There is growing evidence that physical activity has neuroprotective benefits. Countless studies have found that people who exercise regularly are more likely to maintain gray matter brain volume and white matter integrity across their lifespan. (See here, here, here, and here) Additionally, staying physically active as we age may help to prevent the onset of dementia and cognitive decline.

That said, the million-dollar question remains: What is the optimal “dose” (intensity × duration) of weekly physical activity required to promote healthy brain aging and reduce someone’s risk of dementia?

To answer this question, a team of researchers affiliated with Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the Framingham Heart Study analyzed data from 2,354 community-based participants who agreed to have their total steps walked per day—along with the intensity and duration of daily walking (e.g., casual strolls vs. brisk walks)—monitored over a four-year period. Participants also agreed to undergo an MRI to measure total cerebral brain volume (TCBV). 

Source: James Wheeler/Pexels

According to the authors, the objective of this study was “to assess the association of total steps walked per day and total dose (intensity × duration) of physical activity (PA) with brain volumes on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) among Framingham Heart Study participants.”

After spending over three years combing through swaths of data, these findings were published today by JAMA Network Open in a paper “Association of Accelerometer-Measured Light-Intensity Physical Activity With Brain Volume.” The main takeaway of this research is that walking 10,000 or more steps per day was associated with higher total cerebral brain volumes in comparison to participants who walked fewer than 5,000 steps per day.

This research was led by Nicole Spartano, who is a research assistant professor of medicine at BUSM. In a statement, she said: 

“Every additional hour of light-intensity physical activity was associated with higher brain volumes, even among individuals not meeting current Physical Activity Guidelines. These data are consistent with the notion that potential benefits of physical activity on brain aging may accrue at a lower, more achievable level of intensity or volume.”

The most recent Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (Piercy et al., 2018) recommend that adults should strive for 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per week (approximately 21.4 minutes per day) to optimize the health benefits of staying physically active. Unfortunately, this level of weekly MVPA is impossible for many people. Therefore, the guidelines emphasize that any “dose” of physical activity is better than none.

In the Discussion section of their paper, Spartano et al. write:

"Our observations support this new update to the guidelines, suggesting that incremental PA was associated with larger total brain volume at a relatively low-intensity threshold (as measured by light-intensity PA). However, our observation that MVPA was not significantly associated with brain volume after adjusting for light-intensity PA suggests that it is unclear whether individuals can expect further gain in benefit with higher-intensity activity." 

What Doses (intensity × duration) of Physical Activity Provide What Benefits? 

Based on the assumption that exercise is medicine, researchers are continuing to dial in on the benefits of various prescriptive doses of physical activity.

For example, the results of another four-year study (Dunlop et al., 2019) of 1,564 adults over age 49 on the benefits of walking were published early this month. This study found that 56 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity walking per week was the baseline for staving off immobility in older adults. (See “8 Minutes of Walking Per Day Could Change Your Life”)

As another example of the “dose-response” brain benefits of light-intensity physical activity, a study from last year (Suwabe et al., 2018) reported that a single 10-minute bout of mild exercise appeared to improve brain connectivity and enhance memory. 

"We have really only just begun to uncover the relationship between physical activity and brain health,” Spartano said in a statement. She also emphasizes the importance of researchers exploring the detrimental impact of physical inactivity and poor cardiovascular fitness (Spartano et al., 2016) has on total cerebral brain volume and healthy brain aging in community-based cohorts representing diverse racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups. (See, "Can Being a Couch Potato Shrink Your Brain?")

East of San Anselmo

Source: J. Krueger

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

—Heraclitus, in a sober mood

Social mindfulness, by one definition, consists of the willingness to leave a choice to another (Van Doesum et al., 2013). Suppose there are two bottles of Voilà and one bottle of Bricolage left, and not knowing Dana’s preference, you take a Voilà. If you actually prefer the Voilà, you can claim mindfulness without having it. If you prefer Bricolage, you are making a sacrifice, and your social mindfulness conflates with generosity (Krueger, 2014). The plot thickens when you invite Dana to go first. Are you being socially mindful, or are you a strategic hound dog? Now Dana faces the choice between taking the Bricolage—if she prefers it,  thereby revealing selfish intent—and taking a Voilà, leaving you wondering whether you’re faced with genuine social mindfulness or someone who luxuriously emits an ambiguous signal.

Your decision to beat Dana to the offer to go first must, therefore, be strategic—although it could also result from dull-headed indecision or habit. How can you go wrong? The only bad outcome is when you both prefer Bricolage and Dana is selfish. But at least you have learned something. If Dana beats you to offering the first offer and you prefer Voilà, everyone’s happy but little has been learned. If you prefer Bricolage, you face the conflict between social mindfulness and self-regard. If you choose Bricolage, you know that Dana knows you are selfish, but you don’t know if she is. This produces a knowledge advantage for Dana. If you don’t like that, choose Voilà, although you don’t prefer it, which will keep both of you in the dark regarding each other’s selfishness.

If your thinking is dominated by selfishness, you can make the first move, and reveal yourself. If, however, you cede the first move, you affirm your non-selfishness while inviting Dana to choose between revealing selfishness and revealing nothing. Unless your selfish desire for Bricolage is overwhelming, the strategic thing is to ask Dana to go first. It looks mindful, but it is hound-doggishly clever.

To drive this point home, consider the prisoner's dilemma. If you cede the first move, the other will likely defect, realizing that you have no incentive to cooperate with a cooperator. You will then defect too, but you can claim your defection is reactive, whereas the first move could have, in theory at least, cooperated in hopes of reciprocation. Ceding the first move is thus hardly a socially mindful move in the prisoner's dilemma. It is, in fact, a rather competitive one.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening For the Voice of Vocation, Parker Palmer

This beautifully written memoir, a classic in the annals of vocational discernment, brings to life the old Quaker adage to “let your life speak,” which to Palmer means "living the life that wants to live in me,” and creating the conditions that allow the soul to speak.

My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

A captivating and emotionally rattling story about the challenge of honoring a calling under the withering effect of parental disapproval. It highlights the damage parents can inflict not only on their children but on their relationship to their children, as well as the soul-salvaging impact of having an ally, someone who sees the gift in you and nurtures it.

Oh the Places You'll Go, Dr Seuss

For anyone of any age who's venturing out into the world and searching for their wildest dreams, this rhythmically rollicking tale gives a generous tip of the hat to both the highs and lows of those journeys.

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges

The only book I've read 5 times, at 5 transition points in my life. The main reason I keep going back to this elegant and user-friendly book on how people make change is because of the section on Neutral Zones. His take is that change happens in 3 stages— Endings, Neutral Zones and New Beginnings—and he makes a compelling case for why it's critical to allow yourself to hang out in the dangle and not rush the Neutral Zone by straining after a fix: next job, next relationship, next project. It's been named one of the 50 all-time best self-help and personal development books for a good reason.

The Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo

A modern classic with millions of copies sold, this inspiring fable (and adventure yarn) speaks to the essential wisdom of listening to your heart, paying attention to the signs, and following your dreams. What starts out as a journey in search of worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure within.

The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, James Hillman

Based on the premise that a unique soul guides each of us from birth, shaping the course of our lives—what Plato called our “daimon,” the Romans called our “genius,” and the Christians called our “guardian angel”—this provocative bestseller by one of the great Jungian analysts asks the question, “What is it, in my heart, that I must do, be, and have? And why?”

Art and Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, David Bayles & Ted Orland

Ostensibly a book about art and creativity—exploring the way art gets made, or doesn't, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way—it really speaks to anyone who strives to live a creative and meaningful life.

Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, David Whyte

This beautifully written book (Whyte is a poet) is for anyone who wants to deepen their connection to their life’s work—or find out what their life’s work is. Using the metaphor of a sea voyage to depict the journey through the world of work, this is a deep dive into the heart and soul of vocation.

* Honorable Mention: my own book Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (Random House).

For more about Passion! visit www.gregglevoy.com

Have you ever heard that it takes 60 days to form or change a habit? Well, that’s actually not true. I used to write about that being true, but new research and a mindshift change for me made me realize that habits can be very easy to create or change, IF you understand the science behind habit formation and use that science when you are trying to change or create a habit.

Whether you realize it or not, a lot of your daily behavior is composed of habits. These are automatic behaviors that you do without thinking. You do them the same way every day.

Think about all the habits you have that you don’t even remember trying to create. Perhaps you put your keys in the same pocket when you walk out the door, or maybe you have a routine that you go through every weekday when you first wake up.

You probably have routines around hundreds of things:

• How you leave the house for work
• What you do as soon as you get to your place of work
• How you clean your house or apartment
• How you do laundry
• How you shop for a gift for a relative
• How you exercise
• How you wash your hair
• How you water your houseplants
• How you take your dog for a walk
• How you feed your cat
• How you put your children to bed at night

And so on.

How did you end up with so many habits if they are so hard to create? If you understand the science around how habits are formed, you will see that there are some fairly simple things that you can do that make habits very easy to form and even relatively easy to change.

For most people, most of the time, habits are created unconsciously and they are carried out automatically. Habits help us all to do the many hundreds of things we need and want to do in our lives. Because we can carry out a habit without having to think about it, it frees up our thought processes to work on other things. It’s an efficient trick that our brains have evolved to make us more efficient.

It all started with saliva – Let’s take a look at the science behind forming habits. If you took a Psychology course you probably have heard the name Ivan Pavlov. Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel prize in 1904 for his work in medicine. He researched the digestive system, working primarily with dogs. But while he was doing research on digestion he discovered something that surprised him.

Pavlov was measuring the amount of saliva that dogs produce as part of digestion. He noticed first that dogs would salivate when they saw food, even before they tasted it. Then he noticed that if another event, such as a bell, or the footsteps of the experimenter was paired with the food, the dog would eventually start salivating at just the sound of the bell or the sound of the footsteps. This is called classical conditioning.

It goes like this:

First you pair two things together, a stimulus (food) and a response (salivating):

Stimulus (FOOD) results in Response (SALIVATING)

Then you add an additional stimulus:

Stimulus 1 (FOOD) + Stimulus 2 (BELL) results in Response (SALIVATING)

Over time you will be able to remove the original stimulus, and have just the additional stimulus elicit the response:

Stimulus 2 (BELL) results in Response (SALIVATING)

By now you are probably wondering what this has to do with you. You are probably not trying to create a salivation habit! Classical conditioning is the starting point for understanding automatic behavior and habits.

