a coward, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Jeff wasn’t a coward. He was a normal person in a scary situation. Actually, he was an incredibly brave person in a scary situation. In other words, Jeff’s fear was appropriate. So, not feeling the fear was not a smart, or realistic, option.

But he was overwhelmed by his fear, and it was driving him to push his people in a way that kept them smaller, taking fewer risks, and staying stuck. Which is why emotional courage is so critical.

Jeff and I spent some time increasing his capacity to feel the fear without losing himself in it. I asked him where in his body he felt it. What did it feel like? Did it move? He felt it as a knot in his stomach, as a constriction in his throat, as a pain in his heart. We stayed with those feelings and watched them shift, move, lighten. He learned the critical skill of feeling the fear without becoming it.

At which point he could feel scared without acting scared. He wasn’t ignoring his fear — he still felt scared — but it didn’t control him. That was a critical move toward showing up as an inspirational leader.

Focus on the Process

We’re often told (including by me) that we should focus on the outcomes we want to achieve (for example, driving to a sales target). And we should. Usually.

But when we’re scared or intimidated or pursuing something so big that we don’t even really know where to begin, we need to focus on the process that will get to the outcome. A good process will guide you along the path to get you where you want to go, and you can follow a good process no matter what you’re feeling.

The next thing we did was shift Jeff’s mindset from sell more to sell differently. Small change, massive shift.

“Sell more” is outcome-focused, while “sell differently” is process-focused. It answers the question: What should I do, day in, day out, that will get me to that outcome?

“Sell differently” was precisely the prompt that he and his people needed in order to redirect their energy from working harder to working more strategically.

Communicate Clearly

Once you bolster your emotional courage and target your focus, you need to direct the attention of your team.

Jeff had sent some emails that were meant to inspire but had the opposite effect. He basically kept telling people they needed to step it up, work harder, and be accountable (for example, sell more).

We asked the question: How can he communicate, as a leader, in an environment of fear so that his people are inspired to seek creative solutions to a sticky, impossible problem?

After reading a number of his emails, I wrote out the simplest structure I could think of to redirect the energy of his communication, offering a four-part outline:

• Vision. People need to have a clear sense of where they are headed. You should articulate the vision so that it’s succinct, simple, palpable, and clear.
• Empathy. People need to know that you are not out of touch and that you can feel what they are feeling. You do not need to drag this part out — it should be short but connected and heartfelt. This is where you can also own your part in the challenge.
• Direction. People need to see the path that they can believe will get them to the ultimate objective, the vision. Like the vision, your direction should be succinct, simple, palpable, and clear.
• Proof. People need a reason to believe they can walk the path, so you should offer proof for your direction and optimism. You should be specific, be personal, and reflect the work that the team is already doing. This will build your team’s confidence.

Here’s one example of how it played out in Jeff’s communication to his team:

“I am excited about what this business could look like when we share ideas and take some risks in selling differently. We do not need investors to put all their money with us — we need them to put a portion of their money with us, and it’s a good idea for them to do it — we are an important part of a well-rounded portfolio and we’re good at what we do.” (Vision)

“We obviously have serious product challenges. The outflows are disheartening. This is a scary time for all of us, and I realize that I have contributed to that in my own communications. I’m sorry for that.” (Empathy)

“Doing things differently is our path to success requires that we take some risks. Our opportunity is in expanding our client base, finding those who see our offerings as solutions to the exposure they have in the broader market, and sharing the compelling story we see. I don’t have all the answers — but I believe in you and, together, we can make it happen.” (Direction)

“There are already a lot of great ideas — and we’ve made tremendous progress — that shows what we can do when we focus on taking risks and changing our approach. Some things I’m hearing include: Alex streamlined non-sales meetings and added one weekly sales meeting to share ideas. Danielle’s team analyzed what had been successful, and it was a very high-touch sales process, which is hard with 200 clients per territory, so they narrowed it to 60. That’s a big, risky change — which is precisely what we need to be doing. And when Michelle sees that a client doesn’t understand the strategy, she shifts to education about the space rather than doubling down on the sale. This is just some of what I’m hearing, and it shows what we can do when we take risks to do things differently.” (Proof)

Once you’ve got the four-part outline down, your job is to repeat it. All the time. Shifting behavior in others requires repetition. You may become bored with it — and you may feel that you’re overdoing it —but use your newly developed emotional courage to feel those feelings and keep repeating yourself anyway.

The result? It’s not over yet. But the changes that Jeff and his team were looking for have started in dramatic ways. Remember their “impossible” goal to increase total investment in Golden Global’s strategic products by $2 billion? When we last spoke, they were already close to $1 billion.

Originally published at Harvard Business Review.

Source: Smith609 Creative Commons via Wikimedia

Human beings are a social species.  As a result, much of your behavior is affected by what other people are doing.  You are more likely to exercise if you hang out with other people who exercise.  You are more likely to smoke if you spend time with other smokers.  You are more likely to succeed in school if your friends are also doing well in school.

Some of these effects come from the way people choose the groups they belong to.  If academic achievement is important to you, then you may look to be with other people with the same values.  Some of it also reflects goal contagion.  When you see someone engaging in an activity, it makes you more likely to want to do the same thing.

Does mere membership in a group matter? To what degree are these behaviors affected just by your belief that you are part of a particular group?  And, while we are at it, is this just something that happens to adolescents and adults, or is the behavior of younger children affected by the groups they belong to?

These questions were explored in a paper in the May, 2018 issue of Psychological Science by Sabine Doebel and Yuko Munakata. 

These studies used the classic marshmallow task as a measure of self-control.  In the marshmallow task, a 3- to 4-year-old is seated before a marshmallow on a plate.  The experimenter tells the child that they can eat the marshmallow, but if they wait while the experimenter leaves the room and gets another one, they can have two marshmallows when the experimenter gets back.  The length of time the child waits before eating the marshmallow is a measure of self-control.  The experimenter stays out of the room for 15 minutes, so the maximum amount of time a child has to wait is 15 minutes.

In one study, the children were assigned to one of three groups.  In all groups, participants were told that they are now a member of the green team.  They are given a green shirt to wear and shown pictures of other members of the green team.  They are also shown pictures of a second group of children with yellow shirts on who are on the yellow team.

In the control condition, children are not given any other information about the green and yellow teams.

In the Green-waits condition, children are told that members of both teams did the marshmallow test and that the members of the green team all waited for the experimenter to return, while the members of the yellow team did not.

In the Yellow-waits condition, children are told that members of both teams did the marshmallow test and that the members of the yellow team all waited for the experimenter to return, while the members of the green team did not.

In this study, children in the Green-waits condition waited much longer (and were about twice as likely to wait the full 15 minutes) than children in the Yellow-waits condition or the control condition.  So, believing that you are part of a group that has self-control affects your performance in the marshmallow task. 

A second study in this paper ran the Green-waits and Yellow-waits conditions again and observe the same pattern of results.  In addition, children in this study were told about two other children who were not part of a team.  One child waited for the experimenter to return before eating a marshmallow, while the other at the marshmallow before the experimenter returned.  The children were asked several questions to express how much they liked each child. 

The children in the Green-waits condition were more likely to prefer the child who waited for the experimenter to return than the children in the Yellow-waits condition.  This finding suggests that children come to value a behavior that distinguishes their group from the other group. 

This finding is interesting, because it adds a nice wrinkle to the influence of group membership on behaviors that require self-control.  It suggests that just having an identity as a member of a group can affect self-control and that this can happen even in fairly young children.

