Meet Sally Hogshead, branding expert, bestselling author of the FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, and natural Asset-Based Thinker.  

Sally leads by focusing on her assets—she believes the greatest value you can add is to become more of yourself. In fact, she created the Fascination Advantage Assessment, to help others discover their own natural advantages of persuasion and to gain a better understanding of the world sees them.*

Read on to learn how she learned first-hand the importance of “becoming more of who you are” and “understanding who you are not” and how those realizations spurred her career to new heights.

This is part one of Sally Hogshead’s Lead Positive profile. Come back next week to read part two in which she talks about the impact her kids had on her perception of herself and her assets.

*SPECIAL OFFER! Sally has generously offered readers of this blog access to the Fascination Advantage Assessment for free (value of $37)! Go to HowToFascinate.com/YOU and enter the private access code KCRAMER.

What three signature events inspired the passion and innovation you demonstrate as a leader?

Become more of who you are

Around 2008, I had a really difficult time in my business with the economy. Meeting planners had slashed their speakers’ budgets and I hadn’t really hit my stride as a professional speaker. So I focused on trying to be better than other speakers. I looked at what they were doing.  I tried to copy them and tried to outdo them.  I tried to become a copy of somebody else. It was exhausting. I looked terrible on the outside and I felt miserable on the inside because I wasn’t able to raise my speaking fee.

I think a lot of people can identify with times in their lives when they’re working as hard as they can, but they’re not seeing a reward financially or emotionally.  They don’t seem to be able to move forward.  They feel stuck. And so, I took a hard look at myself.

How did the world see me?  I realized that I was trying to copy speakers who focused on authority, were highly detailed, had every word of their presentation memorized or simply repeated the same stories over and over. I was trying to outdo them rather than figure out who I naturally was and the relationship I had with the audience. 

I began steering my career more toward becoming more of who I already was. The audience doesn’t need me to change who I am; they need me to be more of who I am and communicate in a way that’s going to help them hear and take action on my message.  Within two years, I had increased my revenue by 700 percent even though I hadn’t changed my speech.  All I did was change the way I communicated what my speech was to my prospective customers, my prospective clients. 

So, the lesson in there for all of us is you’re never going to be successful in your career, you’re never going to make as much money as you potentially could if you try to be something that you’re not.  Remember, you don’t want to change who you are.  You want to become more of who you are.

Understand who you are not

When I was seven years old, my sister was the number-one rated swimmer in the world.  She had two Guinness Book world records that year. It was also the year my brother went to Harvard.  And so, as a seven year old, I was thinking, “Well, how can I stand out?” 

I didn’t want to go into athletics because my sister had already mastered that and I didn’t want to focus on academics because my brother had already claimed that territory on the family trophy mantle. I realized that creativity and seeing things from an alternative point of view were really where I was going to be able to reach my highest levels of achievement.

It was an understanding of who I was not that allowed me to see who I actually was. And from that, I discovered that I wanted to go into advertising and I wanted to use creativity as a way to really make a difference in the same way that my brother and sister had. Continuing that spirit of creativity allowed me to think very differently about the traditional psychology framework of how we understand personality and instead think of it more like a personality brand. 

Know where you’re at a disadvantage

To this day I hate pre-Algebra, but pre-Algebra played a defining moment in my career.  In the seventh or eighth grade, I came home from school and I got a terrible grade in pre-Algebra on my report card: a D. This is what my pre-Algebra teacher wrote in my report card. I actually put it in the book:

“There’s a fine line in math between being creative and being erratic. I will continue to support Sally in using her creativity, but [also in] becoming more consistent in her work.”

I remember feeling crushed by this. But looking back, what my teacher wrote was actually perfect.  She said, “There’s a fine line in math between being creative and being erratic.”  She wanted me to think about things in a very specific way—very linear, very rational, analytical, and systematic.

I will never be great at rational, systematic thinking.  It’s simply not how I add value.  It’s not how people perceive me, and if I try to do that, I’m going to keep getting a D. Most of us have had times like this in our lives when we tried as hard as we could in a certain area and we still failed in the eyes of others. I propose that it’s not because we didn’t try hard enough or because we weren’t good enough.  It’s because somebody was asking us to do something that was simply a disadvantage of ours.

There are going to be certain areas in your career and in your life where you’re going to be at a real disadvantage. It is going to take a huge amount of energy for you to get good results and it will end up taking energy from the areas where you could really contribute and make a difference.

For example, I score very high on passion. Some people score very, very low on passion.  For them to go to a cocktail party and make small talk and hug strangers and have a conversation around the cheese platter would be totally inauthentic and awkward and tiring—very expensive in terms of their mental, emotional and physical resources. And yet, many of those people are in sales or they’re having to make client outreach. 

If there’s an area in your work that you’re naturally primed to have a disadvantage, that you’re very unlikely to be exceptional at, it’s really important to know that. Then you can surround yourself with team members who can optimize you or you can put a little bit of caution tape around those spots in your work to make sure you’re not getting sucked into a no-win situation.

Over the course of her ad career, Sally Hogshead was one of the most awarded advertising copywriters, winning almost every major international advertising award. Her internationally acclaimed book, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, has been translated into over 12 languages. Her newest book, How the World Sees You is already a New York Times best seller as well as a Wall Street Journal best seller. Follow Sally on Twitter @sallyhogshead.

Dr. Kathy Cramer has written seven best-selling books including Change The Way You See Everything, which started the ABT Global Movement. Her latest book, Lead Positive shows leaders how to increase their effectiveness through her revolutionary yet refreshing simple mindset management process, Asset-Based Thinking. To read more of Kathy’s thought leadership, visit drkathycramer.com/blog and drkathycramer.com/press. Follow Kathy on Twitter at @drkathycramer. 

It’s almost become a cinematic cliché to depict anger management as a technique involving some variation of deep breathing or relaxation. In the 2002 comedy Anger Management, participants in therapy are instructed to chant ‘Goosfraba’ when they get worked up. In the recent film version of The Hulk, the irascible superherois taught to moderate his anger by controlling his diaphragm… While the paper bag technique for panic is considered a relic, many counselors and psychologists are still recommending much the same kind of thing for anger management. By way of example, I heard a leading psychologist provide the following anger-management advice on national radio recently: 

1. Step back mentally, detach from the situation
2. Say to yourself, ‘clear head, calm body’
3. Take a deep breath
4. When you breathe out, let yourself flop

Let me begin by saying: there are far worse things you could do when faced with a provocation. And I happen to like the first step, which is something more akin to ‘distancing’ than relaxation. But my reservation remains – to this and any other relaxation strategy that purports to reduce or eliminate anger per se: The physiological component in anger is a small, and often irrelevant, factor in anger management, and is given far too much importance in psychotherapy today.

Think about it. Much of the time, before getting angry you were calm to begin with. You were eating your breakfast in a sleepy stupor when the neighbour began noisily renovating his kitchen; you were calmly reading through your emails when you found out you’d been passed over for promotion; you were snuggling blissfully when your partner said, ‘You still haven’t called the plumber have you?’ You can be angry in a hammock; you can be angry in the bath. Physiological calmness does not stop anger from arising in the first place, so why would we expect it to have such a big part to play in reducing it?

Physiological arousal does not in and of itself make you angry. Indeed, if it did, aerobics classes would devolve into angry mobs; lovers would become roused to rage as they approached climax; and roller coaster rides would incite mass murder.

Arousal levels have been shown to exacerbate pre-existing feelings of anger, but this effect is non-specific: they can just as easily increase excitement, sexual arousal or anxiety. And this is offset by the fact that many heart-rate increasing activities may also distract you from whatever you’re angry about.

You get angry, generally speaking, if and when you perceive wrongdoing or injustice. Your mechanic has overcharged you; your husband has lied; the kids are misbehaving, and so on. Why would deep breathing, in and of itself, be expected to change your feelings about these things? It might delay acting on those feelings, which is perhaps a good thing; but then again it may not, if you still feel getting angry is useful or appropriate (which anger-prone individuals too often do). Relaxing away your anger is a little like trying to relax away your political convictions, or your superstitions.

And relaxation when you’re angry is such an uphill battle. One glance at the offending email, one fleeting thought of your partner’s comments and the 40 minutes of deep breathing, incense sticks and meditation fly out the window.

Now, let me be clear about something: I don’t doubt that regular relaxation, especially if you’re prone to stress, is a good idea. So is any other form of stress management for that matter: a healthy diet, regular yoga and meditation practice, financial planning, and good sleep can all be of indirect benefit to anger-proneness. But my concern is that using relaxation to stop feeling angry is misguided. It’s targeting a symptom (arousal), not the cause.

And it’s targeting one of the least adverse of the symptoms of anger at that. In anger, people can do and say things they later regret, behave harshly, spitefully and impulsively towards others. They can form overly dark and paranoid views of those around them, and waste their precious time in arguments and defensiveness. They can suffer a burning, toxic feeling that saps the joy from their day, and the sleep from their night. In addition to all of the above, their autonomic arousal levels may rise. The latter, as you’ll agree, is not the worst of it.

Have you ever advised someone to ‘relax’ when they’re angry? It often doesn’t end so well. I feel there’s often something a little invalidating about targeting an angry person’s physiological arousal, rather than hearing them out and talking through what they’re angry about. Someone is expressing a complaint, and you effectively suggest they should be sedated! Imagine how that would go down at a complaints desk at IKEA:

“Excuse me, one of your staff spoke rudely to my son!”