For example, let’s take a look at smoking. We start with:

Stimulus 1 (SEEING CIGARETTE) results in Response (LIGHT UP AND SMOKE THE CIGARETTE)

Then we add:

Stimulus 1 (SEEING CIGARETTE) + Stimulus 2 (FEELING BORED) results in Response (LIGHT UP AND SMOKE THE CIGARETTE)

Until we get:

Stimulus 2 (FEELING BORED) results in Response (LIGHT UP AND SMOKE THE CIGARETTE)

Keeping this original research in mind, let’s explore what we now know about creating or changing habits.

1. Small, specific actions are more likely to become habitual – Let’s say you decide to create an exercise habit, and you tell yourself “From now on I’m going to get more exercise.” This is unlikely to turn into a habit because it’s too general/vague, and it’s too big.

What about “I’m going to exercise three times a week.” That’s a little better, but still not specific enough. “I’m going to go for a walk every day after work” is better because it is more specific. Or even, “When I get home from work the first thing I’m going to do is change into my walking clothes/shoes and take a 30 minute walk.”

2. Making the action easy to do increases the likelihood that it becomes a habit – Once you have identified the specific small action then you want to make that action easy to take. In the exercise/walking example, you will be more likely to engage in the habit if you make it easy. For example, put out your shoes/clothes right near the door so when you get home you see them.

3, Actions that involve physical movement are easier to “condition” into a habit – With the walking/exercise example, that’s easy. You are going to reach out your arm and grab your workout clothes.

If you are trying to create a habit that is not very physical, for example, a habit where at the beginning of the work day you pause and decide on what are the most important things for you to do that day, then you will want to create a physical action to take, for example, have a special whiteboard near you and a special pen you use to do this task

4, Habits that have auditory and/or visual cues associated with them will be easier to create and maintain – One reason that using your mobile phone is so habitual is it lights up when you have a message, and makes buzzing or chirping noises when there is a text. These auditory and visual cues grab our attention, and increase the likelihood that we will develop a conditioned response.

The Best Way to Change an Existing Habit – The best way to change an existing habit is to create new one to replace it.

Let’s say you have a habit of coming home at the end of a work day, grabbing a soda, turning on the TV and sitting on the couch. You’d like to stop doing that because before you know it an hour has gone by and you haven’t started dinner or gotten any exercise.

How do you change that habit? You have to go back to the very beginning of the stimulus/response cycle and replace the current response with a different response.

This is what is happening with the existing stimulus/response:

Stimulus (WALK IN DOOR) results in Response (GRAB SODA, TURN ON TV, SIT ON COUCH)

To change this, decide what you want to replace it with, for example, let’s say you want to go for a walk as soon as you get home. The best thing to do is to position your walking shoes and perhaps a change of clothing right by the door you walk into.Then for a few days purposefully and consciously grab the shoes and clothes and put them on as soon as you walk in the door, and go for a walk.

Within 7 days you will have conditioned the walk in door to a different response:

Stimulus (WALK IN DOOR) results in Response (Grab shoes and clothes, change, and go for walk)

Give it a try. Pick either a new habit you want to create, or an existing habit you want to change. Next, figure out the stimulus and the response. Make sure the action is small, easy, attached to something physical, and, if possible use a visual or auditory cue. Do the new habit for a week, and see what happens. You may be surprised at how easy it is to create or change habits.

For more information:

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

or check out BJ Fogg's site: https://www.tinyhabits.com/

Source: unsplash

Regardless of the problems that bring couples into therapy, what I often see driving their problems is one core one — the need for individuation, the need to speak up and be more of the person I really am. While one partner may be leading the charge, generally both are feeling the same. The same is that there is a staleness, a sense that the relationship isn’t working as well as it did; there’s a restlessness, a need to break out of routines and roles.

Here are some of the common signs that individuation is afoot:

Increase in stupid arguments

Arguments about dishes left on the counter, socks on the floor, who ate the rest of the cake. Stupid because they are about small stuff, stupid because they are basically opportunities for venting; there is no problem-solving.

One partner speaking more

Rather than going along with. This is what may be driving the arguments, but overall there is a “not business as usual” attitude. More complaining, more pushing back.

Resentment / sensitivity to control

This too can be driving all of the above. What used to be “suggestions” are now heard as commands; there are comments of leave me alone, get off my back, stop telling me what to do.

Doing more things individually

One partner starts going out once a week for drinks after work with friends, while the other joins a softball team that takes up 2 nights and a Saturday morning, things they never did before.

More anger / resentment about the past

Old wounds from the past suddenly rise up. There is anger at the other guy for some past offense or stupid behavior, but often also anger at oneself — about tolerating what seems now like bad behavior, or about roads not taken.

General restlessness, need for variety

Grumbling about routines being too routine; a need for … something different. 

The curse here is that there is tension, the climate has gone from good or neutral to negative. The more vocal person seems chronically unhappy, and the other person feels frustrated because he or she doesn’t understand why all the complaining or frustrated because what he or she tries to do to help doesn’t help.

But the cure is that this tense process is really about upgrading the relationship contract, bringing it up-to-date to meet the new needs of each partner. For couples who are able to do this and not get mired in the mud of the stupid arguments, or not continue to sweep problems and needs under the rug, they can create a vibrant relationship rather than one that becomes increasing stale and disconnected.

Here’s how to successfully make it through this transitional time:

Decide what you need now

Step back and define what really is not working, what you need most now. Think in terms of the ideal — more time for yourself, more challenges or creative outlets, more of a voice, more appreciation, more…what?

Similarly, what do you need less of? Day-to-day responsibilities, less micromanaging, less anxiety, less…what?

Use your anger as information

If you are angry about things in the present, don’t just complain or explode. Not only can be hurtful to the other, but all the noise is likely to cloud the message. Instead, use your anger as information that is telling you what you need now, and communicate those needs to your partner.

Define the moral of the story of the past

If one or both of you have resentments about the past, try and find the moral of the story, the lessons learned from mistakes that might have been made, rather than just continuing to talk about it, or arguing over whose reality is right.

Talk about the big picture, share your visions

This is about both of you looking ahead, sharing your visions of what you both ideally want in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years.

Experiment, explore to find new common interests, more satisfying routines

If you are feeling bored, if the relationship seems stale, if you feel you have less in common than you used to, you can’t figure out new and better replacements by sitting on the couch thinking about it. Instead you want to explore and experiment, both as individuals and as a couple — do the softball or the night out with friends, but also sign up for the yoga class together or the volunteering at the food bank. The key is to approach with a “let’s try it” attitude.

Individuation is about discovering, defining, and becoming more of the person you really are. Good relationships, in my mind, are about helping each other do exactly that – I want to help you be the person you want to be, I want to be your best friend, I got your back, I’m your advocate. The challenge is making this a priority for each other and by working as team be happy together. 

So, time to upgrade the contract? Who do you both want to be?

Source: pixaoppa/pixabay

Collective behavior is the spontaneous, temporary, and unstructured behavior of a group in response to the same situation. In the animal kingdom, collective behavior can be observed in flocking birds, swarming bats, schooling fish, and stampeding cattle herds. Insects that live in colonies, such as ants, wasps, termites and bees exhibit collective behavior. Human collective behavior ranges from fads, crazes, and social movements to riots, mass hysteria, panics and mobs. How does collective behavior arise? How does a large group of individuals form a unified ensemble?

To answer this question requires modeling collective behavior. There are various ways to approach the modeling. In physics, collective behavior is typically modeled with the assumption that individuals are influenced by a physical force, rather than as agents. However, this type of model is not an ideal fit for biological systems with interacting living organisms.

To address this gap, a team of researchers from the University of Innsbruck, created a new approach to study collective behavior by using artificial intelligence with learning agents with the ability to perceive and interact with environmental sensory input, and whose interactions are not pre-programmed. In February 2019, professors Thomas Müller and Hans Briegel from the University of Konstanz, and physicist Katja Ried published their machine learning model for collective behavior called “Projective Simulation” in PLOS One.

The research team illustrated their learning agent model with locusts—short-horned grasshoppers that form swarms and are an agricultural threat. The swarming behavior of locusts is well-researched, providing the team with benchmarks to test their learning agent based Projective Simulation model.

To achieve the agent’s learning, the team enabled memory capacity of past interactions with the environment, and provided a reward. The team also equipped the agents with a “forgetting mechanism” to enable manage in environments that are non-deterministic or changing.

The researchers characterize their agents as being “capable of learning how to behave, simply by being exposed to an environment that rewards certain outcomes, rather than requiring their interactions to be postulated ad hoc.”

The Projective Simulation model includes parameters that “measure how each individual is likely to respond” to movement of their neighbors, rather than “simply imposing that the individual’s speed is deterministically set to some weighted local average broadened by an additive noise term.” The researchers wrote that this difference becomes “more pronounced in more complex environments.”

According to the researchers, the Projective Simulation model “offers the possibility of exploring how the collective dynamics are affected as the underlying individual responses change—not only by manually changing the relevant parameters, which is possible in general individual-based models, but also as part of the adaptive (learning) process.”

The results show that learning agent based models are well suited for studying collective behavior as it is more realistic and detailed view on how individuals in a swarm respond to perceptual input and activity of their neighbors. Having demonstrated this principle, as next steps, the researchers plan to test their model on more demanding learning tasks and rewards on “realistic survival tasks, based on insights from biology and ecology, in order to explore the phenomenon of collective motion in more complex settings.”

Copyright © 2019 Cami Rosso All rights reserved.

A version of this piece was originally published in the New York Times Opinion section on February 13, 2019.

The police picked him up from his high school after a terrified student told her principal he had threatened to slit her throat. She showed them his Instagram, where he had posted pictures of the Charleston Church shooter with the word “hero” underneath it, and a picture of their science lab with the caption “Columbine 2.0”. The officers didn’t find any guns or explosives, and couldn’t arrest him for the alleged threats, since the girl was too scared to be interviewed. So they brought him in to the mental health crisis unit for an evaluation.

My job was to see if he needed to be hospitalized and treated for a mental illness. But the first question out of my mouth was a totally unprofessional one.

“Which school?”

As a physician, my loyalty is to my patients: listening to their stories, helping them choose medications, treating them in the least restrictive environment, then getting them back home to their families. In whatever battle it is they are fighting, I’m on their side. But when that patient is a potential school shooter, my loyalties get complicated.

My two teenage daughters go to local public schools. Intruder drills are just another thread woven seamlessly into the fabric of their childhood, a routine whose origins they don’t question. I imagine when they hear the intercom announcement, their primary reaction is glee at getting out of a math quiz or history essay. I picture them huddled under their desks, whispering and laughing with their friends, being shushed by an irritated teacher who is anxious to return to her scheduled classroom activities.

