I live in Montana. Big Sky Country. A state with more livestock than people, more fresh air than pollution, and lots of wide-open spaces. My house is in town, but the ski area at Bridger Bowl is only 30 minutes away, and it takes no time at all to get out into the countryside.

There are many reasons why I moved here from Denver two years ago, such as less traffic and shorter lines almost everywhere. But more space is the big one. Because I need vistas—views where my mind and heart can expand into the distance, feeling the expansiveness of life, and the abundant breadth of possibility held in the cup of every single day.

I had this fact brought home to me again in September when I drove back to Montana from Colorado, through the wide-open territory of central Wyoming. For most people, this barren landscape is a boring interval, best seen in the rear view mirror. But for me it is a visual retreat that opens my consciousness to wider views—and not just of the land, but of myself.

It also has a lot to do with living on the razor’s edge—which I had an opportunity to share with a local business women’s luncheon immediately after making this trip.

I began my talk by asking the ladies what the razor’s means to them. For many, it has everything to do with juggling their professional and home lives, getting everything done every day.

A yoga teacher talked about pushing the edge—knowing what your abilities are, deciding if you should push out or stay where you are. And an esthetician, who feels like she’s always on a razor’s edge, said it’s about being on a beam, in the zone, going beyond your comfort zone, and actually allowing your spirit to inspire you to move forward, beyond your wildest dreams.

Here is the transcript of how the talk unfolded from there:

I want to do a quick exercise with you. Sit comfortably in your chair so you can breathe deeply. At your own pace, take a very relaxed in-breath and then a very relaxed out-breath. Breathe in and then out. And one more time, breathe in and breathe out.

Did you notice anything between the in-breath and the out-breath? You weren’t panting, were you? This wasn’t Lamaze breathing. So you breathed in; and before you breathed out, what happened? There was a pause, wasn’t there? And what happened in that pause? Did you decide how you were going to breathe out? And maybe each time it got a little more relaxed. You did three in- and out-breaths, and maybe the last time it was more peaceful.

Well, that pause--that interval--is actually the razor’s edge. It’s the space between activity and inactivity, in or out, up or down. And so we are living with the razor’s edge all the time.

It’s the point of transition. It’s the point of decision. And what our esthetician was alluding to is that it is also the point of inspiration and intuition—where, moment by moment by moment, we are making decisions about what’s next. What’s to come? What am I going to do? How am I going to do it? And how am I going to be present with it?

That interval, that couple of seconds, is actually the present moment. And as we find with breathing, it’s not static.

How many of you had the idea that the razor’s edge is a single point? A "something"? I think we kind of accept that concept. We almost think of the razor’s edge as a sharp point. Maybe it’s the point of the knife. Maybe it really is a razor. It’s something sharp and it’s static. When, in fact, the razor’s edge is actually fluid.

While I was working on my third book, The LIGHT Process, I came across a term called nunc fluens. It comes from the Middle Ages. In the Christian tradition there was the idea of the fluid present. And the present is actually not a single second; it’s a moving interval of time.

I just got back from Denver and, unlike a lot of people, I really like driving across Wyoming. It’s actually one of my favorite things to do because—especially between Casper and Sheridan—there’s not much to distract you. Okay, there’s the highway, there are a few highway signs. But, otherwise, it’s wide-open spaces.

And what I discovered this time—because I didn’t have anything in particular to think about—I noticed that I was seeing the way an artist sees. I felt my whole body absorbing the nuance of the sky, the clouds, the color, the gradation of color. The foliage—and in many cases, the lack of foliage. But the nuance of sagebrush and the light and shadow playing on the landscape, the rolling hills.

And I thought: "This is one reason why we need wide-open spaces—to give us a chance to expand our horizons, literally."

This is also a wonderful manifestation of the razor’s edge, as I understand it. In daily life, as when we’re consciously breathing--we can be very focused on single task. Our whole perception can get very small, when, in fact, the razor’s edge is pregnant with possibility.

The razor’s edge is almost like our own “Big Bang”—right where we’re living. Because it is the portal, if you will, into great expansiveness, into our own expansive creativity, and our own opportunity at any given point in time to be more than we were in the previous moments.

The other thing about driving across this landscape is that it gave me such a visceral experience of the fluid present, because the landscape is always changing. Even in its sameness, the miles are going by. It’s always changing and yet it’s always the same. And the transitions between different kinds of topography are very natural in their unfolding.

At some point we realize that we got from Casper to Sheridan. And they’re different places. How did we get there? It was a process of being present—making sure we’re still consciously inhabiting our bodies while driving the car—being present with the landscape, with the world that we’re in, with the ground itself.

And I’d like to propose to you that that’s actually how we can approach the razor’s edge in whatever our activity is—whatever our business, whatever our lifestyle, whatever the demands are upon us in our lives. If we can pay attention to this razor’s edge, this point of decision, this point of intuition, this point of “in-spiration”—inspiring us through the breath, especially when we’re in life's big transitions.

So we’re not just rushing through life's changes, trying to instantly transport ourselves from the metaphorical Casper to the metaphorical Sheridan. But we’re actually present through the whole journey—so that when we get to our destination, we know where we’ve come from, and we enjoyed the process.

Copyright (c) 2014 Cheryl Eckl Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For more about living on the razor's edge, see www.TheLightProcess.com

I have claimed (http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415893442/) that authentic (owned) Being-toward-death (Heidegger) always includes Being-toward-loss as a central constituent, because it owns up both to our own finitude and to the finitude of all those we love. Death and loss are existentially equiprimordial. Existential anxiety (Angst) anticipates both death and loss.

Poet David Whyte has expressed this beautifully:

http://riverbankoftruth.com/2013/08/18/honesty-by-david-whyte/

"Honesty is reached by the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, our world, or our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are born to be afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed even by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are but one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.

The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we want to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life.

Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who ultimately, is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not protection; honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where we are given no choice between gain or loss."

(Copyright Robert Stolorow)

Recently the Italian journalist, Stefania Medetti, read my blog on the Inner Critic Voice and had some questions. As I was answering her questions, I thought this would be a good follow up to that earlier blog.

1. When is the voice of the inner critic born? How long does the process last?

No one know for sure when we start to hear any kind of inner voice. I assume that we have no inner voices until we start learning language at around 12-18 months old. Since we are also learning to walk at the same time, I think that the inner critic voice begins as soon as we hear the word NO and see and feel our parent’s upset or anger when we are headed toward danger or something they don’t want us to do.

People talk about hearing their parent’s voice in their mind, so I think our inner voice is started by whatever the parent say—whether it is loving, angry, encouraging, or critical. The child then divides the world into good and bad, so she/he develops both the good voice that is encouraging and positive, and the inner critic voice that is there to correct the child and is mostly negative.

The more negative the adults are when they talk and interact with the child, the bigger the inner critic voice becomes. Whereas, the more positively the adults talk to the child, the bigger, more positive, and loving the inner voice is. This process lasts throughout our whole lives.