I awoke to the sound of children crying, sobbing, and begging for their parents. This morning, I guess that a lot of us who have newsfeeds for alarms had a similar experience. Oddly enough, the crying for their parents somehow managed not to be the only disturbing sound in the sequence—but I’ll come to that other part in a minute. If you haven’t heard it: This is the noise that some of the 2000 children—some of whom are toddlers--make when they are forcibly separated from their parents at the Mexico/ USA border by immigration officials.

Children taken away are held for an average of 51 days at an Office of Refugee Resettlement before finding a sponsor in the USA.  (1) I’m sure that they are fed, clothed, and sheltered. However, this does not constitute the limit of a child’s needs. This should not be news, and there really should be no confusion about this. The effects of deprivation of attachment—because that is what we are talking about here and that’s what you have been listening to--is one of the most heavily researched areas in behavioral science. Furthermore, we have an integrated picture of its effects from comparative biology, neuroscience, genetics, developmental psychology, and psychiatry. We know what happens to separated children in the short, medium, and long terms. None of it is pretty.

So—let’s warm up by starting with something that is pretty.

Source: lovemeow

Have you ever wondered why so many animals are cute? And not just cute to us—cute to other animals who are not even their parents? (2) This cuteness has a technical term—altriciality. And we can measure it. Large head in relation to the body. Large eyes in relation to the head. Small mouth. Squashed-in features. Prominent brow. It is a set of features that elicit care-giving (along with that "aw" feeling) in parental members of the species. And sometimes of other species. The technical term for such signals is “releasers” (3) and the fact that the cuteness ones are pretty much common to all mammals (and some other classes of animals) tells us something important: It’s a very old set of mechanisms. At least 100 million years old. That’s deep in us. Deep in us before we even became us. This predates humans by a very long time.

Mammals vary in the amount of helplessness they show. For example, a baby horse can run within minutes, a baby human takes several years. But—for all mammals—it's built in deep that they need parental care. All mammals are to some extent social, and we are the most social of them all. To build that sociality the young of each species—but most especially our species--needs someone they can trust.

This may be common sense (although I’m starting to wonder how common it is) but in any case, scientists didn’t always know this. In the early days of psychology, the two dominant theories of child attachment were the behaviourists and the Freudians. (4) Both of them got child attachment equally wrong. The two schools of thought were in (incorrect) agreement that the love children had for parents was “cupboard” love—arising from a primary need to be fed. It turns out that the cupboard love theory is simply wrong, and not just with humans. All mammals have a primary need for love from a trusted care-giver. And this is over and above the needs for food, shelter and the rest. The evidence for this came from two sources, to begin with, but over the years we have confirmed it to a degree almost unparalleled in behavioural science.

If there is anything close to being an axiom in developmental psychology it would be this: Children need love. Love is not some enjoyable add-on to life. Absence of love produces measurable effects immediately on a child. In the medium to long term neglect can cause effects so profound that they are visible to the naked eye.

Source: Perry & Pollard (1997) Proceedings from the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting (New Orleans). shared under fair use rules

These are brains showing the effects of extreme privation—a child with no social interaction whatsoever for years. But well before we get to that stage, we can observe serious emotional and behavioural damage. What were the two sources of our knowledge about this that I mentioned? One was a (behaviourist) scientist called Harry Harlow, who accidentally undermined the behaviourist take on attachment with a series of famous experiments on social primates. (6) The second was John Bowlby, a Freudian who found evidence to undermine Freud’s version of the cupboard love theory. (7)

It belongs to only a few behavioural scientists to conceive of an experimental demonstration so iconic that a single picture gives a sense of the discovery. Harlow has that distinction. Raising Rhesus monkeys with surrogate mothers—some of whom delivered milk and some who were soft to the touch he put paid to the idea of “cupboard love” forever. When stressed, where would the young monkey go for comfort? Every time, it was to the soft cuddly “mother”.

Source: Behavioral Biology, 12(3), 273-296. Shared under fair use rules

Harlow had discovered the need for contact comfort in mammals. Put simply: Cuddling those we trust. If we don’t have it, we get unwell. Some of Harlow’s later experiments got even more gruesome. Surrogate “mothers” who rejected their offspring with blunted spikes or compressed air blasts. The baby rhesus monkeys would keep trying to get comfort from these rejecting surrogates and the constant rejection eventually drove them insane. If these damaged infants eventually became parents themselves, they would pass on this brutality to their own offspring:

"Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real  monkey mothers were. Having no social experience themselves, they were incapable of appropriate social interaction. One mother held her baby's face to the floor and chewed off his feet and fingers. Another crushed her baby's head. Most of them simply ignored their offspring”

So—that’s one strand of evidence of the need for love in primates—of which we are one. What about direct evidence from humans? In this case, a major figure is John Bowlby. A Freudian by training, he became dissatisfied with the Freudian explanations of child attachment as cupboard love. In his clinical practice he had documented dozens of delinquent boys who had all gone through some degree of maternal deprivation—separation from the mother during a critical period of childhood. In its most extreme form these responses could amount to what he called “affectionless psychopathy”; and violent behaviors such as fighting, theft, and arson. Bowlby’s emphasis was on the mother-child dyad, and our later research has expanded this to include fathers, and other care-givers. But, he had the essence of the idea: A child needs trustworthy bonds to fully develop socially.

Later research has focussed on the effects of much more limited separation of child from a trusted-care giver in day care. The effects of this are nothing like so profound as what Bowlby (or, gawd- forbid, Harlow) showed. But, even here, measurable social effects like aggression and depression (mostly short-term) are detectable in many children who undergo prolonged separation from their care-givers. And day care is just that: Care for a day. The parent (or parents) are back at the end of that day. They are not pulled apart for weeks or months, or even for good, and in threatening circumstances. People in day care centres, well—they care.

Which brings me neatly to the other disturbing sound in that clip. The sounds of children experiencing the early stages of deprivation are distressing enough. Those sounds are designed to be distressing—millions of years of evolution have made children’s sounds of distress hard for normal humans to ignore. And this is for the obvious reasons that I started off with. Small humans are terribly fragile, and obviously needy. That’s why I found the other sound in the clip in some ways more distressing still. Play it again if you need to (and can stand it). I’m sure they are not all like this (please gawd, tell me I’m right about this) but at 1 minute in that’s the sound of a border patrol agent laughing at the distress, and saying “What an orchestra, I guess they need a conductor”. Hilarious. That’s not someone I would trust to leave anyone’s child in the care of.

As more and more high profile men—such as Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Matt Lauer—fall victim to the #MeToo movement, many media stories focus on the huge impact sexual harassment has on women’s paychecks and chances for advancement.

But the mental health consequences for women can also be dire. Not only can they experience high stress and often depression, but their very idea of selfhood can be undermined. Women’s sense of authenticity is often damaged as they try to cope with unwanted sexual advances. They must change their behavior to try to minimize such advances.

Women face a dilemma that few men ever have to confront. While being urged to be authentic, to be true to the person they really are, to be open and honest, women also confront the need to dissemble, hide, and pretend.

“Women aren’t always true to themselves,” notes the Center for Creative Leadership. “In a vain attempt to live up to organizational norms and expectations, their behaviors sometimes go against their own values. But it’s not easy being a phony. It takes a lot of energy to behave in ways that are out of sync with our true values, priorities, hopes, characteristics, and style.”

Unfortunately, too often the norms in the workplace have been that powerful men are allowed to be predatory and get away with bad behavior.

If women protest, they are grilled about their own actions. What were you wearing? What were you drinking? Why did you wait to come forward?

If women try to just “grin and bear it,” they not only face negative consequences, but they also lose out on the mental health benefits of being authentic.

