Churchill's son Randolph was viewed as a future leader of Great Britain, just like his father. However, this brilliant but self-destructive young man appears to have suffered from a bi-polar disorder, with psychological behavior that Winston was ill equipped to understand or do anything about it. From “WHEN LIONS ROAR: The Churchills and the Kennedys" by Thomas Maier

   After World War II, Randolph Churchill, Winston’s only son, still believed his destiny was to become prime minister, and that the name Churchill alone would carry the day, regardless of the mounting evidence against his chances.

   Many had predicted greatness for young Churchill a decade earlier, when he boldly displayed his gifts as a public speaker which seemed more impressive than his famous father. “He used all the colorful rhetoric and manners of Winston Churchill,” rhapsodized the New York Times about one of Randolph’s early speeches. “Except that he was more restrained in his speech than his impetuous father, the young Mr. Churchill showed conclusively he was a chip off the old block.”

   Randolph shared these high expectations of himself. “I am not afraid to reveal . . . my two main ambitions,” Randolph declared in 1932. “I wish to make an immense fortune and to be Prime Minister.”

   Despite his braggadocio and overt confidence, however, Randolph appeared tired and much older after the war. At age thirty-four, his smooth blond hair had begun to thin and gray, and his overweight body was still recovering from his wartime injuries. Unlike with his father, the election in 1945 had left him without a seat in the House of Commons and suddenly looking for a job.

   In the past, Randolph had relied on writing, particularly for newspapers, just as his father had used journalism to earn some cash and promote his views in between political posts. But Randolph, caught in the maelstrom of divorce and a shortage of funds, returned to another, easier way to make money. Near the end of 1946, he traveled to America to give lectures, hoping to repeat his successful speaking tour from the early 1930s.

   Americans still tended to view Randolph as the heir apparent, the next Churchill to assume power, unlike many in Britain with less regard for him. “It was perhaps just as well that America existed for Randolph,” remarked his cousin Anita Leslie. “It was such a large country to jaunt around in giving lectures—and Randolph remained excellent on the platform if not in private life.”

   On the lecture trail, Randolph kept himself amused at night by excessive drinking and boorish gestures to women. “Britishly drunk all the time, soliciting respectable women at luncheon parties, etc.,” author Evelyn Waugh (“Brideshead Revisited”) complained to his agent after meeting his friend Randolph in Hollywood.

   Randolph’s penchant for rapid mood changes—a sudden, almost violent intensity in his speech, followed by a period of mildness seeking forgiveness—suggested problems beyond alcohol abuse. Only Kay Halle, who’d known him since his golden-haired youth, seemed to recognize a deeper cause in Randolph’s psyche.

    To Halle, Randolph confided that “he could feel whenever an illogical tantrum was going to overwhelm him”. She didn’t seem to consider this “illogical tantrum” a symptom of mental illness.  Instead Randolph described to Halle “a physical sensation that arose from the earth” and left him feeling out of control.

      “If I can stop it before it reaches my knees I will be all right,” Randolph explained to Halle, his longtime friend, “but once it gets above them a black fog envelops me and I just don’t care what I say.”

     Randolph Churchill’s behavior displayed signs of bipolar disorder (then called manic depression) as defined in today’s medical literature: very elevated emotional highs with racing thoughts and talkative outbursts followed by remorseful “black fogs” and feelings of worthlessness; irritable moods and little temper control; impulsive decisions and spending sprees; binge drinking and overweight eating; compulsively seeking sex with many different partners; and a false overestimation of self-importance.

     In retrospect, Lady Juliet Townsend, Randolph’s goddaughter, said many of these symptoms were evident in his demeanor though never diagnosed professionally. “He certainly was a person who was very up and down,” she recalled in 2012, “and got more down than up as time went on.” His contemporaries, including Waugh, dismissed these problems as part of Randolph’s eccentricity or buffoonery, without regard for a deeper cause. “Randolph’s friendships were not very close friendships because he was so wild—people didn’t like to get too close to him,” recalled Adrian Berry, grandson of newspaper baron Lord Camrose. “My uncle Freddie [Birkenhead] regarded Randolph in slightly comic terms, not a person whom he’d confide in.”

  Neither Clementine nor Winston was much for psychological analysis, and none of their correspondence about Randolph’s behavior suggests it. Perhaps the nagging sense of a family link (that his son’s erratic nature too closely resembled that of his late father) was too uncomfortable for Winston to consider. Even Halle seemed ill-equipped to deal adequately with Randolph’s raw admission. “Kay tried to train him to check this crazy creeping temper at the ankle stage,” Leslie described. “But it was no good.” Kay’s well-intentioned but amateur methods—as if his “crazy creeping temper” could be put on a leash—were no match for the “illogical tantrums” that continued to haunt his existence.

   Across America, Randolph’s bad-boy antics were followed by gossip rather than political columnists. In December 1946 he was arrested for reckless driving after addressing a women’s club in Connecticut. Rather than hire a lawyer, he unwisely conducted his own defense. He argued that his eighty-mile-an-hour speed along the Merritt Parkway wasn’t necessarily “reckless” because the highway was “one of the safest in the world.” The judge failed to see his logic and fined him fifty dollars.

   Back in England, the verdict was even harsher. Both his parents, Winston and Clementine, could no longer hide their disappointment in him and his adolescent behavior. Randolph’s acts of genuine heroism during the war, his insightful advice as Winston’s eyes and ears in other nations, and the deaths of friends and colleagues in battle had somehow failed to mature him or season his judgment. In his wake, all he seemed to leave behind were unpaid bills and a broken marriage, with a six-year-old son who barely knew him. Unlike Winston at this same age, who spoke of life’s brevity after his father’s death, Randolph acted as if the party would never end.

   Upon his son’s return to England, Winston let it be known he didn’t care to see him, an emotional wound Randolph could not bear. In February 1947, Randolph composed a heartfelt letter admitting his faults and acknowledging his father’s disappointment in him. “As you know the only career in which I am seriously interested is politics,” he said. “While fully realizing that I have made my full share of mistakes I believe also that circumstances have not so far been propitious. But I am still young & fortune may yet come my way.”

   Randolph conceded he should have become a lawyer, just as Winston suggested, but needed to work as a journalist to pay his debts. What he could not afford emotionally, though, was the estrangement of his father. “Please don’t expect too much of me now,” Randolph beseeched. “Believe instead, I beg you, that I have no other ambition than to be ultimately judged an honorable & faithful son. No day passes but that you are constantly in my thoughts & I am grateful that you think so often of me. Give me your confidence & I shall not fail you.”

We’re on the cusp of a great American holiday, Halloween, and most people think of it as a day for children, with bags of candy, weeks spent choosing the perfect costume, and a sense of anticipation on par with Christmas Eve. Judging from what I witness at the mall and in my neighborhood each year, this is also a favorite holiday for parents. Many moms and dads love to help the kiddos get dressed up and some couples draw straws to see who gets to go trick or treating and who has to stay home to pass out candy. But, even if you don’t have kids, it’s still a wonderful day to get into the action. Read on to see how childfree adults can make the most of Halloween.

1. Stay at home with your sweetheart, get dressed up, and enjoy frightening the neighborhood children while you pass out candy to them. Nothing brings out our inner child as quickly as dressing up for Halloween. I recall a night several years ago when my husband and I recreated ourselves as monster bride and groom. It was a bonding experience for us and an evening I’ll not soon forget. Being in costume with your sweetie creates a fun venue for laughter during an otherwise mundane time of the year. Plus, an added bonus of staying at home on Halloween night is the great excuse it gives you to go out shopping for candy—and eat the leftovers.

2. Get dressed up and go out to a party. Or, if you’re in the mood to entertain, host one for your friends. There are all kinds of Halloween treats that you might serve such as Martha Stewart’s caramel apples and Rice Krispy bars. It’s so easy for us to get into our ruts, to forget to be childlike in our daily lives. Halloween is a day that reminds us to be kids again. In the new movie, The Skeleton Twins, the characters put on their garb and let their inner children cut loose on Halloween evening. Invite your friends over for a Halloween party, and you’ll get to see their silly sides as well.

3. Take a child out trick-or-treating. Despite the great number of parents who flip a coin to see who gets to go trick or treating, there are a lot of kids today who don’t have an adult willing to take them out for Halloween. You might offer a friend or relative some help with shopping for a costume, getting dressed for the evening, or hitting the streets for candy.

When was the last time you celebrated Halloween? Don’t let being childfree keep you from making the most of this spooky day! 

Photo courtesy Flickr user Pedro Ferreira (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0)

Imagine you walk into your house late one stormy night when suddenly the power goes out. And in the flash of the next lightning bolt, out of the corner of your eye you see the glint of a knife as a masked man steps out of the shadows.

Not fun right?

            But stick the same situation into a haunted house or a movie, and people will pay good money to get the crap scared out of them. That seems kind of messed up. Why is that?

Turns out it has to do with the limbic system, the emotional circuit of the brain that evolved in mammals and includes the amygdala and hippocampus. Essentially the limbic system comprises the regions of the brain that are all connected to the hypothalamus, which controls the body’s stress response. So when you see the masked man, the hypothalamus instructs the body to increase your breathing and heart rate, dilate your pupils, and make your palms sweaty. Surprisingly though, when you feel excitement, the hypothalamus triggers the same physiological reaction.

There is very little physiological difference between fear and excitement. So if you’re scared, but nothing bad actually happens to you (e.g. you find a strange masked man in your house with a knife, but it turns out he’s making you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich), then it’s very easy to shift that fear into excitement, or even mistakenly think that you had been excited all along.

Interestingly, studies have shown that if you learn to anticipate fearful situations then you actually activate the nucleus accumbens, which is the reward center of the limbic system (Klucken 2009). Thus knowing you’re about to be scared is actually somewhat enjoyable. But if the fear is unpredictable then it doesn’t activate the nucleus accumbens. So fear activates the hypothalamus in the same way as excitement, and when it’s predictable it activates the brain’s reward center as well. And that really gets at the heart of the matter. We don’t like fear per se, we like predictable fear. It gets the limbic system fired up, making us feel more alive, but we don’t have to worry about actually dying.

We don’t like scary masked men in our houses because we never saw it coming, and we might actually die. However, we like haunted houses because we choose to go into them, and we know that in the end we’ll be safe. We like scary movies because we get the rush of fear without having to sacrifice anything (except like $14 for the movie).