2. Is the inner voice shaped by kids trying to please their parents, or is it shaped by the words the parents use, or both?

It is definitely shaped by both. We are social being and our survival as children depends on our pleasing our parents. Biology and attachment do a lot to make children and their parents love each other, and the parents overall want to take care of their children. But young children are completely dependent on the good will of the parents, and children innately know that they need to learn the language and the social behaviors of their parents to get their approval and be cared for.

3. Can you give examples of how parents play a role in shaping the child’s inner voice?

Whatever a parent says or does is imprinted on the mind of the child. Children are learning machines who absorb everything they see and hear. Parents can say to the child: “You are stupid. You are beautiful. You are bad. You are good.” The child will believe everything the parents say about him/her. And the child FEELS when the parent is loving, angry, disgusted, or adoring. All of these messages are recorded by the child as she/he tries to figure out “Who am I?” As we get older, we have grandparents, teachers, friends and other adults who also reflect in their words and actions who they see us to be. At first we believe everything, but as our minds and individuality develop, we learn to tune in more to the messages from the most SIGNIFICANT people in our lives and ignore messages from people we don’t know or care about.

4. Why is this inner critical voice louder for some people?

Some people are subjected to many more negative messages than others. I sat listening one evening in a restaurant to two parents with their young daughter having dinner. I noticed that in the span of one minute, they gave the child more than 20 negative messages. For example, “Sit down, be quiet, use your napkin, don’t yell, look at me, be quiet, sit down,” and on and on. That child will clearly have an enormous number of negative messages by the time she becomes an adult.

Children have only two choices when confronted with negative and critical messages—either listen or tune out. Children often try to tune out. But for their own survival to please their parents, they HAVE TO listen quite a lot. The more we listen to the criticisms, rejection and hostility of negative messages, the louder the inner critic voice in our minds gets.

5. Is the voice just louder for some people, or can they simply cope with it better?

It does appear that biologically we all hear negativity louder than the positives. This is probably an adaption for survival. Our survival as a species was dependent on us hearing, “Watch out, there’s a snake”, while hearing “You are doing that well” was not so urgent. However, I have observed that some people hear negatives extremely loudly and tune out the positives almost completely. This appears to be a biological predisposition in some people, while for others, tuning into the criticism is due to hearing so much of it compared to positive messages.

6. How does the inner critic impact our lives and self-esteem as kids and as adults?

The inner critic voice works very much the same in adulthood as in childhood. It tries to remember what we are NOT supposed to do, which takes a great deal of energy. The inner critic uses up a lot of energy worrying, being fearful of doing the wrong thing, feeling inferior and at fault, and can lead to social awkwardness and lower self-esteem.

A smaller inner critic voice can help us self-correct our behavior to be less selfish and more considerate of others, but when the inner critic voice becomes louder than our loving inner voice, it starts damaging our sense of deservability. The inner critic then starts tearing down our sense of self and damages our self-esteem—sometimes over and over as it becomes a habit.

7. You wrote about a loud and a sneaky voice: What roles do they play?

The loud inner critic voice is easier to subdue because we can tune into it and hear it more easily, so we can work on neutralizing that voice with positive self-messages, evidence from our good behaviors, and encouragement from others.

But after the loud critical voice is subdued, there can still be a quieter critical voice whispering messages just below our awareness that we don’t even notice. This one is harder to control because we don’t realize that it is there. We see evidence of this negative voice’s influence when we make decisions that are against our own best interests, when we allow others to demean or abuse us, and when we get so focused on the needs and wants of others that our own needs get ignored and our health or well-being is damaged.

8. What kinds of situations trigger the inner critic?

The kinds of situations that trigger the inner critic SHOULD be when we have been unkind, uncaring or mean spirited to others. However, too often, the inner critic is there ALL the time even when we are just looking out for our own welfare. People who are overly caretaking of others’ needs, can make themselves emotionally or physically ill by over-doing for others trying to be perfect for that inner critic. Also, if your inner critic is too easily activated, then anyone’s criticism of you (even when undeserved) can trigger it. Then you are criticized from the outside and the inside at once.

Learning to get your inner critic under the control of your logical and reasonable mind will allow you to discriminate between times when you need to take better actions and times when someone else is just trying to manipulate you to do their bidding by accusing you of being selfish.

9. When should we start to worry that the inner voice gets in our way?

When you see that you are not taking good care of yourself, it is most likely that your inner critic is getting out of hand and too dominating. We see evidence of very high inner critics in people who are depressed, who are overly self-effacing, who ignore their health, who never exercise, who rarely take time to do something nice for themselves, who are embarrassed by compliments, who feel unworthy or worthless, and who don’t let anyone know what they need or want. You should be worrying about your inner critic voice being too loud whenever you start to feel hopeless, helpless, unimportant, overly-obligated, overly-guilty, hurt that others are being better treated than you are, and depressed that no one is thinking of your needs.

10. Can you give suggestions about:

How to react when we hear this inner critic voice?

Take the four steps that I outlined in my earlier article—Awareness, Questioning, Deactivate, Replace. Be aware of the message the inner critic is giving you; question whether it is true or not; if it is not true, deactivate the negative message by identifying and acknowledging your positive strengths; and replace the inner critic’s lie with a statement of positive truth about yourself.

How to behave with people who trigger this voice?

Stop to assess whether the person criticizing you is truly loving, kind and focuses on your best interest. If so, then go through the four steps I just outlined to determine what may be true about their criticism. Take whatever corrective action you feel is right.

Assess whether you are over-reacting to the criticism. It may be that your own inner critic is too loud or you have an inner critic message that you were unaware of until the other person’s criticism hit that nerve. 

If the person triggering your inner critic is consistently critical, unjust in their criticism, and using their criticism to make you feel bad or manipulate you, this is a toxic person. Your inner self-loving voice needs to be activated to move you away from further interactions with the toxic person and to repair the damage they are doing to your self-esteem. Avoiding this person whenever possible is your best choice.

How to train ourselves to cope with the inner critic better?

Taking charge of your inner critic means being aware of what you are saying to yourself and about yourself on a continuous basis. Tuning into your self-messages will prove to your inner self that you care. Then be kind to yourself. Imagine what you would say to a dear friend if he or she was saying such a self-critical thing. Say this positive message to yourself until you really understand its truth. Surround yourself with loving, caring people who are supportive and encouraging and whom you can trust to deliver any criticisms justly and kindly. And stay away from overly negative and critical people and interactions.

Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, 'Let Newton be!' and all was light.

– Alexander Pope (1688–1744), British poet

It did not last: the Devil howling 'Ho!
Let Einstein be!' restored the status quo.

– John Collings Squire (1884–1958), British journalist

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.

– Alan Valentine (1901–1980), American author and university president

The dreams of reason bring forth monsters.