And then sometimes flashes of the real scenario creep in. My daughters at the picnic tables at lunch, their hair shining in the sun, giggling at an image on a friend’s phone, complaining about the cafeteria food. How quickly their heads snap up at the first loud crack, and that frozen second of silence before the realization dawns and the terror sets in. Everyone scattering in chaotic efforts to hide, to escape, to live. My children don’t know how to do this. They have never been taught to survive a massacre. Worse than the noise and the blood must be the realization that the adults can’t help you, that you are on your own now and forever, and that you are never safe.

I can’t wander too far into the paralyzing darkness of this alternate reality; I have things to do. So as soon as those images start to come, I turn my back on them and build a wall in my mind. Each row of bricks rises against the sounds and images spilling out, until the last one is mortared into place. Then I can go on with the questions that are relevant to my assessment.

The young man in front of me answered “no” to almost everything I asked: he hadn’t been in a psychiatric hospital before, he didn’t hear voices, he wasn’t suicidal, he didn’t intent to actually do anything at his school. He seemed unfazed by the implications of his words and his posts, and by the sudden and extensive multi-agency investigation of his entire life. The FBI found a dark web browser he had downloaded onto his computer to buy a gun on the black market. Police discovered his kill list in his locker; his mom was one of the first names.

Like most psychiatrists, I pride myself on my ability to maintain a level of compassionate neutrality with my patients. I don’t get offended when manic old ladies call me vulgar names in front of my medical students. When a patient throws coffee on my shirt because the voices told her to, I just put a sweater over it and increase her medication. My job is to get people better, then get them back home. But with this patient, my instinct was to lock him away indefinitely.

It’s hard to do that through the mental health system. Checks and balances ensure that a patient’s fate doesn’t lie in the hands of a single psychiatrist. Involuntary commitment requires that a judge agree that the person is dangerous because of a mental illness. Even then, the hospitalization is usually limited to a few weeks.

This patient was seen by multiple psychiatrists and psychologists, and there was little agreement on whether he actually had a mental illness. He certainly shared common traits with other mass shooters: anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, paranoia, narcissism and autism-spectrum traits. But he didn’t quite fit the description of any single diagnosis, nor was there a treatment anyone thought would cure him of his violent fantasies.

As his discharge date crept closer, the treatment team’s best hope was for law enforcement to show up and arrest him. But the detectives had a lot of interviews left to do, and a dark web browser history to sort through, before they could bring charges. They were really counting on further psychiatric treatment to dissipate the threat. But the clock was ticking, and our patient was likely be released home in week or two. Usually, this is the outcome we are all working towards, but in this case, it was a day I was dreading.

The Columbine killers were someone’s kids, too. Dylan Klebold’s mother came to a talk I gave once on the mental health system and mass shootings. Sitting a few rows back in a long skirt and patterned sweater, her grey hair in a bob, she looked like anyone’s mom. I didn’t know who she was, until came up to the panel of speakers afterwards and thanked us politely for our presentation. I had shown a photo of her son striding through the Columbine High School cafeteria in military cargo pants and boots, holding a sawed-off shotgun aloft in his gloved hand. I’m sure that’s not how she remembers him.

I’m hoping this young man’s story has a different ending. With his discharge from the hospital imminent, his attorney, his psychiatrists, and the law enforcement agents investigating his case worked together to create a plan for when he left the hospital. We linked him up with intensive outpatient services so a therapist could go see him every day. He finished his high school diploma online and attends community college, and for the first time, he has friends among his peers. Instead of going to jail temporarily on misdemeanor charges, he checks in weekly with mental health court. His parents aren’t in his life, so the judge is the closest thing he has had to a father figure in a long time. He lives in a group home a few miles from my family.

I send my children to school every day as though nothing will ever happen to them. They whisper and giggle through their intruder drills, blissfully oblivious to the shadow of threat that looms and shifts over their world. I keep my visions of the real thing safely sealed away in my mind, and I go on with my work. My girls come home from school, and I come home from the hospital, and we all sit down to dinner together without so much as a glance at the fear that lurks behind the walls.

Source: Pixabay, Public Domain

Every two weeks, a psychotherapist consults with me about his practice. Today, he asked me,

I have a client who keeps coming back and every session says everything’s fine. He comes back because he likes reporting on what happened that week and telling me his plans for next week. I feel okay about continuing to take his money but I’m bored just listening to him and am wondering if there’s a way to add more value. Do you have any suggestions?

I asked if he had queried the client about a wide-enough range of life’s aspects. That might unearth an area or two for exploration. The therapist asked me if I had a list of such aspects. When I created one for him, he suggested that other therapists and counselors might benefit from seeing it, so here it is:

Career

Are you in the right job?

The right career?

Like many people, do you suffer from the imposter syndrome? If so, what might you do to ameliorate it?

Is there a person you’re working with who’s troubling: a boss, coworker, supervisee, customer?

Is there a fear you’d like to address: for example, public speaking, running a meeting, managing upward, decision-making?

Do you have an issue with time management or procrastination?

Relationships

Have an issue with a romantic partner?

With a platonic friend?

With someone in your family of origin, either now or a past scar that’s still impeding you?

Avocations

Do you have a creative outlet or other hobby you find rewarding? Any issue there worth discussing?

Physical health

Any concerns about your weight, diet,  exercise, or substance use?

Do you have a good primary care provider and insurance?

Mental health

Are there any mental health concerns that might be wise for us to talk about, for example, attention problems, executive functioning, sadness, depression, or angermanagement?

Philosophy or spirituality

Do you have issues regarding the meaning of life or how to live the life well-led?

Have any issues regarding religion or spirituality? For example, are you wondering whether to try to find religious faith? Or how a non-believer can find meaning beyond the quotidian?

The takeaway

Of course, a therapist or counselor might not want to ask about some or even any of these. But as you plan your next session with a client, or even, as I do, ask clients to complete a new-client questionnaire before the first session, perhaps this checklist will be helpful.

Source: National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF)

National Police Week begins May 6, 2019. Thousands of law enforcement officers and families from around the world will converge on Washington, DC to honor those who have died in the line of duty and to care for their survivors. I’ve never been to Police Week, even after three decades as a police psychologist. It doesn’t really matter, because when May rolls around, no matter where I am, I remember sitting on the living room floor with a grieving mother who wanted to believe that her son wasn’t dead, he was on a secret, deep undercover assignment. I remember the Christmas tree, the presents piled underneath, and the sound of the local school band who showed up to serenade a grieving widow and her children. I remember the shattered faces of the surviving officers as they waited to be interviewed after the accidental    death of a colleague. And the many dazed and grieving families, dwarfed by the pageantry of a police funeral, being guided by the gentle touch of others as though they were blind as well as brokenhearted. And the houses filled with friends, relatives, and cops. The food, the flowers, and the mash-up of sobs and laughter. 

I recall how, after a line-of-duty death, bureaucracies are pressed to respond humanely. Some do, some don’t. Mistakes are made, injuries sustained, and long-lasting emotional scars accumulated. Guilt hangs in the air. 

Money is often a worry for families. The time it takes to unsnarl the red tape and start collecting benefits can feel like forever. Occasionally, grief unleashes a family fight. I recall the children who needed help dealing with their devastating losses. And the parents who had trouble explaining a loss they didn’t yet understand or accept.

Grief is a paradox; a struggle to cope with the flood of memories that alternate with the flood of fears about forgetting the sound of a loved one’s voice or the feel of a loved one’s touch. 

I remember watching survivors struggle to accept the meaning of “no more, never again,” as messages of solace and compassion appeared from everywhere. Calling cards from the men and women, husband and wives, mothers and fathers, siblings and children who have lost loved ones in the line of duty. How volunteers from COPS (Concerns of Police Survivors) swung into action, offering support to co-workers and family, living proof that people survive their losses.

Then there are the memorials, like those scheduled for this coming May and the events that follow: seminars for the bereaved and summer camps for kids, therapists visits, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, holidays, family-get togethers with an empty seat at the table, decisions to make, headlines to read, interviews to give or avoid, annual ceremonies honoring the death, billboards along the highway, maybe even a trial to endure. What should be a private loss becomes a public event to be shared with friends and strangers. 

I am still in touch with some of these families. As though being present during the worst time of their lives links us together. With help and time, the people I know have all survived their losses, as have countless other police families who represent the best of a professional community that can be as fickle as it is loving and protecting. 

The dead officers’ co-workers are still doing the jobs they were hired to do, even as they are understandably more cautious and may have harder, sadder hearts. Eager young men and women are still lining up to pursue careers in law enforcement. They are still marching through the doors of police academies, pants pressed, boots shined, eyes forward and hearts open.

Source: Unsplash

As an introverted child, I lived partly in a small suburb in Minnesota and partly in my imagination. I was content spending whole afternoons by myself, writing books on construction paper and daydreaming. As a teenager, I had a group of friends I loved, but spending time with them drained me. They didn’t seem to need the alone time that I required just to function. I told myself that they were the “normal” ones, and I should be more like them.

Later in life, I learned there’s a word for who I am — introvert. By definition, introverts get easily drained by socializing and need plenty of downtime. Most important, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being an introvert. It’s not a disease or a disorder. In fact, 30 to 50 percent of the population are introverts, which means there are plenty of us "quiet ones" out there!

Being an introvert is something that will never change about me. Yes, we can grow and stretch as people; we can step out of our comfort zones, develop new skills, or gain a new perspective on life. But our temperament (introversion or extroversion) is innate. Experts agree it's something we’re born with, and it mostly remains unchanged throughout our lives. According to Dr. Marti Olsen Laney in The Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child, kids begin showing signs of introversion or extroversion around four months of age — and they generally remain true to their nature as adults.

In other words, once an introvert, always an introvert.

So what are introverts like as kids? No two introverts are exactly alike, but introverted children tend to share these seven characteristics to some degree.

7 Characteristics of Introverted Children

1. They have a vivid inner world.

It’s always alive and present for them. They rely on their inner resources rather than constantly turning to other people for support and guidance. “In their private garden away from the material world they concentrate and puzzle out complex and intricate thoughts and feelings,” writes Dr. Laney.

Introverted children like imaginative play, and they prefer playing alone or with just one or two other children. They often spend time in their own room with the door closed, doing solitary things like reading, drawing, or playing computer games.

Unfortunately, having a rich inner world can be a double-edged sword, because it can lead them to feel isolated and alienated from others. It’s important for parents of introverted children to help them see how their temperament can be a source of strength.

2. They engage with the deeper aspects of life.

Introverted children are not afraid of the big questions. They want to know why something is the way it is or what it means on a deeper level. Astonishingly, even at a young age, many of them can step outside themselves and reflect on their own behavior. Often, introverted children want to understand themselves — and everyone and everything around them. They might wonder, what makes this person tick?