“Ma’am you are visibly agitated. Allow me to offer you something from our range of tranquilisers…”

I’m not against relaxation or stress management. We could all do with a little more of it. But I’m not for it either when it comes to treating anger. What I’m for is addressing anger head-on: Going right to the angry mindset itself, and seeking to challenge the unique set of beliefs and expectations that cause anger-prone individuals to frame events as wrong, unjust, and unacceptable.

How do we do this? Stay tuned for future posts on how to attack anger at its roots. 

Tortoises always foresee obstacles. - D.H. Lawrence

Today, most impediments that Desert Tortoises encounter are not foreseeable. This ancient species did not evolve to withstand the brute force of vehicles that crisscross its southwestern U.S. habitat. Roads, cars, real estate development, climate change, the devastating exotic “pet” and product trades, and attendant slings and arrows of misfortune rendered by human hands are far too many and unrelenting for even the Tortoise to artfully dodge. [2, 3] Take, for instance, a group of Tortoises recently arrived in sanctuary. [4]

Last fall, 2013, the Desert Tortoise Conservation Consortium (DTCC) announced its pending closure as a result of funding cuts. [5] The DTCC is a consortium of organizations that includes the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, San Diego Zoo Global, and the Nevada Department of Wildlife whose primary mission is Desert Tortoise conservation. While healthy tortoises were reintroduced to their native wild, those with a history of abuse and neglect as “pets” were deemed unfit to survive on their own and threatened with euthanasia unless offered sanctuary. They now live at The Tortoise and the Hare Sanctuary in southern Oregon. [6]

Some have lost a leg or arm, while others have suffered other deprivations. One Torotise had been kept in a closet for more than a year. The effect of such isolation is not only psychologically searing, but the lack of ultraviolet light (UVB) causes great damage to their shells. [7] Yet despite these life-threatening obstacles, none of the Tortoises have lost their zest, nor have their complex emotional lives been dampened.

The juxtaposition of “emotion” and “reptile” used to be regarded as a contradiction in terms. Tortoises and other reptiles are cold-blooded in physiology and metaphor. But standing science says otherwise. We humans share with Tortoises comparable cogs and machinations of the brain that govern sophisticated cognition, a rainbow of emotions, feelings, and even consciousness. Science’s findings have leveled species differences nearly to those between cultures. In the words of Dr. Erich Jarvis, professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center:[8]

A reptile brain is analogous to a bird brain and both are analogous to mammalian brains which implies that reptiles may have parallel capacities to think, feel, experience consciousness, and related abilities to mentally function.

And there is certainly no doubt of Tortoise consciousness and emotions when visited up close and personal. Reptiles even reflect neuropsychological shaping described by modern attachment theory [9] and embodied lyrically by François Mauriac: “We are molded and re-molded by those who have loved us; and though the love may pass, we are nevertheless their work, for good or for ill.”

For example, one of the new sanctuary residents, Chosovi (Hopi for bluebird), is quite comfortable with humans and gravitates toward them for companionship. She lived with a human family for many years until relinquished.[4] While wildlife captivity definitionally constitutes a serious compromise mentally and physically, Chosovi’s relatively good health and relaxed, quiet inclination to the human species suggests that she received care and affection.

On the other hand, Hototo (Hopi for “warrior spirit who sings”) has a distinctly different personality. He is outgoing, confident, and strong.[4]  Hototo is decidedly an extrovert who prefers the company of other Tortoises. This in part may be explained by a history of neglect. After arriving at the DTCC, he was diagnosed with uroliths (bladder stones) that form because of improper nutrition and sustained dehydration. Subsequently, one might hazard that Hototo’s neutral to indifferent attitude towards humans and his press to engage with other of his species may derive from a negative experience with humans and their inattention to his care.

Still, these are early days in sanctuary. In contrast to a cortisol study showing that Desert Tortoises experienced little stress from translocation, the Oregon arrivals showed psychological symptoms of stress their first two days in sanctuary. [10] Similar to ourselves, stress expresses in mind, action, and speech.

There is obviously more than meets the eye under those shells and in their beautiful minds. Our reptile kin teach us that even in silence there is a story.

References

[1] Lawrence, D.H. 1921. Tortoises.

[2] Doo, S. 2013. The evolving threat of wildlife trafficking. International Affairs Review. http://www.iargwu. org/node/500; Retrieved November 2013.

[3] Lovich, J.E.  et al. 2014. Climatic variation and tortoise survival: Has a desert species met its match? Biological Conservation 169, 214–224.

[4] Kerulos. 2104. The Tortoise Clan. http://www.kerulos.org/our-projects/the-tortoise-hare-sanctuary/the-tortoise-clan/about-desert-tortoises/profile-tortoises/; Retrieved October 8, 2014.

[5] Dreiber, H, 2013. Desert Tortoises faces threat form conservation center. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/25/desert-tortoise_n_3813133.html; Huffington Post. Retrieved September 2013.

[6] The Tortoise and the Hare Sanctuary. 2014.http://www.kerulos.org/our-projects/the-tortoise-hare-sanctuary/the-tortoise-clan/; Retrieved October 2014

[7] Williams, D. 2014. Desert Tortoise Care. Deshttp://www.donsdeserttortoises.com/1.html; Retrieved October 8 2014.

[8] Kerulos Center. 2104. The Tortoise Clan. http://www.kerulos.org/our-projects/the-tortoise-hare-sanctuary/the-tortoise-clan/about-desert-tortoises/profile-tortoises/; Retrieved October 9 2104.

[9] Schore, A.N. 2008. Modern Attachment Theory: The Central Role of Affect Regulation in Development and Treatment, Clinical Social Work 36: 9-20.

[10] Drake, K.K. et al. 2012. Does translocation influence physiological stress in the desert tortoise?  Animal Conservation 15 (560 -570).

As the sun begins its dip into early evening darkness these Fall days, our mood and mental energy seem to dip with them. Known as the afternoon slump, or the brain-dead zone, most of us feel an urge to be in bed with a pillow over our heads rather than continuing on with our work obligations for another few hours.

Indeed, the fatigue sometimes seems so overwhelming, especially when the work preceding late afternoon has been so mentally and emotionally stressful, that our bodies feel as if they have been on a construction site all day. A friend who is a litigator told me that two days of yard and house chores over a weekend do not leave him nearly as tired as doing a cross examination in a courtroom; even though his physical activity is limited to standing, sitting, and occasionally walking a few feet from his chair to a table. “There is something peculiar about late afternoon,” he told me. “I consider myself a pretty calm guy and able to resist reacting to insults or challenges from other lawyers or a judge. But around 4PM, I feel myself either feeling suddenly sensitive to the tension in the courtroom, or overcome with profound fatigue. ”

A late afternoon slump can descend on anyone—a UPS delivery person, a daycare assistant, or a neurosurgeon. And it is more likely to occur as the days shorten and the light outside no longer feels like noontime, but more like the start of evening.

The Internet and magazine columns are full of advice about this problem, most of it entirely wrong. Many advice givers assume that the slump is caused by the body’s need for energy, and recommend eating a bigger lunch and/or snacking to increase low blood sugar. But the cause of the fatigue and mood changes resides in the brain, not in the blood. Is anyone really famished at four in the afternoon? If someone exercises at lunch but doesn’t eat afterward, he or she will be quite hungry by late afternoon. But the rest of us? Most of us beyond infancy do not need to be fed every three or so hours, and if lunch is over at one o’clock, our bodies really do not have to be fed again three hours later. But our brains are something different.

To understand what lies behind the need to nap, rather than write a report in the late afternoon, we have to see what is going on with serotonin, that brain chemical which attempts to keep us energetic, in good humor, and focused.

It seems that something happens late in the afternoon to the activity of serotonin. There may not be enough of this neurotransmitter, or its activity may be slowing down; whatever the mechanism, the result is a deadening of mood, motivation and mobility.

We discovered this en route to studying something else; i.e., why many people wanted to eat a sweet or starchy carbohydrate snack late in the afternoon. The backstory is that these volunteers were living in a research residence where snacks where available 24/7. But they never snacked until late afternoon. Why then? They told us they felt their mood deteriorating at that time. They felt depressed, tense, impatient, and tired. They could not concentrate either. And they claimed that after they ate the carbohydrate, they felt better.

All this was anecdotal, interesting, but not scientifically valid. We wanted to know: Did they really feel better after eating carbohydrate or just thought they did because they liked to snack?

They really felt better. We gave them a drink that contained enough carbohydrate to increase the production of serotonin in the brain (serotonin is made only after carbohydrates are eaten, not protein) and at another time, a drink that did not increase serotonin (it contained protein).

Their moods including fatigue were tested before the drinks and about an hour or so later. They did improve their moods, and were less tired after the carbohydrate drink, but not after the drink containing protein.

So the volunteers taught us something very useful: if you want to lift yourself out of a slump (this does not apply to baseball) eat a carbohydrate snack.

Two suggestions to lift late afternoon mental and emotional fog: eat 25 grams of a starchy carbohydrate such as pretzels, popcorn, graham crackers, or a piece of bread. (Carbohydrate avoiders will have to stay in their fog). Avoid any starchy food with fat, which will make you feel lethargic and dull. Don’t eat fruit! No serotonin is made after eating fructose!

And, move. Vigorously. Wait until you swallow your snack, then get up from your chair and do something physical. Find a staircase and climb it a few times. Take 10 minutes to jog around the block. (Remove high heels before you do this.) If you are home, find a jump rope, set the egg timer and jump for 3 minutes. Or if you have a treadmill or bike, run or pedal for 5 minutes until your heart rate goes up.

Your brain will thank you. Now go back to work.

Or take this to work and as a reminder.