So have a spooktacular Halloween. Oh, and P.S. Halloween costumes, whether scary, sexy or funny, also amp up your limbic system. I guess the limbic system is what Halloween is all about.

Boo!

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References:

Klucken, T. et al 2009. "Contingency Learning in Human Fear Conditioning Involves the Ventral Striatum." Human Brain Mapping 30:3636–3644

It’s Halloween, which means that most likely you will be surrounded by opportunities to indulge in chocolate treats. Therefore, you may be wondering: Is chocolate healthy? The answer, surprisingly, is that extra dark chocolate is GREAT for brain health. While pure cocoa is best, this may be too bitter for anyone with a sweet tooth, so a good rule of thumb is to go for chocolate that is 85% cocoa or more. Basically, the darker the chocolate, the better it is for your brain. Sorry milk chocolate lovers, milk chocolate does not meet these requirements. While we’re on the subject of unhealthy chocolate, forget about white chocolate as well, which, according to my cousin, a Chocolatier and owner of Chocolate Accents in Florida, technically isn't even chocolate at all

The fact is for over 20 years, I've been toting the benefits of dark chocolate to my patients with a brain injury, such as  someone with a concussion, stroke, MS, Parkinson Disease, Autism and ADHD. I've even included this information in my newest book, Coping with Concussion and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. Luckily, it seems that this notion of dark chocolate being healthy is becoming more widely known, and recently there was even a segment on the evening news discussing recent research on how eating dark chocolate was good for memory, especially for seniors.

History of Chocolate

It is interesting that over 500 years ago, Christopher Columbus, brought back cocoa from the Inca, Aztec, and Maya, who discovered the medicinal properties of cocoa in 600 AD for treating stomach and intestinal problems. According to the website Foodtimeline.org, “The basic Aztec method of preparing chocolate was about the same as that prevalent among the Maya; the only real difference is that it seems to have been drunk cool rather than hot as seems to have been the case among the Maya of Yucatan. One of the earliest notices of this drink is by the hand of a man known to scholars as the Anonymous Conqueror, described as ‘a gentleman of Hernan Cortez’, who’s description of Tenochtitlan was published in Venice in 1556: These seeds which are called almonds or cacao are ground and made into powder, and other small seeds are ground, and this powder is put into certain basins with a point... and then they put water on it and mix it with a spoon. And after having mixed it very well, they change it from one basin to another, so that a foam is raised which they put in a vessel made for the purpose. And when they wish to drink it, they mix it with certain small spoons of gold or silver or wood, and drink it, and drinking it one must open one's mouth.”

Going a little deeper into the history of chocolate and its early health benefits, the website Cadbury.com notes that, “in the 17th century, the Dutch broke Spain's monopoly of cocoa when they captured Curacao. They brought cocoa beans from America to Holland, where cocoa was greatly acclaimed and recommended by doctors as a cure for almost every ailment, and also enabled the cocoa trade to spread.”

Chocolate’s Health Benefits

On Medscape in 2013, Dr. Bret S. Stetka, MD wrote about the 7 Health benefits of Chocolate. In this article, he noted that cocoa is high in flavanols. “These abundant phenolic plant compounds have marked antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and are thought to be responsible for much of the health benefit ascribed to chocolate consumption.” For a reference point, the darker the chocolate, the more flavanols.

In previous blogs, I've emphasized that a brain injury, especially a concussion, causes the brain to become inflamed. Therefore, I always recommend an anti-inflammatory diet for anyone who has recently suffered a concussion, and dark chocolate is certainly included in this diet because of its beneficial anti-inflammatory properties.

Dr. Steka’s article also states that flavanols can help reduce blood pressure. Having high blood pressure, of course, is very unhealthy, and can even lead to stroke. In the article, Dr, Steka discusses a 2011 study of the Swedish Mammography Cohort, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which found an inverse relationship between cocoa-rich chocolate consumption in women and stroke: Increasing chocolate consumption by 50 g per week reduced cerebral infarction risk by 12%, hemorrhagic stroke risk by 27%, and total stroke risk by 14%. A more recent study looking at a cohort of over 37,000 Swedish men,[10] published in Neurology, reported that individuals who eat at least 1.8 oz of chocolate per week have a 17% lower risk for stroke compared with those who eat less than 0.4 oz per week.

 In other recent research, it is shown that the amount of flavanol, which dark chocolate is rich in, was the key factor in helping seniors to reduce memory loss. Other articles state that flavanol also help in regulating your mood and even depression.

So, the bottom line here is that eating dark chocolate is good for your memory, blood pressure, and your mood. It helps alleviate depression and also acts as an anti-inflammatory, which means that it is good for your brain. And if it is good for your brain...it is good for you.

Also, please remember that if you have had a brain injury, it is essential to cut out as much sugar from your diet as possible. Refined Sugar is terrible for your brain in general, and detrimental to a brain that is healing from an injury. This is why it is vital to look for chocolate that is at least 85% cocoa.

For more information, please see Martha Lindsay’s blog- Ditch the Sugar and Say bye to Brain Fog.

Healthy Holiday Treat – Chocolate!

One of my favorite memories was when I was in Switzerland and went to a chocolate factory. At the factory there was a fountain of chocolate where you could put a cup or piece of biscuit in the fountain to gather the warm chocolate. It was delicious. Another time when I was in Belgium at another chocolate factory, they had a similar fountain, but it was made of dark chocolate. I believe that just thinking of it these events is making my brain better!

Sugar Warning

Please, if you have a concussion, stroke or other brain injury or you don’t want brain fog, you can still enjoy chocolate during the holiday season...Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas...just make sure it is dark chocolate that you’re consuming.  There is a Way!™

 Copyright © 2014 Diane Roberts Stoler, Ed.D.

Charles Salvador has been in the news lately**. Wait, who?

He used to be known as Charles Bronson.

No, not the star of the endless Death Wish films.

 The Charles Bronson who is considered the most violent prisoner in the British penal system.

Since entering prison for a petty crime as Michael Gordon Peterson-- from which he later changed to Bronson-- he has obtained the infamous reputation as being one of the most ruthless and unpredictably violent inmates to ever carry a prison sentence in Great Britain.

There have been many books about him, and even a critically acclaimed film starring Tom Hardy (of Dark Knight Rises and Inception fame) that really seemed to capture the nuance of his character.

I confess, he intrigues me.

He has been in prison for over 40 years, with only one 69-day stint outside its walls during which he became a bare-knuckle boxer.

Despite this lengthy sentence, longer than some who have murdered, Bronson was originally arrested for petty theft, and had never assaulted or killed anyone outside the prison walls. Even inside, attacking and injuring many, he never killed anyone.

His prison history is rife with taking workers and inmates hostage, and numerous violent outbursts and attacks. He even tried poisoning one inmate.

He is currently serving a life sentence after taking an educator hostage for –ironically-critiquing his art. For some time after receiving this final sentence, he continued to act aggressively and violently against a number of people for a variety of perceived slights and offenses.

He has spent considerable time in solitary confinement and acute mental health units. He was even placed in one prison’s “Hannibal Cage”, named for the character Hannibal Lector. You can imagine what that looks like.

He has staged several protests, one on the roof of the forensic psychiatric hospital where he was sent after deemed insane.

He had also been on the receiving end of many attacks, from inmates and officers alike—himself included. Once, after a lengthy situation in which he took two Iranian terrorists hostage, he carved up his arm with a razor blade just before letting the hapless inmates go.

He is also one of the most divisive characters.

Some say he’s extremely dangerous to his environment; others have argued that he is a miserable product of the same. Some have claimed that his being locked up and confined for so long caused his impulsive, violent, aggressive and unpredictable behavior. Others have argued that is just who he is.

A recent petition to have Bronson released from such deplorable conditions has garnered more than 10,000 signatures. Others would like to see him end his days in prison.

There is simply not enough space in this brief blog to underscore all that he has been put through and all that he has put others through. 

So what does the most violent inmate do? Naturally, he turns to art.

Almost 20 years ago, he picked up pens and pencils and started drawing.

And what images they are. On the surface, they appear to be whimsical line drawings and colorful cartoons. Take a closer look*.

Some are just what they appear to be—amusing but well contrived sketches.

Yet some are indictments of the very environment that imprisons him.

Some still are humorous self-caricatures that are simultaneously self-deprecating and horrifyingly perverse, giving us a glimpse of the struggles he may yet endure.

From an art therapist’s perspective, the images are controlled, carefully executed and well organized. They do not appear to be completed by someone overly aggressive and out of control, let alone a reflection of emotional turmoil. And, that may be their strength.  The very act of completing these images may in a sense provide him a semblance of control and mastery over the very environment he feels forces him to lose control.

This in no way implies that I excuse his behavior, his poor decisions and his uncontrollable fury. I am neither championing him nor condemning him. I am simply pointing out that he has perhaps, maybe, found a more productive means of expression. 

Granted; I recognize that he remained quite ruthless even when making these images. However, and I understand there is no way in telling, might he not have been even more out of control if he didn’t find this outlet? I don’t know.

Another question-- are these genuine expressions?  Or are they more like John Wayne Gacy’s work—a cynical attempt to take advantage of society’s fascination of violence and murder to market sub-par and sophomoric imagery to make money?

I don’t think so.

For one thing, his work is quite good. He has talent.

And the money he has made from selling his work has been used to help his mother or donated to various charities.

To peruse his website, one gets a sense of humor coupled with a message of just how potentially mad he may be: http://www.charliebronsonart.co.uk

Granted, the website is protecting the brand Bronson. Perhaps the art may indeed provide a glimpse of the man Bronson.

So, who’s Charles Salvador? Twice he changed his name. He became Bronson when he began to bare-knuckle box, to embody the strong, aggressive, don’t f@&^ with me persona that he carefully honed.

Now, giving credit to the art, he now sees himself as a peaceful man, a creative, artistic person. Thus, he changes his name to Salvador to symbolize the change. He even has a new website to herald this transformation: http://charlessalvador.com. Perhaps this is simply another marketing ploy. Maybe it is. However,  I’d like to think that the art does indeed provide him a means to channel and focus his anger and aggression. 

Maybe he has indeed found peace, become peaceful. I hope so.