A study in the Journal of Counseling Psychology by a team of British researchers examined the effect of authenticity on people’s lives. They found that, in general, the more a person acted authentically, the more likely he or she was to be happy and experience subjective and psychological well-being. So, harassment can create a powerful lose-lose health scenario for women.

The media and entertainment industries have been the most visible targets of the movement against sexual harassment. But just as problematic is the world of high tech, where industry leaders often see themselves as the “good guys “ of the corporate world. (Don’t be evil) is Google’s motto.

In the tech industry and the startup community, the level of sexual harassment and its health consequences for women are very high. In First Round Capital’s 2017 survey of venture-backed startup founders, half of founders told of personal experience with sexual harassment.

“Over 50% of the 869 founders who took the survey have been or know someone who’s been sexually harassed in the workplace. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the results to this question were extremely gendered — 78% of female founders said they've been sexually harassed or know someone who’s been sexually harassed, compared to 48% of male founders.

They also split on public perception of the issue. 70% of female founders said sexual harassment in the industry is still underreported vs. 35% of male founders. And men were 4 times more likely than women to say the media's overblown the issue (22% vs. 5%).”

Women trying to find money for startups are especially vulnerable, because men hold the purse strings, and without their money, nothing happens.

Such women told CNN horror stories. One woman looking for funds from a German investor said she got an email from the man saying how attractive he thought she was. He added, “I will not leave Berlin until I have sex with you. Deal?” Another woman in the U.S. was meeting with a potential investor and remembers,  “I felt my leg being grabbed under the table and I thought, ‘Holy Moley, this is real.’”

Women face a dilemma that few men ever have to confront. While being urged to be authentic, to be true to the person they really are, to be open and honest, women also confront the need to dissemble, hide, and pretend.

The voices in the many Me-too hashtags underscore the heavy price women pay for compromising their authenticity in order to keep their jobs, build their careers, and pay the bills.

Joan Cook, a psychologist and associate professor at Yale University, says that survivors are often scared or angry, “but keep their mouths shut, in fear of negative consequences such as not being believed. However, “Keeping quiet doesn’t make the degradation go away. For many years and decades, survivors live in silence and disgrace, thinking they were the only ones. That there was something terribly unique about them that caused this to occur, that they somehow brought it on themselves; they stew in a spiral of self-loathing.” Nor does the sense of being inauthentic easily disappear.

Many victims tell similar stories of having to forego their authenticity as they put on a smiley face and dealt with unwanted sexual advances.

And powerful men can often just pay off women who complain, reaching agreements that gag their female victims.

For example, gymnast Aly Raisman won six Olympic medals, three of them gold, and she (along with many others) recently went public about being sexually abused by the team doctor while competing on the U.S. national team.

She told Sixty Minutes, “I was in denial. I was like, I don’t— I don’t even know what to think. It— you don’t wanna let yourself believe but, you know, I am— I am a victim of— sexual abuse. Like, it’s really not an easy thing to let yourself believe that.”

She struggled to keep her authentic self—the Olympic medal winner—intact, but finally had to face her stress and anxiety as a victim of abuse.

Kathryn Minshew, the founder of the career website The Muse, told the New Yorker about her encounter with an investor when she tried to raise money for the site.

“We went to sit, and the next thing I knew he was so close to me.”  She wound up wedged between the arm of a sofa and the man as he leaned into her. She left, rattled and knowing her behavior had not represented her authentic self.  “It’s funny, because I think if you had asked me, ‘What would you do in that situation?,’ I would have said that I would have been so much more badass and assertive,” she said. “But then it happened . . .”

Not only do women like Minshew experience stress from having to change behavior to discourage harassers, but they also lose the positive benefits that acting and feeling authentic can deliver.

And, speaking out when you are looking for venture capital has real risks.

Susan Ho and Leiti Hsu, cofounders of the travel startup Journy, were concerned about going public with their sexual harassment by a major Silicon Valley investor.

"When you talk about sexual harassment in tech or in any other industry, it's like dropping a nuclear bomb on your career," Ho said.  "That fear of retaliation, of it impacting your business in some way, is so, so real. We have a financial responsibility to do what's best for our business, and if speaking out is going to harm our business, is that OK?

The question remains: Will the rash of media stories that have led to the firing or resignation of powerful men be just a flash in the pan—especially in the Tech World?

One problem is that few women hold the top jobs in tech companies. Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says that “the asymmetry of power is ripe for abuse.”

But perhaps the chorus of voices from the #MeToo movement are having an effect.

The recent Uber sexual harassment scandal that led the CEO to resign caused financial upheaval for the firm. Patrick Quinlan, CEO of the analytics company Convercent told the New Yorker that he has seen a change in the way tech companies are facing the issue. Up until the recent past “companies wanted to have the ostrich view of ethics, which is, ‘If I don’t hear it and see it, it’s not happening,’” he says. “A big change we have seen is that companies realize you’re much better off identifying the problem and working to solve it. That evolution is happening fast.”

This is an encouraging first step, but will circumstances change so that women no longer have to pay an outsized price in terms of their mental health and their their sense of authenticity? Will the #MeToo hashtags become a thing of the past?

The answer, at present, is still unknown.

Source: James Recht, used with permission

by James Recht, MD and J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD

We are two psychiatrists who perform psychological evaluations of individuals seeking asylum in the US. We recently saw a Central American woman who had fled gang violence, bringing her two surviving children with her; but only after her two eldest daughters had been murdered for refusing to become sex slaves. Another woman we recently evaluated had barely escaped her home in Eastern Europe after she was beaten and raped by skinheads who routinely target members of her ethnic minority. We have encountered many other women who escaped domestic violence of a similarly brutal nature. All of these individuals had sought help from police and local authorities, in vain.

According to international law long recognized by our courts, these people are refugees: they have fled their home country “because of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group;” and they must not be forced to return.

Abuse leaves scars. Perhaps not surprisingly, severe depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are extremely common among refugees. Our evaluations aid immigration authorities tasked with deciding the fate of refugee asylum applications, by documenting these psychological scars.

Last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the U.S. will no longer recognize domestic abuse or gang violence as grounds for asylum. His decision has no basis in mental health or medical science; it is, transparently, a political tactic. For every person who flees violence to seek safety in the U.S., Sessions’ decision is also tantamount to a death sentence.

Promoting health and well-being and protecting victims from further harm: these are clinical responsibilities based on moral imperatives. We ask our friends, our neighbors and our communities to consider that certain issues should not be decided on the basis of one’s politics: left vs. right, or liberal vs. conservative. The “issues” in this case are human beings: men and women, many carrying their children along with them in their flight. They have rights — and regardless of our politics, we have responsibilities.

James Recht MD is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a member of the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network.

As any parent knows, small children experience even brief separations from parents as highly stressful. Prolonged separations inflict lasting trauma and catastrophic neurological damage (Wan 2018). Yet under their “zero tolerance” policy, the Trump administration has forcibly separated well over 2,000 children from their mothers and fathers (Jordan 2018; Schallhorn 2018). This policy, better dubbed "zero-compassion," can result in deporting parents without their children and with no clear path for family reunification (Jordan 2018).

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, non-partisan family research organizations (such as the Council for Contemporary Families), and religious leaders have all condemned the separation of children and parents at the U.S. border (CCF 2018; Green 2018; Jordan 2018; Miller 2018; O’Reilly 2018). Why? Because needlessly taking a child away from a loving parent and placing them in institutional care is abusive. Such separations are acutely stressful to children (if you doubt that, listen to this recording), do lasting psychological and neurological damage to children (Rutter 1971; Paksarian 2015; Suarez-Orozco 2011; Veijola 2004; Woodward et al 2000; Wan 2018), and are heartbreaking for children and parents (Jordan 2018; Miller 2018; Thompson 2018; Wan 2018).