– Francisco José de Goya (1746–1828), Spanish painter

Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

– C. P. Snow (1905–1980), English physicist, scientific statesman, and novelist

To the politician, the scientist is like a trained monkey who goes up the coconut tree to bring down choice coconuts. If he is successful in bringing down a very choice one, the owner of the monkey begins to worry, lest somebody else learn the trick. The priest is in the same position. He is asked to bless the arms of the nation; he is not asked what the nation should do with those arms. [Scientists and religious leaders] are exactly in the same place.

– I. I. Rabi (1898–1988), American Nobel-laureate physicist and scientific statesman. Witnessed first test of atomic bomb and advised the U. S. government on science policy.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

– Albert Einstein

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

– J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), American nuclear physicist, "Father of the atom bomb." (The reaction of many physicists to this controversial remark was, "Speak for yourself, 'Oppie'.")

People must understand that science is inherently neither a potential for good nor for evil. It is a potential to be harnessed by man to do his bidding.

– Glenn Seaborg (1912–1999), American nuclear chemist and scientific statesman, discoverer of plutonium and other transuranic elements.

The content of physics is the concern of physicists, its effect the concern of all men.

– Frederick Dürrenmatt (1921–1990), Swiss writer

Birth is the most hazardous time of life.

– Virginia Apgar (1909–1974), developer of the "Apgar score," a test of vital signs given worldwide to newborns during the first minute of life to see if emergency measures are indicated.

I was bothered by the fact that thalidomide would not put a horse to sleep.

– Frances Kelsey (1914–    ), American research physician whose suspicions kept thalidomide—Europe's favorite sleeping pill—from the United States market and thus prevented thousands of birth defects.

At temperatures above freezing one is between the Scylla of excessive drying and the Charybdis of molds.

– Mary Pennington (1872–1952), American bacteriologist whose research on refrigeration led to a revolution in the preservation of perishable foods.

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy. But after a war it seems more like astrology.

– Rebecca West (1892–1983), Irish writer

Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.

– Joseph Wood Krutch (1893–1970), American critic

Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.

– Claude Bernard (1813–1878), French physiologist

Science must constantly be reminded that her purposes are not the only purposes and that the order of uniform causation which she has use for, and is therefore right in postulating, may be enveloped in a wider order, on which she has no claim at all.

– William James (1842–1910), American philosopher and psychologist. He posed the question, "Is there a moral equivalent of war?"

The Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

– Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), Russian-born American writer and futurist who coined the term "robotics."

The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence. The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.

We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of machines, or we can be arrogant and die.

– Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), American mathematician

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.

Even longer,' Pooh answered.”

― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

 What would we do without our friends? And yet, how often do we take time to thank them for what they have given us? I’m not talking about concrete gifts here, of course, but all of the tiny (and not so tiny) ways that friends contribute to the richness of our lives. If you’re like me and most people I know, no matter how grateful you may be, you probably don’t take a lot of time to say so. And truth be told, that’s probably just fine. Most of our friends know that they’re important to us, in the same way that we know that we’re important to them. And in a lot of cultures it’s not really okay to talk about these things – tell a friend how grateful you are and they’ll tell you how grateful they are for everything you do, and you’ll both end up feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed, so why even go there?

But there are ways to express your love and gratitude to friends without getting mushy and awkward. And there are two very good reasons to find some of these nonverbal expressions of gratitude: First, when you let someone know how much you genuinely appreciate them, you make them feel good. And second, when you share your thanks, you will almost always feel good yourself!!! (and in case you think that’s selfish, let me say that in my humble opinion, that doesn’t make it wrong to do it – just because we get pleasure from doing something doesn’t take away from the fact that it is also meaningful for someone else!).

Since giving thanks can make us all feel good, why not share that pleasure with your friends? What about a dinner that is itself a way of expressing your gratitude to one another – not necessarily in words, but in the age-old tradition of breaking bread together?

 What about a FriendsGiving Dinner this season?

I can’t take credit for the idea, which I have heard about from a number of clients and my own child as well. But I think it’s one well-worth considering, whether on Thanksgiving Day or on another day during the holiday season.

It turns out that lots of people are already doing this, but without giving it a name. For many years my husband and I have celebrated Thanksgiving with friends, for example. But we have not thought to call it a day of giving thanks for those friends.

There are advantages to making the celebration about friends and friendship. Not only does it give you a chance to mutually appreciate one another, but it also means that you don’t have to worry about being polite to relatives like Great Aunt Mathilda who always mentions that you’ve gained weight every time she sees you. It also frees you from the necessity of eating dreaded traditional foods – whether that means dry turkey or cold mashed potatoes or jello salad.

One client tells me that each friend at her FriendsGiving dinner brings a traditional ethnic dish. It can be from his own family, or country of origin, or simply something that he loves to eat! Another says that the host chooses a theme for the meal – Italian, for example, or vegetarian, or even, in one case, Paleo – and everyone brings a dish that fits that theme. (For the Paleo Thanksgiving, the group decided that it would be okay for participants to bring non-Paleo food as well…) And still another says that they make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner – but with hot mashed potatoes and succulent turkey, and no jello salad.

Here’s another plus: These meals tend not to devolve into traditional family arguments.

But there’s a tradition to FriendsGiving that would be really nice at family gatherings as well. Somewhere in the course of the meal, someone often raises a glass and says “Thanks” for the friends at the table. Maybe we can do the same thing with our families when we get together with them?  Wouldn’t that be an interesting tradition to start?

Please tell me about any FriendsGiving experiences you've had!!!

Copyright @ F.Diane Barthlcsw 2014

Teaser image source: iStock_000015044700

What happens to people with BPD as they age? We know that most of these individuals get better. But for those who don’t improve, there are significant differences between younger and older borderlines.

In one study (Journal of Psychiatric Research, 7/19/2013), both groups of symptomatic patients exhibited high levels of functional impairment and accompanying other diagnoses, such as depression or substance abuse. Younger adults (age 25 or younger) tended to be more impulsive, self-injuring, substance abusing, and more emotionally labile. Older adults (45 and older) reported greater social dysfunction, more lifetime hospitalizations, and feelings of chronic emptiness.

Borderlines who do recover over time report a different experience. Researchers investigating long-term evolution of borderline patients report that those who are considered fully recovered are more likely to marry and have children. These patients marry later in life and are less likely to get divorced than those who remain symptomatic. Successful marriage and parenting are associated with higher IQ, absence of childhood sexual abuse, no history of substance abuse, and extraversion.

These studies suggest that older and younger borderlines may present with different problems. We know that most of these patients improve significantly, but those who make commitments, such as marriage when younger and while acutely ill are less likely to sustain healthy relationships. Like many illnesses, allowing time to heal may be the best medicine.

The changes in medicine predict the death of private practice. More than half of physicians in this country are employed by a larger entity—hospital, community clinic, university, insurance company. Personalized health care is being proctored by mammoth, faceless institutions. The doctor-patient relationship is intersected by the employer’s priorities, which, of necessity, must include economic considerations. “Efficient” medical care means less expensive care. As medicine mutates into a business complex, personal courtesy may be sacrificed.