Because, wouldn’t you rather be attacked like this:

Than like this:

*Special thanks to Henry Boxer Gallery and the Charles Bronson Art website for allowing me to use images from their sites

**Information on the history of Bronson/Salvador was garnered from various sites; these are just a few:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Salvador

http://listverse.com/2014/06/16/10-truly-bizarre-facts-about-engl...

http://bustyrockets.blogspot.com/2010/10/charlie-bronson-truth-fa...

Moral bankruptcy: the state a person reaches when he trades away or violates too many of his core moral values and commitments. He may also lose important relationships either as a cause or consequence of his loss of moral commitments. Someone who is morally bankrupt may or may not recognize that he has reached this state. 

As someone working in moral philosophy, I argue that our deepest moral values and commitments are a crucial part of our self-identity. When a person knows his nonnegotiable moral commitments and the values he holds most dearly, he knows himself in a very important way. He knows his limits and his boundaries. He knows his motivations as well as how he tends to act in situations that require a moral response. 

Our self-identity is also a matter of the particular relations we have with other people. There are some particular social relations that are vital to our identities and our self-understanding. I am a daughter/sister/best friend/teacher etc to particular others. My moral commitments and my relationships are fundamentally connected; I often live my moral commitments and practice my moral values in those social relations. I become a loyal and trustworthy person by acting in loyal and trustworthy ways with the people around me. 

Given this, it isn’t surprising that when our vital relations change, our key moral commitments may change. And when our deep moral commitments change, our vital relations may change. This can be both the bad news and the good news depending on the direction of the change. 

The bad news: As a person’s use of a substance or engagement in a behavior such as gambling progresses, her moral commitments and vital relationships may change simultaneously. Consider a man who begins to gamble in ways that move him down the spectrum from mild problem to more severe. He may have regarded his spouse and children as the most important people in the world. He sees himself as a good father and husband; this is crucial to his identity. He understands himself to have the highest duty to provide well for them. He continues to gamble, such that he pays less attention to his family because he spends more time gambling. Many of the common ordinary activities such as sharing meals, doing errands, and puttering a day away together fall by the wayside. His mounting losses make it no longer possible to provide well for them. In fact, he might not be able to provide enough for basic necessities. He changes his relationship to his family and they may well change theirs to him. His partner may leave. His children may tend to avoid him when he is home. 

Rationalization acts as an accelerant in a case like this. Rationalization is the ultimate form of excuse making and justifying after the fact; it is “yeah, but” thinking. When a person rationalizes, he attempts to maintain his understanding of himself and his commitments by shifting responsibility on to others.  With the family man who gambles, he might start to think, “they don’t appreciate me, so why should I work so hard for people who are ungrateful?” He may convince himself that his family has changed but not him. Or there may be vestiges of his deep moral commitment to provide well for his family that makes him think, “I am risking all of this for my family,” even though that is the very activity that risks his family.  In the most extreme form, he may start to blame his family and their demands for his gambling. 

In losing those vital relationships, a person loses the very people who are best able and situated to provide moral mirrors. In losing one’s core moral commitments, a person loses his orientation such that he can no longer appreciate and cherish the people around him. This is a vicious cycle that leads to moral bankruptcy. 

Some people may never recognize they have reached the point of moral bankruptcy. Denial, the first cousin of rationalization, functions to maintain a person’s perception of reality. Denial helps a person to maintain a fiction in the cold light of fact. Denial is a perversely remarkable creative ability that carries a great potential cost. 

The good news: Some people will come to recognize when they have traded away or violated their core moral values before things progress too far. They feel pain, loss, or disorientation that pierces their denial; the haze that denial creates is lifted.  Once lifted, a person is able to see himself and world differently, which makes it possible to act differently. 

Some others reach moral bankruptcy and begin to realize how they got there. They may recognize the good people they lost. They may see the effects of losing their moral commitments or living commitments that had become skewed. In short, they begin to see and appreciate the connection between their core moral commitments and vital relations. They may see that their moral commitments and priorities can only be lived in the company of certain others. And, they may see that some of their vital relations can bring out a best in them they had never even imagined.

In chapter 8 of my trade book The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature, I discuss how various hope peddlers are uniquely successful because they cater to our fundamental Darwinian-based insecurities. Religion “grants” us immortality. Medical quacks “solve” intractable health ordeals. Self-help gurus offer us "prescriptions" for every imaginable life challenge. For today’s post, I’d like to briefly discuss a subset genre within the self-help movement: the New Age guru.

This morning I had the misfortune of catching a two-minute clip of Gary Zukav chatting with Oprah Winfrey. I had never heard of Mr. Zukav until today. I was struck by the astonishing vacuous comments that he was spouting delivered in a guru-like tone of haughty profundity. Of course, there are many other such spiritual “gurus” perhaps none more famous than Deepak Chopra (see my earlier Psychology Today article on the daunting task of choosing between competing spiritual movements). To any person steeped in an ethos of reason, science, and logic, these New Age proclamations are nonsensical gibberish. And yet to millions of people, these men are holders of universal truths that lie below the “vulgar” realm of mere material reality. You see, Chopra, Zukav, and their ilk have access to deeper spiritual truths that plebeian schmucks such as myself can never understand (as was “explained” to me by a Twitter follower).

In a sense, New Age gurus are akin to postmodernists within academia (see my earlier Psychology Today on the faux-intellectualism of postmodernism). They dispense meaningless drivel that masquerades as profound truths whilst in reality it is a mere exercise in obscurantism. Watch how I can easily become a New Age guru. Given my scientific work in evolutionary psychology and my Middle Eastern background, I am an evolutionary quantum hakim (EQH) and as such I channel cosmic energy using the EQH frequency. Because of my ability to tap into this ancient vibrational field, I have received the following three universal truths:

1) Compassionate intentionality is the illumination of the cosmic soul.

2) The transfiguration of cosmic consciousness is the astral oneness.

3) Harmonic convergence is the quantum energy of biofeedback singularity.

The prescription for being a New Age guru is the following: 1) Create verbiage that appears profound but that is otherwise meaningless. People will attribute their inability to understand your sentences to their own failings rather than to your charlatanism; 2) Be charismatic and self-confident in your delivery, and perhaps deceive yourself as to the veracity of your words. In the immortal words of George Costanza, one of the central characters of the classic sitcom Seinfeld: “Jerry, just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.” See my earlier Psychology Today article on the adaptive roots of self-deception.

P.S. I generated the latter three sentences randomly but I can assure you that I could easily convince many people that these nonsensical sentences carry infinite and timeless insights.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page, and follow me on Twitter (@GadSaad).

Source for Image:

http://bit.ly/1G33t5R

Rewilding is all the rage

The notion of "rewilding" is receiving a good deal of attention in books such as George Monbiot's Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life (the original title is Feral: Searching for Enchantment On the Frontiers of Rewilding), J. B. MacKinnon's The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be, and in my own Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence. In all of these books rewilding, to make wild once again, calls for a personal transformation and journey to undo the unwilding that occurs in the lives of many people, including youngsters. In his excellent book, George Monbiot recalls how by watching salmon fly through the air he became enraptured and felt as if he “had passed through the invisible wall that separated me form the ecosystem, as if I were no longer a visitor to that place but an inhabitant. … It was then that I realized that a rewilding, for me, had already begun.” (page 255) An editorial in New Scientist magazine (March 1, 2014) noted that "Rewilding is all the rage in conservation circles."

In a recent video interview I did about my book, I recounted how rewilding is necessary if we are to make the future better for other humans, other animals, and all of our homes. It came to me as I was doing the interview that rewilding is all about rehabilitating our hearts and souls and love for ourselves, other animals, and the places we call home. This personal and spiritual journey also calls for rewilding education and rewilding the media, so that youngsters get out into nature and other animals are represented for whom they are, not what we want them to be. Why have kids if they’re headed into an impoverished world? Of course, part of rewilding means that we need to stop making more of us, as overpopulation and over-consumption are decimating us and our one and only wondrous planet. Less really can be more. 

In my work with inmates at the Boulder County Jail as part of Jane Goodall's global Roots & Shoots program I also talk about rewilding and how important it is for them to reconnect with other humans, other animals, and habitats for their own good. Just today, when I was talking with the students in my class at the jail, many mentioned how important it is for them "get outside" or daydream about being outside to relieve their alienation from nature.  When I asked them what rewilding meant to them one student said that he thinks of rewilding as rehabilitating oiled birds, for example, and that it is our duty to do so. They also talked about how we are innately and deeply connected to nature, that biophilia is real, and that's why it feels so good to be outside and in the company of other animals. It reduces fragmentation and instills wholeness.

Unleashing our hearts

In his Foreword for my book, renowned author and visionary Richard Louv sees rewilding as part of the New Nature Movement that "includes but goes beyond traditional environmentalism and sustainability; one that maximizes the potential of nature to enhance our minds, our personal and societal vibrancy, and our resilience." (page xiv) He also notes that "Rewilding is achieved through the most radical of acts: opening ourselves to others. In essence, it is about unleashing our hearts." (page vx)

Rewilding calls for humility, is open to all, and is simple, concrete, and personal. Individuals can choose how to rewild and follow the path that best fits their interests and needs in terms of how they reconnect and interact with other people, other animals, and their homes. Rewilding also calls for being open to learning about all views and being kind even to people with whom one disagrees. We need to talk with others, not to them or at them.

Rewilding: A cultural meme for rehabilitating our hearts 

Rewilding is rehabilitation process that will result in much closer and deeper reciprocal connections with other humans and other animals and their homes, and that if enough people rewild themselves, rewilding will become a heartfelt and heartful cultural meme that fosters behavior patterns that will spread from person to person and to future generations as a form of cultural evolution. In my book I write about the eight p's of rewilding -- being proactive, positive, persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, powerful, and passionate -- and I've recently added two more, namely, the importance of being playful and being present.

We really need a heartfelt revolution in how we think, what we do with what we know, and how we act. Rewilding can be a very good guide and is all about acting from the inside out. The revolution has to come from deep within us and begin at home, in our heart and wherever we live. We’ll never have the world we previously had, but the longer we wait the less likely the future will be a good one for those who follow in our wake. 

While we won't ever get back the world we once had, we all need to do all we can to make sure that future generations inherit a planet that is the very best we can leave them. Rewilding is a great arena for all to meet and to move into a challenging and complicated future.  As I've written before, ecocide is suicide and the end result is that we will all benefit from rewilding and becoming re-enchanted with the magnificent world in which we live.