3. They observe first, act later.

Generally, they prefer to watch games or activities before joining in. Sometimes appearing hesitant and cautious, they stand back from the action and enter new situations slowly. They may be more energetic and talkative at home where they feel more comfortable.

4. They make decisions based on their own values.

Their thoughts and feelings anchor them inwardly, so they make decisions based on their own standards rather than following the crowd. This can be an extremely positive aspect of their nature, because it means they’re less vulnerable to peer pressure. They don’t do things just to fit in.

5. Quiet initially, it can take time for their real personalities to come out.

Just like introverted adults, introverted kids warm up to new people slowly. They may be quiet and reserved when you first meet them, but as they become more comfortable with you, they come alive. Often their aim in conversation is to better understand their own or someone else’s inner world; they value connecting and really getting to know someone on a deeper level.

Like introverted adults, introverted kids are generally good listeners, paying attention and remembering what the other person says. They may speak softly, occasionally pause to search for words, and stop talking if interrupted. They may look away when speaking to gather their thoughts but make eye contact when listening.

6. They struggle in group settings.

Over the years, our society’s values have shifted and extroversion has become the ideal. We praise assertiveness, group acceptance, and external accomplishment rather than quiet reflection, solitude, and careful decision-making.

Sadly, the standards of being outgoing and assertive have been woven into every school and institution that an introverted child encounters. At a younger and younger age, children are spending time in group day cares and preschools. When they begin formal schooling, they may spend 6-7 hours a day with up to 30 other children, all the while being encouraged to participate and work in groups. This is challenging for introverts, who do better at home during their early years and adapt better to group settings as they grow older, writes Dr. Laney.

7. They socialize differently than extroverts.

They may have just one or two close friends and count everyone else as an acquaintance, because introverts seek depth in relationships rather than breadth. They probably won’t spend as much time socializing as extroverted kids, and they’ll need to go off on their own after a while to recharge their energy. Like introverted adults, introverted kids have limited social energy. Too much time spent socializing might result in tears, meltdowns, and bad moods.

Introverted vs. Extroverted Children

How do introverted kids compare to extroverted kids? Here are some general characteristics of extroverted children, from Dr. Laney’s book. Extroverted kids may:

• Talk with a snappy patter and loud voice, even more so if nervous
• Switch subjects frequently
• Have the capacity to sound like an expert on a subject, even when they're not
• Stand close to the person they’re talking to
• Interrupt conversations
• Look away when listening
• Be very expressive with their face, hands, or body when talking
• Get bored and disengage if a conversation goes on for too long
• Think of most people as friends
• Dive into new situations quickly
• Feel charged up after stimulating activities -- especially social ones
• Complain or feel drained if they spend too much time alone

If you’re the parent of an introverted child, the best thing you can do for your child is to honor their temperament. Help your child understand why they feel tired and cranky after socializing. Teach them that there's nothing wrong with needing to spend time alone.

Above all, don’t ever let them think there’s something wrong with them because they’re introverted. When we embrace introverted kids for who they are, we give them the confidence they need to fully show up in the world.

More resources for parents of introverted kids:

• 15 Things You Should Never Do To Your Introverted Child
• Why Is Socializing Exhausting For Introverts? Here’s The Science
• 10 Signs Your Baby (or Toddler) Is an Introvert

Source: Nik/Unsplash

I love it when research supports my bad habits. And when I read how swearing is a sign of honesty and intelligence I was all in. Apparently so are many of my friends.

The study on swearing is one of dozens that talk about the impact of words on our relationships, health, moods, motivation, and performance.

Positive self-talk improves performance and makes people more effective leaders, according to researcher Randall Masciana.

It's clear, the words we use can either empower and elevate us, or hold us back. 

Looking to overcome an obstacle on the way to your goal or habit change – like say, cutting back on the cookies to lose weight, or leaving work on time to have dinner with the fam? 

Say “I don’t,” not “I can’t.”

Try it:“I don’t eat dessert” feels punishing and limiting. “I don’t eat cake,” is more empowering and motivating.

“I don’t” helps us recognize that we are in charge of what we create in our lives. It also makes us more likely to stay on track toward our goals, according to research led by Vanessa M. Patrick. 

Talking to yourself in second-person works a similar way. Saying “you” instead of “I” improves follow through and performance, according to research.

And instead of screaming like a lunatic, or calling your husband a doofus and stalking off to the bedroom while the kale burns (maybe that’s just me) using precise words to describe our emotions can help us manage and diffuse them, according to UCLA researchers and others.

When we choose the right words to describe a scary situation we can also have an easier time dealing with it, according to Katharina Kircanski at UCLA.

She tested the theory by exposing people who were afraid of spiders to spiders. 

I think I’ll stick to the cussing research.

Ever known someone who you thought was very controlling? Or, have you ever called yourself a “control freak” or describe yourself as a person who hates to “lose control”? Have you ever considered what those descriptions really mean?

Unpleasant or difficult emotions (e.g. sadness, anger, disappointment) exist for protective purposes, yet what I’ve found through my clinical practice, is that people distract or shut down, particularly from these difficult feelings, when they are focused on having control or being “in control.” One might feel exposed, threatened, or in a state of upheaval or chaos if unpleasant emotions were simply allowed to run their course. In this case, people often describe themselves as being "out of control" or "having lost it".

Instead, people often find it safer to operate under a false notion of control. Stop and think about it . . . how many people have you heard describe themselves as “control freaks”? Or say that they hate “losing control”? Perhaps you feel this way, too.

The word “control” implies that something is being imposed from the outside or occurring outside the self. You may have noticed that certain people will try to control situations or events (e.g., the way a day gets planned out, the order of vacation activities, how closets and drawers are arranged, how things are organized on desktops and flat surfaces, etc.). Or you may find them trying to control others’ reactions, decisions, or emotions (e.g., manipulating people’s emotions for a desired outcome, trying to cultivate a particular image or reputation, etc.).

The trouble is that people think this issue of control has to do with managing all those external situations, for example, in the way they are perceived or how they conduct themselves in highly emotional circumstances. But the real focus needs to be on their internal life – where all the messy, “out-of-control” feelings are. When the “inside life” seems unmanageable, it often feels comfortable to try to enforce a measure of control on external, “outside life” matters instead.

Consequently, I find people are often confused about the notion of control; they think they can control (that is, prevent or stop) their feelings. You do have some control over what and how you think (patterns of thinking), and over your behavior, but you do not have control over what you experience. What you are really trying to control in these situations are the natural spontaneous, in-the-moment reactions to everyday life events or situations.

Thoughts, feelings, needs, and perceptions can be managed once they enter your conscious awareness, not prevented. In this context, the fear of losing control actually means the fear of feeling something you don’t really want to feel– most often, the eight difficult feelings or emotional states of sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment and frustration.

Overall, then, when people talk about control, the issue is usually difficulty experiencing their internal emotional life. They don’t want to experience it, would like to prevent or stop it altogether, or want to be able to dictate the terms by which they engage with it. And often, being out-of-control or losing control often translates to losing “comfort” (e.g., feeling sad, disappointed, angry); these eight unpleasant emotions move you away from comfort and into an emotional state that feels painful or uncomfortable. Loss of comfort or loss of control then often means feeling more vulnerable.

When we become conscious and aware of our emotional states, then we have the capacity to monitor, modulate, or modify our feelings and emotions, but not until those moments of awareness. With this awareness, you can choose how you respond to and interpret your experience, as well as decide what actions to take. But you need to work with your experience, not shut it out, shut it down, disconnect from, or distract from it.

The aim, then, is for you be in touch with as much of your emotional experience as you can bear.  Ideally, you will be able to freely, fluidly, and spontaneously access the emotional information made available to you, as you experience and become aware of your spontaneous reactions to what is happening in your life. You want to be able to modulate your feelings well and be able respond to situations and events in an adaptive and flexible manner, absent a desire or need for control.

About once every 40 seconds we lose a life by suicide. On April 20th, 2018 the world learned about the loss of electronic dance music artist and producer Tim Bergling, better known as Avicii. As many began to mourn his tragic passing, common consequential questions following a death by suicide began to arise.

Were there signs?

How was this possible?

…and of course…

Why?

Avicii’s family released a statement confirming his lifelong challenges with mental health including concerns such as extreme stress, the pressure to be perfect, and questioning the meaning of life. They affirmed that he sought methods to achieve peace. This was validated by the documentary Avicii: True Stories that documented four years of his rise to fame, stressors, and attempts to cope. Since, Avicii's family has established a foundation to foster mental health and promote suicide prevention. If you wish to honor the memory you may think to share one of his chart-topping songs as a tribute, but, aligned with his family, another way you can do so is by promoting mental health awareness. Be mindful of the stressors he experienced, the same that affect many others today, choose to stand against stigma, and know how to seek help.

Source: wikimedia commons

Stress

Stress is the typical, expected response when faced with a challenge. Stress is a natural part of life, and with it comes the need to cope. One can foster resilience by recognizing stressors and utilizing tailored methods to moderate their stress. Over time, the inability to recognize stressors, the lack of coping skills or even feeling hopeless in the potential to reduce stressors can cause mental health concerns. In True Stories, Avicii’s attempts to reduce his stressors by minimizing events were seen, as well as the impact on his mental wellness. Monitoring stress is an ongoing, important method of maintaining mental health. When possible, it can be beneficial to proactively consider coping mechanisms. If you notice the amount of stress is inundating and negatively impacting your wellness, it is important to seek help.

Perfectionism

A common concept that perpetuates stress is perfectionism. According to Curran and Hill perfectionism may be affecting recent generations more than in the past. Growing recognition as a dangerous frame of mind, perfectionism is now noted as a risk factor for suicide. Perfectionism is isn’t all bad, and that actually makes it difficult to distinguish when it is problematic. When adaptive, perfectionism prompts individuals to be proactive, set goals, and work hard. But how high is too high for our standards and expectations? While an outsider may see Avicii’s chart toppers simply as amazing achievements, True Stories captured the pressure Avicii felt to meet the hopes of his fans, friends, and collaborators. Underlying perfectionism often drives individuals to set unrealistic expectations, overwork, and be self-critical. Perfectionism should be taken seriously as a warning sign. Make an active effort to differentiate between self-compassionate encouragement and self-critical bullying. Practice self-kindness and gratitude to honor what you have, what you have achieved, and your potential to continue to grow.