In years past, reduced or waived fees were often extended to clergy, policemen, firefighters, other physicians, and their families. This bygone tradition was termed professional courtesy. Such benefits are virtually outlawed by Medicare and other agencies, which insist on maintaining consistent billing practices. Changing reimbursement patterns and organizational oversight also inhibit the practice. But it is also the non-professional courtesy which is diminishing.

The secretary you knew as long as you knew your doctor may be replaced by a new receptionist, hired by the institution, who may be frequently replaced. Or, your call may be answered by a computerized recording, insisting you push various buttons before communicating with a sentient entity. The doctor “on-call,” whom you don’t know, may respond to your after-hours phone call. The hospitalist, whom you don’t know, may be the physician who commands your inpatient care. Patients must be seen quickly and “efficiently.” There is little time for personal, informal conversation after the exam.

Treatment begins with medical brews and surgical pruning. But healing involves the personal ministrations between the doctor and the patient. We must be vigilant to insure that this relationship remains trusting, confidential, and, well, courteous.

Perhaps more than any other psychiatric diagnosis, Borderline Personality Disorder is rarely a solitary one.  There are several reasons why in doctors' notes and insurance forms there are usually other labels chaperoning the BPD diagnosis.  Insurance companies often do not reimburse unless there is a primary (Axis I) psychiatric diagnosis, such as Major Depression, Bipolar Disorder, etc.  Also, BPD continues to carry a stigma, distasteful not only to insurance companies but to the general public as well.  Especially if you are a celebrity arrested in Southern California, it is probably more acceptable to claim Bipolar Disorder with addiction and proceed to rehab, then to cop to a diagnosis of BPD! 

Perhaps the primary reason for additional diagnoses accompanying the BPD designation is the range of symptoms that infiltrate other labels.  BPD mood swings may accompany or be confused with Bipolar symptoms.  Suicidal threats may travel with Major Depression.  Episodes of severe paranoia may look like Schizophrenia or Schizoaffective Disorder.  Impulsivity and impatient anger may reflect Attention Deficit Disorder symptoms.  Many patients with diagnoses of Anorexia, Bulimia, and Substance Abuse also fulfill criteria for BPD.

In the Hi-ho the Dairy-o Dell farmer's world, the Cheese stands alone.  BPD does not!

            I used to think that it was my duty at an art museum to stand in front of every artwork and admire it as an expression of creative beauty. How long would that take? Jeffrey and Lisa Smith, two prominent scientists in the field of empirical aesthetics, observed visitors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and recorded the time they spent viewing six masterpiece artworks. Answer: 17 seconds per artwork (Smith & Smith, 2001). That's it—though considering our fast-paced, short-attention span, tweeting society, 17 seconds to some may actually seem like a long time. In any event, in recent years the Slow Art movement has sought to quiet the pace of our art viewing experience and change the way we approach art.

            Like the Slow Food movement, the Slow Art movement is grounded on the premise that one should savor artworks in a conscious and deliberate manner rather than simply gulp each one down as "eye candy." Phil Terry conceived the idea in 2008 when he spent hours at the Jewish Museum in New York focusing primarily on two abstract paintings—Hans Hoffman’s Fantasia and Jackson Pollock’s Convergence. A year later, 16 museums initiated an official Slow Art Day at which visitors signed up to view five artworks with a volunteer host and spent 10 minutes with each piece. They were invited to meet afterwards for lunch to discuss the experience. Since then, over a hundred museums and galleries have participated in what has now become an annual event—in 2015 the official Slow Art Day will be held on April 11 very likely at a museum near you. According to the organizers, it is the goal of the beholder to contemplate art and take in the sensory experience as a meditative event. They want you to attend to the artwork itself rather than spend time considering background information, such the printed notes next to an artwork. 

            Others have followed and extended the notion of a deliberative art experience, though not exactly as espoused by proponents of the Slow Art Movement. For example, artnet.com has showcased "Strictly Critical Videos" in which Blake Gopnik and Christian Viveros-Fauné, two insightful art critics, spend an hour focusing on an artwork (each video shows only 5 minutes of their analysis). So far, they have spent time looking at a Pollock, a Vermeer, and most recently several works at the Jeff Koons retrospective currently showing at the Whitney Museum of American Art. As one might expect, these two rather vociferous art critics do not adhere to the tenets of the Slow Art Movement by merely standing in front of an artwork in a contemplative or transcendental manner. Instead, they spend their one hour considering the artwork within the context of art history, and thus it is full of background information. In other works, critics Gopnik and Viveros-Fauné do exactly what is a no-no with respect to the Slow Art Movement—they use their expanse background knowledge to consider the meaning of an artwork within the context of the story of art. When considered in this manner, it is easy to see how two knowledgeable individuals can spend an hour talking about a particular artwork as there can be much to say with respect to an artwork's cultural and historical significance (and it is fun to listen to them do it—only it would be even more fun to have access to the entire one-hour conversation).

            The distinction between the Slow Art Movement and the Strictly Critical Videos captures the contrast between the typical museum-goer, who looks at art for a sensory and emotional experience, and the typical art expert, who focuses on the conceptual nature of an artwork, as if it is an expression of an idea—preferably a novel chapter in the story of art. I have advocated that our art experience should be grounded on highlighting sensations, knowledge, and emotions. That is, an artwork should be considered in the ways it drives our entire psyche, and in particular our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. Thus, for every artwork we find interesting (which of course will likely not be every artwork in a gallery), we should take in its visual quality and generate feelings from it. Thus, I applaud the Slow Art movement in encouraging museum-goers to spend more time contemplating selective artworks. However, the experience should not stop there. In order to consider the conceptual nature of an artwork it is vital to have background knowledge, which can come from prior knowledge, a printed card next to an artwork, and any other information available—perhaps information on the walls as you enter an exhibition, an audioguide, a docent (or knowledgeable friend), or even information gleaned from your smartphone.

            In the end, our art experience can be most exciting when our senses, thoughts, and emotions are all jacked up to 11 on a scale of 10.  Indeed on those rare occasions when I get that "wow" feeling, it is usually because an artwork completely captures my sensations, thoughts, and feelings to the point where there is nothing else except me and the artwork. In addition to these sublime moments, whenever I visit an art museum, it is as much of a learning (i.e., conceptual) experience as it is an "aesthetic" (i.e., emotional) one. What can we learn from new works of art? How can an artwork be placed within the story of art? What is the artist trying to say? By considering such conceptual questions with others, our art experience can also be an exciting social event as well. Seeing, learning, and feeling—these should be the features of our art experience be it at a museum, outside, or on the web, and the next time you encounter something that you like or find interesting, take the time to consider why.

What do you do when you feel that the love you once shared with your mate has disappeared with no possibility of revival, but you adore your children and can’t imagine spending even one day apart from them?