Note: The cover for my book was given to me by Thomas Mangelsen, Images of Nature.

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), Why dogs hump and bees get depressed (see also), and Rewilding our hearts: Building pathways of compassion and coexistence. The Jane effect: Celebrating Jane Goodall (edited with Dale Peterson) will be published in 2015. (marcbekoff.com; @MarcBekoff) 

There is this great quote from Cybill Sheperd, one of my very favorite actresses where she says, “I was born and bred to be a great flirt”. Not everyone feels that way though, and for some flirting feels like walking over hot coals while juggling knives. Or maybe you think flirting doesn’t matter (gasp). We’ll get to that in a moment. First, though, I have to debunk a myth.

A recent post on Seriously Science at Discover titled: “Why are humans the only animals that flirt?” caught my attention. My first thought was Whaat?, which prompted me to explore the article further. The very first sentence read, “As far as scientists can tell, humans are the only animals with covert sexual signaling.” Covert sexual signaling is code for flirting. There are two problems with this  statement. First, that animals don’t engage in cautious seduction and, second, that all flirting is some kind of secret James Bond-esque behavior.

I assure you that animals flirt secretly, openly, and in as many varied ways you could imagine. Furtive glances? That’s just how a gelada baboon signals interest in another, especially for a clandestine rendezvous right under another male’s nose. And, yes, oftentimes we do use subtle gestures that only hint at interest. For women, these might include arching or pointing our feet toward someone. This is not unlike the greater flamingo, which stretches out its leg in a ‘come hither’ fashion, while simultaneously offering a little wave of encouragement using its wing. Another classic? Playing with our hair the way a scarlet macaw preens their feathers.

Men can also surreptitiously reveal their interest by trying to move closer, not unlike emperor penguins that lean in close to each other. A man may also reach over and touch the arm or leg of a woman as a sign of interest like a macaque male that tries to groom a female he is interested in. Though when it comes to touching, caution is recommended. Mutual interest should be established; otherwise it could be offensive and intrusive.

But not all flirting in humans is discrete. Men may huff and puff about, expand their chests, talking extra loud, or taking up a lot of space. We ladies can sway our hips to and fro, sashaying blatantly past a man. Not unlike the crocodile. Though to be fair, female crocodiles are a bit less delicate about this display. When they fancy a male, they arch their backs straight out of the water to get his attention.

And sometimes, both men and women unabashedly gaze at a romantic interest across the room. And guess what? When they aren't trying to hide their love, amorous staring is also the way of baboons.

Hopefully, by the time we’re adults we’ve outgrown the grade school flirting rituals of throwing things or pulling hair. Sadly, bearded capuchin females remain stuck, using these methods as their primary flirting tactics. They throw rocks at a male. If that doesn’t work, they try running up to a male, pull his fur and then run away. When all else fails, they sit, stare at their love interest, and pout (see journal article here; video here) Not exactly subtle! And not recommended.

Which brings us to improving our flirting game. As I said above, for some the art of flirting doesn’t come quite as naturally as we would like. As with many other species, males are often waiting for their cue that a female is interested. How can we get our message across without being as brazen as a crocodile? One suggestion is to mix a little baboon gaze with a flamingo wave. Or, orient your body flamingo style and lean in close like a penguin. By combining multiple signals we can avoid missed opportunities.

Males aren’t off the hook though. Not only do you have to pay attention to the signals we are sending, but you also need to initiate things. If flirting is hard for you, don’t worry you are not alone. Long-tailed manakin males take years to hone their skills. Since they have to dance in pairs, older males will take a young male under their wing as an ‘apprentice’, teaching him how to be a smooth, charming, and desirable manakin.

For human males there are some good teachers out there for you as well. For example, The Art of Charm Podcast presented by AJ and Jordan Harbinger is one place to find great mentors. Whether it’s learning how to avoid flirting mistakes (listen here), getting tips on flirting more successfully (listen here), or improving your communication style (listen here), there is something for every man interested in standing out from the crowd.

Because we see flirting, covert and overt, in both humans and animals, this suggests that it might be a really important part of courtship. It’s often critical to initiating contact with a potential romantic interest. Although flirting serves to establish a connection with another, it can also be critical to maintaining that relationship over time. Flirting lets us know we are desired and attractive and who better to do that than the partner you already have. So don’t stop seducing your lover or they just may get their flirt on somewhere else.

Flirting isn’t just about romance. It can be about fun. It can be manipulative. For more discussion on this check out "Science News You Can Use Radio" with Amy Alkon and Dr. Jennifer Verdolin: A Scientific Look on How to Flirt Like a Master (listen here) where Advice Goddess @AmyAlkon and I chat about the art of flirting.

Even if it is only for a day, there is no denying that it's fun to be someone else. For some, part of the fun is to be as different as possible. Perhaps that's why some men put on drag, why some demure women get their sexy on, and... why some white folks are drawn to blackface. I'm far from qualified to offer real fashion advice, but after 25 years on a college campus, I have seen my share of what not to wear. Let's start with the obvious and go from there.

1. Blackface. Blackface is not ok. Ever. This is apparently complicated, so Twitter user @BobbyBigWheel made a nifty flowchart. And no, there are no exceptions. It doesn't matter if you're trying to impersonate a Black person or if you're going with Black friends (who say it's ok). It doesn't even matter if you're not White or if you're dressing up to honor someone or if it's part of a theatrical performance. If this doesn't fully resonate...if you think that it's a compliment or, at the very least, harmless fun, well, then you probably don't know much about the history of blackface and aren't about to follow the link to learn.

2. Recently murdered Black men.  This obviously pertains to Black women and any other person who met a violent death, but let's face it: It's usually a Black man and usually combined with blackface, as in the images below.

3. Anything with a noose.Much like blackface, nooses have a history. Using a noose as part of a costume or as part of a Halloween decoration dishonors, trivializes, and mocks that history. And no, you can't "hang" what look like Black bodies (or conspicuous nooses) and then say some version of "This is not about race. They're just dead bodies because, you know, Halloween." Well you can, but don't expect folks to take you seriously. Because no one who understands and respects the real history would do such a thing and those who would do such a thing are only using Halloween as cover for what they want to do every other day.

4. A racial, ethnic, or cultural group. This one is so commonplace, especially in the sports world, that some of us may not even realize it's racist. The Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins don't make it any easier, but it's not just the professional sports franchises and their fans who are guilty of this. There are still college and high school teams who use Indians as "mascots" and even when a university formally gets rid of such images, as the University of Illinois did recently with Chief Illiniwek (left), students sometimes still like to bring the Chief back on special occasions, like Halloween. More generally, any attempt to dress up as a generic member of a group (i.e., a stereotype) rather than a specific person is probably not going to end well. On the other hand, dressing up as a specific person can also be a problem (see below):

5. A criminal whose crime reinforces harmful stereotypes.  This one is trickier than most on this list. Criminals come in all shapes and colors and dressing up as a specific criminal is not generally off limits, but some criminal acts have more stigma than others, as, for example, sexual assault and violence against women. When we dress up as, say Ray Rice in a domestic violence scene, as below, we are essentially saying "ha ha...isn't domestic violence hilarious?" and subtly implying that this is how Black men tend to act. And when we dress up young kids in this fashion, we (perhaps unintentionally) condone the behavior and even imply that it wouldn't be so bad if little Johnny would do the same thing when he grows up. I know. I know. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And yes, of course I get that it's supposed to be a joke. But who/what is the butt of this kind of humor? The way I see it, humor that pokes fun of domestic violence or its victims is meanspirited, misogynistic, and not at all funny. In other words, costumes like this are scary, and not in a good way.

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For more racial analysis of news and popular culture, join the | Between The Lines |Facebook page and follow Mikhail on Twitter.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

How do you know if your romantic partner really needs you?

Whether you just started dating or have been together for decades, to be needed is an important part of a well-balanced relationship. Not only does being needed help define your role in a relationship but being needed can also influence how satisfied you feel in a relationship.

In healthy relationships, partners depend upon each other, playing indispensible parts in each other’s lives, yet they each still maintain active individual interests. The balance between being needed and being independent can be difficult to strike, but it can also disguise some of ways couples depend upon each other. In other words, sometimes we don’t fully appreciate how much our partners might really need us. 

Do you see clearly how you matter in your partnership? Or at times, do you wonder whether your partner really needs you? Here are some ways to tell:

1. Your partner engages in self-disclosure with you. Self-disclosure refers to talking about personally-meaningful events, thoughts, or emotions. Such an act is a clear indicator of need and is an incredibly important component of relationship well-being. Much research supports the idea that self-disclosure to a responsive partner is a favorable process that increases romantic couples’ intimacy (Laurenceau, Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998).

2. Your partner borrows your brain. It’s hard to remember everything, so why not split the burden? Recent research shows that satisfied couples remember together, rather than individually, a clear indication of needing each other. This type of socially-distributed cognition has some great advantages for couples as they navigate the world together (Harris, Barnier, Sutton, & Keil, 2014).

3. Your partner is integrated into your social network. If how much your partner needs you includes all the ways your partner benefits from knowing you, consider your friends and family. Does your partner benefit from knowing your friends? How many friends you share (i.e., your social network overlap) has been linked to relationship quality, but this link is likely a function of how much friends approve of a partner more than mere overlap (Sprecher & Felmlee, 1992). The evidence suggests that interdependence is fostered through shared friend groups in which the friends like your partner.

4. You and your partner share responsibilities. It might surprise you to learn how many ways your partner needs you. For example, think about your partner’s reliance on you to share the work that comes with being a couple. Whether the responsibilities are related to making social plans, swapping the job of designated driver, parenting, household chores, or financial decision making, couples often have a lot of work to do in order to keep their relationship (and lives) in good form. Relationship quality can suffer when the division of labor is not satisfactory (Treas & Lui, 2013) and couples can benefit from striking a good balance between being needed by and needing their partner.

5. Your partner seeks you for comfort. A classic component of a secure attachment is the idea that people pursue proximity with attachment figures (i.e., as an adult: your romantic partner) in times of distress. Does your partner turn to you in difficult times? Such behavior would indicate that your partner needs you. Note that some romantic partners are high in attachment avoidance, and thus to feel safe, they may need to emphasize independence (not dependence) in times of need. For most people, a healthy dependence on a partner is viewing that partner as a safe haven, a refuge from stress or hardship, an accepting source of comfort. 