Academic researchers have long documented the effects of parent-child separations (Rutter 1971; Paksarian 2015; Veijola 2004; Woodward et al 2000), including separations due to immigration (Suarez-Orozco 2011). These separations do severe and lasting damage. Children subjected to separations suffer a flood of stresshormones, killing neurons and permanently stunting brain development (Wan 2018). They are at higher risk for antisocial behavior and a range of psychological disorders in adulthood (Rutter 1971; Paksarian 2015; Veijola 2004; Woodward et al 2000). These effects may be especially pronounced for younger children (Woodward et al 2000; Wan 2018).

But it should not require an M.D. or a Ph.D. to understand that separating children from their parents is wrong. Anyone who has ever been or known a child should recognize the pain, fear, heartache, and lasting trauma that the U.S. government is inflicting on children. As a parent, I cannot help imagining my own child ripped from my arms, knowing that he would be sobbing, crying out for me in a mass detention with other devastated children. Even as an imagined pain, it is a pain I would never chose to inflict upon anyone.

Reasonable people can disagree over many immigration policies, but this is not one of them. Zero-tolerance policy is not about law enforcement: Losing one’s child is a disproportionate punishment for a misdemeanor offense, and the consequences of parent-child separation are tantamount to child abuse. The wellbeing of children should supersede partisan differences. Americans claim to care about children and family, but as long as we rip apart children and parents at the U.S. border, these claims are hypocritical.

Follow me on Twitter @ElizaMSociology or check out my website.

REFERENCES

Council for Contemporary Families (CCF). 2018. https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1008808389940600833

Green, Emma. 2018. “Religious Leaders Condemn Family Separations—but Not Necessarily Trump.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/why-religious-conse...

Jordan, Mirium. 2018. “'I Can't Go Without My Son,' a Mother Pleaded as She Was Deported to Guatemala.” NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/immigration-deported-parents.html

Miller, Devin. 2018. “AAP a leading voice against separating children, parents at border.” AAP News. http://www.aappublications.org/news/2018/06/14/washington061418

O’Reilly, Kevin B. 2018. “Doctors oppose policy that splits kids from caregivers at border.” AMA News. https://wire.ama-assn.org/ama-news/doctors-oppose-policy-splits-kids-car...

Paksarian, D., et al. 2015. “A population-based study of the risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder associated with parent-child separation during development.” Psychological Medicine 45(13):2825-2837.

Rutter, Michael. 1971. “Parent-Child Separation: Psychological Effects on the Children.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 12: 233-260.

Schallhorn, Kaitlyn. 2018. “What Trump's 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy means for children separated from families at border” Fox News. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/19/what-trumps-zero-tolerance-im...

Suarez-Orozco, C., et al. 2011. “I Felt Like My Heart Was Staying Behind: Psychological Implications of Family Separations & Reunifications for Immigrant Youth.” Journal of Adolescent Research 26(2):222-257.

Thompson, Ginger. 2018. “Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border.” ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-borde...

Veijola, J., et al. 2004. “Parental separation at birth and depression in adulthood: a long-term follow-up of the Finnish Christmas Seal Home Children.” Psychological Medicine 34(2):357-362.

Wan, William. 2018. “What separation from parents does to children: ‘The effect is catastrophic’” The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/what-separation-f...

Woodward et al. 2000. “Timing of parental separation and attachment to parents in adolescence: Results of a prospective study from birth to age 16.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62:162-174.

Source: 123RF Stock Photo

Using Self-Kindness to Cope with Stress

 “In all the greatest spiritual traditions, at their heart is tenderness, just to be kind inside, and then everything rights itself. Fear rests. Confusion rests.”

                        Pamela Wilson

Most of us today are suffering from the stress that chaos and uncertainty can bring. Self-kindness, an important aspect of self-compassion, has been proven to help reduce stress. 

Being kind to oneself can come naturally to those who believe they deserve it. Unfortunately, for many people, including those who experienced abuse or neglect in childhood, shame may have kept you from feeling kind toward yourself in much the same way that it may have been difficult to accept kindness from others. You may not believe that you deserve to be treated with the same patience, tenderness and comfort that you might naturally feel for a loved one.

However, if you have reduced some of your shame in therapy or by reading my book, It Wasn’t YourFault: Freeing Yourself from the Shame of Childhood Abuse with the Power of Self-Compassion, you may now be more open to believing you deserve self-kindness. You may not know how to treat yourself with loving kindness, but if you now believe you deserve it, then this article will help you learn how to practice it.  I’ve divided this article into two parts.  

            In Part I. I will define what self-kindness actually is, what it feels like, and what providing it for yourself looks like on a practical level. Then I’ll help you find ways to begin to provide it for yourself. Even those who have the hardest time with this concept and practice will find that you will be able to experience the healing that comes with self-kindness if you are willing to practice the suggested strategies and complete the exercises in this article.

What Does Kindness Feel Like?

What is self-kindness exactly? Let’s start by defining kindness, not with a dictionary definition, but from a feeling perspective. When you think of someone being kind, what comes to mind? What does kindness look like? What behaviors do you think of? What does kindness feel like?

When I think of kindness I think of someone being gentle, patient, caring, warm, open-hearted, giving, non-judgmental, welcoming. You may have thought of some other words that define kindness for you.    

Those of us who were abused or neglected in childhood are usually keenly aware of kindness. Most especially, we are keenly aware of when it is missing. We long for it, we look for it in the eyes, in the faces, in the hearts of others. And if and when we receive it, we are deeply touched by it.

Think about the people in your life who have been kind to you. Who treated you with interest and concern? Who made you feel like you mattered, like you were special?

Most people define self-kindness as providing for yourself the patience, acceptance, caring and whatever words you used to describe kindness. But it is so much more. Self-kindness involves generating feelings of care and comfort toward oneself. Instead of being self-critical, self-kindness involves being tolerant of our flaws and inadequacies. It also involves learning simple tools for giving ourselves the support we need whenever we suffer, fail or feel inadequate.

Kristin Neff stated in her landmark book, Self-Compassion, (2011) that self-kindness involves actively comforting ourselves, responding just as we would a dear friend in need. It involves allowing ourselves to be emotionally moved by our own pain and suffering and then asking ourselves, “How can I care for and comfort myself in this moment?”

Unfortunately, it is often difficult to learn to treat yourself with kindness if you haven’t experienced much kindness from others. It often helps to mimic the way one of the people who have been kind to you treated you. 

Exercise: Being Kind to Yourself

1.      Think about the kindest, most compassionate person you have known—someone who has been kind, understanding and supportive of you. It may have been a teacher, a friend, or perhaps a friend’s parent. If you can’t think of someone in your life who has been kind toward you, think of a kind and compassionate public figure or even a fictional character from a book, film or television.

2.      See if you can single out the key factors involved in helping you to feel so cared about: the words, gestures, looks, or touch of this person. Now use these factors to help you become your own “nice person”—meaning that you can now provide for yourself the things this person provided for you.

3.      Try talking to yourself in the same way, using the same loving words or soothing tones. If the person physically comforted you, repeat this gesture toward yourself.

4.      Take a deep breath and take in the good feelings of loving kindness. 

Creating a Self-Kindness Practice

Learning to practice self-kindness will take time and practice. I recommend creating a self-kindness practice. This can include learning to do all the following:

·        Soothing yourself and having compassion for yourself when you are experiencing difficulty (self-soothing).