Until now, the options have been: 

1. Stay miserable in your marriage in service of giving your kids a stable home;
2. Work “harder” on the marriage in therapy and convince yourself that if you can somehow see your spouse differently or tap into the part of you that fell in love with him or her, you’ll be fine;
3. Have an illicit affair that makes being home seem more tolerable;
4. Divorce and just accept that you can’t see your kids every day (but feel consoled that you get to talk to them on a daily basis). 

Maintaining a romantic bond for years on end is challenging, but adding kids to the mix and keeping a romantic connection the entire length of the relationship is extremely challenging, if not impossible (even with all the great advice books out there on the topic).

We all know the cliché of the spouses who grow apart after having kids (he wants sex, she’s too exhausted; he feels rejected, she’s resentful), then the man has what we call a “mid-life crisis,” he has an illicit affair with a 20-something young thing, and then he leaves his wife (who also happens to be the mother of his children) to goes on to relive the good old carefree days, while she stays in the family home caring for the kids. 

Although he has momentary guilt, he’s mostly having fun but the ex-wife feels downright kicked to the curb and used. I hear women say things like, “How dare he leave me! I gave him the best years of my life!”

Some version of this happened to my parents and as a therapist I see this scene play out over and over.

Admittedly, there is no good choice when your marriage as you knew it is over. There are just less bad options. 

The alternative I’m about to propose doesn’t offer a cure-all for the troubled relationship, but it does provide a better lifestyle option for what my co-author, journalist Vicki Larson, and I believe matters most—the children. 

It’s called a Parenting Marriage and it is pretty much what it sounds like: A non-romantic union centered around raising healthy kids. 

Some of you might be thinking, “That’s not what marriage is supposed to be about.” Others of you might be thinking, “That’s what we already do. How is this Parenting Marriage different from traditional marriage?”

A Parenting Marriage is different in some significant ways, not the least of which is that it’s a conscious choice the couple makes together, not simply a holding pattern they have fallen into.

Three Reasons Couples Stay Stuck in A Bad Marriage

The first reason couples stay stuck in their marital rut is that they want to avoid having a difficult conversation about their marital blahs for fear of hurting their spouse. Yet, the hurt and devastation caused by not talking (and having the cliché nightmare ending) is far worse. 

Another reason is that it’s not socially acceptable to stray from the love-based model that lasts forever. In fact, we deem a marriage “successful” by how long it lasts. How ironic that we hold those who have unhappy and unconscious marriages as acceptable or even normal, but we ostracize those who create conscious agreements to change the purpose of their marriage. 

The third reason is that there has never before been a map or language to help people create a Parenting Marriage. It’s like the difference between having GPS and not having it: couples might eventually find a place that feels right in their couplehood but with this marital GPS, they can see exactly where they want to go and how to get there. 

Marriage is changing in so many ways these days and the rigid paradigm of Ozzie and Harriet is going by the wayside at breakneck speeds.

People are beginning to realize that they have the option to stay single or to get divorced without shame; they have the option to marry later or marry several times without shame. Now, couples are starting to see that they can renegotiate the terms of their marriage without shame. 

While a Parenting Marriage isn’t right for every couple, it’s certainly worth looking into.

Here are the key elements:

1. Both spouses agree and accept (and this acceptance is crucial) that the marriage they used to have is over. That is, the love-based relationship is over.

2. Both spouses agree that the primary purpose of their marriage now is to be good co-parents and raise healthy kids in as stable an environment as possible.

3. Together, both spouses will tell the kids honestly and openly about the changing nature of the marriage so that they don't have to wonder. (Note that some couples need a temporary break—a time-out, if you will. One couple lived apart for 18 months.)

4. Both spouses agree on the terms of their new marriage. Examples include one sleeping upstairs, the other downstairs; agreeing on a schedule of time with the kids; agreeing to separate financial obligations other than those that impact the family (mortgage, insurance payments, etc.); agreeing that in their free time, they can go anywhere, see anyone and do anything they wish; that each can have another relationship but that no one is introduced to the kids without prior permission.

For more information on how to consciously convert your old tired marriage into a Parenting Marriage, pick up a copy of, The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels or visit the website: The New I Do.

I'm also happy to provide a free 30-minute assessment to couples who might want to explore this option. Contact me at info@changingmarriage.com.

 My Wife and My Mother-in-Lawis a a famous ambiguous optical illusion in which a woman appears to be both young and old as your brain flips back and forth between two conflicting perceptions. Images like this illustrate how your brain can play tricks on your neural circuitry as your mind struggles to interpret perceptions of reality.

As you look at the image above, what do you see first? When you feel your visual perception shift from the "wife" to the "mother-in-law" can you also identify an "a-ha" millisecond in which it feels like your brain has changed gears and the perception of reality is traveling on a different brain pathway?

In a fascinating new study, researchers were able to identify this phenomena under slightly different circumstances in a laboratory. The October 2014 study, “Reversal of Cortical Information Flow During Visual Imagery as Compared to Visual Perception," was published in the journal NeuroImage. 

Barry Van Veen—a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering—performed this research in collaboration with Giulio Tononi, a UW-Madison psychiatry professor and neuroscientist, Daniela Dentico, a scientist at UW-Madison's Waisman Center, and collaborators from the University of Liege in Belgium.

The role of bottom-up and top-down connections during visual perception and the formation of mental images was examined by analyzing high-density EEG recordings and other state-of-the-art methods.

The researchers hope that these findings could lead to the development of new tools to help Tononi deconstruct what is happening in our brains during sleep and dreaming. Van Veen hopes to apply the study's new methods to understand how the brain uses networks to encode short-term memory.

To identify changes in the flow of information during daydreaming versus watching a movie, the researchers used two different methods. In the first experiment they asked their subjects to watch short video clips and then replay the action in their mind's eye using their imagination.

In the second experimient, subjects were asked to imagine riding a "magic bicycle" and to conjure up imaginery details of shapes, colors and textures they saw in the world around them, then they were asked to watch a short video containing scenes of nature. 

Visual information taken in by the eyes when watching a video flows directly to the occipital lobe and is then sent "up" to the parietal lobe.

The researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified that electrical activity in specific brain regions changes direction depending on whether subjects were asked to imagine a scene or watch a video of that scene.

During imagination, the researchers identified an increase in the flow of information from the parietal lobe of the brain down to the occipital lobe. This is a type of "top-down" processing from a higher-order region to what most consider a lower-order region.

In a press release, Barry Van Veen said, "A really important problem in brain research is understanding how different parts of the brain are functionally connected. What areas are interacting? What is the direction of communication? We know that the brain does not function as a set of independent areas, but as a network of specialized areas that collaborate."

Using a revolutionary technique, the researchers were able to quantify the directionality of signal flow during perception of movie clips versus replaying the clips in their imagination.

The study revealed an increased top-down signal flow in during mental imagery as compared to visual perception. These results are the first direct demonstration of a reversal of the predominant direction of cortical signal flow during mental imagery as compared to perception.

Van Veen concluded, "There seems to be a lot in our brains and animal brains that is directional, that neural signals move in a particular direction, then stop, and start somewhere else. I think this is really a new theme that had not been explored."