Existential suffering

Avicii’s family shared that he was a seeker, a “fragile artistic soul searching for answers to existential questions.” Existential suffering may be more common than we think, because individuals pondering thoughts pertaining to meaning, purpose, connection, individuality, and life overall may find themselves isolated in their reflection. Existential scholars such as Søren Kierkegaard Viktor Frankl, and Irvin Yalom have all remarked on the intensity one experiences when willing to question the meaning of life. One can find themselves overwhelmed by existential concepts, and may turn to avoidance. To foster existential thought sans suffering, be mindful of your emotional experience, caution isolating from others, refrain from avoiding the magnitude of your thoughts, try to make abstract concepts tangible when possible, and seek support.

While Avicii may have faced other concerns that warrant mental health awareness, out of respect for his family and in order to honor his legacy, this article specifically addressed known and confirmed variables that affected his mental well-being. Suicide affects all people regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic status, nationality, etc. Recognizing the prevalence of mental health concerns, specifically suicide, helps us to see that the problem is widespread. Awareness of the need to improve may seem small, but it is the first, crucial step.   

To learn more about what you can do, read :

A Call for Change: How to Contribute to Suicide Prevention

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts please seek help.

Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or chat online.

Pixabay

Source: Pixabay

If you are reading this right now, you are one of the handfuls of human beings born in a rather unprecedented time; one within which there is likely no need to worry about the pillaging, raping and cultural elimination of your country/tribe. For a mere eye blink in time, since Sapiens stood upright and created the first spear, you can confidently say it is highly unlikely a neighboring faction or country is going to invade your sovereign nation. You will probably never experience troops landing on the shores of your city, nor seek refuge in a basement, placing a spoon of sugar in your baby’s mouth so they do not betray your position to the opposing force. You don’t have to hide your daughters from soldiers, or your sons from being lined up in rows of fifty to be executed. Through sheer, good fortune, a sprinkling of human achievement, the fear of mutually assured destruction and a dollop of technological sophistication, a minor miracle has occurred: you are safe from an invading force.  With this in mind, you might, perhaps understandably, wonder why countries such as Australia, a country that has not faced the threat of invasion in over 70 years, just spent in excess of 50 billion Australian dollars on 12 brand new, gas guzzling submarines often associated with the Cold War. Imagine, you might muse, what could be achieved if that money was directed toward scientific research focused on finding a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease, or renewable energy, let alone schools, hospitals and roads.

Human Nature: The Ugly Truth

To answer this question, let’s cast our gaze across the brief time Sapiens have dominated this planet. We need to be completely clear on this matter: humans have been happily slaughtering each other over land, mating opportunities and resources since one ape slapped another. The idea of the noble savage, or the tranquility and peace of tribal humans has been thoroughly debunked. Capitalist ‘propaganda’ is not to blame, nor is the ‘militarism of America’, or the ‘Hollywood propagandist machine’. Our ability and willingness to divide and conquer is far older than any of these modern human constructs. Whether or not we are comfortable with it, violence, and the ability to systematically annihilate entire groups of humans, is about as human a trait as our ability to form countries, legal systems, and complex trade agreements. Likely, they are all expressions of what makes us human, warts and all. From documented accounts of Eskimo tribes’ total annihilation of neighboring factions, to the genocide of the Jews and utter destruction of Europe, the one thing you can bet on is our ability to work together to dominate and destroy other fellow Sapiens. 

Those of us born in this unusually stable time in human history may have real difficulties integrating the idea that there is a genuine threat to our nation. There is good reason for this, as Steven Pinker and Yurval Noah Harari observe: the costs of war, the economic benefits of peace and our ability to form complex alliances and laws make land invasion highly undesirable. In the bestselling book Sapiens, Harari makes a compelling case for trade, threat of nuclear annihilation, and the nature of the rapidly advancing way in which we measure wealth as good reasons we may have staved off recent land grabs. If China invaded California, what would they hope to gain? Would they make a grab for Google headquarters?

A Changing World

Despite the unlikely scenario of a traditional invasion,  regions such as the Asian Pacific are plagued with an ever evolving strategic uncertainty... The shifting powers and accessibility to technology make the defense of nations increasingly technologically fast paced, expensive and unknown. The American Navy has admitted to no longer being able to dominate and project its power to all corners of the planet, therefore, responsibility to defend one’s waters and trade routes are falling ever more toward sovereign nations. Consider that Indonesia, a country most would not associate with military prowess, is on the path to become a world economic power in the coming decades, and a major player in Asia. India is making a serious play to be among the top five largest Navies in the world, and one of the few countries to have three aircraft carriers. China may have as many as 400+ war-fighting ships by 2030 (America plans on having 300), and  indeed China, with what appears to be an objective to totally dominate the Pacific, has made no qualms about its desire to expand its defended waters, create artificial islands, and re-integrate Taiwan into its national confines within three decades. Tension between the USA and China has mounted to a point where some are calling it the new Cold War, and others suggesting that the current climate may lead to nothing short of a crescendo of war between China and USA within the coming decades. It should be noted that in the last 500 years, 80% of the time that a rising power has taken the mantle from the dominant power has resulted in war.

We Can't Afford To Live In Denial 

The statement that Sapiens are killer chimps is virtually axiomatic. Researchers have already suggested that we are natural born killers, and that in all likelihood, we inherited these violent patterns of behaviour from a common ancestor. By accepting this reality, we can be better prepared for what lies ahead of us. As Steven Pinker remarked in his 2002 book, The Blank Slate:

Many intellectuals have averted their gaze from evolutionary logic of violence, fearing that acknowledging it is tantamount to accepting it or even approving of it. Instead they have pursued the comforting delusion of the Noble Savage, in which violence is an arbitrary product of learning or a pathogen that bores into us from the outside. But denying the logic of violence makes it easy to forget how readily violence can flare up, and ignoring the parts of the mind that ignite violence makes it easy to overlook the parts that can extinguish it. With violence, as with so many concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution (Pinker, 2002).

There is a hard truth we need to own up to: we have spent far more time as humans at war than we have at peace. When we are discussing matters of defense, let us cast our gaze through the lens of history, and not let wishful thinking about human nature dictate policy.

When your relationship ends, how will you rebuild? Will you seek someone to replace your partner or someone completely different? The rebuilding process can be painful if you just keep repeating your same mistakes. Consider what happened following the devastating fire that nearly destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to restore the structure to its former glory. The commitment to rebuild gave the French people, and indeed the world, some solace. A similar process occurs when people lose their homes to a natural disaster. You hear those interviewed on the news stating with absolute confidence that they will be able to overcome the challenges of erecting a new structure on their property, and to refuse to be daunted by the thought that another flood, hurricane, or tornado will strike twice. However, as with Notre Dame, most people plan to make changes when they rebuild so that the same fate doesn't befall the repaired structure.

The psychological rebuilding that occurs when your relationship has come to an end may reflect somewhat similar processes. You need to regroup and, despite what you’ve learned are the challenges, you’re willing to dive back into a new relationship. The idea that your romantic life doesn’t have to be over despite the loss of your close partner gives you hope even as you sort out the steps that you’ll need to take to accomplish this goal. You may decide that you’ll need to find someone completely unlike your previous partner or, alternatively, a replacement who will be virtually identical to the person you lost if not in appearance, then in personality.

New research by University of Alberta’s (Canada) Matthew Johnson and Franz Neyer from Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Germany) examined the question of whether, when people rebuild relationships, they find partners alike or completely distinct from their previous ones. In their words, “Because people seek lasting love amid a relational landscape littered with the remains of prior unions, we asked a simple question: Does a new relationship differ from its preceding one?” (p. 1). Think about the littering that’s occurred on your relational landscape. How different, in fact, were your partners from each other? More to the point, how did the dynamics that characterized your various relationships differ from each other, or were they virtually interchangeable?

As Johnson and Neyer note, there’s surprisingly little research on this question, despite the fact that relationship transitions are common over the course of adult life. Even if you’ve been with the same partner for decades, it’s likely that you had previous relationships when you were younger. Although you hope your relationship will never end, when you think about who a next partner might be for you, how do you envision the dynamics? Will you seek to replay the themes of your current relationship? How will you rebuild?

To address these questions, Johnson and Neyer compared the stability-focused with the change-focused perspectives. The stability model takes attachment theory as its starting point, and suggests that people in fact recreate prior dynamics in new relationships because their “habitual patterns of thought and behavior with their lovers” are transferred from old to new partners (p. 2). In contrast, the change-focused perspective proposes that people alter their relationship dynamics with new partners because each new relationship must be renegotiated. Additionally, the context in which relationships occur change over time if for no other reason than Partner A will never be identical to Partner B. Furthermore, as you move through life, later partners are more likely to come with families of their own to whom your relationship dynamics must adapt.

To contrast these models, Johnson and Neyer took advantage of a large longitudinal data set that began in Germany in 2008 and will continue until 2022, across a total of 8 waves of testing. Known as “pairfam,” the German study compared 3 cohorts that included adolescents (15-17 years old), young adults (25-27), and midlife adults (35-37). The focus of pairfam, which began with a sample of 12.402 participants, is on these 4 areas: intimate relationships, fertility, parent-child relationships, and intergenerational ties. To arrive at a sample appropriate for the relationship transition question, the researchers narrowed their focus to the 1949 participants who reported being in more than one close relationship over the course of the study. From this they selected 554 whose relationship changes occurred across at least 2 waves of testing.

The first set of analyses tested whether those in more than one partnership differed from those whose relationship history was stable. These relationship-changers were more likely to be female, younger, lower in education, and slightly lower in agreeableness but higher in neuroticism. Thus, people who switch relationships are a selective group compared to those who remain stable. Because the relationships changes might have occurred over different years within the study, the researchers adjusted “time” to reflect the changes between first and second partnership. Therefore, some partners may have switched between the years 2008 and 2010, and others between 2012 and 2014.

The questions asked of participants relevant to the study on relationship changes included satisfaction with the relationship overall, satisfaction with sex life, frequency of sexual intercourse, and perceived instability of their current relationship. Six questionnaire items asked participants directly about the dynamics of their relationship including frequency of conflict, extent of self-disclosure, and admiration expressed by the partner to the participant. As predictors of the relationship change measures, the research team included personality according to the Five Factor Model (i.e. neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), sex, age, and relationship duration of the first partnership.

To assess change over time within individuals, the research team took advantage of a complex analytical strategy that allowed them to test the underlying relationship and individual factors as these evolved over time. This was important because just looking at average scores over time could not answer questions related to change within people across relationships. Additionally, the research plan allowed the investigators to evaluate the contribution of demographic facts as well as personality.