The hardest thing she’s ever done in her life, says Beth Mayer, social worker and executive director of Massachusetts-based MEDA (Multi-Services Eating Disorders Association), was to recover from her own eating disorder. She didn’t tell a soul about her struggle until she had graduated from college and started group therapy, though she had been locked in an exhausting battle with it since high school.Her body image problems began when she was even younger, though she couldn’t have defined them at the time.

“I developed very early and became heavier [than other girls] earlier,” says Mayer. “My mother had a weight issue, and was very fearful” about shape and size, Mayer says. “The body, how people appeared physically, became very, very important in my family,” she notes. In a family where “it was very clear that you got praise for being adorable,” gaining weight set off panic alarms for Mayer. While one of her three sisters responded to the situation by gaining weight and not losing it, Mayer figured out how to survive by becoming bulimic and staying severely underweight.

Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s there were few resources for a teenager or young adult fighting an eating disorder. One doctor Mayer saw—when she was at a weight that today would be cause for hospitalization—prescribed potassium and sent her on her way. She gradually recovered by keeping a daily log of her eating-disordered behaviors and working hard at not freaking out when she began to gain weight.  By the time she finished graduate school, she considered herself recovered.

Today Mayer declares that not only is full recovery possible for eating disorder sufferers, passing on this belief to her clients (she maintains a part-time private practice in West Roxbury, Mass.) is a key factor in putting them on the path to recovery. Although it’s common to hear truisms in this field such as “you’re never fully recovered,” or “I’ll always be ‘in recovery,’” Mayer is refreshing in her generous take on recovery. “Just because you have [some residual] symptoms doesn’t mean you’re not fully recovered,” she believes.

In her life, it seems, every five or ten years after pronouncing herself newly “recovered,” she reaches yet another level of recovery. The first stage came after graduate school. The second came after having children, and the next stage, she says, came with growing older. “Allowing myself to be gentle with an aging body and continuing to appreciate its strength has been wonderful,” she explains. “I am 56 years old and I just did my first mud run!”

Three years ago, when I first heard Mayer speak, it was unusual, especially for an East Coast eating disorder professional, to publicly declare her or his own past history with the disorder. Although in her part of the country most treatment centers don’t allow staff to disclose if they’ve had an eating disorder, she has been doing so since she entered the field in 1983, and explains that while it’s critical to understand the pros and cons of disclosure, “I have always felt that I have the skill to disclose and that it has been helpful to my clients.”

“The beauty of having recovered is that you understand how stuck you can be, and how scary it can be to recover,” she says; the disorder is hard to shake because it keeps unwanted and overwhelming feelings in the deep-freeze. To her, the most important thing is to believe in full recovery, “that people can really live a life without their eating disorders,” no matter what the trigger, or “how damaged their childhood was,” she says. The other important thing for patients to hear, she adds, is, “I never met a person who has recovered say, ‘I wish I had never recovered.’”

On the topic of relapse, Mayer is equally forgiving. She learned to respond to relapses with a “so what?” attitude. “The idea is not to beat yourself up, but be gentle with yourself. People are so angry at themselves and toward their illness; they beat themselves up continually,” she notes. She came to see that “if I could be gentle with my recovery then I could go on after relapse,” and keep going on to full recovery. Mayer often wondered: “if something horrible” happened in her life, would it send her high-tailing it back into the arms of the eating disorder? The answer, she learned, was that although “many horrible things did happen, I did not relapse.”

Of course we know that all this recovery talk is fine for someone who has actually summoned the courage to engage in the daunting battle to recover one’s health. In a recent article Mayer wrote for The Renfrew Center’s journal Perspectives, she wrote about being able to sense when a patient is ready to take the first step toward recovery. Thirty years of clinical experience has taught her to sense when a client is “sick of being so sick,” and thinks,  “What can be worse than this?”

Mayer’s approach is to say to the patient, “It feels like you’re ready to give up a parts” of the disorder, making it clear that the recovery process doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing deal. She guides her patients in baby steps: “Did you have any symptoms today? How are you doing tonight? Every time you get through another day or night you have that new memory implanted; you’re building new and vibrant memories of recovery…could you read that book for one minute without thinking of your eating disorder? Two minutes?”

In this way, Mayer explains, “recovery is a minute-by-minute process.” The anxiety surrounding giving up the disorder, she adds, is of course immense. “It’s like you’re ripping away [the client’s] security blanket… I say, ‘I’m just putting it over here. You can walk over and get it and hold on to it as long as you want, but then let’s try to give it back.’”

By this stage, the client trusts Mayer and her professional team enough to take these first steps toward recovery. Writing in Perspectives, Mayer sums up her point of view this way: “Clearly, full recovery is possible, and, as therapists, we need to ensure that every client believes in recovery, embraces recovery and takes the journey with us.”

Why is the sky blue? Why does snow melt? Why do people die? Why is that man sleeping on the street? Why can’t I (have ice cream, play video games, go out and play)? Why do I have to (go to bed, do my homework, clean up my room)?

Young children are full of questions like these. They’ve learned from us that people ask why. As the brilliant philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein would say, they’ve learned to play a language game (a “form of life” or activity that human beings engage in). And through playing this particular language game over and over and over, they come to see and experience things and events causally and to expect that everything they encounter in the world is either cause or effect of something else.

At first, parents delight in the “wondering whys” (“Why is the sky blue?”)—proud of their child’s intelligence and curiosity. Sooner or later, though, most parents will tire of their children’s barrage of questions (many or most of which they have no clue how to answer). And then there are the “whiney whys” (”Why can’t I…?”) that adults like even less. That’s a different language game—whose next move is often the parental, “Because (I said so).”  

Once we’re adults, “Why?” is always with us. Causality is one of the ways we know; to know something has come to mean to know its causes and its effects. One of the twelve categories of thought identified by the 18^th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, causality as well as reality and the other categories were identified by Kant to correspond to forms of understanding that are the foundations of our conceptual knowledge. These categorical ways of thinking are a priori, meaning independent of experience—they’re the innate structures of the human mind. It’s these categories, the story goes, that then shape our experiences. The short version of Kant, in some phrases from our day, goes something like this—“We’re programmed that way.” “That's how our brains work.” “It’s in our DNA.” 

Psychotherapies of the traditional kind depend on causality. The working assumption is that identifying what is causing depression or anger or whatever (the cause usually being something in one’s childhood) changes it, clears everything up, and even makes a person better. I’ve long believed that the assumption of a causal relationship between past events and current emotions needs to be carefully examined—after all, it’s the very foundation of a profession dedicated to (and an industry that feeds off) helping people experiencing emotional distress! 

There are at least two downsides to causality remaining unexamined. One is that ignoring the topic keeps valuable information away from both consumers and professionals. If conversations about mental health don’t address the assumption of cause and why we should try to uncover it, then it’s unlikely that both the “helpers” and the “helped” will have opportunities to learn about the many non-causal treatment options there are on the market. None of us should be limited that way.

Second, we lose the chance to look at ourselves and what our own assumptions are. Examining our own assumptions is an important, often eye-opening and transformative experience. In the case of causality, when we do look, we see how obsessed we are with cause in everyday life. Do you know people who truly believe that every single thing and event has some other thing or event that caused it to be, and who won’t rest until they believe they’ve pinpointed it? I do. Are you sometimes even more concerned with the cause of something (maybe why a friend seemed to ignore you or why you got angry at the cashier at the supermarket) than with ways to move on with your relationships and your life? Or maybe you think you can’t take a course of action until you know why it happened in the first place.

I’m among quite a few psychologists who believe that, far from being the solution, trying to find the cause of feeling a certain way only exacerbates feeling that way—and that we need to loosen the hold causality has on us. Applying causality to the psychological realm, and insisting that all of human thought and action is best understood in terms of cause and effect, is misguided. While mainstream therapy (of both the talk and drug variety) reinforces a causal view of the world, to those of us who practice non-causal approaches it is clear that much of people’s emotional pain comes from thinking causally, and we’re finding more and more evidence that challenging this way of thinking is extremely helpful to people. 

Here is a classic, hypothetical example. Client says, “I stayed in bed all day because I was depressed.” Therapist says, “How do you know that? Maybe you were depressed because you stayed in bed all day. Or maybe one thing has nothing to do with the other.”

By suggesting other ways of looking at the situation, the therapist opens the possibility for a new kind of therapeutic conversation—more a creative journey they will take together than a telling of information so the therapist can come up with the correct cause-effect explanation. 

You can read more in Chapter 4. “The What and How of Knowing,” The Overweight Brain: How Our Obsession with Knowing Keeps Us from Getting Smart Enough to Make a Better World. And to learn more about the problems with thinking and speaking causally, and find out about therapeutic approaches that don’t, see Philosophical Investigations, A Clinician’s Guide to Social Therapy, a book I co-edited with Dr. Rafael Mendez, and Let’s Develop! A Guide to Continuous Personal Growth by Dr. Fred Newman.

Cognitive psychology deals with human attention, memory, and problem solving. It can also provide many insights into how we handle our computer security in general, and how we choose passwords in particular.

Most people know that they are supposed to choose passwords that are hard to guess, relatively long, and contain a mix of characters. But given that the most popular password is "password", people are obviously not making choices in line with those guidelines. So how do we actually make password decisions? Here are five things we do and how cognitive psychology explains them.

1. Pick easy-to-guess passwords – It is hard to remember a completely random string of 8 characters with upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. A name or date (which are among the most common choices) is easy to remember, reducing how hard we have to work every time we log in. In other words, memory issues makes us choose less secure passwords.

2. Reuse passwords across sites – Again, memory plays a role here. An active web user may have hundreds of passwords to remember across every e-commerce site, social media platform, discussion forum, and news site. While security advice says we should have different passwords on each site, it is just not possible to easily remember so many different passwords – especially if they follow the hard-to-guess guidelines.