Illustrations of Information Flowing Differently During Visual Perception

As you can see by looking at this ink drawing from 1892, perceptions of reality can be subjective. What animal did you first see when you looked at this sketch?

Does your brain have trouble simultaneously seeing both the duck and the rabbit while looking at the picture? Now close your eyes and imagine the image. Is it easier to loosely flip back and forth between the two in your mind's eye?

This image was made famous by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who included it in his Philosophical Investigations as a means of illustrating choices you can make when observing the world around you.

In the 1820s, Johannes Purkinje wrote two influential books on the subjectivity of visual perceptions. Purkinje believed that “visual illusions reveal visual truths”.  

I believe that visual realities can also create misperceptions if you are too rigid in your viewpoint of how the world appears from a "top-down" or "bottom-up" perspective. Researchers are beginning to understand why flipping between strict executive function to daydreaming or mind-wandering can improve creative thinking and cognitive function by optimizing the flow of information between various brain regions. 

Conclusion: Optimizing Information Flow In Both Directions and Between All Brain Regions Throughout the Day Is Key to Creativity and Cognitive Function

If you tend to overthink and be hyper-analytical all the time, current research shows that you might want to "unclamp" your executive function throughout the day and let your mind wander more. Conversely, if you tend to be spacey or always daydreaming, your mind and brain will benefit by consciously making an effort to dial-in your focus and force your mind to wander less at some point throughout the day.

It's important to stay cognizant and vigilant about constantly mixing up your explanatory style and perceptions of the world. This will prevent the neural networks of you mind and brain from getting stuck in a rut that blocks a healthy flow of information in all directions.

The key appears to be surfing your individual tendecies of thinking to find your individual sweet spot. You can do this by regularly flipping from linear to divergent thinking and using both your imagination and pragmatism throughout every day. Making this a habit wil engage every nook and cranny of your brain from different angles and maximize the potential of your brain and mind.

The new research from Tonini et al offers exciting new connections between information flow, cognitive function and creativity. Although the new study doesn't specifically include the cerebellum or other brain regions beyond the occipital or parietal regions, I have a gut instinct that more exciting findings are around the corner. Stay tuned! 

If you’d like to learn more on related topics please check out my Psychology Today blogs:

• "Einstein's Genious Linked to Well-Connected Brain Hemispheres"
• “How Does Daydreaming Help Form Long Lasting Memories?”
• "Too Much Crystallized Thinking Lowers Fluid Intelligence"
• "The Neuroscience of Imagination"
• "Toward a New Split-Brain Model: Up Brain-Down Brain"
• "The Right Brain Is Not the Only Source of Creativity"
• "Squeeze a Ball With Your Left Hand to Increase Creativity"
• ”The Neuroscience of Speaking With Your Hands”
• “Gesturing Engages All Four Brain Hemispheres”
• “The Neuroscience of Madonna’s Enduring Success”
• “Hand-Eye Coordination Improves Cognitive and Social Skills”
• "Can Physical Activities Improve Fluid Intelligence?"
• “Childhood Creativity Leads to Innovation in Adulthood”
• “Musical Training Optimizes Brain Function”
• “Better Motor Skills Linked to Higher Test Scores”
• “Video Gaming Can Increase Brain Connectivity”
• “Tongue Twisters Reveal Quirky Brain Functions”
• “The Mysterious Neuroscience of Learning Automatic Skills”
• “How Does the Brain Remember the Places of Your Past?”
• “Sleep Strengthens Healthy Brain Connectivity”
• “One More Reason to Unplug Your Television”
• "The Neuroscience of Knowing Without Knowing"

Photo Credits: Wikimedia Commons

A new study published in a prestigious medical journal attempts to shed new light on an old question, namely the neurobiological underpinnings of ADHD.  As can be readily seen by bloggers on this website along with many others, the diagnosis of ADHD remains quite controversial. Even among those inclined to support the legitimacy of the diagnosis, greater clarity regarding what is actually happening in the brain in those struggling with ADHD symptoms is sorely needed.

The study represents a nice example of the new generation of brain imaging studies that focus less on the size or activity of a particular brain region in isolation and more on regional networks of several areas that are functionally connected to each other when the brain is doing tasks or at rest.  Perhaps the most famous of these networks relates to brain activity when we really aren’t doing anything.  This has been known best as the default mode network or DMN. 

MRI scans from a group of 135 individuals with a diagnosis of ADHD were compared to 188 typically developing controls from ages 7 to 21.  To compare activity in various brain networks, the authors employed complex analyses called whole-brain connectomic methods that allowed the authors to examine more than 400,000 different brain connections.

In terms of results, maturation lags were found among those with ADHD, particularly within the default mode network and  between the DMN and two other “task positive” networks (those networks involved in specific cognitive functions), namely the frontoparietal and ventral attention network (VAN). The VAN is involved in salience processing, i.e. detecting the relevant stimuli in the external environment while the frontoparietal network is involved in adaptive cognitive control.  The implication of both of these networks in ADHD makes intuitive sense and provides ever more increasing and specific evidence that the challenges related to ADHD reflect "real" alterations in brain function and structure.

At the same time, the hypothesis of ADHD as brain maturation delay could offer a compromise between those inclined to dismiss the very existence of ADHD and those who view it from a more traditional disease model.  Before getting too excited, however, I personally would like to see more evidence regarding whether the brain function of those diagnosed with ADHD eventually catches up or whether these differences persist later in life.  As far as I can tell, this study does not address this important point.  Clinically, many people do seem to “outgrow” childhood ADHD struggles, many don’t, and others design their life in a way so as to minimize the impact of them.

Furthermore, it’s not always clear what people mean by the word “delay.”  To many, a delay means that eventually things will get there, as in, “My train is temporarily delayed.”  When it comes to child development, however, the term unfortunately is often used without such reassurances implied.  As far as this study goes, it seems as though the term delay really just meant that how well these networks functioned was related to both to age and whether or not one was diagnosed with ADHD.

In the end, this is certainly an important study, with pieces that can be used to bolster those on both sides of the ADHD debate.

Image courtesy of dream designs and freedigitalphotos.net

@copyright by David Rettew, MD

David Rettew is author of Child Temperament: New Thinking About the Boundary Between Traits and Illnessand a child psychiatrist in the psychiatry and pediatrics departments at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.

Follow him at @PediPsych and like PediPsych on Facebook.

By Max Belkin, Ph.D.

As romantic relationships flourish and mature, lovers become emotionally dependent on each other. This closeness can be anxiety provoking—the fear of losing one’s life partner is hard to tolerate. In an effort to make love feel safe, many couples try to rid their shared life of anything risky and destabilizing. Case in point: Connie and Edward Sumner from Adrian Lyne's 2002 erotic thriller, Unfaithful.