Using this model, the findings supported the stability vs. the change model to an overwhelming degree. In the words of the authors, “this study sought to understand whether a new relationship differs from the one that preceded it… the answer to that question seems to be ‘mostly no” (p. 9). Given this stability, “why does it seem as though a new partnership is different from those in the past?” (p. 9). The illusion of change, then outweighs the reality of stability in the building of new relationships. As your first relationship deteriorates and ends, they suggest, you approach your new relationship with “the bliss of new love” (p. 9). Because the old relationship’s deterioration remains so prominent in your mind, you rewrite history to think that it was terrible all along. This distorted recall, along with your own longstanding approaches to relationships, as reflected in attachment style and personality, leads you to recreate your old patterns with your subsequent partners.

Interestingly, one exception to this pattern occurred in the areas of sexual frequency and appreciation, which showed patterns of improvement from partner 1 to partner 2. The authors attribute this finding to the fact that these factors reflect behavior of the partner. When it came to internal relationship evaluations, participants didn’t perceive any significant improvements after transitioning to their new partners. As the authors conclude, “Although some dynamics may improve in a new relationship, perceptions of the partnership do not” (p. 9).

To sum up, when people rebuild a physical structure that they lost, they may strive to restore it as closely as possible to its prior glory, as will certainly be the case for Notre Dame in an aesthetic sense. In relationships, it appears that they will also strive to rebuild their former patterns of interactions, which may actually not be all that desirable if those interactions weren’t working. The Johnson and Neyer study suggests that to find happiness when you’re in the rebuilding process, you look objectively at your role in your previous relationship. You’ll be more likely to find fulfillment in your new relationship if you are able to start with yourself.

In ancient times, Hippocrates of Kos, a Greek physician during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and Galen of Pergamon, a Greek physician and philosopher during the second century A.D., divided people into types. These types were based on, according to them, a person's levels of what they identified as four vital bodily fluids necessary for nutrition, growth, and metabolism, primarily originating in the digestive process. These doctors believed that excessive levels of any of these fluids in a person resulted in certain, moderately predictable character flaws and strengths.

During the early 1900s, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung found great interest in the fact that he and his colleagues Alfred Adler and Sigmund Freud reviewed the very same clinical and scientific material and came to very different conclusions, which he wrote about in his book, Psychological Types. He sought to reconcile Freud's and Adler's theories and developed his own model in which a person is characterized by first assessing preference in their general attitude (i.e. introversion vs extraversion), then by preference between two functions of perception (i.e. sensing vs intuition), and finally by preference between two functions of judging (i.e. thinking vs feeling).

Source: Joshua Earle/Unsplash

Nearly 100 years have passed since Carl Jung distilled the thinking of the ancients into the profound and soul-searching nuance of a (more) modern psychological model, yet Jung's typologies have never been proven empirically. He based his theories on observation and anecdote and criticized academic science.

Jung wrote,

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world. (Jung, 1916)

Trait dichotomies and the storied self

Isabel Briggs Myers, a researcher and practitioner of Jung's theory, added a fourth dichotomy to Jung's model (judging vs. perceiving) in her immensely popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Dichotomies are divisions representing opposites, tending to lead us toward identifying ourselves with either one trait or another. Most popular personality typologies rely heavily on trait dichotomies at some level, yet there is a one-dimensionality to such partitions. Jung himself once asserted that anyone who is only an introvert or an extravert would naturally be admitted to a lunatic asylum.

Personality psychologist Dan P. McAdams has been critical of any approach to understanding individuals in reductionistic terms and especially of characterizing a person purely in terms of personality traits. In reality, people often contradict the categories models place them in. McAdams (1995) wrote, "A person cannot be known without knowing traits. But knowing traits is not enough." He contended, "personality psychologists must seek first and foremost to know persons" (McAdams, 1996).

In doing so, according to McAdams, we would best traverse through three layers of assessment, starting with an assessment of general personality traits, which he calls "Level 1" personality assessment, "the first level of knowing a person." From there, he says, an astute assessor moves into the second level, knowing personal concerns:

"[Personal concerns] speak to what people want, often during particular periods in their lives or within particular domains of action, and what life methods people use (strategies, plans, defenses, and so on) to get what they want or avoid getting what they do not want over time, in particular places, and/or with respect to particular roles" (McAdams, 1996).

Source: Dmitry Ratushny/Unsplash

At "level three," we gain insight into a person's sense of unifying meaning and purpose, their own conception of self-identity that comes out especially in the ways that they share stories about themselves. McAdams (1996) explained, "[Modern men and women] construct...more or less coherent, followable, and vivifying stories that integrate the person into society in a productive and generative way and provide a purposeful self-history."

Models are wrong but potentially useful

The commercialization of psychology inevitably reduces and therefore corrupts. Consequently, as members of a commercialized society, we are ever at risk for creating man-made caricatures of ourselves. Yet personality assessment can be a useful predictor of behavior. At the least, it can help in normalizing anxieties about why we often feel, think, and behave in particular ways.

The great storytelling British statistician George Box famously argued, “All models are wrong, some are useful.” Typological models help us understand the continuums of personality. We simply must be careful not to assume their precision, or worse, horoscopic meaning. On the other hand, human personalities are not merely irreducible one-offs. Popular personality tests are indeed pseudoscience, but we must be careful not to confuse that fact with the false notion that personality is a myth. It is not. The fact of the matter is that personality traits are a thing. They are not fixed, but they are relatively stable, readily observable, and quite consequential.

Even the hard sciences build and utilize models themselves, engaging necessarily in their own forms of reductionism. Box (1979) reasoned,

It would be very remarkable if any system existing in the real world could be exactly represented by any simple model. However, cunningly chosen parsimonious models often do provide remarkably useful approximations. For example, the law PV = RT relating pressure P, volume V and temperature T of an 'ideal' gas via a constant R is not exactly true for any real gas, but it frequently provides a useful approximation and furthermore its structure is informative since it springs from a physical view of the behavior of gas molecules. For such a model there is no need to ask the question 'Is the model true?' If truth is to be the whole truth, the answer must be 'No.' The only question of interest is, 'Is the model illuminating and useful?'

The secret to knowing a person

In the end, the point is that models have their limitations. Almost assuredly, the very best way to come to know the layers and distinctiveness of one's own, actual personality—and another's—is through friendship.

Source: Matheus Ferrero/Unsplash

Psychologist and researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) suggested, “It is in the company of friends that we can most clearly experience the freedom of the self and learn who we really are.” Friendship brings out different parts of ourselves. C.S. Lewis (1960), author of The Chronicles of Narnia, wrote about how friendship enlivens particular aspects of who we are—"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."

But friendship not only helps us know ourselves; it helps us become ourselves. Lewis (1960) posited, "It makes good men better and bad men worse." Among Lewis's closest friends was J.R.R. Tolkien, who was not only one in a fellowship of friends (the Inklings, they famously called themselves) whose indelible influence shaped Lewis, but who also poignantly depicted in his epic, Lord of the Rings, the formative role of a fellowship of friends in the course of fulfilling a calling greater than themselves. In terms of typology, I enjoy exploring personality models, especiallywith friends, and I, for one, believe that such enjoyment has merit in-and-of-itself.

In my previous post (Part 1 of this essay) I discussed themes related to our feelings of discontent.  I described differences between unhappiness, sorrow, and sadness.  I considered, with the help of Robert Burton’s 400-year-old masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy, some causes of those conditions.

In Part 2 of this essay, I explore feelings of discontent as difficulties in our “relationships” with the world.  To be sure, there are different kinds of relationships that affect us.  Some discontent is traceable to physiological imbalances. Under such circumstances, medication or other kinds of bodily readjustment and healthful living may be appropriate responses.  Pertinent also are persisting psychological disturbances – perhaps traumatic events we have experienced in our lives, addictions we cannot shake, or other destructive behaviors that keep us from operating at our best.

With all respect to those types of causes, and to the psychotherapists and health practitioners that address them, I want to focus here on social and cultural factors as sources of unhappiness.

To be sure, there is a sense in which unhappiness is an individual, even psychological, matter.  All of us maintain personal expectations for how the world operates.  Some of those anticipations are standards, that is, visions of what we consider preferred or “good” conditions.  We don’t like to see our standards violated, especially when the events in question are important to us.  At such times, dissatisfaction turns into unhappiness, which may linger within us as sadness and sorrow.

To be unhappy then is to ponder the perceived gap between our understandings of good conditions and the conditions that currently prevail.  We feel worse as that gap widens and better as it closes.  We feel very good when we exceed those desired conditions (perhaps winning a lottery or getting an unanticipated A on a test).  We feel miserable when events descend toward what we conceive to be worst conditions, perhaps realizing our “darkest fears.”

Much of life – and of our quest to be happy ˗ features attempts to reconcile our expectations for existence with the conditions we encounter.  Sometimes that means attempting to change those worldly conditions (and by implication our own behaviors) to make them approach those expectations.  Alternately, we fiddle with our standards, moderating them so they align better with the lives we lead.  Most of us think of maturity or wisdom as the ability to develop reasonable standards, both for ourselves and for the world we live in and, more than that, to decide which things we can change and which things we must endure.

Be clear that the standards we apply are complicated, fluid, and sometimes situation specific.  We may have different standards for different areas of life (think of job success, romantic involvement, friendship, family ties, physical well-being, leisure endeavors, and so forth).  We may declare some of these areas more important than others (perhaps support of family and friends instead of job success).  We may shift the reference groups that are the basis of our standards (perhaps comparing ourselves to “people like us” rather than some vaunted person).  We may further adjust that focus by bringing up examples of the terrible things that can happen to people (“Poor Jones is sick; his wife left him; his son is in jail.  Really, I should count my blessings.”)  We can shift our concern from our own circumstances to those of others, such as our children.  Who of us does not rationalize their existence in similar ways?

I once wrote a book that presented the emotions – and happiness, in particular ˗ in those very terms.  But this is an incomplete theory of what makes people happy and unhappy.       

Although we possess personal standards (sometimes quite rigid ideas) for how the world should operate, other kinds of standards are equally important in our quest to be happy.  Those standards include basic physical and psychological needs, the commitments of the groups we belong to, the values of the wider culture, and even our perceptions of the “interests” of ourselves and of others.

What I’m arguing then is these patterns of expectation, essentially expressions of our life conditions, are also crucial elements of happiness.  These conditions make claims on us, urging us to do one thing or the other.  Some of these claims countermand our cherished values or ideas.  In much the same fashion, we also make claims on the life-conditions that confront us. That is to say, our relationships with the world are dialectical affairs, patterns of give-and-take.  Frequently, we are able to impose our will on situations, but even more frequently, we have to accede to the wishes of otherness.  This interaction is especially apparent in our relationships with other people.

This is the theme ˗ how different kinds of relationships create different kinds of challenges ˗ that I comment on in what follows.  I describe four different kinds of relationships: subordination, privilege, marginality, and engagement.  Each one generates distinctive possibilities for happiness – and for unhappiness.