3. Sharing passwords – almost half of people say they have shared their passwords with friends, family, or co-workers. This is a conscious choice that people make, usually because they reason that they can trust the people they share the password with. The convenience and ease of use are important, and since users trust the people they share with, they tend to reason that their choices are unlikely to significantly compromise security.

4. Writing down passwords – Another memory issue. Many systems require people to choose passwords that conform to set of guidelines. If it is too difficult for people to memorize these passwords– which is often the case– they will write them down to make sure they don't forget and/or they don't have to go through the long process of resetting the password when they inevitably do forget.

5. Mnemonics – When people try to follow password guidelines, they do some creative thinking to make them easier to remember. Mnemonics are a good way to do this, and using them is common advice regarding password choice. They can be any technique to aid memory, and in passwords, mnemonics often manifest when people use common names or words, replacing letters with representative numbers or symbols (e.g. o=0, i=1, e=3, a=4, s=5 or &, B=8, etc.). They also show up when people choose phrases (e.g. "IluvMyD0g!") that are hard to guess.

Image credit  Eric Schmuttenmaer

The other day I was reading a WTODivorcing post in which someone recommended that a member of the list get an "agressive" attorney. However, while you want to make sure your divorce attorney is prepared for a possible high conflict, contentious divorce, someone with a reputation as a "pit bull" can do you more harm than good. In this post, Pasadena family law attorney Mark B. Baer explains why. In an upcoming post, Tthe author of Splitting: Protecting Yourself When Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist Bill Eddy will outline what to do when your ex is the one hiring the pit bull.

Many think that when they become involved in a lawsuit—including divorce—they need to find a lawyer who is a “fighter,” or “pit bull” (disclaimer: many of these dogs are lovable companions). By logical extension, a lawyer who is not ruthlessly aggressive would be a lesser choice.

However, strong, proactive, and even aggressive representation doesn't necessarily equate with the “pit bull model.” Attorneys classified as pit bulls often tend to be belligerent, argumentative, and eager to fight.Just like your high conflict person.That's why many judges have no respect for them.

What the public doesn't realize is that highly contentious individuals (attorneys included) usually place self-interest above all else. Always looking for more points to fight over (and taking unreasonable positions on behalf of their clients) generates significantly more money in fees for lawyers who charge hourly. So expect to pay more.

Moreover, these attorneys derive a great deal of pleasure from the fight in and of itself. In fact, many attorneys enter the field precisely because they enjoy argumentative confrontation. They tend to be disagreeable and difficult people in general and attract that same type of client. Reasonable people who want to create more of a "win-win" situation (as long as the children are safe and other needs are met) need to chose an attorney with the same mindset. If you have children, you will be dealing with your HCP as a parent for many years to come. Start on the right foot.          

Pit bull attorneys thus tend to delay the resolution of a case. They file motions that make no sense from a cost/benefit analysis, which can cause the other side to file motions or incur significant legal fees and costs because their client refuses to disclose required information and/or is hiding marital assets. So pit bulls drag things out forever and set up your soon-to-be-ex to get angrier and angrier. That can backfire on you.

Pit bull attorneys don't care about resolving a case in a fair and equitable manner-- even though family law court is considered a court of equity, or fairness. They just want to win. So they take advantage of the imperfections in the legal system to make the case for the other side so costly that they'll give up. This is not the way you want to treat someone who has the potential to make your life a living hell through distortion campaigns. When they tell someone what you're doing, you'll have no defense.    

Ultimately, the difficult client and difficult attorney won't be able to treat each other any differently than they treat anyone else. These sorts of mismatching are why clients might go through several different attorneys in course of a single particular legal proceeding. Let things run their course and give yourself one less thing to worry about.  

I have previously written about the supreme importance of trust, mutual respect, and good communication between a client and his or her attorney to have a successful working relationship and a positive legal outcome. Pit bull attorneys” and their clients can rarely, if ever, maintain these crucial aspects of the relationship.

Mark B. Baer is a family law attorney, mediator, and collaborative law practitioner in Pasadena, California. He is recognized as a 'thought leader' in many areas of family law for his provocative and forward-thinking ideas on improving the way in which family law is handled. He provides insight on how the dissolution of familial relationships, as typically practiced, leads to poorer financial and emotional results.  

mark@markbaeresq.com. www.markbaeresq.com, www.linkedin.com/in/markbaeresq

www.facebook.com/MarkBBaerEsq,

Child abuse remains a common problem that is experienced by millions of Americans. Approximately 1 in 10 children report some form of maltreatment by a caregiver, which translates into more than 30 million victims of child abuse in the country. Adverse childhood experiences have lasting effects too. Research shows that the health effects can last for decades following high levels of child abuse and other adversities during childhood, ranging from natural disasters to having an alcoholic parent..

The good news is that many people overcome these experiences. We can learn from the experiences of those who have learned to survive and even thrive after a history of child abuse and adversity.

Our traditional approaches to therapy too often miss the point and, frankly, aim too low. No one defines their hopes and dreams for their lives in terms of "not meeting criteria for clinical depression" or the absence of any other mental health problem. Humans seek happiness and belonging and general well-being. Of course, individual experiences vary. One of the biggest factors in the challenges of healing from abuse is the "dose"—how much abuse and adversity a person has experienced. The number of perpetrators and the number of dangerous settings also make a difference. More perpetrators and more dangerous settings (that is, not safe at home, school, or in the community) make it more challenging to heal. Still, even some people who have experienced a lot of abuse learn to heal. What heals?

1) Telling your story. Probably the single most effective healing step someone can take is to write a narrative. Sometimes these are called "trauma narratives" and they have some of the best research supporting them of any therapeutic technique. I prefer the term "values narratives" and an approach to narrative that focuses not only on the trauma but how that can fit into your broader identity, personal values, and who you want to be.

The human brain is built for storytelling. Telling your own story can help you organize what happened to you and put it into the big picture of who you are. It improves something that psychologists call "narrative coherence." Another benefit is what psychologists call "emotional clarity." Here is how one narrative writer put it:

"I like writing, it helped me kind of, I think writing the last one I wrote helped me more understand what happened in the experience, I've never really like sat down and recalled it all, and it helped me do that… I think it's helped me reflect on it, more than shape it. It's helped me to understand what's gone wrong, or what's gone right, and helped me be thankful for more things."

2) Helping others. When I give presentations to providers, I like to talk about how none of us are "zeroes" when it comes to childhood adversity. Yes, there are important, very important, differences in the severity of childhood adversity. As I mentioned, the latest research suggests that the overall "dose" and especially the number of different types of abuse or other childhood problems appears to make the biggest difference in the psychological impact.

However, it is also important to realize that there are very few people who survive to adulthood without any experience of adversity. All of us eventually experience loss and hurt—major loss and significant hurt. Unfortunately, in our professional roles we often pretend that is not the case and I believe that leads us to miss some important insights into what helps people overcome adversity.

Giving back to others is so important to virtually every psychologist, social worker, police officer, or health care provider. It is the way that many of us have overcome our own childhood experiences and worked to interrupt the cycle of violence. Which is why it is all the more ironic that psychotherapy and most other interventions for abuse or adversity hardly ever focus on generosity, community involvement, and social support. That needs to change.

3) Activism. One particular form of giving back that is important to many is activism. This can take any number of forms. It can mean volunteering—for any number of causes—at community agencies. It can mean serving on the board of directors or as an advocate or as a guardian ad litem or in a number of other roles in agencies that specialize in helping victims of abuse and violence. It can include becoming involved with national political organizations or contacting your members of congress about policies that help those who were mistreated as children. It can include donating money or other items to various nonprofits or churches. You will probably find that many of the people in these organizations were inspired to do that work because of their own experiences or how abuse or other adversity affected their loved ones.

4) Re-thinking the focus of short-term therapy and other brief interventions. These days, many people only have access to short-term therapy, often not more than 6 to 8 sessions. It's a mystery why these services are still organized in ways that are reminiscent of the days when therapy often lasted a year or more. A few leaders in the field are starting to encourage many providers and agencies to think about using those 6 to 8 weeks as a time to mobilize other resources and support. Most therapists cannot—and should not—be sources of long term social support. However, even in 6 weeks a therapist can help a client reach out to family, friends, co-workers, fellow church members, or others. A therapist can help a socially isolated client join a support group or enroll in a class.

5) Improving self-regulation. Finally, as adults healing from childhood wounds, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is improve our self-regulation. Improving self-regulation means a lot of different things. It means learning to manage our emotions and to gain more control over the difference between having a feeling or thought and acting on it. It's almost impossible and also unwise to try to control thoughts and feelings. Like the old challenge of not thinking about a pink elephant. That is one reason that narrative interventions help, they help you express and organize thoughts and feelings instead of suppressing them. Behaviors can and should be controlled, from excessive use of alcohol or drugs to our own angry impulses. Improving emotional endurance, diligence, and grit are also paths to success and happiness for many people.

 All of these different approaches and many others too numerous to include here are all focused on the same goal: getting to a place where you can acknowledge what happened to you and also acknowledge that there are many other important parts of your identity. We are all more than the sum of our bad experiences.

© 2014 Sherry Hamby

Also see http://thevigor.org, http://lifepathsresearch.org, and http://www.nationalcac.org/calio-library/polyvictimization.html

Freud’s great contribution is not only in understanding the mind but also in forming an approach to therapy for people whose minds are suffering — that is, psychoanalysis. This approach links the patient’s reported symptoms to an emotional and mental stalling, or fixation, in early childhood. The trained therapist helps the patient, by means of a long and structured process, to revisit that early stage and handle the fixation.