6. Your partner relies on you when pursuing goals. People take on all sorts of goals (e.g., new fitness plan, new woodworking project); how does this relate to couple dependence? New evidence shows that people outsource the hard work of meeting goals (Fitzsimons & Finkel, 2011). In other words, they share the self-regulatory effort needed to complete tasks with their romantic partner, which usually leads them to exert less of their own effort towards achieving those goals. This type of outsourcing predicts greater relationship commitment and underscores the potential importance of interdependence when it comes to goal pursuit.

When considering interdependence, having your partner need you is essential, but excessive dependence is considered unhealthy. In healthy relationships, people don’t want their partners to be excessively dependent, but want to encourage their partner’s autonomy. Both partners benefit from having their own independent pursuits and their own self-sufficiency, thus allowing them to be in a good position to give their best to their partners. The challenge is to strike a healthy balance between being needed by and needing your partner, while at the same time fostering your own independent self-worth.

Other Reads

• How do you know a relationship will last?
• Is Passion Necessary for Love?
  
• Ten Things We've Learned about Hook-ups and Regret
  
• Is Constant Texting Good or Bad for Relationships?
  
• How Healthy are On-Again/Off-Again Relationships?
  
• Seven Fashion Secrets for Romance
• When Being Single is Not an Option
  
• Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last?

Photo credit:

References

Fitzsimons, G. M., & Finkel, E. J. (2011). Outsourcing self-regulation. Psychological Science.

Harris, C. B., Barnier, A. J., Sutton, J., & Keil, P. G. (2014). Couples as socially distributed cognitive systems: Remembering in everyday social and material contexts. Memory Studies, 7(3), 285-297.

Laurenceau, J. P., Barrett, L. F., & Pietromonaco, P. R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: the importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of personality and social psychology, 74(5), 1238-1251.

Sprecher, S., & Felmlee, D. (1992). The influence of parents and friends on the quality and stability of romantic relationships: A three-wave longitudinal investigation. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 888-900.

Treas, J., & Lui, J. (2013). Studying housework across nations. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 5(2), 135-149.

As the children take to the streets tonight in search of a trick-or-treat, you might be wondering the best way to protect your house from some heavy candy-looting. In 1976, Ed Diener and his colleagues asked a similar question, though they were more interested in the conditions that prompted trick-or-treaters to overindulge and take more than they should. Halloween is a holiday which encourages people to dress up in costumes and roam the streets in large groups - the perfect recipe for deindividuation. Deindividuation occurs when people’s own sense of individuality is diminished and can result in antisocial behaviors. Diener used Halloween as an opportunity to research how anonymity, group size, and feelings of responsibility influence people’s willingness to steal extra candy and money. 

The scene: Imagine that you come up to a house with a table, on one side is a bowl full of individually wrapped bite-sized candy bars, about 2 feet away on the other side is a bowl full of pennies and nickels. Nearby is a decorative backdrop with a peep hole that camouflages an unobtrusive observer. When you arrive at the door, a woman you have never met greets you.

The conditions: 

Anonymity: In the anonymous condition, the woman told the trick-or-treaters to take one piece of candy each and left the room. In the identified condition, the woman asked the trick-or-treaters their names and where they lived, and then told them to take one piece of candy each and left the room.

Group size: The observer recorded whether trick-or-treaters arrived alone or in a group. 

Responsibility: The woman either did not make anyone responsible, or she told the smallest child in the group that s/he would be held responsible if any extra candy was taken. In some groups, she asked everyone’s name so that they were all identified. In other groups she asked only the name of the child held responsible, and in still others, she let them all be anonymous.

The results: As you can see from the graph below, being in a group and being anonymous both greatly increased the likelihood that kids stole extra candy or money. Children who were alone and identified stole candy 7.5% of the time, whereas children who were anonymous and in a group stole candy 57.7% of the time.

But there was one group in which 80% of the kids stole extra candy and/or money. Who were they? When the experimenter put one child in charge, but didn’t get any of their names, trick-or-treaters were much more likely to steal. Diener anticipated this would be the case because it let the other kids off the hook, if they stole, it wasn’t their fault.

How much candy did they steal? 1.6-2.3 extra candies on average or “the amount that they could hold in their hand.”

There were also two groups that didn’t get included in the analyses – groups in which a parent was present, or groups that were so large that the experimenter stayed in the room the whole time to prevent too much Halloween mayhem from occurring. When an adult was present the incidences of stealing were very low.

The bottom line: If you don’t want kids taking off with more than their fair share tonight, separate them from the herd and encourage them to share some information with you about themselves. Or, even simpler, just make sure you are nearby when they take the candy.

Did you participate in mayhem on Halloween? Did you find yourself more likely to engage in destructive acts (egging, tping) if you were in a group and/or knew you were going to be anonymous?

 The Article: Diener, E., Fraser, S., Beaman, A., & Kelem, R. (1976). Effects of deindividuation variables on stealing among Halloween trick-or-treaters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33 (2), 178-183 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.33.2.178

Dear Dr. G.,

I think I may be making a fool of myself here but I need your input. I'm wondering if every time someone says that they are in love that that means they are involved in a sexual relationship. I'm almost scared to hear the answer.

Here is what is going on: My 16 year old daughter says that she is in love with her boyfriend of 3 months. She does not spend all of her time with him. In fact, she has good friends and she does not appear to be ignoring them since this boy came into the picture.She also continues to get decent grades and is going to dance classes as usual. The point that I am trying to make is that while she tells me that she is in love with this boy she continues to do well in the other areas of her life as usual.

I must tell you that this is my daughter's first boyfriend. He is a nice boy as far as I know. I have allowed my daughter to go on dates with him as long as she checks in with me so I know their whereabouts and that she gets home by curfew. I've asked my daughter what she means when she says she is in love and she just says that she really really is crazy about this boy.I can't bring myself to ask her if she's sexually involved because the thought of my daughter in that sort of entanglement frightens me to death.

Here are my questions for you:

1. Can love exist without sex?

2. Should I talk to my daughter about sex and how?

3. Is it okay for a 16 year old to date or am I making a dreadful error?

Please help me Dr. G.

A Freaked Out Mother

Dear Mother,

I'm here to give you support and to answer your questions. I am delighted that you wrote to me. Let me start with your first question.

1. Can love exist without sex? There are many definitions of love but my favorite is to describe it as a deep and intense feeling of affection. I am fully convinced that love can and does exist without sex for some teens, adults and even those in marriages. I am not suggesting that love should exist without sex or that love is enhanced by avoiding sex. Instead, I am telling you what I have learned over the years in my 3 decades of work with teens and adults in all sorts of relationships and their phases. Of course love is more often than not associated with sex and even tremendously enhanced by sex for many but that does not mean that the 2 always go hand-in-hand or body-to-body.

2. Should I talk to my daughter about sex and how? I'm afraid that despite your anxiety about sex it is necessary to talk to your daughter about this sensitive topic. You may be worried that if you talk to your daughter about sex that that will give her the idea that you are encouraging it. That is unlikely to be the case. Instead, your daughter may be both relieved while at the same time a bit anxious. Treat it like any other topic. While I understand how sensitive a topic it is- sex is a natural part of the human condition. Talk to your daughter about both the emotional and physical aspects of sex. All of our kids need to be aware that sex is very emotionally connecting. Too often we forget to teach our kids that emotional and physical intimacy are very deeply connected. Perhaps you would like to take your daughter to her pediatrician to talk about STDs and contraception. Perhaps she is not at all ready for sex but nonetheless she is at the age where she should be talking about it and and getting her questions answered.Believe me, you will be doing her a great service. Discuss your anxiety with your friends and find out what has worked for them. My guess is that they all have some degree of anxiety about this sort of conversation.

And

3.Is it acceptable for a 16 year old to date? It depends on the 16 year old. If he or she is mature enough to handle curfews and limits then that is a good sign that they are ready to begin dating. Teens who are starting to date should also be expected to maintain their friendships and other aspects of their lives. I am very much aware that many parents feel that 16 year olds are too young to date but I on the other hand feel that there is a great deal to be learned from dating.This is especially beneficial while your kids are still under your roof and you and they can talk about healthy vs. unhealthy aspects of dating.

I know that you may learn that your daughter is sexually involved or at least that the thought has entered her mind. Take some deep breaths and then ask her about her feelings and what other sources of support might be helpful for her. By 16 many but not all teens in the U.S. have been sexually active. I am not trying to alarm you. I am trying to prepare you. Now go talk to your girl and please get back to me.

Dr. G.

For more articles like this see my website:

http://drbarbaragreenberg.com/

It’s getting to be that time of year again. The time when more of us than usual fly somewhere to see friends and family, or to relax and avoid friends and family. 

Putting more travelers in the wild blue yonder mean more of us are experiencing an environment that’s tough for humans. Read on to learn why.

Think the most unpleasant part of traveling by air is getting to the airport? Think again. Although getting to the airplane in most cities is no picnic, being airborne is much more stressful. Airplanes are among the least hospitable places you can visit, for a psychological perspective – almost every element of the interior design sets human beings on edge.

As soon as you get to the airplane you give up control of your world – if tussling with the TSA and flight delays haven’t already forced you to acknowledge that there are forces more powerful than yourself. When you sink down into that uncomfortable passenger seat, you lose most of your ability to exercise your own free will. Sure, you can pick your movie (maybe), turn on and off your overhead light, and chose to read or not, but those sorts of decisions are insignificant compared to the opportunities you lose – such as the ability to determine the speed and direction of the aircraft, use the restroom whenever you want, or step outside for a change of pace. Human beings are more relaxed and happier when they have control over their environment.

Part of that in-plane loss of control results in having to tolerate people being too close to you. When our personal space is compromised, so is our privacy– on a plane, your row-mates can even read along with you as you try to de-stress with the latest paperback thriller. Outside an airplane, when people have to be too close to others, they take what are called compensatory measures. An elevator trip is a fine example of a time when people are forced into uncomfortably tight quarters. To keep the tension levels down and everybody calm, people on an elevator avoid making eye contact or recognizing others are even there – conversations in elevators are rudimentary, at best. Conveniently, airplane seats prevent travelers from making easy eye contact with anyone except the flight attendants. On board conversations are notoriously unsuccessful.