Some people cheat on the spouses they love

Connie, a stay-at-home married mom in her forties, is cheating on her gentle and caring husband Edward with a young and sexy Frenchman named Paul. According to conventional wisdom, Connie's infidelity is a symptom of her dissatisfaction with her marriage, an unexpressed desire to end it. However, Connie and Edward’s marriage appears a happy one. While Connie’s relationship with Edward might have lost its erotic spark, it still offers the couple myriad domestic pleasures, a cozy togetherness.

The struggle to experience both love and desire within the confines of a monogamous relationship reflects the predicament of many couples.

It is scary to love and desire the partner who means so much  

For Edward and Connie, like for many other couples, the spouse is a co-parent, a soul mate, and a lover, all folded into one irreplaceable fragile human being. In fact, for this husband and wife, marriage is their only emotional lifeline. Being each other’s primary source of moral support, emotional intimacy, and erotic bliss unleashes much unacknowledged anxiety.

For many middle-aged individuals, like the Sumners, mortality becomes more real and frightening. Having watched parents or grandparents bury their life partners, most have witnessed the emotional devastation of such loss. So it is possible that, among other reasons, Connie turned to Paul to make herself less emotionally dependent on her husband.

Lust and aggression are often excluded from happy marriages

Because of its unruly nature, lust is often perceived as a threat to the relationship’s stability. Lust is not politically correct. Breaking taboos, aggression, exhibitionism, submission, and domination are powerful aphrodisiacs for many folks. Thus, in order to keep marriages calm and predictable, many people channel their erotic passion into extramarital affairs.

Cultivating both love and desire towards one's life partner requires tolerating conflicting feelings: the wish for autonomy versus the desire for emotional dependence; tenderness towards one’s partner, as well as aggression; and the need for stability, as well as that for adventure. We often acknowledge only comfort-inducing parts of ourselves and our partners, while ignoring the anxiety-provoking parts.

For example, Connie perceives and treats Edward as if he were only warm and fuzzy; she is loath to acknowledge his lust and aggression. Conforming to his wife's expectations, Edward moves, smiles, and talks like a middle-aged Teddy Bear. Paradoxically, Richard Gere, whose sex appeal is obvious to everybody but Connie, plays Edward’s character.

Similarly, as part of the tacit agreement to keep lust out of their relationship, Edward views Connie (played by Diane Lane) as predictable, motherly, and incapable of risk or adventure. And for a while, she complies. Ironically, again, Edward might be the only person who ignores Connie’s erotic charisma. Both husband and wife are complicit in selectively overlooking the erotic—and thus potentially destabilizing and nerve-racking-- aspects of themselves and their partner.

Extramarital affair serves as a steam valve

Edward's and Connie's unacknowledged and unexpressed lust and aggression find expression in their emotional triangle with Paul. While Connie is unconsciously invested in keeping her marriage predictable by treating her husband as a man-child, she directs her erotic passion toward Paul. Although in the marital bed Connie allows only the gentle, loving parts of herself expression, in her extramarital affair, she luxuriates in domination and submission. For instance, with Paul, Connie is game for hitting, spanking, and having sex in public places.

Similarly, while Edward never confronts his wife about her affair, he lets his anger out by getting into a fight with her lover. Thus, the affair allows both of them to experience and express their unacknowledged lust and aggression without jeopardizing their loving marriage.

Affairs make people feel autonomous and erotically alive

Whenever people trade eroticism for the illusion of security, their romance turns stale and bloodless. Routine and predictability, the two pillars of stability, tend to stifle erotic spontaneity and creativity. In contrast, veiled-in-secrecy and risk-taking extramarital affairs tend to fill lovers with excitement and titillation.

However, affairs carry a hefty price tag. Just like Connie, other married people who cheat eventually get tired of lying and feeling guilty. Afraid they will break up, some couples turn to marriage counseling to unpack the meaning of the affair, and to rekindle love and desire. Connie and Edward Sumner would make perfect candidates for such an endeavor.

Marriage counseling to the rescue

In therapy, Connie and Edward would begin to articulate and explore the loving, lustful, and aggressive aspects of their own and their partner’s personality. The therapist would help them to discuss what turns them on, and to manage the anxiety and guilt evoked by their erotic desires. The goal would be to help Connie and Edward construct new ways of tolerating the tensions between love and lust, autonomy and dependence, and tenderness and aggression.

Max Belkin, Ph.D., is a relational psychoanalyst and psychologist. He is a graduate of NYU and the William Alanson White Institute and serves on the editorial board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He teaches graduate courses in couples counseling and individual psychotherapy at NYU. He works with individuals and couples in his private offices in Greenwich Village, New York City, and in Atlantic Highlands, NJ.

“Vulnerability is the core of fear, but also the birthplace of love and belonging.” Brene Brown

It is human nature to want to experience a strong sense of love and belonging in your life.  What Brene Brown found in her groundbreaking studies on shame and vulnerability is that there is ONE thing that separates those who feel shame and struggle for this sense of true connection, and those who are able to experience love and belonging in their lives:

A feeling of worthiness.

In other words, in order to experience love and connection, we must believe we are worthy of it!

So many of us run a false story (often just below the surface of awareness) that we are not worthy, and live in fear of being rejected, abandoned, hurt, unloved, or discovered a fraud. This is often based on childhood (or even young adult) experiences that felt so terrifying that we think by staying on guard we will protect ourselves from what can sometimes feel like virtual annihilation.  We avoid vulnerability and don’t talk about it. Then, we hide behind our shame by numbing ourselves out or pushing it below our conscious awareness.

The short explanation is that feeling unworthy is not based on reality but on being exposed to words or experiences at a crucial time in our childhood (predominantly) but certainly at some impactful point in our lives.  We then translated those experiences into feeling not good enough. We feel abandoned, confused about our instincts or unlovable. Some examples of these childhood experiences would be feeling pressured to get all A’s (so you become a perfectionist),  parents telling you that you’ll never make money at art (so you abandon your dream), or, having a parent leave, either literally or emotionally, (so you grow up feeling unlovable).

There’s also a fair amount of shame wrapped around each of these experiences and the truth is that unless we name that shame, we will never let it go – and it will continue to be the covert director of our lives. Shame will stop us from taking any risk that we think threatens exposure of our shame -- risks in relationships, in pursuing our real dreams or in allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.

So what do you do? Start by allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to get hurt – and know you will not only survive, but will be relieved and then thrive. Being hurt does not kill us, but we think it will. Remember, we always have a choice about how we feel – as long as we are conscious. Yes, you’ll sometimes get hurt. But what you do with that hurt is up to you.

Look at where the shame lives. Identify the shame. It’s not always obvious, but shame can exist in secret hiding places like: “I’m unattractive and therefore unlovable,” or “I made such stupid mistakes when I was younger that if anyone finds out, they’ll think I’m horrible.”

Ignoring the fact that we do feel vulnerable causes us to be even more afraid. Our fear causes us to numb out and not face our fears. Brown’s work is important because she makes it okay to be imperfect and vulnerable. By realizing we are imperfect and vulnerable, we realize we are all born worthy of love and connection.