The possibility of online emotional therapy came up even in the Internet’s early days. Critics of the idea balked at the thought that the therapist and patient would communicate online by typing, and they asserted that clinical emotional therapy has no place online. They argued that normally body language helps the therapist read the patient’s hidden messages, and that since long-distance typing leaves body language invisible, much misunderstanding could result. In fact there are cases where a patient’s body language expresses great distress that would not come through in text.

Nonetheless, I’m inclined to believe that if we could ask Freud, he would oppose the critics and strongly support online therapy. After all, in classic Freudian therapy the patient lies on the couch in order to enter a state of near-sleep that enables the unconscious to express itself, while the therapist sits in a chair at an angle that leaves the patient invisible. The absence of any line of sight between them is intended to help liberate the patient from inner defenses so that he or she may confidently release the sought-after story. It gives the patient a feeling of disconnection from daily experience, and of undisturbed immersion in the intimate monologue.

A variety of problems can be treated over the Internet, ranging from eating disorders, depression, and addictions (nicotine, alcohol, gambling) to various forms of anxiety that harm a person’s functioning by generating tension and uneasiness. Like regular therapy, the Internet sets up a therapeutic relationship between the patient and therapist; and online therapy accommodates the various approaches that are in the field today. Sessions are held using various means of communication, from private text-only chat to systems like Skype that make the patient and therapist visible to each other.

 The limits of online therapy

Research shows some success for online therapy in cases of mild to moderate disturbance. And when patients might be a danger to themselves or their surroundings, or when the patient’s disturbance worsens and makes everyday functioning difficult, the Internet could be a brief way station, enabling the patient to rally and report for therapy in person. Such cases could involve severe depression or psychosis (where the patient loses touch with reality and hallucinates), bipolar disorder (manic-depression, where the person swings between deep depression and extreme euphoria), and more.

Online therapy offers the patient several advantages:

• There is no fear of being stigmatized. Even today there are people who worry “What will the neighbors think?” and those people may fear that going for therapy will brand them unfavorably in society. Therapy should not trigger a social stigma, and we should remember that emotional therapy is a professional procedure like any other — just like seeing the doctor for the flu — but until society corrects itself, there is comfort in knowing that for online therapy, you won’t be seen entering a clinic and you don’t even leave the house.

• Distance means nothing. Whether good therapists of the type you want aren’t available nearby, or whether you started therapy in person but then relocated, the Internet can serve as the solution.

Freud would presumably have supported the availability of online therapy. He would have seen this growing, developing field as an additional arena for a delicate discourse among the personality’s components: the id, the ego, and the superego. The Internet could even help reconcile the id, the ego, and the superego. For example, online role-playing games are a place where you can exercise less-developed parts of your identity in order to better integrate your identity as a whole.

But it’s not simple. Even the Internet has its rules, and respecting them is part of being a good web user or netizen. You can notice the rules as soon as you land on the home page of a site that is open for public use. A public website posts rules notifying every visitor what behavior is expected and what behavior violates the rules of the site. Repeated violations can result in a “ban” against the “offender.” A forum lays down clear rules such as “Keep your language clean,” “Don’t start a battle of insults,” “Direct any complaints against participants to the forum administrators,” or “No sale of illegal or stolen merchandise.” The penalty is clear: “Violators will be blocked.” In other words, you can’t simply say whatever youh want and do whatever you want.

And it turns out that even behind closed doors, inside fantasy games, people are under control. In Freudian terms, people’s online behavior can be defined as regression in the service of the ego rather than complete release of the id. “Regression in the service of the ego” means acting immaturely in order to advance the ego’s long-term goals. Behind some immature behavior that we see on the Internet, there may — from Freud’s perspective — be a significant purpose involving adaptation to life. Given the ability to occasionally leave strict behavioral formulas behind in favor of openness and creativity, people can more easily improve their definitions of themselves.

I like to think I’m a better career counselor from having had so many careers. Here are lessons I learned from each

Accounts receivable clerk. At age 12, my father’s friend hired me. He paid me $2 an hour and fired me a month later because I was so eager to show I could get the work done quickly that I made too many errors. I just couldn’t slow myself down. Lesson learned: Speed is only impressive when accompanied by accuracy.

Pianist. When I was 16 and 17, every summer Saturday, I played for $25 for four hours at a bungalow colony (translation: slum vacation spot) in the Catskill Mountains. My three-piece band and I had to drive 240 miles round trip to get there but we loved playing and so it was worth it. Lesson learned: It may be worth doing work you love, even if you take a net loss--at least when you're young.

Cab driver. In college, I drove the night shift in Manhattan. Loved it. If I’m honest, it was my favorite job ever: I succeeded with every customer and had great conversations. Lesson learned: Status can be the enemy of contentment.

Medical researcher. In my cab, I was lucky enough to get the famous medical researcher, Neal Miller, as a passenger. Miller was the first person to prove that biofeedback worked. I quipped, “I’m not letting you out of this cab unless you give me a job.” He did. Lesson learned: There’s no risk and plenty upside in asking for what you want.

Drug counselor. I ran “rap groups” with teenagers in an inner-city New York City public school. Not only could I not disabuse them of drug use, I couldn’t even control the group. Lesson learned: Sincerity isn’t enough.You must know how to interact with people from cultures that are very different from your own.

School psychologist. Another failure. I just didn’t have the ability to help special ed kids enough. Lesson learned: We need to find the sorts of people we work most successfully with.

Classroom teacher. Yet another failure. I returned to an inner-city public school. I wanted to prove that I could succeed with tough kids. Yes, I had learned how to command their respect but I was unable to improve their learning enough. After three years of trying hard, very hard, I quit. Lesson learned: Not every problem is solvable no matter how much education, experience, and effort.

University instructor.  I was itinerant, filling in for a semester for someone on maternity leave, then a temp to accommodate a temporary blip in students, etc. My student evaluations were excellent, my PhD was from Berkeley with honors, and I am a prolific writer, yet I could never land a permanent professorship. Lesson Learned:  We don't live in a meritocracy. At two universities, I was told that I was very worthy of a tenure-track position but that factors other than merit affect hiring decisions.

Career Counselor. I wasn’t in love with being a career counselor but I adapted it to suit my strengths and preferences: working at home, being more active in sessions than is the typical counselor, and having a public outlet (writing and speaking) to add a little pizazz to my career. Lesson Learned: Like a suit of clothes, for a career to really work, you must tailor and accessorize it.

Columnist. I’ve never taken a journalism course yet have written 2,800 columns and articles. Indeed I had to unlearn how graduate school taught me to write---obfuscatorily. What helped was that I showed drafts of my articles to just-plain people and begged for feedback: What’s clear and not? What’s interesting and not?  Lesson learned: Sometimes, it’s better to learn outside of school.

Radio host. My daughter had a friend over. For the fun of it, I interviewed them and recorded it. Because I had nothing to lose, I sent the recording to two radio stations. KALW-FM said yes and now, I’m in my 26th year hosting a weekly program on that NPR station in San Francisco. Lesson learned: Again, ask for what you want. And schooling isn’t the only way to get hired.

Rose hybridizer.  I loved that, for very little money, you can buy a rose bush that quickly grows into a romantic flower factory that lasts for decades. But roses are prone to disease, which often requires spraying with fungicides. So I decided to learn how to hybridize roses—My goal was to create roses that never needed spraying. I learned by reading articles and books and then visiting a few professional rose hybridizers, most who had degrees in botany. I now have three commercial roses on the market, for which I’ve received almost $100,000 in royalties. Lesson learned: Again, if you’re a self-motivated learner, you can learn a lot without going to school.

Instructor of medical students.  Now, as an adjunct to my career counseling practice, I teach medical students at the University of California, San Francisco the art and science of communicating with patients. That work is among the most rewarding I’ve ever done. Lesson learned: Being around very smart, motivated, idealistic people is wonderful.  

The takeaway

Perhaps one or more of those lessons may be of value to you. But maybe even more valuable, try listing all your careers and the lessons learned.

Marty Nemko's bio is in Wikipedia.

Are we all lazy-boned laggards? Well, not exactly. While procrastination is common, laziness isn’t the usual cause. After all, most people are unmotivated to do things they dislike until they absolutely have to. It’s also hard to get started when we’re not sure what we face when we begin pursuing a goal so it’s common to procrastinate on ambiguous tasks we’re unsure how to perform. Some procrastination isn’t even a choice but merely a matter of having too little time and too many responsibilities.

Some people say they procrastinate because they work better under last-minute pressure. Cartoonist Bill Waterson (“Calvin & Hobbes”) once said, “You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. What mood is that? Last-minute panic.” According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, people aren’t motivated to perform a task until they have the optimal level of arousal. Too little and they’re unmotivated, too much and they experience performance-inhibiting anxiety. One of my theories is that habitual procrastinators don’t get to that “optimal” level of arousal as quickly as non-procrastinators. Non-procrastinators are sometimes anxiety-prone and reach that motivating level of arousal much sooner; for them, putting tasks off only leads to uncomfortable anxiety.

It appears to me that some habitual procrastinators are fiercely independent types who rebel when their personal freedom is challenged. They’re high in “psychological reactance.” More than most people, they experience deadlines and task obligations as affronts to their personal freedom and they rebel by procrastinating. Their procrastination is their way of saying, “Nobody can boss me around. I am the Captain of my own ship.” Meanwhile, in an ironic twist, procrastination often sinks their ship.