·        Talking to yourself in a nurturing, accepting way (positive self-talk)

·        Treating your body with love and care. (self-care)

·        Knowing what you need and providing it for yourself (self-awareness)

·        Becoming your own nurturing and responsive parent

Soothing Yourself When You Are Experiencing Difficulty

             Self-soothing is actually something many children learn to provide for themselves as part of a natural developmental stage. It goes like this: A child begins to cry out for her mother. A responsive mother reacts quickly to her child’s cries. She picks up her baby and soothes her with a gentle voice and touch. She ascertains what it is that her baby needs, whether it is food, a diaper change or simply needs to be held and comforted. This is considered an empathetic response, which makes the baby feel safe and reassured. From experiences like this an infant learns in a deeply unconscious way that he or she can get what she needs, when she needs it, and that all will be okay. This unconscious experience of knowing that she will be responded to adequately and that everything will be taken care of translates into an ability to self-soothe. 

            Now let’s imagine another infant and another mother. This time the mother is distracted and impatient. Her baby’s helplessness and the immediacy of his needs triggers her own fears and fragile sense of self. Instead of responding calmly and confidently she acts anxious and impatient and she communicates (nonverbally) to her baby that things are not safe. Instead of experiencing the relief of a soothing response, the baby feels even more anxious. And the more distressed he becomes, the more distressed his mother becomes. Even food or a clean diaper cannot soothe him because he is too overwhelmed by the quality of his mother’s care.

            If this mother consistently treats her child this way or in other less-than-nurturing ways (i.e. leaves the infant alone for long periods of time, reacts unpredictably toward the child—sometimes she comes into the room when he cries, other times she doesn’t) he is likely to grow into an adult who is unable to soothe himself effectively. He may feel off balance and distressed whenever he is in a situation that is challenging or uncertain. From these early experiences he will likely develop the expectation that things will not be okay, that he cannot get his needs met and that the world is an unsafe place. Of course, some children are inherently more sensitive and more vulnerable to non-empathetic responses.

            You may have noticed that when life presents challenges you often experience an intensity of distress that feels excessive and out of control. Or you may experience a depth of hopelessness and futility that seems overwhelmingly powerful. If this is true for you it may be because your needs were not responded to in a soothing, nurturing way when you were an infant or toddler. It may also mean that as an infant or toddler you experienced a great deal of interpersonal chaos (such as often hearing your parents fighting) parental neglect, or rage. All these experiences would have created an intense anxiety inside of you as a child.  This does not mean that you will never feel comfortable and confident about getting your needs met and never be able to self-soothe, however. In fact, the following information and exercises can help you begin to repair these deficits.     

Talking to Yourself in a Nurturing, Compassionate, Accepting way

When you find yourself in a distressful situation, instead of allowing yourself to become overly fearful or to obsess anxiously over what could or could not happen, you can talk to yourself in a calm, nurturing way (you can do this silently, inside your head, or, if you are alone you can talk out loud). Think of the kindest words you could tell yourself—the words you most want to hear. Here are some examples of words of kindness created by some of my clients:

“You deserve to be loved.”

“You are a good person and you deserve to be happy.”

“It is understandable that you would have difficulty taking in love and other good things, but you’re getting better at it every day.”

Work on Creating a Nurturing Inner Voice

Begin by going inside and consciously creating an intimate connection with yourself. Many people don’t know how to do this. Others are afraid to do it because their inner life seems like a cold, uninviting place. You can start by simply asking yourself, “How do I feel?” as many times a day as you can think of it. You may need to prompt yourself to go inside by leaving yourself written reminders like, “check-in with yourself” or “how are you feeling?”

Exercise: Create a Nurturing Inner Voice

1.      Bring up a nurturing, but strong inner voice, one that is deeply connected to the inherent strength, goodness and wisdom within you (your essence).  If you find that it is difficult to find a nurturing voice, begin speaking to yourself in the voice you use when you talk to a small child or a beloved pet. Or adopt the voice of someone you know who is nurturing but strong (your therapist, a sponsor, a loving friend). 

2.      Whenever you find you are criticizing yourself or being hard on yourself, consciously switch to this more nurturing voice.

3.      Make it a practice to regularly give yourself credit for the progress you have made or for the good things you have done.

Self-Kindness Practice: Treating Yourself Tenderly

The next time your inner critic begins to attack you, check inside your body to see where you are feeling pain or discomfort. You might feel a tightness or heaviness in your throat, stomach, or chest (heart).

·        Place your hand gently over your heart or on your cheek and comfort yourself by saying, “I care about this suffering. May I be free from suffering.” 

Soothing Your Body 

There is actual research that shows that the power of self-kindness is not just some feel-good idea that doesn’t really change things. For example, one important way that self-soothing works is by triggering the release of oxytocin—what researchers have dubbed the “hormone of love and bonding.” It has been shown that increased levels of oxytocin strongly increase feelings of trust, calm, safety, generosity and connectedness and also facilitate the ability to feel warmth and compassion for ourselves. This is especially true when you self-soothe by touching your body in a gentle way since physical touch releases oxytocin, which has been shown to reduce fear and anxiety and can counteract the increased blood pressure and cortisol associated with stress.

There are many ways to physically soothe yourself.  Many of my clients find that softly stroking their cheek or gently stroking their arms is especially comforting. Find a way that works for you to soothe yourself through touch. 

Self-Kindness Practice: Soothe Your Body

1.      Think of the most soothing kinds of physical touch and physical comforting you have experienced. It may be a wonderful massage you received or the gentle touch of a lover. It may be the memory of a time when one of your parents or a caretaker comforted you by gently stroking your hair, scratching your back, or rubbing your feet.

2.      Try to replicate this comforting feeling by touching yourself in a similar way. You may resist at first by telling yourself that it feels better when someone else is doing it, but continue the touch and try to take in the pleasure.

3.      It can be especially soothing if you talk to yourself in a kind way as you stroke your arm, your hair or your face.

In Part II. I'll offer still more information and exercises around creating a Self-Kindness practice. In the meantime, I hope what I've offered so far will help you to begin to offer self-kindness to yourself, especially when you are especially stressed. 

Source: Google Images

 My wife and I recently had the opportunity to see “Springsteen on Broadway”.  For those who are not familiar with this production, it is a one-man show written, directed and performed by Bruce Springsteen that is built both upon his music, and his tremendously compelling (and at times tremendously harrowing) autobiography, “Born to Run”. 

 “Springsteen on Broadway” is an incantatory melding (or perhaps melting) of story and song that, like much of his career, is uncategorizable.  From my perspective, it provided both a summing up of the artist’s vast panorama of musical pathways, as well as a summoning up of the complicated conglomerate of demons, angels and ghosts that were always, and still remain, the engine that drives his artistry.   

            While the show spoke (and sung) to me on many levels, for the purposes of this post I wanted to focus on the part of the narrative that details his struggle to burst the bounds of his bleak small-town upbringing “in the boonies” and leave home in pursuit of his dream, his calling.

            In his introduction to the song “Thunder Road”, Mr. Springsteen conjures up the memory of  lying on his back on a beat-up couch that sat atop an old truck loaded with his and his bandmates’ belongings as they finally slipped away from their neighborhood in search of horizons beyond the Jersey shore that they had always been sequestered in.  Feeling the ocean breezes drift across his face and staring up at the night sky filled with stars, he was consumed by a sense of hopefulness, of optimism, of inexpressible, infinite possibility, the world a “blank page to be written on.”

            And so many of his most popular songs address that same theme—the desire to break out of the confines of one’s upbringing, to hit the geographical or psychological road (sometimes they are the same, sometimes they are different) and discover truth—personal truth, relational truth, moral truth, spiritual truth, and perhaps even, under the best of circumstances, true love.