Subordination and feelings of Entrapment

Subordination is perhaps the most apparent source of unhappiness, at least in a rights-oriented society like ours.  Although there are many occasions where we willingly accept the directives of superiors (think of parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, ministers, and the like), for the most part we like to experience the feeling of being in charge of our own thoughts and behaviors.  When we direct our own involvement in the world, we have the best chance of aligning it with our standards.  We can start, stop, and otherwise manage our behavior at will.  Granted we may fail as often as we succeed. Still, we do this on our own terms.

Under conditions of subordination, others tell us what to do.  We may not accept the standards they impose.  To make matters worse, there may be little we can do about their ability to control us.  Commonly then, we live with a sense of blocked opportunity, of deferred or unrealized dreams.  One response is to try to accept the standards others impose on us, and the identities they require us to hold (Karl Marx called this acceptance “false consciousness”).  Similarly, we may deny that we have any ability to change our predicament (Jean-Paul Sartre called that denial “bad faith”).  Still, we recognize that we are not able to do the same things as other, more advantaged people in our society. I call such feelings of blockage and hopelessness Entrapment.

Privilege and feelings of Normlessness

What if we occupy a position opposite to the one just described?  We have resources galore.  We can go and do as we please.  We are able to control other people instead of being controlled by them.  Surely, that condition of privilege is the good life.

Not so. At least that is what the great sociologist Emile Durkheim argued.  Durkheim claimed that we humans need social and cultural directives to fulfill ourselves as persons.  That is, we need others to express their concern for our welfare; we need to reciprocate that concern.  Without that sense of willing obligation to others ˗ call it “responsibility” ˗ we merely bounce around from one self-nominated pursuit to another.  Ultimately, we become prisoners of our own desires, which we discover to be endless in their variety and quality of incompletion. At some point, existence follows the tyranny of whim.  Durkheim termed that lack of social commitment “anomie,” which is the Greek term for Normlessness.

Once again, our culture – especially our culture of advertising˗ celebrates this ethic of boundless domination.  We celebrate freedom of personal choice, however, worthy or unworthy those choices may be.  In ads, beautiful people are shown at exotic places pursuing fanciful adventures, all permitted by the passport of money.  Smiling others are shown greeting them and doing their bidding.  The ideal life, or so it seems, is cultural masturbation.

However, most of know that incessant willfulness is ultimately empty.  We need other people around us, not as minions but as persons we care for and respect.  Without firm commitments from others, our own standards weaken and collapse.  A day at the beach or spa is only that.  The better forms of happiness express our caring, consistent involvement in the lives of others.

Marginality and feelings of Isolation

The previous two conditions feature direct relationships with others, though those relationships may not be what we desire or even what is in our best interest.  Different from both is the condition where we have few connections to society, perhaps even to family and friends.  I call this pattern marginality.

Once again, our society sometimes glamorizes this condition of being on the edge, or perhaps beyond the reach, of society’s powers. Wouldn’t it be grand to be a cowboy alone on the prairie, a solitary mountaineer, or an eccentric genius fascinated with his or her personal creations? Nobody could tell you what to do.

Less glamorously, many people endure this condition as a fact of daily living.  They live alone in apartments, wander streets, or stare at the walls of jail cells.  Countless others find themselves cut off from society’s normal routes and routines.  They are old, poor, physically disabled, psychologically challenged, or marked as outsiders by criteria or gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other matters.

Perhaps these marginalized people, like the rest of us,  find comfort in small circles of family and friends.  Perhaps they take pride in their special identities or join organizations that represent their concerns to the public at large.  Those limited contacts may be enough to build a satisfying life.  But there is inevitably the knowledge that many people in society do not accept them, indeed have marked them with these identities in order to shun them and to restrict their access to that society’s valued resources. 

Isolation ˗ the awareness that one is cut off from others, unable to contact them or to receive their contact ˗ is a profound disturbance of its own sort.  Defensively, some marginals may insist they don’t want contact with those who reject them. However, all of us need the support of communities of caring support; and our self-estimations expand consistently with the expansion of those communities.

Engagement and feelings of Meaninglessness

Many readers, or so I believe, would say that none of the above types approximates their life-conditions.  Those readers are actively involved in their communities of concern.  They feel comfortable going about on public byways.  They do not expect shunning or reproof.  They have little desire to lord it over others; nor do they expect those others to dominate them.

Most relationships with other people feature patterns of give-and-take, and the compromises that result from such dealings.  At least that is the case for those who understand themselves to be of the middle-class, of “mainstream” identities, and otherwise unrestricted in their expression of interests and beliefs.  Day-to-day interactions for such people feature countless engagements with those of relatively similar status ˗ the store clerk, the plumber, the insurance agent, the coach of the Little league team.  Life is an exchange of services, sometimes on money terms.

Rare is the person who would say that their life is not “busy” in just these ways.  Even children find themselves over-scheduled.  Some enjoy the hectic routine; it makes them feel vibrant and involved.  How can any of this be a problem?

It is a problem, or so I would maintain, if that involvement is mostly a ritualization of life energies. Getting the car serviced, going to the dentist, attending exercise class, meeting with a child’s teacher, turning in a report at work, and so forth may all be necessary enough.  However, there should also be occasions where people reaffirm what is fundamentally important in their lives.  Potentially, years can go by where the minutiae of existence overwhelm us.  Involvement seems like happiness, but is it?

In my view, Meaninglessness is the danger of the over-involved life.  For many reasons, we do what we think is required to make our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, successful.  But how hard have we thought about the various meanings of “success” or “happiness” and how complicit are we in fabricating a world that entraps the people we care about?  Stepping back from routine ˗ and reaffirming fundamental values – is one response to an existence turned robotic.                      

Being unhappy means that we have somehow departed from our better standards for living.  We have lost connection with the basic human resources we need to make our lives whole.  Reevaluating those connections, re-imagining our self-trajectories, and redirecting our energies is the challenge of the committed life.

A few days ago, I wrote a post, “Does ‘Flow’ Open Our Minds to Believing in ‘Oneness’?” which was inspired by a recent study (Edinger-Schons, 2019) published in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. This follow-up post explores how “oneness became my religion” based on three key factors: Experiencing ego-dissolving awe in nature (this first happened when I was still a young church-going Mennonite in the 1970s), by achieving flow states and “superfluidity” through physicality, and a single life-changing experience on psilocybin during adolescence. 

In my opinion, oneness is the antithesis of divisiveness. The topic of “oneness” can get very heady and it's easy to slip into new-age territory and "woo-woo" vernacular. That said, my core foundation for believing in oneness is rooted more in neurobiology than spirituality. I strongly believe that the same feel-good molecules (e.g., endocannabinoids, adrenaline, endorphin, dopamine, etc.) that flood your body and brain when you’re in a “flow zone” flood my body and brain when I’m in a state of flow, too. Flow is a universal human experience.

Additionally, the “small sense of self” (Paul K. Piff et al., 2015)—that we all experience when sublime awe makes us say “wow” and reminds us that there is something much bigger than us out there in the universe—is another core tenet of oneness beliefs. We all know the spine-tingling feeling of nature-inspired awe. It often happens when you look up at a full moon, see the Milky Way, or witness a breathtaking sunrise/sunset. All of these awe-inspired experiences have the ability to reinforce our sense of interconnectedness, human commonality, and oneness beliefs.  

Lastly, I have a hunch that once the seeds of oneness have been planted by someone's early life experiences, that it only takes a single psychedelic experience (in a safe and expertly-monitored environment) to reaffirm that these universally accessible feelings of oneness are something that may seem ethereal but are actually real, and surround us every millisecond of the day. 

My hope in sharing the following autobiographical experiences of how I stumbled on the power of oneness might serve as a type of 'hodgepodge' road map for anyone reading this who is interested in nourishing his or her oneness beliefs.

It's hard to believe that this image is an oil painting by Caspar David Friedrich from 1832 and not a high-resolution digital photograph, it looks so realistic. When I put myself in this painting, I can relive the sense of oneness I've experienced out near the breakwater and "moors" in Provincetown, Massachusetts where the legendary Rt. 66 begins and ends on Cape Cod.

Source: Caspar David Friedrich/Public Domain

As I sit here at my desk in the predawn hours, I'm touch-typing these ideas about oneness beliefs in a stream of consciousness fashion. That said, something just reminded me of a passage from C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse—A Record of Two Friendships. In this book, the author, Miguel Serrano, recounts a story that during Jung's last known solacing dream before his death, he saw "a huge round block of stone sitting on a high plateau, and at the foot of the stone were the engraved words: 'And this shall be a sign to you of Wholeness and Oneness.'" (p. 104) 

In another passage, Serrano explains Jung's possible relationship with this proverbial stone:

"Even as a child Jung had 'his stone,' on which he would sit for hours, fascinated by the puzzle of which was ‘I’—he, the little boy, or the stone. For years it was ‘strangely reassuring and calming' to sit on this stone, 'which was eternally the same for thousands of years while I am only a passing phenomenon.’ For Jung the stone ‘contained and at the same time was the bottomless mystery of being, the embodiment of spirit,’ and his kinship with it was ‘the divine nature in both, in the dead and the living matter."

For the next portion of this post, I’m going to share some of my own ego-dissolving experiences with oneness where “I” and the “other” became one over the years.

In my book, The Athlete’s Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss, (2007) I write about how archetypes and mythology laid a foundation for my oneness beliefs: 

“Myths grabbed me somewhere deep down inside. They got into my spine. It was a metaphysical experience for me as a teenager because I realized that I and “the other” were one. This experience of complete connectedness is what I have coined superfluidity—the episodic feeling of existing without any friction or viscosity—a state of ecstatic bliss I will explore in this book.” 

One ironic aspect of having strong oneness beliefs for me is that feeling a sense of “oneness” has never been about belonging to a congregation or “tribe” of other people. Along this line, my affinity for self-determined solitude (SDS) is directly tied to the robustness of my oneness beliefs. 

For me, being a “loner” and also being a “oneness seeker” are two sides of the same coin. The paradox of being a "loner" and "oneness seeker" brings me to a potential dark side of obsessively craving to get back into the “flow zone” as a way to escape day-to-day life by tapping into oneness. This pursuit has the potential to become a way of isolating yourself from others in unhealthy or self-destructive ways. (See, "The Dark Side of Mythic Quests and the Spirit of Adventure.")

For example, in another passage from my first book I wrote:

“Many people, especially obligatory exercisers (like me), treat mental health problems with exercise. Be on the lookout for the warning signs of compulsive behavior, and if you think there’s a problem get help to sort it out. Please understand that a lot of what I accomplished as an athlete was a coping mechanism for me. In many ways, it was a substitute for not being able to really let people into my life. Instead of connecting intimately to other humans, I had an ongoing love affair with 'the other.'”