Procrastination is sometimes a killer of self-actualization, the realization of our own unique potential. This is more likely when procrastination is a self-handicapping strategy. Self-handicapping occurs when prior to performance on an “ego-relevant” task (one central to the self-concept), you place an obstacle in your own way. The point of self-handicapping is to have something to blame if you don’t perform well. This allows you to believe that were it not for the obstacle, you would’ve performed at a high level. If you perform decently despite the obstacle, your ego benefits. For instance, habitually procrastinating students are usually very proud of their B or C grade point averages. They feel incredibly smart because they achieved this despite their procrastination. Unfortunately, many later regret their academic underachievement when it prevents them from attending graduate school or getting a good job.

Self-handicapping is typically motivated by a lack of confidence. The person wants to believe they have a particular talent or ability or potential for “greatness” but secretly fear that they don’t. They’re afraid to try their best because they’re afraid they might find out that they’re not as smart, talented, special, etc. as they want to believe they are. They do things like procrastinate, don’t get needed mental health treatment so they can blame their anxiety for their underachievement, abuse drugs or alcohol so they can blame their hangovers or late nights, take on responsibilities that prevent them from giving it a real go, etc. Ironically, they’re so afraid of dealing with possible failure they end up preventing their own success. While their ego is protected in the short run, in the long run they don’t reach their goals and ultimately they live with regret and feelings of failure.

Procrastination isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, I have often wondered if procrastinators have greater life quality than us highly disciplined people who rarely procrastinate. We complete tasks promptly, which only leaves time to complete even more tasks! There’s always something that needs doing. Sometimes I think that what looks like procrastination is sometimes just having your priorities straight. Letting the housework or yard work go so you can play with your kids, read a book, check in on Facebook, do your hobby, take a bath, or spend time with a friend might be hallmarks of balanced life rather than something to feel guilty about. They can be evidence of good self-care, rather than procrastination.

If you never procrastinate it may mean that you don’t make time for rejuvenating leisure, creative pursuits, or your relationships. You may see these things as productivity threats and procrastination instead of the health and happiness necessities they are.  In yet another ironic twist, too much productivity can harm productivity. Without occasional restoration, burnout is likely and our productivity ultimately suffers. Interestingly, your productivity at socially approved tasks may even mask your procrastination. When you think about it, many highly productive people may be procrastinators; they just procrastinate on self-care, leisure, and tending their relationships.

So your procrastination may not be a problem and could even be healthy! However, if your procrastination significantly interferes with your achieving important life goals or desired success, it’s cause for concern. Ditto if it harms your personal or professional relationships because of its negative impact on others. When you get around to it, you might visit a therapist to explore the roots of your procrastination. And, if you never procrastinate, that too could be a problem worthy of therapeutic exploration. Your excessive focus on productivity may be unhealthy.

Why do researchers and the federal Animal Welfare Act continue to ignore what science has told us about animal sentience? A recent research report called "Mice and rats achieve similar levels of performance in an adaptive decision-making task" by Santiago Jaramillo and Anthony M. Zado published in the journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience shows that rats and mice perform similarly in different cognitive tasks. The researchers go on to say that researchers can now use mice instead of rats in various research projects and totally ignore the ethics of their use in invasive research although we know that they and other animals are highly emotional and sentient beings. This study is summarized in a press release titled "In a battle of brains, bigger isn't always better: Rats and mice perform similarly in cognitive tests" from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where Dr. Jaramillo works. (Other researchers have also noted that brain size doesn't matter in cognitive tasks, about which I wrote an earlier essay called "The Birds and the Bees and Their Brains: Size Doesn't Matter.") 

Were researchers actually "more humane" years ago?

For the past few weeks I've been thinking about the possibility that, paradoxically, researchers and those people responsible for developing legislation and guidelines for the use of nonhuman animals (animals) in research were actually more humane years ago, before we knew that many other animals, including those who are used and brutally abused by the millions in various forms of research, are sentient and highly emotional beings. The above study rekindled this thought, one that I have been discussing with Psychology Today essayist, Jessica Pierce. 

Consider, for example, that we now know that mice and rats display empathy and that rats demonstrate the cognitively complex capacity of regretting what they didn't do. We also know that rats feel joy and laugh. Why hasn't this knowledge been used on their behalf? The same can be said for what we now know about birds and fish (see also). Many researchers and those responsible for developing legislation and guidelines for the use of nonhuman animals in research ignore what we know about these animals who are bred for and abused by the millions in various types of resear

What are we going to do with what we know? Nothing so far

We can only hope that discoveries about their deep and rich cognitive and emotional lives will be used to protect rats, other rodents, and other animals from being used in horrific invasive research. It is inexcusable that this knowledge has not been factored into a revision of the Federal Animal Welfare Act in the United States. Rodents and many millions of other animals who comprise more than 99% of the animals used in invasive research can still be greatly harmed or killed "in the name of science." Indeed, the Animal Welfare Act does not consider them to be "animals". Only about 1 percent of animals used in research in the United States are protected by legislation and the legislation is sometimes amended in nonsensical ways to accommodate the "needs" of researchers. 

Birds, rats, and mice are not animals according to the U. S. Animal Welfare Act

The desperation of science to rob animals of their sentience produces distortions that open the door for egregious and reprehensible abuse. For instance, here is a quote from the federal register: "We are amending the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) regulations to reflect an amendment to the Act's definition of the term animal. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 amended the definition of animal to specifically exclude birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus, bred for use in research" (Vol. 69, no. 108, 4 June 2004). It may surprise you to learn that birds, rats, and mice are no longer considered animals, but that is the sort of logic that epitomizes federal legislators. Researchers are not allowed to abuse animals, so the definition of animal is simply revised until it refers only to creatures researchers don't need. Garet Lahvis, a behavioural neuroscientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, correctly notes, "We study animals to see what makes us uniquely human, but the findings of empathy in animals often force uncomfortable questions about how humans treat animals."

The animals care about how they are treated and we also should and must

So, it just may be that years ago researchers and those people responsible for developing legislation and guidelines for the use of animals in research were actually more humane. Although many people who studied and shared their homes with rodents and other animals knew they were sentient beings, the scientific evidence wasn't available and those who used animals or favored their use could say and get away with something like, "We don't know if these animals are sentient or emotional so until we do we can do whatever we want to them." Some researchers still act as if this were true, but now the data are available and they have been published in highly prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals and it boggles my mind that researchers continue to use these animals as if they -- the animals -- also don't care about how they were treated. They do, and we also should and must. 

Stay tuned for more on the fascinating lives of other animals. It's essential that we use what we know about them on their behalf and not granting birds and rodents much more protection is inexcusable. It is as if the data that are collected do not matter.

Marc Bekoff's latest books are Jasper's story: Saving moon bears (with Jill Robinson; see also), Ignoring nature no more: The case for compassionate conservation (see also), and Why dogs hump and bees get depressed (see also). Rewilding our hearts: Building pathways of compassion and coexistence will be published fall 2014. (marcbekoff.com; @MarcBekoff) 

When I was young I distinctly remember being afraid of a nuclear attack from Russia. I also remember being afraid of the killer bees that were on their way from Africa. What if we get bombed? What will happen to my family and me? What if killer bees attack me? Will I die? These are not comforting thoughts when you are a child. They are scary. We didn’t get bombed and we weren’t attacked by killer bees.

Fast forward to 2014.

Last night at the dinner table with my wife and three children, my high-schooler says, “Did you hear about the person who got it in Texas?” My elementary schooler says, “Got what?”, and my middle schooler, nicknamed Mr. Science, replies, “Ebola.” “What’s Ebola,” my youngest asks. As my wife (a nurse who is good with explanations) starts to respond when Mr. Science says something to the effect of – “a disease that kills you by blood pouring out of your skin.” Oh great, that is helpful I think as my youngest child’s face pales, her eyes widen, and she blurts, “Can we get it?”

Game on.

Fortunately, my wife and I are veterans at helping to manage our children’s worry. We have an unspoken game plan based on years of experience with them. We don’t even have to look at each other anymore as we quickly move into information management and damage control. We know that each of our kids is at different developmental stages, and each gets worried about different things in different ways.

Our oldest is very good -- now -- at putting big scary things out of her mind and focusing on what’s in front of her – a Japanese test, home-coming, and cross-country. Our middle guy isn’t scared because he has already deduced the facts about how the disease is spread, how it could get to the U.S., and what is done about it. Further, he is focused on freaking out his little sister far more than getting Ebola. Our 10 year-old, however, is starting to get scared.

My wife and I are calm. She explains that Ebola is a virus that is in Africa. “Not anymore” my son says. Again, very helpful I think. Deep breathe. Ok, first we are also aware that this is how our son is managing his worry about it – to be the expert and mess with his sister. While I am getting frustrated with him about his comments, we proactively counteract his statements – “A man in a Texas has it. He came from Africa after helping a woman who was very sick. He allegedly lied about being exposed and was let in our country.” My wife is talking very calmly and I am remaining calm. Our oldest, who is very intuitive, is looking at us to get a read about how serious this is. We are doing a good job – she is starting to think about home-coming again. Our youngest asks a few more questions about how you get it. My wife calmly responds through contact with others fluids – not just through the air. I calmly say the likelihood of us or anyone we know getting it is so small it isn’t even worth thinking about. She is satisfied (for now) and goes back to her book. My son sees the door has closed on scaring her and we go back to our evening.

With the news of Ebola dominating the news, similar scenarios are taking place at dinner tables, bedtime, soccer games, and at the lunch table in school.

Being afraid of a nuclear attack or killer bees was very upsetting to me. These events were out of my control and there was nothing I could do about it. All my time worrying about them was for naught – fortunately.

Today, our current situation with Ebola is the same for children and teens. It is very scary to think about but there is nothing we can do about it. Our job as parents is to help our children deal with worrisome information by understanding how they think and process information at this formative time in their lives, and by giving them information they need to manage their thoughts and worries and while remaining engaged in life and sticking to regular routine living.