            But one of the many contradictions that characterize Mr. Springsteen, contradictions that he acknowledges in a bemused and unshielded way, is that while he became wealthy and famous furiously writing and singing about the desire to leave home and the desperate urgency that fuels that desire, for years now he has been living less than ten minutes from that very home. 

            For me, it is difficult to ignore the irony that lies within the name of the town in which he grew up, from which he decamped, and to whose general environs he eventually returned—Freehold.  Because the oxymoronic designation "Freehold” captures the complicated tug of loyalties that define our journey towards selfhood.  We are always “free” to leave our home, but we are also always “held” by our childhood, no matter how far we travel, no matter how long we journey.  Eventually, most of us realize that our insistent need to prove to ourselves that we are entirely independent and unfettered turns out to be the most imprisoning of life’s endeavors.

            Maturity requires us to find a way to reconcile the competing forces of holding and of letting go, of being held and of wriggling free.  In this regard, we all long to leave our personal “Freehold’s”, but we will never fully succeed.  We are built to seek liberation, but as we grow, we encounter the growing awareness that complete liberation is unattainable—it is in the middle ground between wish and reality that we all must toil, struggling to create a life of purpose and connection while forever tethered to the world in which we were raised.  That we must re-visit and make sense of our origins is unavoidable—how we do so is what defines us and our capacity to become whom we are destined to become.

            The magic of “Springsteen on Broadway”, and indeed of any meaningful creative enterprise, is that the narrator’s personal tale is one that so many of us can find ourselves within, as well—we recognize who we are in his humbling, stumbling odyssey to grow into someone whom he can believe in.  Listening to his irresistible fable, we find a way to lighten our opinion of ourselves and become someone whom we can believe in, as well.  These moments of truth may only last a moment, but they can certainly intensify our sense of aliveness, and help us to get by with a certain dignity and grace in between those moments, especially when we are not feeling particularly alive.

            Listening to Bruce Springsteen sing his old songs in this new and different context was a reminder to me that the destinations that every young adult sets out for are not so much physical places as emotional spaces, spaces in which our past can be seen, understood and re-experienced in innovative, imaginative and transformative ways.

                  Separating Parents From Children - Is It Abuse?

     Like many, I have been watching in horror the images of children taken from their parents, housed in caged containers, huddled under silver blankets.  As the intellectual debate about whether this is sound border patrol policy or outright child abuse wages on, it feels urgent to share my perspective as a psychiatrist with twenty-five years of experience treating individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder from related childhood abuses. When you look through the lens of neuroscience there is no debate – ripping children from parents is extraordinarily traumatizing.  In fact, the pain and impact of the separation is likely setting off the same biological alarm system that would be activated if they were being beaten in these cages.  Let me explain.

     When mammals evolved from reptiles millions of years ago something very interesting happened. Reproductive strategy shifted dramatically from mass producing eggs and hoping a few of the offspring survive to adulthood (like turtles) to producing offspring internally.  Carrying a child internally for nine months meant a dramatic decrease in the number of children born to mammals and the infants created were immature and unable to fend for themselves making attachment to parents or caregivers essential to survival.  To assure attachment a corresponding evolution of the nervous system occurred. Humans developed a “social engagement system” to assure that parents and children stay connected.

Source: Lisa Langhammer used with permission

     When a child is separated from his parents the child’s nervous system sends out a loud signal to signify that he is in grave danger. The child will become dysregulated, extremely anxious and stressed out – he will protest by crying out for his parent as a full load of adrenaline or norepinephrine is surging through his system. The child separated from his parent is terrified and because the brain function to modulate affect is built within this care taking relationship and is ongoing well into the late teen years, that child is also not able to calm the terror. Over time, if the parent does not respond (or in this case can not respond), the child will flip into a parasympathetic shutdown of his body creating a state of learned helplessness or despondency.  At this persists, the child enters an extremely dangerous state called failure to thrive in the attachment literature. 

     This is not new information and certainly should be in the hands of anyone considering making public policy that adversely impacts children. It was learned back in the late 1950’s when Harlow set up an experiment where he placed an infant monkey in a cage with a cold wire monkey that provides milk and another wire monkey covered in a warm material that offered comforting contact.  Repeatedly, the young monkeys chose the comfort of the cuddly mother over food. That is how important touch and holding is to primate children. One of the policies being reported at these centers is that workers are not allowed to pick up or comfort the children. The results for these children will be devestating.

     Likewise, the Abnormal Childhood Experience Study (ACE Study), a twenty-year longitudinal research project on the health outcomes of children who have had traumatic experiences in childhood, suggests that a child disconnected from his/her parents (as one of only a few abnormal experiences) has negative impacts on health and well-being. Not only are mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse found to be higher in people with a high ACE score but also physical illnesses like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and even infections are increased.

     Additionally, research by Eisenberger and Lieberman at UCLA  (SPOT Theory)identified an area of the human brain – the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex- that is activated when a person is feeling socially excluded or disconnected.  The dACC also happens to be the same area of the brain that is activated when a person is feeling the distress of physical pain. Essentially, SPOT Theory tells us that being connected to safe others is so important to human survival that it shares a neurological alarm with the distress of physical injury or illness.  In essence, ripping children from parents carries the same risk as hitting them. To human beings pain is pain and so these children, their parents, and anyone who is witnessing this cruelty without disconnecting from it, is in deep, deep, preventable pain.

      Given the clear science, how is it that some humans are not upset about this abuse?  One explanation is found by looking at the neuroscience of "othering".  Studies show that when I see someone as “not like me”, my mirror neuron system shuts down and I do not feel a physiological resonance with his suffering. Rather, I look at him through the area of my brain that helps me understand abstract ideas. This is a disconnected way of knowing another and heavily influenced by cultural stories and biases. This is not an excuse but rather a warning of the social impact of policies and rhetoric that divides people and communities into “us” and “them”.

     The neurological bottom line is clear, separating children from their parents is child abuse.  And anyone who has a sense of morality must do everything in his or her power to help it stop ASAP.

World Domination Summit

https://worlddominationsummit.com

This Portland, OR conference draws over 3,000 entrepreneurs/adventurers/go-getters, "people trying to live remarkable lives in a conventional world," according to organizer Chris Guillebeau, author of The Art of Nonconformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World.
 

The Accidental Creative

http://www.accidentalcreative.com

The website of Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative and Die Empty, is dedicated to practical processes for identifying personal and organizational passion and what he calls “authentic voice.” The site is thick with ideas and tools to help you thrive.

What Makes Your Heart Sing?

http://brucecryer.com/what-makes-your-heart-sing/

The combined work of Heartmath co-founder Bruce Cryer and Emmy award- winning composer Gary Malkin, this site is devoted to awakening and reawakening inspiration in people’s lives, especially those in leadership and healthcare arenas, as well as resetting the course of your life especially in times of stress, complexity and transition.

The Buried Life

http://theburiedlife.com

Subtitled “What do you want to do before you die?” and based on a New York Times bestseller of the same name, the tag line describes this site as “Four regular guys on a mission to complete a list of '100 Things To Do Before You Die' and to help and encourage others to go after their own lists.”

The Animus Valley Institute

https://animas.org

Founded by author Bill Plotkin, the Animus Valley Institute offers wilderness immersion rites-of-passage journeys—vision quests—designed to encourage “an encounter with soul,” so that it becomes a vessel for your deepest, world-transforming gifts.

Before I Die

http://ritualfields.com/project/before-i-die/

“Before I Die” is a global art project, begun by artist Candy Chang, that invites people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in public spaces, filling in the phrase “Before I Die I Want To….” with their own bucket-list items.