For the record: I wrote the above passage over a decade ago when I was still an exercise fanatic. Since retiring from ultra-endurance sports, I have a much healthier relationship with using flow/superfluidity to create oneness in healthy doses and strive to nourish more wholehearted and intimately-connected relationships on a daily basis. 

As mentioned, this post is purposely written in a free-association style. The ideas presented in this post are very much a work in progress. But that's OK; there's purposely no dogma being presented here. I’m a strong believer in the Van Morrison mantra from “In the Garden” where he sings, “No guru, no method, no teacher. Just you and me and nature.”

I don't have many answers or expert tips on exactly "how to" instill oneness beliefs. But I am optimistic that if more people start believing more strongly in oneness that we can break the snowballing divisiveness of “us” against “them” sentiment and rhetoric. (See, "Your Brain Can Learn to Empathize with Outside Groups") 

As you can see, I’ve sprinkled some artwork from my all-time favorite Romantic-era painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) throughout this post and included a brief description of how using "theory of mind" to put myself in each landscape triggers "what-when-and-where memories" of oneness from places I’ve been. If you have visual cues that evoke a strong sense of oneness, I highly recommend placing them somewhere in your living space or pulling them up on a digital screen when your oneness beliefs need a reboot.

“The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Close your bodily eye so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards.” –Caspar David Friedrich

In the final section of this post, I’ll try to keep the narrative grounded in a streamlined, chronological timeline.

This Caspar David Friedrich painting evokes a sense of "small self" and oneness that I feel anytime I'm back in the Berkshire mountains where I first tapped into a sense of oneness by connecting to nature in the early 1970s.

Source: Caspar David Friedrich/Public Domain

Around the age of five, I have early memories of the seeds of awe and the “small self” being planted in my psyche. Because I was born and raised in Manhattan, some of my earliest memories are of walking like a sea of marching human ants on the sidewalk and being overwhelmed by jaw-dropping awe anytime I looked up at the skyscrapers that literally seemed to be scraping the crystal-clear blue sky above us. Also, finding bright-orange salamanders hiding under rocks at our summer house in the Berkshires planted early seeds of nature-inspired awe and nourished a strong sense of connectedness to other creatures in the wilderness when I was a youngster.

As a native New Yorker, Central Park has always served as a way to tap into the feeling of unspoken “oneness” with all the other joggers, walkers, skateboarders, cyclists, etc. in the park who are either wittingly or unwittingly seeking a state of flow. The solidarity I feel with these “flow-seeking” strangers from all different racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds never fails to reaffirm my core belief system of oneness. Although everyone in the park is a unique individual, it also feels like everyone working out in the park on any given day gets on the same wavelength. 

Although I didn’t know (or use) the term “flow” until I read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's seminal book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, around 1990. With hindsight, I realize that I first learned how to find the sweet spot between my level of skill and challenge (to create a state of flow) while hitting tennis balls against a backboard starting in about the fifth grade. During this mid-1970s period, my family was living in rural Pennsylvania. I was lucky enough to have a tennis court on our property; this allowed me to spend a lot of time practicing my groundstrokes alone against a backboard.

As my tennis skill level increased, I intuitively figured out that if I moved farther away from the board and hit the ball harder and at more challenging angles, it helped me stay in the “flow channel" and improved my game. Coincidentally, The Inner Game of Tennis was a bestseller during this era and was one of my father's favorite books. Dad was also my tennis coach, and I suspect I had a loose understanding that getting into the "zone" as a tennis player was rooted in some Zen-like practices. But I didn’t have a name for these states of consciousness when I was 10. Interestingly, I still feel the exact same childhood sense of “oneness” I experiences back in the 1970s anytime I step onto a tennis court to rally with my 11-year-old daughter. 

This landscape painting by Caspar David Friedrich reminds me of where I lived in Lebanon, Pennsylvania during middle school. At the time, I had a horse named Commander and attended Mennonite church regularly. Anytime I look at this image, I can imagine me and Commander galloping across the canvas because it reminds me so much of the Lebanon Valley on a visceral and awe-inspiring level.

Source: David Caspar Friedrich/Public Domain

During this period of my childhood, I also had a horse named Commander who was always a stone’s throw away because we had a big barn next to our limestone farmhouse. Commander was my soulmate. We formed a symbiotic relationship. Whenever it was warm enough, I’d ride him barefoot and without a saddle. Galloping full throttle through the cornfields on Commander during dramatic weather as 10-year-old is the first time I can remember feeling really connected to something much bigger than me in nature. This sense of oneness and "transcendent ecstasy" became something that I continue to seek whenever I'm biking or trail-running through the wilderness.  

At this impressionable period of child development, I was also attending Mennonite church every Sunday and strongly identified with Jesus’ messages about the "Golden Rule" and loving thy neighbor as thyself. Because the Mennonite church was at the top of a hill just a few hundred yards from my house, it felt like a home-away-from-home. Notably, my Sunday school teacher, Cristina Neff, is probably the kindest most generous human beings I’ve ever known. Although I don’t identify with any organized religion now, the lessons I learned by being part of that peace-loving community have stayed with me for life.

During adolescence, in the early 1980s, I attended a boarding school called Choate Rosemary Hall during the peak of very cliché Bright Lights, Big City substance abuse. My classmates were notoriously busted at JFK for trying to smuggle in $300,000 of cocaine from Venezuela and made the front page of the New York Times. 

Although this was a very dark period in my life, I did have a transcendent and mystical experience on psilocybin at boarding school that evoked and reaffirmed earlier feelings of oneness from my “days of innocence” in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. This very intense one-time mystical experience of realizing that everything in the universe was interconnected hardwired my “oneness beliefs” for life. Anyone who has felt the exuberant sense of finally comprehending the interconnectedness of eve-ry-thing while tripping on some type of psychedelic knows what I’m talking about.

That said, the second time I took 'shrooms, I ingested way too many grams of dried “magic mushrooms” and had such a terrifyingly bad trip that I have never taken another dose of hallucinogenic drug since the early ‘80s. Although I don’t condone recreational drug use, based on a growing body of evidence, I speculate that everyone who’s interested in trying psilocybin as a"oneness-evoking tool" should consider doing so at least once under very regulated conditions.(See, "This Is Your Brain on Microdoses of Psilocybin") 

This is a photograph of me running 135-miles nonstop through Death Valley in July at the Badwater Ultramarathon. Having strong oneness beliefs made it possible for me to dissolve physical pain by tapping into a type of transcendent ecstasy during extreme sports competitions.

Source: Courtesy of Kiehl's Since 1851, used with permission.

The bright side of having a petrifying bad trip—and developing a type of PTSD that made me way too spooked to ever take drugs again—is that I started using running as a way to go to this “special place” of interconnectedness and oneness when I was seventeen.

Although most people hate running in hot and humid weather, I always choose to run during the hottest time of day. I love sweating like crazy on hot summer days because once my body is covered in sweat, it seems like there’s no longer a discernible barrier between "me", my skin, and the air around me. 

Author's note: I wrote this post in one sitting and am well aware that the ideas presented herein are only half-baked and could probably be reformatted in a much more linear and logical fashion. Nevertheless, in the tradition of “wabi-sabi” and purposely leaving a creative expression in raw form without trying to make it perfect, I’m not going to be overly nit-picky and attempt to polish this post into perfection.

In closing, even though I'm not a poet, I want to share a poem I wrote decades ago, long before I used terms like “oneness” beliefs. I wrote this poem in my head (without pen or paper) after an intense psychoanalytic session at the William Alanson White Institute on the Upper West Side, while I was jogging in Central Park. The poem is so basic and easy to remember...Sometimes I recite it the same way someone might use a pair of rosary beads. When I was still competing in nerve-racking international competitions, I’d use this poem to help put me in a trance-like state so that I wouldn’t choke on race day. These days, I recite these words to remind myself of easy ways to keep divisiveness at bay.

The Athlete’s Recognition by Christopher Bergland 

Recognize that god is alive and well in every cell. Recognize that god is in us all.

Recognize this source of power—every hour, here. Recognize with strength and love there is no fear.

Recognize the light in every eye and soul. Recognize the sun lives in us all.

Recognize your thoughts and actions every day. Recognize the passion—always give your all.

Recognize One Blood, One Sun, One Hope, One Love. Recognize the collective conscience of humankind.

Recognize a trance like this. As you break a sweat—Drip. Drip. Drip. 

Gregg Popovich is the longest serving American professional sports head coach, having led the San Antonio Spurs basketball team since 1996. (By comparison, the second longest-serving, Bill Belichick, began his stint as head coach and general manager of football’s New England Patriots in 2000.)

Popovich is unique in scores of ways. Brought up in an interracial housing project in East Chicago, Indiana, and serving in military intelligence, he is the most internationalist and racially aware figure in professional sports management (i.e., the most ‘woke’).

Popovich has won five NBA championships, been selected as best NBA coach three times, made the playoffs a record 14 straight years; his teams have the best winning percentage in the NBA over the length of his career, etc. He has accomplished this with an international cast of players (his most famous teams featured players born in France, Brazil, and the Virgin Islands).

And yet this year’s Spurs are his most amazing accomplishment. With all of his great players having moved on, Popovich was forced to go with an unknown cast. Barely making the playoffs, his team is currently leading its opening playoff series against a much more heralded team.

What makes the Spurs’ and Popovich’s success most astounding is that it has occurred in a “small media market”—i.e., they get relatively little media money to fund their roster. Popov Instead succeeds by creating a cohesive team spirit, marked by large group dinners including players, coaches and other staff, and owners and management. These social engagements run to the tune of seven figures in the course of a season.

And they involve oodles of wine. For Popovich—while being raised in inner-city America—is the son of parents from Serbia and Croatia, wine cultures. For him, wine is essential to group gatherings. And, given his success record, who’s to argue with him?

In his role as group team-spirit leader, Popovich encourages—one might say foists—wine on everyone, including African American players for whom such drinking isn’t customary. Yet they seem to appreciate it!

Popovich’s approach is being acknowledged in sports and business periodicals at a time when American and international abhorrence of (or perhaps ambivalence towards) alcohol is reaching near-record levels—including the World Health Organization’s recent pronouncement that no drinking is worth its risks and health consequences.

The United States is a leader in this anti-alcohol movement—as it has been traditionally. (See my previous post and resulting comments.) For Americans, abstaining from alcohol is both virtuous and medically dictated.

Gregg Popovich, now 70 and still active in what most view as among the most demanding of occupations (he carries on even though his wife of over 40 years unfortunately died last year) begs to differ.