Based on my work with families and my own personal experiences, I suggest:

• Think about how your children think about “worry” events based on their age and maturity

• Filter information based on their age and maturity level

• Minimize watching the news, listening to the radio, screen time and monitoring internet news and images

• Respond to their questions calmly and with the minimal amount of information necessary

• Give facts that are helpful and reduce fear such as the likelihood of the event occurring and how it is transmitted

• Offer reassurance as needed

Whether it is nuclear attack, killer bees, SARS, economic collapse, war, or Ebola, there will always be something that can cause worry in young people. The goal is to give our children (they way our parents did) the tools to deal with the worry right now and shut down the fear. The unexpected curve balls of life will keep coming but we can win the fear game.

When the Voyager spacecraft was on the verge of leaving our solar system, it turned its cameras back around and took a single photograph. Almost every known object in existence was in the frame. Every life ever lived has been on the face of a lonely pixel, only a little brighter than the surrounding darkness; “A pale blue dot…suspended in a sunbeam”. Carl Sagan's narration of this is both stirring and devastating.

When we look up at the void above us, it is with both awe and with dread. The cosmos is unimaginably vast and its secrets unimaginably great; the number of possible worlds is endless. And yet, the great emptiness is profoundly daunting.

For some, the sheer size and complexity is a beautiful testament to the immense complexity of nature, or to the deeds of a god. Its as-yet unknown secrets and its potential to hold another home, other lives and existences are as exciting now as they were to children watching enraptured as Armstrong set foot on the Moon.

For others, the realisation that we are but one of 7 billion fleshy organisms living out our lives on a rock revolving around a gaseous flame in a never-ending darkness instils a sense of meaninglessness. It’s the formidable emptiness of space that is responsible for our ambivalence.

At the risk of sounding like a teenager after reading Nietzsche, our lives are something of a battle between inevitable meaningless and a desire to give it meaning and order. This conflict is at the heart of science; the attempt to find laws that govern the seemingly random.

The idea that there is a greater being behind the apparent meaninglessness is, in a way, an attempt to
do just that. It holds the promise of an unobserved order to the universe and has the added benefit of making us feel less alone. The search for extra-terrestrial life is, it would seem, an update of the desire to feel as though we are not the only ones here. It is a testament to the human will to conquer the unknown and order the void that we pour billions of dollars into the quest to travel to and colonise space. So profound is our fear of insignificance that it becomes an existential threat.

Between the beauty of space and the fear of solitude and emptiness, space is bound to stir up a range of emotions. The human mind, evolved to better enable us to hunt and reproduce, never really needed to comprehend anything beyond the horizon. It is no wonder then that we are so ill equipped, and so deeply conflicted by, the sheer enormity of the physical world around us.

I am passing along news of this upcoming online seminar. I am not involved with it myself and have no financial or other interest other than spreading the news about narcissistic personality disorder--Randi Kreger

The Personality Disorders Awareness Network, a nonprofit organization, presents an online seminar with therapist/author Wendy Behary, author of "Disarming the Narcissist...Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed"

Loving…Leaving…Living With The Narcissist In Your Life

What: A 2-Hour Online Seminar (Live Webinar)

Date: Wednesday 12 November 2014

Time: 2:00–4:00 pm (US Eastern time), 11am –1pm (US Pacific time), 7–9 pm (Greenwich time)

Where: Online (login will be sent after registration)

Cost: See below

Details: www.PDAN.org/programs/pdan-online-calls

This seminar is designed for anyone who has been involved with people exhibiting the following behavior. See if you recognize these signs (people can have both borderline personality disorder and NPD):

 * Self-Absorbed—acts like everything is all about him or her

 * Emotionally Detached—steers clear of feelings

 * Entitled—makes the rules; breaks the rules

 * Demeaning—puts you down, bullyish

 * Demanding—of whatever he or she wants

 * Distrustful—suspicious of your motives when you’re being nice to him or her

 * Perfectionistic—rigidly high standards, his or her way or no way

 * Snobbish—believes he or she is superior to you and others

 * Unempathetic—totally uninterested in understanding your inner experience, even when things are going well between you

 * Unremorseful—cannot offer a genuine apology at any time

 * Compulsive—gets overly consumed with details

 * Addictive—cannot let go of bad habits

Focus of Seminar

Whether you are living with, dealing with, in love with, or leaving a narcissist—this workshop will offer the essential tools necessary for understanding and dealing with this complex syndrome, its impact on relationships, family, children, and, most importantly, on your sense of self.

 What This Seminar Teaches

 You will learn effective strategies for:

 1. Limit setting

 2. The art of empathic confrontation

 3. The proper use of leverage

 4. How to identify & heal your life and change self-defeating patterns in relationships

Speaker Info: Wendy Behary is the author of "Disarming the Narcissist...Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed,"(New Harbinger – 2008 & 2013). See www.DisarmingTheNarcissist.com.

Space Is Limited… 40 people max.

Please Register Early!

Fee: 25.00 US$ if you register by Monday October 20th

30.00 US$ if you register by Saturday November 1st

35.00 US$ if you register by Monday November 10th Registration closes November 10 at 5:00 PM (US Eastern)

Registration or Questions: Please email seminars@pdan.org

Credit Cards: Accepted via phone 973-218-1776 ext. 808 c/o Lauren, or email seminars@pdan.org 

Or Send Check by Sat. Nov 1st payable to: Personality Disorder Awareness Network, PO Box 79468, Atlanta GA 30357 – USA

These are special prices for PDAN. Typically Wendy’s online seminars cost $200 to $300 for 6 to 8 hours.

We hope you will take advantage of this great opportunity to hear an expert speaker on communication and narcissism.

Web info: http://www.pdan.org/programs/pdan-online-calls

Thanks!

www.PDAN.org

www.facebook.com/PDAN

www.facebook.com/PDANfamilies

Personality Disorder Awareness Network

Ask your friend to recount an exceptionally positive experience with a company.  Then ask your friend to recount a negative experience with a company.  It is likely that your friend would be much quicker at remembering the negative experience and have many more examples to share than positive experiences (Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy, & Quinn, 2005).  It seems that great customer service is becoming the exception rather than the norm.  This is unfortunate because customer service is at the foundation of brand management and brand management should be vigorously protected by managers especially in today’s social media age.  No longer are bad customer service experiences limited to one’s inner circle, neighborhood, or work places.  Social media has made it possible for any customer to share his or her experiences with companies to a much larger audience with the possibility of their experiences going viral and becoming a major public relations disaster for companies at worst and at the very least have a negative effect on the company’s bottom line through lost future sales.  Readers might remember Delta Airlines faux pas over charging U.S. soldiers over $2,000 for baggage fees.  The soldiers’ video complaining about the fees led to a PR disaster and changes to baggage fees for military personnel at the other major airlines as well (the other airlines learned from Delta’s mistake).  A tweet by Sir Patrick Stewart blasting Time Warner for having to wait over 36 hours for his cable installer to arrive flooded Twitter with similar complaints from other dissatisfied customers.  More and more consumers are now becoming aware of the customer service experience of others (Interested readers can check out more customer service blunders and a few customer service exemplars here).

The irony is that the negative customer service experience could have begun as a relatively minor offense on the part of a company, but it can be quickly exacerbated if management does not manage the offense appropriately.   There is not a business or industry that does not depend at least to some extent on its relationship with its customers to survive. The recognition that customers and customer service are instrumental to business success goes back more than a century as evidenced by the popular adage “The customer is always right,” coined in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London (Martin, 2012).  While each specific situation needs to be investigated to determine whether the customer is actually right, managers would do well to begin with this premise and train their employees to do so as well.   Below are some tips that managers and customers can follow to navigate through these situations to prevent a mole hill from becoming a mountain. 

Tip 1: The Customer is Always Right:  As I mentioned earlier, managers and employees should begin with this premise because it reaffirms a culture of exceptional customer service—which should be the aim of just about any company.  This is certainly a balancing act for managers because employees want to feel like their management supports them while customers also want to feel like they are valued.  The key is that if exceptional customer service is the culture of the organization, employees should not take it personally when deference is given to customers because they recognize that the company is trying to come to an integrative solution where the needs of both parties are met and appropriate care and respect are given to all parties involved rather than a distributive solution where one side wins and the other side loses.

Tip 2:  Mitigate any Further Damage and Investigate Promptly:  If a water pipe is leaking, then it is most urgent to stop the leak to mitigate any further damage in a home.  Along the same vein, when a customer has a negative customer service complaint, then managers should work quickly to provide appropriate solutions to mitigate any further damage that may occur due to the injustice.  Customers and employees/companies develop psychological contracts regarding the service and relationships  that they expect from one another (Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Robinson & Rousseau, 1994).  Of course this expectation varies depending on the brand and industry where high-end brands are expected to deliver far superior customer service to their customers than low-end brands, thus justifying the high-end brands’ price premiums.  Although great customer service should be a norm at any company, one would expect a higher quality of service at Mercedes Benz (more on this later) than one would get at Hyundai.  Equity theory (Adams, 1965) informs us that people pay close attention to inequities in social relations and when an inequity occurs one would search for a solution to restore equity.  Bad customer service is an inequity and psychological contract breach to a customer so after mitigating any further damage, managers need to investigate promptly why, how, when, where, and who experienced and was the cause of the bad customer service. 