Bucket List

https://bucketlist.org

A website dedicated to inspiring people to create, expand and share their bucket lists. 

Cal Newport

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIMu1PGbG-0

A provocative lecture questioning the assumption that "follow your passion" is good advice.

www.encore.org

A site dedicated to tapping the passions and skills of those in midlife and beyond, as a vital source of talent to benefit society. The site's motto is “Second acts for the greater good.”

www.brenebrown.com

The website of Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent and Lead, and a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work who has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. One of the most popular TED talkers, too.

Jason Silva

https://www.thisisjasonsilva.com

Website of Jason Silva, creator of Shots of Awe, a short film series of “trailers for the mind that serve as philosophical espresso shots exploring innovation, technology, creativity, futurism and the metaphysics of the imagination." Inspiring stuff, and Silva's a character!

TED Talk: "The Secret to Desire in a Long-term Relationship"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa0RUmGTCYY&feature=youtu.be

A witty and eloquent exploration of how to sustain passion in our love affairs, by Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity.

lifereimagined.org

An online program sponsored by AARP, designed to help people create the life they really want, from work and well-being to purpose and passion.

Brain Pickings

https://www.brainpickings.org

Among the most stimulating and eclectic blogs out there—and one that gets millions of hits a month—Brain Pickings is an absolute treasure-trove of inspiration on “how to live and what it means to lead a good life,” put together by Maria Popova, who calls herself "a hunter-gatherer of interestingness.”

Revolution.is

Weekly stories from change-makers and culture-shapers who take initiative, trust their gut, and create revolutions in their work. "From minimalist world-travelers to tech founders to fashion designers and more, we hope these perspectives on failure and success will inspire you to explore, discover, act, and accomplish." Their mission statement goes on to say that “the most significant people you’ll ever meet are not the wealthiest, the wisest, or the most connected. They’re people just like you—but who are two or three steps ahead."

The Passion Company

http://www.thepassion.co

An outfit, geared largely toward 20-30 somethings, that offers community-based programs and conferences to help people pursue their dreams.

TED talk: "Start With Why"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioZd3AxmnE

Author and leadership expert Simon Sinek’s inspiring discussion of the core of passionate leadership.

Supersoul Sunday talk: “Flight of the Hummingbird: The Curiosity Driven Life"

http://www.oprah.com/own-supersoulsessions/elizabeth-gilbert-the-curiosi...

Author Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the importance of focusing not on passion but curiosity.

Don’t Follow Your Passion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVEuPmVAb8o&feature=youtu.be

Mike Rowe, host of the TV series Dirty Jobs, on the counterintuitive notion that you should not follow your passions.

Reasons to Remember Death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A7VrTxuZIE

A short video from a wonderful website called School of Life, devoted to "Developing Emotional Intelligence." This animated video explores the power of acknowledging that we each have a use-by date.

What is the Sunday Evening Feeling?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI-4-hA4NtY&utm_source=CreativeMornings-...

Another marvelous short animated video from School of Life which addresses the mood that often descends on people at that time of the day/week and is related to the feeling of mismatch between who they really are and what they do on Monday mornings.

For more about Passion! Visit www.gregglevoy.com

Among those who survive a nearly fatal event, such as a heart attack, nearly 20% report a near-death experience (NDE). “The experience consists typically of a completely real or hyper-real—more real than their previous experience or reality—perception of the material domain—the material world usually including their physical bodies—and/or transmaterial domains and entities—incredibly beautiful nature-like scenes and architecture-like structures as well as deceased loved ones and spiritual entities that are sometimes but usually not identifiable yet familiar.” Sometimes people have the experience of floating above their bodies while receiving CPR; sometimes they experience traveling through a tunnel towards a light; sometimes they see their lives flash before their eyes as if watching a movie. And they return to tell us about it.

Source: lash505/Flickr

The above description of NDEs is taken from a 2014 study of NDErs’ perceptions of disclosing their NDEs to healthcare professionals. The researchers were concerned with how NDErs integrate their experiences into their lives going forward. In particular, they were concerned about NDErs’ reluctance to disclose their experiences to healthcare providers due to “fear that their NDEs would be dismissed as neither real nor even potentially real and/or discounted as meaningless experiences resulting from purely physiological processes ad that they and/or their experiences would be diagnosed as manifestations of mental illness and /or demonized as somehow evil.” It would be a real shame if the ability of NDErs to integrate these experiences into their lives were to be stunted by their interactions with healthcare professionals. On the one hand, this runs the risk of undermining a host of positive transformations associated with NDEs. On the other hand, it raises questions about fidelity to the maxim ‘do no harm.’ NDErs, as much as anyone else, should expect to receive care from those in helping professions.

The researchers collected data from 88 subjects regarding 188 experiences of disclosing a NDE (subjects were permitted to answer questions regarding up to 3 NDEs each). Overall, they found that 81% of these disclosures were perceived by the NDErs as neutral or positive experiences, and there were no significant differences between different professional groups or between different time periods in the past eight decades. However, they did find that NDErs were more likely to have a negative perception of their disclosure experience if it occurred sooner after the NDE and if the NDE was “deeper”—that is, if it scored higher on the NDE Scale. They conclude that a notable minority of NDErs “have felt harmed … by disclosure to members of every professional group” and, in particular, “the presumably most vulnerable of NDErs” were most likely to feel this way. “[T]he richer their NDE narrative, the more they perceived their confidante to respond detrimentally—dismissing, pathologizing, and/or demonizing the NDE and/or NDEr.” Thus, they call for “NDE-related information to become an established part of health care providers’ preparatory and continuing education curricula.”

Quality healthcare for NDErs is a laudable goal. And there is no doubt that these experiences are profoundly meaningful and transformative for those who have them. But it’s not clear what problem the present study is identifying as needing to be addressed.

The researchers appear to elide an important distinction in the way they set up their study and interpret their results. They do not distinguish between two senses of “real.” An experience may be real (a) in the sense that it truly occurred or (b) in the sense that it accurately represents an external reality. Oftentimes, our experiences are real in both senses. For example, when I look out my office window and see a tree across the street, my visual experience is real both in the sense that I am truly having the experience of seeing the tree (a) and in the sense that my experience accurately represents external reality (b). In short, I am actually seeing what is there. Not all experiences are like this. Sometimes one has the experience of seeing something that isn’t there. Such an experience may be real in the first sense (a), but not the second (b). It actually occurs but isn’t accurate. Think of dreams and hallucinations. Alternatively, one may recall a past experience—say, a previous time one looked out of a window—and yet mis-remember it. One might recall seeing that tree across the way all covered in snow this past winter, but this memory may be a false one. This experience would be real in the second sense (b), but not the first (a). You never actually saw the tree covered in snow, even though it really was there in all its snow-covered glory. The false memory may be the result of a suggestive conversation with a colleague who mistakenly thought you were around campus the day of the freak snowfall.

This distinction is relevant to the present study because of the repeated invocation of the term “real.” It features prominently in the researchers’ characterization of NDEs. Such experiences are defined as “completely real” or “hyper-real” perceptions. But, we can ask, in which sense of the term? Are they especially vivid representations in the sense having to do with their experiential character? Or are they especially vivid in the sense having to do with their representation of an external reality? Or is it both? Similarly, the researchers asked subjects whether the healthcare professional they disclosed their NDEs to “considered the NDE at least potentially real.” But in which sense? Are they asking about whether healthcare professionals doubted that these subjects ever had the visual, auditory and other impressions they reported having? Or are they asking about whether these healthcare professionals doubted whether these impressions accurately represented an external reality? 