The noises made by airplane engines are particularly disconcerting to human travelers. Their pitch and volume can often be annoying. In addition, the sounds that the airplane makes aren’t really rhythmic – and that unpredictability, even if it is readily explainable as an engine “changing gears,” induces stress. Stress makes it harder for us to control our emotions and “get along” with others.

The aircraft cabin is not pressurized to anything close to sea level and the environment becomes dry in the course of a flight. Being on an airplane is generally equivalent to being at an altitude of over a mile, and in those conditions alertness decreases for most passengers.

Being de-hydrated also hinders our cognitive performance. Pawson and his research team learned that people who took water to exams and presumably drank it, thereby staying hydrated, got higher scores than people who didn’t who had the same level of general ability. Being in places with low relative humidity has also been linked to headaches, which doesn’t help when we’re doing thoughtful work or trying to get along with other people.

Ergonomic conditions are so bad for coach class airplane travelers that they result in psychological stress. The legroom and position of the tray table can make it difficult just to sit quietly, let alone work on a laptop.

So, what’s an air traveler to do? The suggestions that follow can ease the psychological discomfort of travelers in general, but passengers who are afraid to fly need clinical assistance.

• Listen to calming music you enjoy. Make sure your music selections have a rhythm slower than your resting heart rate (generally 50-70 beats per minute). If you Google “beats per minute,” you’ll find websites that can tell you about this aspect of your favorite music. Don’t try to create complete silence with earplugs etc. Your plan won’t work which will frustrate you – and silence is just as nerve racking for humans as the random airplane noises.
• Establish whatever control over your experience the FAA will allow. For example, if you bring an eye mask and cover your eyes while you nap, you decrease the odds that you’ll be disturbed by the flight attendants and other passengers.
• Don’t try to do thoughtful work as you fly – the air pressure and relative humidity inside the plane will insure you don’t work well, anyway – and knowing that you’re not performing as well as you might will frustrate you and amp up your stress levels.
• Look out the window at the clouds as you fly along. Clouds have a fractal pattern which people find calming.
• Bring along your own comfort foods – their smells and tastes will make you feel much calmer, even if they can’t actually make you happy with your feet so far off the ground. Don’t pack anything that other passengers are likely to find “stinky.” Why make their lives more miserable when you can eat something else?
• Be patient with your fellow travelers, at least for as long as you can. You’re all being taxed by the same inflight conditions and if they’ve snapped, reacting negatively yourself will worsen the situation.

Next time you find yourself on a flight, acknowledge the difficult situation in which you find yourself – that’s the first step to reducing your stress levels and enhancing your wellbeing.

Imagine the end of a long Monday where nothing went right. You're tired. Hungry, too, since you had to work through lunch. Your bus was late picking you up and traffic was a bear getting home. The stranger seated next to you complained non-stop about local politics. What got you through was knowing it was your spouse's turn to cook. Fantasies of a long relaxing shower kept you from exploding in irritated rage. Finally you walk through your front door, hoping to inhale comforting aromas of an almost-ready meal. Instead, the stove is cold and your spouse is sprawled on the couch playing video games. The first words you hear are "It's about damned time! I'm starving!" Your blood pressure rises. Heat surges deep in your core. Your hands tighten into fists as a nagging pain stabs into your shoulder blades.

You're having a crisis moment. What do you do?

Of course, there are any number of answers to that question. Some people might blow their stacks. Others may go meek and start peeling potatoes. If you're the addictive sort you might reach for the bottle or the bong. Folks living with compulsions may start washing or cutting or plucking. None of those actions are going to help the situation, are they? That's because none are in line with what needs to be the goal of any crisis.

The goal of any crisis is to get through the moment without making things worse.

That's all. We don't have to solve anything. We don't  have to fix anything. We don't have to correct any moral wrong or right any social injustice. Save that for another time.

The goal of any crisis is to get through the moment without making things worse.

Let me explain. As a scientist, my first job is to define terms. Let's start with "crisis". A crisis is when a situation outstrips an individual's resources. That's all it is. David's crisis may be Susie's nuisance or Pat's routine. Nothing in and of itself is ever a crisis. Any situation we face is only a crisis if it overwhelms our resources. Here's an example. Let's say you're driving down the road, hear a loud pop, and realize you've blown a tire. Is that a crisis?  If you have towing coverage, a few thousand dollars sitting idle in your checking account, and a cell phone to call for help, the situation is little more than an irritant, right? Nothing more than a story to tell your friends at happy hour. But if your checking account's empty, there's no spare in your trunk, no AAA card in your wallet, no cell phone on the dash and you're on your way to the only job interview you've had in the past six weeks, well then, I'd say you're in full-on crisis mode. The situation with the blown tire has completely outstripped your resources.

The goal of any crisis is to get through the moment without making things worse.

People shoot themselves in the foot time and again when they find themselves in an emotional crisis; when a situation has presented itself which overwhelms their emotional resources...like the person in our opening vignette. They forget about the goal of a crisis and try to fix things...understand things...correct things. It's impossible to do because in that moment we are without our most important resources for fixing, understanding, or correcting. We are without our frontal cortex.

Our frontal cortex is the keeper of our executive capabilities. It's the part of our brain allowing us to reason, analyze, discern, communicate, problem solve, prioritize, and compromise.It is the singularly most important tool we have for fixing things and righting wrongs. But when we're in emotional crisis...when the situation wipes out our ability to emotionally cope, we're operating out of another brain structure: the amygdala. That ancient reptilian center deep inside our skull. The amygdala can't reason, analyze, discern, communicate, problem solve, prioritize or compromise. The amygdala has only two options: fight or flee. Expecting it to do anything else is just as ineffective as expecting our microwave to vacuum the carpet. It's just not the tool to use.

Try this image: Think of an emotional meter ranging from zero to ten. Zero is utter serenity. Zero is relaxing on a hammock, tropical breeze whispering across your cheeks, warm sun caressing your shoulders, and not a care in the world. In that state we're operating fully with our frontal cortex. We're free to think great thoughts and solve giant problems. Ten on our emotional meter is the knowledge that we need to kill ourselves or somebody else immediately. Nothing else will fix things. In that state we're pure amygdala. Like an alligator in the swamp, all we can do is flee or fight. The numbers in between 0 and 10 on our meter represent a mounting climb of negative feelings. As our emotional arousal climbs up the meter, we lose evermore access to our frontal cortex and cede evermore control of our behavior to our amygdala.

The goal of any crisis is to get through the moment without making things worse.

If we try, in a moment of crisis, to do anything other than calm ourselves...to find a way to get closer to our 1 on that emotional meter, we're making things worse. You know this, right? Think back. All those things you've said or done in the heat of the moment which cost you friends or jobs or possessions or perhaps even your own self-respect. It's because you said or did something when your emotions were up over a 5. You were acting out of your amygdala and trying to do something. Maybe you were trying to communicate your needs. Amygdala can't communicate. Maybe you were trying to resolve an issue. Amygdala can't problem-solve. Maybe you were trying to understand why something happened. Amygdala can't analyze. Maybe you were even coming from a totally righteous place and attempting to correct an epic wrong. You will fall flat on your face because amygdala can't do anything but fight or flee.

Trying to fix something in our lives while we don't have our frontal cortex available is like trying to fix a chipped coffee mug and all we have is a hammer. We're just going to make a bigger mess of things.

A goal of any crisis is to get through the moment without making things worse.

The first step, of course, is to realize we're in a crisis. How are we supposed to know the situation is overwhelming us? Here's some quick and easy questions to ask. Am I yelling? Am I having difficulty finding words? Am I repeating myself? Is my breathing rapid and shallow? Is my body frantic in its movements? Does my mouth feel dry? Is it difficult to swallow? Do I feel like crying or screaming or running away? Do I want to hit someone/something?

If the answer to any of these is "yes", you're up above 5 on your emotional meter. You're in crisis. And your only job is to get as close to 1 as you can get before you do anything else!

The best tool you have to push that amygdala aside and give room for your frontal cortex to come back on board is distraction. Don't feed the crisis. The old standby of counting to 10 helps. But here are some other ideas. Step away from the situation and mentally distract. List all the addresses where you've lived in chronological order. If you miss one, go back to the beginning and start over. Or make a mental list of every person you've ever kissed. Again, in order and re-starting if you remember the night after the homecoming game when you'd had just enough beer to flirt with someone you thought was unattainable. When I find myself up over a 5 I close my eyes, start at 100, and count backwards identifying all the prime numbers along the way.

Do anything that will take your mind off the emotionally charged situation. Stick with it. Watch what happens. Your breathing will stabilize. Your body will relax. Your voice will return to its normal volume. Stick with it a while longer. Stay with it until you're back to a 1 or 0. Feel your frontal cortex take charge again. Then, and only then, will you have the tools necessary to handle whatever crisis you're facing. And the fun thing is it won't feel like a crisis any longer. It will instead feel like a situation needing attention and you'll have the tools to deal with it.

Try it this week, okay? Something will happen to trigger an emotional response in you, throwing you high up your emotional meter. Don't react in the moment. Your frontal cortex has left the room and you cannot be effective. You will only make things worse. Instead, make your only goal in that moment distracting yourself enough to get back to a 0 or 1 on your emotional scale. Welcome your old buddy frontal cortex back in the game and meet the situation with all your tools at hand.

The goal of any crisis is to get through the moment without making things worse.

Let me know how it works for you, okay? I'd love to hear.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

– Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher

Anyone living in a house, if he is ignorant of its materials or construction, its size and kind, its position and distinguishing characteristics, is not worthy of being a guest in such a place. Similarly, he who is born and brought up in the hall of the universe, if he neglects to get to know the reason for its wonderful beauty when he reaches maturity, is unworthy of that hall and, if it should be possible, must be thrust out of it.

– Adelard of Bath, 12th century English philosopher who introduced Arabic science to Europe

In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple, could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind, the Ruler of the Universe. So the Sun sits as upon a royal throne, ruling his children, the planets which circle round him.

– Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543), Polish astronomer whose model of the planets orbiting the sun challenged the prevailing earth-centered model. In its time this view was revolutionary and blasphemous. Copernicus's new cosmology—that the planets revolve—transformed both our sense of our place in the Universe and our sense of ourselves, and gave us the term ”revolution” to describe such upheavals, whether scientific or political.

To consider the earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow.

– Metrodorus, Greek philosopher of the 4th century BCE

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.

– Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), German, and later, American rocket pioneer

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.