Tip 3:  Apologize, Explain, and Attempt to Reconcile to Show Good Faith:  Managers apologizing for the mishap should be a no-brainer, but I am surprised to hear how often customers are not even offered an apology for bad service.  An apology can actually go a long way in keeping the mole hill from turning into a mountain, however, many times an apology alone is not sufficient to provide reconciliation and show good faith.  After an investigation is done and answers are available, managers should relay the findings of the investigation to the customer as soon as possible and take full responsibility.  If the offense was truly on the company, then the manager should offer an appropriate form of reconciliation to show good faith in an effort to retain the customer, offer the customer a positive experience (you don’t want a customer’s last experience with you to be negative), and provide closure to the event.  Explaining the situation to the employee who was involved is also necessary to prevent situations like this from happening in the future.  If the company was actually in the right, then the manager should still apologize for failing to meet expectations, but also provide adequate justifications for why proper policies and procedures were followed.  Managers must pay close attention to tone as the justification should not be given in a condescending, dismissive, or superior manner, but only for information purposes to provide closure to the event. 

What should customers do?

When customers receive bad customer service, they should inform a representative of the company.  This can be the employee, a manager, or the corporate office.  Informing the company of bad customer service should be welcomed by the company because it provides the company with important feedback and allows other customers to hopefully not experience what that customer experienced.  Customers should also seek more information concerning the situation in order to get a better understanding of what may have occurred and alternative explanations.  Customers can do this by asking other employees questions on policies and procedures, pitching hypothetical situations, as well as asking others within their network for information and advice.  Depending on the severity of the situation, customers can also stage confederates to gather more information and provide evidence in support of their case.  In fact, using confederates in research has been an important scientific design that has provided us with a lot of valuable information on how customers may be treated differently based on a number of various characteristics (Evett, Hakstian, Williams, & Henderson, 2013; King & Ahmad, 2010).  Customers should stand up for themselves and not be afraid to ask for an appropriate reconciliation on the part of the company to show good faith and to restore the inequity.  If such a reconciliation is refused and the company does not provide an adequate justification to support the refusal, then shame on the company and it should beware! 

Can you give a personal example? I recently experienced the disappointment of bad customer experience from the Mercedes Benz of Cherry Hill, NJ dealership.  I decided before not to purchase my vehicle from that dealership because of the unexpected poor and impersonal service I received while seeking information on a number of different models they were selling.  Instead, I purchased my vehicle from a Mercedes Benz dealership that is more than an hour from my home.  Deciding to give the dealer another chance, I went back to purchase a prepaid maintenance plan.  Needless to say, my first impression was reconfirmed and the service got worse.  I followed the advice I am giving, but MB of Cherry Hill did not.  The irony is that Mercedes Benz’s slogan is “The Best or Nothing” and although MB of Cherry Hill did not fulfill on the “Best,” they certainly fulfilled on the “Nothing.”  Therefore, I returned to the dealership where I purchased my vehicle to fulfill my service needs, which they did with the utmost respect and professionalism.  However, as I mentioned before, bad service at one company does more than just affect that company, but also affects the entire brand so I still have second thoughts about purchasing another Mercedes Benz.  As customers, we always have options and managers of companies must remember that. 

Brand management is even more important in the age of social media.  Managers need to realize that bad customer service may not just affect the specific company but can affect all companies under the same brand.  This point is most evident with franchise brands.  Many profitable and well-known companies have fallen from their apex and some have even entered bankruptcy (remember Blackberry, Circuit City, Polaroid, Blockbuster, etc.) so no company should believe it is invincible against threats.  Whether or not the customer is always right, managers would do well to follow these tips.    

References

Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), (Vol. 2, pp. 267–299). New York: Academic Press.

Evett, S. R., Hakstian, A. G., Williams, J. D., & Henderson, G. R. (2013). What’s Race Got to Do with It? Responses to Consumer Discrimination. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 13(1), 165–185. doi:10.1111/j.1530-2415.2012.01297.x

King, E. B., & Ahmad, A. S. (2010). An experimental field study of interpersonal discrimination toward Muslim job applicants. Personnel Psychology, 63, 881–906.

Martin, G. (2012). The customer is always right. The Phrase Finder. Retrieved March 15, 2012, from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/106700.html

Morrison, E. W., & Robinson, S. L. (1997). When employees feel betrayed:  A model of how psychological contract violation develops. Academy of Management Review, 22(1), 226–256.

Roberts, L. M., Dutton, J. E., Spreitzer, G. M., Heaphy, E. D., & Quinn, R. E. (2005). Composing the reflected best-self portrait:  Building pathways for becoming extraordinary in work organizations. Academy of Management Review, 30(4), 712–736.

Robinson, S. L., & Rousseau, D. M. (1994). Violating the psychological contract: Not the exception but the norm. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15(3), 245–259. doi:10.1002/job.4030150306

In his bestseller, The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker argues that personality traits are inherited. They are the adaptive traits of our ancestors. When we are born, we are therefore not born as blank slates. Nor are we necessarily born good.

Certainly Dr. Pinker is onto something. We are born with lots of innate traits. But are we born with a particular unchangeable personality?

Cases of people undergoing traumatic brain injury suggest that we aren’t.

I have examined several people who developed extraordinary abilities following brain injury. In each and every case their personality changed drastically.

For example, our most recent subject L, a 46 year old female, has literally become a different person after a dramatic accident. On October 11, 2009 she fell 40 feet down a 75 degree inclined steep slope, hit her head on numerous rocks, and sustained gashes from those impacts. She was flown to a trauma II hospital and had to have facial reconstruction and tooth implants.

After she recovered, things took a new turn. She emerged from the accident with new skills. She was previously a farmer. In fact, she was feeding chickens in Colorado when she fell down the steep slope.

But suddenly she saw the world differently. She had no desire to look after farm animals, or any other animal for that matter. Instead she took up painting. She also writes poetry, quickly picks up foreign languages and has acquired perfect pitch.

What could possibly have happened in her brain in order for this transformation to take place?

Well, we know that subject L injured parts of her prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex normally suppresses our creative skills. When this part of the brain is injured, the creative parts of the brain are free to flourish. This was most likely what happened to subject L.

What is perhaps even more amazing is the change in personality that happened after the accident. Prior to the accident subject L was extraverted, the “class clown,” quick-witted, impulsive and not very conscientious. She lived to party and go out late at night with her best friend. She was also very good at sports but had no interests in the fine arts or any serious, intellectual matters, although she was fairly good at English in school.

After the accident subject L became a completely different person. Now she has no interest in farming or animals. She lives for her art: painting and poetry. But something even more drastic occurred. She no longer has emotions. She doesn’t feel fear, anger, irritation, joy or love. She would know that she ought to run if she were face to face with a tiger but she wouldn’t feel the fear that most of us would in the envisaged scenario. Her emotional responses are flat … with one exception: she has an amazing eye for aesthetic beauty. That is the closest to emotional feelings and responses that she ever experiences.

It is perhaps because emotions are needed to securely anchor most memories that subject L has difficulties remembering. She has had to learn what others feel. She has had to learn that her mother is her mother, that her brother is her brother and that people form relationships and get married. She doesn’t feel any of the feelings associated with these life-changing events. She has had to learn to give her friends compliments to avoid being rude but she never feels it. She is a new person, changed from a complex human being to an aesthetic creator and appreciator, without any other emotional biases.

Pinker, of course, is right that the idea of a blank slate is nonsense. But cases like that of subject L tells us that personalities can change radically, depending on how the brain is organized or reorganized.

HOLY TORNEDO OF STRESS BATMAN!

You're stressed to the max! What do you do? Before fawning a dramatical faint (picture wrist to forehead) or creating a Jerry Maguire 'flip out' moment, let's pause and assess the situation, shall we?

"Why is it that when some people get knocked down, they keep going? They get knocked down, they get up, and they go again. Other people, they get knocked down and they just stay down; they never get up." - Marsha Linehan on Radical Acceptance

Marsha Linehan, psychologist and creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, identified a strategy for facing painful problems. She says you basically have four options: (1) Find a solution to the problem (2) Change the way you feel about the problem (3) Accept that the problem is what it is (4) Stay absolutely #miserable

The Four Options:

1. Solve Your Problem

Is there anything you can do about the problem right now? If you could do something, would it be fair? Is your solution reasonable? Is a solution possible? Will your solution make things better? 

If there isn't a reasonable solution to the problem in the immediate future, then move on to the next option.

2.  Change the Way You Feel

How can you possibly change the way you feel about stress, right? "It's awful and will always be awful," you say. Well, our feelings are created by our perceptions and thoughts. So if we want to change the way we feel then we need to challenge our thoughts.

In many instances, stress/depression/anxiety will color our perceptions. In other words, picture yourself wearing blue-tinted glasses and now you're asked to identify the color of a lemon. Through the blue lens, that lemon looks blue-greenish. If you were wearing clear lenses, the lemon would be yellow (#obvi). So remember that just because you are having a bad day, it doesn't mean you're having a bad life. Challenge the overly negative thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones...which usually just happen to be more positive. Read more on how to challenge thoughts here. 

3. Radically Accept It | It Is What It Is

Acceptance. Although hardly rocket science, Marsha Linehan's talk on radical acceptance (transciption here)...is liberating to say the least. As she describes, you are more likely to stay stuck in your own muck of yuckiness if you refuse accept the reality of your life. Those who tend to ruminate on thoughts such as "it's not fair,""this is horrible,""I can't possibly get over this," etc. are the ones who continue to suffer. In contrast, if you are able to accept the reality of the hand you're delt (whether fair or not) you are more likely to move away from suffering. It's tough, but acceptance truly is the precursor of happiness. In the words of renowned psychologist Carl Rogers, "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."

4. Stay Miserable

#enoughsaid

"People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you are fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly."― Elizabeth Gilbert

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