This is not an inconsequential distinction. It’s one thing to be told by a medical professional that you’re making up a story about what happened to you while in cardiac arrest, to be told you didn’t actually have the experience of seeing something when you say you did. It’s a different thing to be told that what you had the experience of seeing wasn’t really there. In the first example, there is a denial of one’s subjective experience; in the second, there’s a recognition of the experience but a denial of its accuracy. Even if both denials are unpleasant, there’s a difference to them. The first is a much more sweeping denial of the NDE than the second. It doesn’t even admit that there’s something to talk about or explain. It shuts down the patients’ concern about what happened by failing to take seriously her account of her own mental life. This is not the same thing as taking the patient’s report seriously and trying to get to the bottom of what happened.

It would have been good for the researchers to distinguish between these senses of “real” and investigate what it was that accounted for the NDErs’ negative perceptions of their disclosure experiences. Did they feel as if their accounts were being rejected out of hand? Or did they feel as if they were being believed about having seen and heard things, but that their confidantes doubted the reality of the contents of these experiences? Assuming that we get some cases where it is the former and others where it is the latter, it would be interesting to know if these different denials have different effects. Are NDErs more likely to have a negative experience when they feel as if their healthcare providers don’t even believe them that they saw and heard certain things? Or is it denying the accuracy of what they reported seeing or hearing that is most unpleasant? 

From a clinical perspective, it would be good to know. If a doctor does most harm by giving off the impression that he doesn’t even believe his patient saw anything while she was in cardiac arrest, this is something he can easily be trained to avoid. He can be educated about the prevalence of NDEs, their nature and typical contents. And he can be educated about the positive effects these experiences often have and the profound meaning they often have for those who experience them. He can validate the experience by simply taking his patient at her word about her inner mental life. And this may not require him taking the further step of accepting that everything the patient reported seeing or hearing accurately represents elements of an external reality. Now, it may turn out that what hurts NDErs the most is denial of the accuracy of the contents of their experiences. If so, then healthcare professionals may face a different, perhaps more difficult task. They may have to choose between trying to explain NDEs in terms of physiological or psychological processes and validating their patients’ experiences in the fullest sense. This may be an especially difficult choice given that healthcare professionals are typically trained to think in physiological and psychological terms. It may amount to asking them to step outside their professional paradigm. It’s not clear whether this is too much to ask. My present point, however, is that we don’t even know if this is a choice healthcare professionals actually need to make.  And this is because we don’t know what’s really going on when NDErs have unpleasant experiences disclosing their NDEs to others.

One of Henry David Thoreau's most frequently quoted sayings is "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Many people have cited this sentence to me. To my surprise, they have always referred to it approvingly, as a correct and insightful claim that expresses their own view. It is also commonly mentioned in written form, as well as appears in art, as in, for example, Peter Weir's 1989 beautiful film, Dead Poets Society.

I have some difficulties with this claim. Many of those who cited it to me themselves felt quite desperate or depressed. (Although desperation and depression are not the same I refer here to them both and will use the terms interchangeably in this post.) It seemed to me that many of my interlocutors could have significantly diminished or gotten rid of their desperation, but that this claim decreased their readiness to take the means needed to do so. It did so in various ways.

First, there is a part in many of us that wants us to be like others. We feel uncomfortable at the thought that we are "different." This tendency can be very powerful even when we are not aware of it. (Some advertisements use this tendency very efficiently to push us to buy some things that we do not really need, emphasizing that this or that is what most people do or wear today.) Thus, some people who hear that the majority of lives are led in quiet desperation are lured into entering such a state themselves or, if they are already in this state, into not leaving it.

Second, I found that many took this claim to imply that being depressed is a necessary state of affairs—part of the human condition that could perhaps be concealed, but not changed. "If the majority of people lead a life of quiet desperation although they probably do not enjoy it," the reasoning seems to go, "then it's probably unavoidable, and there's no sense in trying to fight it." Of course, accepting that a state of affairs is unalterable diminishes people's readiness to do what can be done to change it.

Third, the claim leads some to feel that emphasizing or even enhancing their desperation would make them be, or seem, more authentic; they wear desperation on their sleeve as a status symbol. The line of thought seems to go more or less like this: "the mass of people who lead lives of quiet desperation probably do so because they are afraid to be who they are. I, on the other hand, am not afraid and I will not conceal who I am: I will lead a life of loud desperation." Yet once emphasizing desperation is romanticized as authentic, unconventional, and brave, people do not easily let go of their desperation, fearing that doing this might be interpreted as returning to phoniness. On the contrary, they try to perpetuate and even augment their desperation.

Thoreau himself probably did not want this sentence, which appears in the first chapter of his celebrated book Walden; or, Life in the Woods to be taken out of its context and be understood so pessimistically. The book describes an interesting experiment Thoreau made with his own life when he moved to live in a cabin in a forested area by Walden Pond, Massachusetts. Among many other things, the book advocates solitude, self-reliance, contemplation, proximity to nature, and renouncing luxuries as means of overcoming human emotional and cultural difficulties. Thus, Thoreau in fact suggests in the book that people can stop leading lives of desperation and can improve their condition. The Walden experiment was initiated by the conviction that there is no need to go on living in desperation, quiet or not. Unfortunately, this is not the way in which many, unfamiliar with the context of this famous sentence, interpret it.

However, even when taken in context, the claim Thoreau makes in this sentence is problematic and incorrect. One question that comes to mind is how Thoreau knows that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Many people's non-desperate demeanor may be the result of a real, genuine, contentment in life. Other people's non-desperate demeanor may only be a cover-up of their silent desperation. Thoreau asserts that the mass of people are of the second type, but he does not present any evidence for this bold claim. To know that many people's contented appearance is just a charade, Thoreau had to have some way of seeing through their demeanor to their inner self. But he does not tell us what it is.

I wonder how many people Thoreau spoke with before making this bold claim about the mass of people. He does not tell us, and I do not know, but I suspect that he based his claim, as is often the case with such generalizations, on his own feeling and on conversations he had with a few friends who told him that they, too, suffer from silent desperation. Then, using induction, he extrapolated from what was true of himself and a few others to "the mass of men," assuming that most people who do not say or behave as if they are silently depressed are just hiding it.

Yet this, of course, is a rather problematic generalization from the very few to very many. A sample of myself and perhaps my friends (who, being my friends, may very well be like me) is too small, non-arbitrary, and unlikely to be representative of the human condition at large. If we asked Thoreau, after he made this exclamation, how he knew that the mass of people lead lives of quiet desperation, I doubt that he would have had a satisfying reply.

Research in empirical psychology shows that, contrary to what Thoreau claims, most people in the world are, in fact, generally happy. Even people in difficult conditions are usually happy. Thoreau's claim is simply false: the mass of people in the world do not lead a life of quiet desperation but, rather, of happiness. Moreover, there are methods that help many who live desperately to live happily. Many have reported that these methods have been effective for them.

It is, of course, true that people don't lead lives of perfect happiness. Happy people, too, have their occasional moments, hours, etc., of quiet or non-quiet desperation. And no people are happy about everything in their life. However, being sometimes sad, or even being always sad about a certain aspect of life, differs from leading a life of quiet desperation, and does not conflict with being a generally happy person who lives, all in all, a good life. Happy people need not be perfectly happy as if they were characters in fairy tales.

It is important to set this record straight. Thoreau probably did not want his claim to be taken out of context and to be understood pessimistically. Yet even in context, there are good reasons to believe that his claim is simply factually wrong. The negative implications many draw from this claim to their own lives, sometimes without being completely aware of it, are unnecessary and harmful.