– Robert Heinlein (1907–1988), American science fiction writer

Sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has lived before us—Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.

– Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974), Creator of the television series The Ascent of Man

From a human point of view, the difference between the mind of a human being and that of a mountain goat is wonderful; from the point of view of the infinite ignorance that surrounds us, the difference is not impressive.

– Wendell Berry (1934–   ), American writer, environmental activist, and farmer

We had succeeded in showing that everything is made of stardust. We were stardust.

– Hans Bethe (1906–2005), German-born American Nobel-laureate physicist who explained how nuclear reactions generate energy in stars

The World would be a safer place, / If someone had a plan, / Before exploring Outer Space, / To find the Inner Man.

– Edgar Y. Harburg (1898–1981), American who wrote the words to the song "Over the Rainbow" for the film The Wizard of Oz

Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth is that it is alive. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos.

The uniformity of earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled.

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance.

– Lewis Thomas (1913–1993), American biologist and writer

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.

– Carl Sagan (1934–1996), American astronomer, writer and creator of the television series Cosmos

All we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

– William Harvey (1578–1657), English physician and discoverer of the circulation of the blood

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and solidity of our possessions.

– Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), English naturalist

The more the universe seems incomprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

– Steven Weinberg (1933–    ), American Nobel-laureate physicist

[The] tyranny of the genes has lasted for three billion years and has been precariously overthrown only in the last hundred thousand years by a single species, Homo sapiens. We have overthrown the tyranny by inventing symbolic language and culture. Our behavior patterns are now to a great extent culturally rather than genetically determined. We can choose to keep a defective gene in circulation because our culture tells us not to let hemophiliac children die. We have stolen back from our genes the freedom to make choices and to make mistakes.

– Freeman Dyson (1923–   ), British-born American physicist and writer

The universe is infinite in all directions, not only above us in the large but also below us in the small. If we start from our human scale of existence and explore the content of the universe further and further, we finally arrive, both in the large and in the small, at misty distances where first our senses and then even our concepts fail us.

– Emil Wiechert (1861–1928), German physicist, writing in 1896, as quoted by Freeman Dyson in his book Infinite In All Directions.

I just couldn't look at the sky without wondering how anyone could do anything but study the stars. Probably the greatest bliss I have ever known has been working at the telescope.

– Vera C. Rubin (1928–   ), American astronomer

There is a straight ladder from the atom to the grain of sand and the real mystery is the missing rung. Above it, classical physics. Below it, quantum physics. But in between, metaphysics.

– Tom Stoppard (1937–    ), English dramatist, from his play Hapgood, which is replete with ideas from quantum physics

What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

– Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French mathematician, physicist and philosopher.

The history of civilization details the steps by which men have succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos. Fragile reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed: there lies within him a fund of energy, operating intelligently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe, that it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process. In virtue of his intelligence, the dwarf bends the Titan to his will.

– Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), English naturalist

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

– Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Nothing troubles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.

– Charles Lamb (1775–1834), English essayist, known, with his sister Mary, for their Tales from Shakespeare.

A man said to the universe: /    "Sir, I exist!" / "However," replied the universe, / "That fact has not created in me / A sense of obligation."

– Stephen Crane (1871–1900), American author of Civil War classic, The Red Badge of Courage.

I accept the Universe.

– Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), American feminist and critic

By God! she'd better.

– Thomas Carlyle's reputed rejoinder

We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the sea. Having access to that mysterious place will be one of the most exciting things ever to happen. We ought to go [down] 10,000 feet, live there, play there, and travel around. I think it's the only avenue to understanding. I'd like to lure everyone down there to see for themselves. I care about the fate of the plants and animals that share the planet with us. And I care about our own fate. I don't think we'd continue to dump waste in the ocean if we could see what happens to it.

–Sylvia Earle (1935–   ), American marine biologist

From The Wisdom of Science

In previous blog posts, I’ve tried to reassure anxious men that penis size doesn’t matter to the substantial majority of women. And every time, comments have poured in from gals calling me a fool, saying that size matters a great deal to them.

Okay, size matters to some women. I’ve never said it didn’t. But based on decades of conversations with sex therapists and many women, I’ve concluded that the substantial majority of women don’t care, that they’d rather be with men who are warm, kind, solvent, caring, and funny, who share their values and interests than one who has a phone pole in his pants. Unfortunately, I couldn’t back that up with research because I knew of no study that explored women’s feelings on the subject. Now the verdict is in.

Recently, researchers at UCLA and Cal State LA published a report showing that 84 percent of women feel “very satisfied” with their man’s penis size. Fourteen percent wish it were larger and 2 percent would prefer smaller. The 84 percent figure means that seven out of every eight women think their man is just fine, corroborating my assertion that size doesn’t matter to the substantial majority of women.

This study is particularly persuasive because its methodology goes way beyond your run-of–the-mill survey of 100 college undergraduates. The researchers posted their questions on MSNBC.com and got responses from 26,437 women ages 18 to 65. Respondents were a self-selected group, which raises questions about demographic representation. But 26,437 is a huge number, a number so large that statistically it obviates concerns about self-selection and strongly suggests that the findings are truly valid.

Women Feel More Satisfied Than Men About Men’s Size

The survey also attracted responses from 25,594 men. Two-thirds of them rated their penises as “average,” exactly matching what the women said about their partners. But women were only half as likely as men to call their man’s penis “small,” and were more likely to call it “large.”

• Men who called theirs “small:” 12%

• Women who called their man’s “small:” 6%

• Men who called theirs “large:” 22%

• Women who called their man’s “large:” 27%

From Ancient Greece to Michelangelo to Porn

Our equation of manhood with a big penis stands in marked contrast to how the ancients viewed genital size. In Aristophanes’ play, The Clouds (423 B.C.), a character admonishes delinquent young men that if they continue to behave badly, as punishment, their penises will grow larger, but that if they repudiate their wicked ways, their organs will remain as they should be, small.

Five centuries later, the Roman novel, Satyricon, (c. 50 A.D.) describes bathers at a public bath who make fun of one character’s large penis, calling it as ridiculous as contemporary reactions to the outsized shoes of circus clowns. Like the Greeks, the ancient Romans thought the most attractive penises were on the small side.

The classic view that small is beautiful persisted through the Renaissance. Consider Michelangelo’s David or male nude sculptures by other artists of that period. The penises are surprisingly small. At that time, “masculinity” had less to do with the size of a man’s penis than with the size of his scrotum. A big scrotum that hung full and low suggested large testicles, which in turn, suggested great potency. During the Renaissance, penises were considered little more than incidental injection devices for what really counted, sperm.

That changed in the second half of the nineteenth century as photography (invented around 1840) and motion pictures (1890) paved the way for modern pornography. Porn has always been primarily a masturbation aid for men. Male masturbation is all about erections, so porn transformed penises from injection devices into the center of attention—and for portrayal in photography or film, the bigger the better.

Got a Ruler?

To most people, “penis size” implies length. Some two dozen studies have measured it. Most measure on the top side from the pubic bone at the base of the penis to the tip of the glans—without pushing the ruler into the gut or pulling on the shaft to stretch it. The results:

Flaccid:

• The typical flaccid penis is 3.5 inches long. (Small flaccid penises grow more to erection than large flaccid organs.)

Erections:

• Only 2.5% of erections measure less than 3.8 inches.

• 13.5% are 3.8 to 4.5 inches.

• 68% are 4.6 to 6.0 inches.

• 13.5% are 6.1 to 6.8 inches

• And only 2.5% are longer than 6.9 inches.

Ironically, among women who said care about size, fewer care about length than girth.

Be All You Can Be

The taller the man, the longer his arms and legs—and penis. But according to the survey, compared with the shortest men (5 feet 2 inches) the tallest (over 6 feet 4 inches) reported feeling only slightly more satisfied with their size.

Weight is another story. The slimmest men are much happier about their penis size than men who are obese. This makes sense because as weight increases, the lower abdominal fat pad grows and envelopes the base of the penis, making it look considerably smaller.

Want to make the most of what the good Lord gave you? Forget all the pills and potions advertised on the Internet. They’re all cynical frauds. To be all you can be between the legs, lose weight. But do it for yourself because there’s an 84 percent chance that the woman in your life is perfectly happy with your penis as it is.

 References:

Lever, J. et al. “Does Size Matter? Men’s and Women’s Views on Penis Size Across the Lifespan,” Psychology of Men and Masculinity (2006) 7:129.

Clarke, J.R. Roman Sex. Harry N. Abrams, NY, 2003.

Fighting between you and someone you want to get along with is miserable, sometimes devastating and can negatively impact all areas of your life. The fight you had with your partner last night left you drained, depressed and barely able to function this morning. You feel “dys-regulated” –meaning your emotional state is not peaceful, stable and cheerful, your mind is drifting into the fight every few moments, and while you may not be entirely aware of it, you’re believing (complying) with the negative things your partner said or at least implied about you, while you were fighting. Given that your mind is so busy obsessing over the details of words that flew back and forth, your energy level is quite expectedly down, not where it’s supposed to be. The problem is the negative thoughts that invade you the next morning until some kind of peace is declared and there is an end to the argument.

 On the one-hand the negative after-effects of a fight with a partner or loved one is a function of your mind and therefore, with control of your mind, the negativity post-fighting also comes under conscious control. So one solution to fighting is to develop your daily mindfulness-meditation practice in which you learn to distance from negative thoughts, the kinds that run you down after a fight with your partner. With mindfulness training you see those thoughts as thoughts, not as solidly true statements representing the “truth.” Instead they become like clouds in the sky, here at one moment, gone the next. They may float above you for a while, but you don’t dwell on them or take them seriously.  So gaining control of your mind through meditation practice is one way to cope with a fight –but it s a one-person endeavor and fighting takes two or more people mixing it up.

 Getting into the dynamics of fighting with your partner is another approach, and one that has the potential to change your whole relationship for the better; it’s a two-person problem and a two-person solution. Fighting that escalates is almost always the result of the cycle of guilt and anger (or even rage as some psychologists call it although that might be hyper-dramatic). Lets look at an example; here’s what happens. You said you’d do something and you forgot to do it. Your partner fails to calmly indicate that she/he will help out, acknowledging that you were so busy yesterday it’s understandable why it slipped your mind. Instead your partner begins to blame you with suggestions that you are always forgetting things, breaking promises, not pulling your weight and may even subtly indicate that you are a lazy, parasitical character who expects everything to be handed over on a gold platter. You take in the character assassination and although you don’t want to believe it, you –under the level of conscious awareness—you fear that he/she may be right, and you deserve the accusations and blame heaped upon you.

Your defenses go up like a sheet of hard marble and in order to stop that horrible anxious feeling we call guilt –a fear that you’ve hurt someone (in this case your partner), you turn it around, you “externalize” to use the word psychologists use, and you tell your partner how the situation was in fact his/her fault. He left you no time to get paperwork together, or he is always shoving tedious tasks on you, instead of taking responsibility himself. You now get more into assassinating your partner’s character letting him know this is typical of him, he is thoughtless, unkind, a fundamentally selfish person. So now the blame is thrown on your partner, and like you, he listens, half believes every word you say, can’t stand feeling so much guilt and he turns it around again, externalizing the source of the problem, i.e., making it you. And so it goes back and forth with no chance of resolution.

 The problem here is our tendency to feel guilty when accused of anything, and in response, to blame others, particularly people we love, for things that go wrong, even if unconsciously we’re blaming ourselves. In fact the more we blame ourselves, the more guilty we feel, and the greater is our need to externalize the problem by blaming our partner. The blame-guilt-blame-guilt cycle is what happens when you have a fight with your partner or roommate, or even a work colleague. You can see this without any deep analysis of your childhood experiences although it must be said that when a partner blames you in a tone reminiscent of the tone your mother took when reprimanding you, you’re likely to get even more upset, feel more guilt, and then turn it around and blame your partner with a greater sense of urgency and anger. So it’s not that childhood experiences are irrelevant entirely, but you can see this pattern without spending a moment thinking about the past

 The good thing here is that you can actually interrupt the cycle without the other’s knowledge or cooperation. As soon as a fight breaks out, stop for a moment, and allow yourself to recognize that you feel guilty as if you committed a crime (although it’s most likely an imaginary crime). Just recognize it, feel it, don’t take it seriously (and mindfulness meditation can be helpful here). Then think of some way to avoid blaming your partner in return. An effort to refrain from externalizing and blaming the other will put an immediate break on the situation. The fight will end, your energy conserved and perhaps you and your partner will be able to discuss the contentious issue in the future. Ordinarily, the focus of these fights is an exaggeration of daily life problems anyway. Write down –in simple language—the heart of the problem. It’s often about allocation of chores or money. Or maybe you and your partner have been fighting about how much space either of you take up in social events, with a competitive edge. In the cool light of day the distribution of household tasks may be considered and negotiated successfully; the same holds true for the allocation of money, and for attention in a social situation.

 You might not be able to stop the very next fight with your partner, but you will be able to step away from it and examine it, noting the blame-guilt cycle leading to more blame and more guilt, then to even more blame and guilt. Once you see this in action, in a real interaction, you’ll be able to change your fighting style or tactics. When you avoid blaming your partner, he or she will wind down quickly and refrain from blaming you once again. And you will see it, I guarantee you of that. It’s predictable, it’s a law of a two-person system.

 I challenge everyone to write in the comments about a fight that didn’t amount to blame and guilt countered with more blame and guilt. There have to be exceptions, I’m looking for them. 

Nomar* was in love. He had never been happier. He and his girlfriend Marissa* were talking about living together and eventually getting married. For the first time in his life, he could imagine himself becoming a father. And then something seemed to go wrong. Marissa was tired and irritable when they were together. She didn’t want to spend so much time with him. She didn’t answer when he asked what was wrong. And suddenly, without warning, Marissa told him that it was over. Nomar went from disbelief to incredible pain. It hurt to know that the woman he loved did not love him anymore. He fluctuated between rage and terrible sadness. And he missed Marissa, who had been his best friend, more than he could say.

Talia* and Jason* had been living together for almost two years. Talia wanted to get married and start a family. Jason said he wanted it, too, but that they weren’t ready yet. “What will it take for us to be ready?” she asked. Jason couldn’t answer the question. He could only say that he knew it wasn’t time. Six months later, he still wasn’t ready, and Talia decided that she had to break up with him, but she dreaded the pain and hurt she knew she would feel when she did leave him. It took her another six months to get up the courage to say goodbye. What she didn’t realize was that her actions would also hurt Jason. He sobbed when she told him she was leaving. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I love you. I just can’t marry you.” He never did explain why.

We all know that hearts don’t really break, but it can be hard to believe when a relationship is ending. Not only can you feel a physical pain in your chest, where your heart seems to be cracking, but also you probably feel plenty of other pain as well – your head, stomach and maybe even your whole body seems bruised and aching. And even your spirit or psyche or whatever you call your emotional center is reeling with pain. Try telling that part of you that it’s all in your head.

The truth is, it isn’t all in your head. Recent research has shown that we feel an emotional wound in the same way (and sometimes in the same part of our brain) as we feel physical injury. In fact, phrases like “broken heart” or “wounded spirit,” or “hurt feelings” are not simply metaphors. According to a group of researchers headed by Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, the evidence is that emotional pain activates the same part of your brain as physical pain.  (See also the terrific blogs by my PT colleagues Peg Streep and Melanie Greenberg on some of the fascinating research into the physical connections to emotional pain.)

So what does this mean about recovering from the breakup of a relationship?

For one thing, it means recognizing that you are suffering from an injury. The following 6 steps are based on doctor-recommended procedures for healing from a physical injury.

1. Allow yourself time to heal. Get enough rest. And feed yourself well, even if you don't feel much like eating. Food nourishes your body, and this is a time that your body needs nourishment to repair itself. 

When you are physically injured, you are often told to stay off of the injured part of your body for a period of time. According to the Mayo Clinic, both mental exertion and a too early return to physical activity after a brain injury (such as a concussion) can worsen symptoms and puts the injured person at risk of potentially permanent damage. The same can be true for the injuries of a breakup. Sometimes it seems like an emotional injury doesn’t get credit for being as painful as it is. When there’s a physical sign of distress – a cast or a sling or crutches – we get a lot of sympathy. But while people may be sympathetic about the pain of a breakup for awhile, they often want us to get over it before we actually are healed. In such situations, it’s important to remind yourself – and maybe gently remind your well-intentioned sister or aunt or friend – that like emotional injuries, like physical injuries, take time.

2. So what’s the equivalent of resuming physical activity after a breakup? Dating? Not exactly. That would be like going back to running five miles after you’ve been off a broken leg for 6 weeks. Just as with physical exercise, it’s important to start back slowly and carefully, to give your body and your psyche a chance to get used to the activity. You need to rebuild your feeling muscles just as you rebuild your physical muscles. Maybe start with a quiet evening with friends, or a drink with an old buddy. You can see how it feels, and when you feel ready, you can try a larger social event.

3. When you do start dating again, be prepared for some anxiety and discomfort. It’s natural to be guarded in these situations. You’re going to have an automatic fear of being hurt again. Slow and easy is the way to move forward, just as you would if you were increasing your exercise regimen after hurting yourself. I encourage people I work with to share with their dates that they are just getting over a breakup. Although there are some counselors who disagree with this advice, my thinking is that saying it gives you a little more leeway to go even more slowly. It’s like saying that you just got a cast taken off your leg, so you can’t run full out right now. It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to in the near future. Sure, it might scare some potential dates away; but my feeling is that they might not have been the best match for you at this point in your recovery anyway.

4. At some point, you will notice that you are genuinely feeling better. One danger of this stage is that you may have gotten too comfortable in your recovery position. Maybe you’re afraid to take a chance. Maybe you’ve gotten some of the nurturing you really needed, not just after this breakup, but in life. Maybe you’ve gotten comfortable feeling sorry for yourself or focusing on your anger at your old partner. These thoughts and feelings can keep you stuck when you’re actually ready to move on. Some honest soul searching can help you move on. Are you afraid of repeating old patterns? Are you ready to make some changes in how you approach dating and relationships?

Use this entry time to assess your real hopes and desires about a relationship. Now is a good time to make a realistic appraisal of what went wrong with the relationship that just ended. Did you miss early signs that something was wrong? Can you take responsibility for your own part in the difficulties? What can you do differently this time? And what can you ask for from your next partner that maybe you didn’t let yourself put out there with the last one? 

5. Once you have healed, let go of the old relationship. You’re ready to move towards a new one, but chances are good that you won’t meet the “right” person immediately. Take advantage of the opportunity to meet new people – maybe some you wouldn’t have ever gotten to know otherwise. Learn something new and return to old pleasures. Don’t make snap decisions and don’t jump into something new just because it feels comfortable – or because it feels different. 

6. And finally, remember that injuries can lead to growth and new directions. Take your healthy heart out into the world and find yourself a new and healthy relationship!

Copyright @ F.DianeBarth2014

Readings:

Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain Ethan Kross, Marc G. Berman, Walter Mischel, Edward E. Smith, Tor D. Wager. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 April 12; 108(15): 6270–6275. Published online 2011 March 28. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1102693108  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076808/ PMCID: PMC3076808  Accessed November 1, 2014

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After my house burned down, I thought I’m supposed to have a better house. And so the redesign process began. My desire to live without making choices I’d regret, made decision-making painful. Not to mention my training as a lawyer, which severed all connections between my head and heart.

I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention to my gut reaction, which lasted only a second or two, before my analytical skills kicked in. What did I truly like? What did I think I should like? Even if I liked this now, would I like it in 10 years? And what would my mother say?

Wanting to get it right, I hefted a 16-inch-square slab of limestone into the faucet showroom and held it under various fixtures to see how they would look against my future tub surround. In the bathtub showroom, my friends and I lay in empty model tubs, chatting across the room, testing lengths and back inclines. When I chose a bathtub, I stretched out in it, while a friend who was a nurse marked the spots where the Jacuzzi jets should be installed to hit my body for maximum therapeutic relief.

I’d be needing a lot of that. Two years into the project, I was feeling like one of those losers I’d read about—the kind that takes three years to remodel her home.

There were hundreds of decisions. Faucets – stainless, brushed or plain, brass or gold? Cabinets - maple or oak, vertical or flat grain? And what about the roses behind each doorknob? Who knew there was such a thing?

Fortunately, I love my home and the decisions that I made. It is a sanctuary of serenity, a wonderful place to write and have other writers over to write. Yes, I could use more closets, but I have very few regrets.