Shame and vulnerability are universal! Everyone feels these things on different levels. When they are not talked about or acknowledged, they damage us by making us feel unworthy.

Here are some ways to work with this awareness:

• Acknowledge that we are all perfectly imperfect. Each and every one of us.
• Stop blaming others in order to numb the pain and instead, acknowledge where you are.
• As Brown says, “Let yourself be seen. Vulnerably seen.”
• Notice when and how you numb yourself out. Are you eating/drinking/sleeping/not sleeping/using sex or other behaviors in an unhealthy way? What’s behind that?
• Lose the drama. Life is full of craziness, hurt, confusion and mistakes. When you acknowledge what is good, the drama should take second place. (Aka, be grateful as much as you possibly can!)
• Be gentler with yourself.
• Be gentler with others (especially when you think you’re blaming them for your own stuff).
• Listen. To others. To yourself. To your heart.
• Lose the judgment, too. It’s a snare the “I’m not good enough” monster uses to stop you from taking any sort of steps forward.
• Stay vulnerable. Allow yourself to feel everything — the good, bad and the ugly.
• Name your shame — and speak about it to someone you trust. It’s enormously freeing.
• Be authentically you — not the you you inherited or who others think you should be.
• Embrace your uniqueness. No one is the same. That is the beauty of this life.
• Know you are enough.
• You – and everyone else on this planet – are worthy of love.

Brown says to feel vulnerable means you’re alive. Embrace that.

In my therapy session with my psychiatrist Dr. Adena (not her real name) this past week, I was talking about writing and my father came to mind. Dr. Adena is a psychoanalyst and prefers me to blurt out whatever comes to mind, however seemingly unrelated so I stopped what I was saying about writing and said simply, “My father just came into my mind.”

She responded “Why do you think that is?”

I told her a story that my brother had recently reminded me of, one that I had forgotten. He had most likely remembered it because of the major snowstorm in Buffalo that had been on the news. It seems that my freshman year in college, at The State University of New York at Buffalo, there was a huge snowstorm at the beginning of spring break and all the airports were closed. I usually flew back and forth to New York; it was relatively inexpensive back then and it was the most efficient way to travel the long distance. My brother was in his senior year of high school; he told me that he and my father got in our 1976 Buick Electra (that thing was a tank on wheels) and started on the thruway up to Buffalo. They got as far as a town called Utica, a little more than halfway up. They were forced off the road and found a motel, but it was full and they had to sleep on the floor of the lobby. The next morning they got back on the road, picked me up at the dorm and we turned around and headed back to New York.

After I recounted this story, I paused and then started to cry. “Was it possible that he cared about me?” I asked Dr. Adena.

She nodded slowly.

I cried harder.

Something else occurred to me. “When Dr. B. (my psychiatrist on the long-term borderline unit who I was seeing when my flashbacks started) called a family meeting and asked Dad if he had sexually abused me, he said no, my Mom said no, and my brother said no. That I could even think he was capable of such a thing must have hurt him more than I could ever have imagined. He pulled back from me, retreating. I thought it was because he couldn’t handle the fact that I was so ill, that I wasn’t perfect.”

“Perhaps that was part of it,” Dr. Adena remarked.

The tears fell in a torrent. “I was so self-absorbed. I couldn’t see how much I was hurting him. Not then. Not towards the end of his life. Not till now.”

“I have no way to apologize to him. He’s gone. I’ve blocked out all the good things he tried to do for me. I haven’t allowed myself to remember.”

“Perhaps now you’ll give yourself permission to remember,” said Dr. Adena.

He taught me how to play softball. He didn’t want me to throw like a girl. He spent endless hours playing catch with me. And softball became one of the biggest pleasures of my life.”

“What else haven’t I allowed myself to remember?”

 I cried deeply and hard as scenes of my father’s life flashed through my mind like I was flipping the pages of an old photo album. The wedding photo of the handsome man and the beautiful young woman I still have on a shelf of my wall unit. My father, still young, sitting on the couch in our living room with a scotch in his hand. My father with our Shetland sheepdogs in a green meadow at the bungalow colony in upstate New York we used to go to each summer when I was young. Now he is old. My father in the apartment that we were raised in with an unkempt grey beard. The apartment is filthy. Him in the hospital, barely conscious.

I missed an entire portion of his life as he did mine. I convinced myself I hated him. I had convinced myself that he was the reason I had never been able to enter into a successful relationship with a man. Not because he had sexually abused me, but because as an alcoholic father with other problems, he was not able to be a capable father for a young girl.

Now I hold my head in my hands and weep. I weep for the missed opportunities, I weep for the fragile man who was so hurt by his daughter, I weep for the love that was lost.

I tell Dr. Adena “I can’t tell him how sorry I am. I can only apologize to him through my writing. Which I will do.”

Dad, I’m so sorry that I hurt you. Please forgive me.

© Elnur | Dreamstime.com - Scary Monster Photo

Ever wish you could meet one of your intellectual idols? Maybe shake her hand? Maybe share how much her work has meant to you? Well, I got to meet, greet, and convey my gratitude to many of the mental giants who have most influenced my meager mind. And then I sat down and they let me interview them, on film, for a good half hour or so.

Part I of this blog series explains why fellow evolutionary psychologist Catherine Salmon, filmmaker DaveLundberg Kenrick, and I co-led On the Origin of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society ~ An Oral History Project, and presents our interviews with Steven Pinker, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Douglas Kenrick, Martin Daly, Randy Thornhill, Mark Flinn, and William Irons.

Part II contains interviews with David Buss, David Sloan Wilson, Napoleon Chagnon, Don Symons, Bobbi Low, Sarah Hrdy, and Raymond Hames. Future installments will include interviews with Richard Alexander, Randy Nesse, and Peter Richerson, and hopefully luminaries Robert Trivers, Noam Chomsky, and Richard Dawkins.

This installment focuses on my January 2014 interview with the world’s most decorated living scientist, Harvard University’s Edward O. Wilson. Among hundreds of other accolades, Ed is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction and recipient of the Crafoord Prize, biology’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. This extensive interview was full of surreal moments, the first of which occurred off camera, just before we began:

After we sat down, Ed told me that he's been ‘looking forward to this interview and the opportunity it provides an 84-year-old to set the record straight on the formation of sociobiology, a story I have never fully told and want recorded for posterity before it’s too late.’ Nearly speechless, all I could muster in return was a measly, "Ditto, sir. Ditto."

I had asked Ed for an hour of his time. Three hours later, my belly was full of lunch and my camcorders full of riveting stories. Highlights include:

• his rocky relationship with the co-discoverer of DNA, the “difficult” James Watson (Part I: 7:23 -  9:50)

• the historical formation of sociobiology (Part I: 11:40 – 40:00)

• our spirited discussion of the relationship between sociobiology and evolutionary psychology (Part I: 40:00 – 58:04)

• his antagonist relationships with two departmental colleagues: the “inexplicable” Richard Lewontin (Part I: 1:19 - 8:10) and the “charlatan” Stephen Jay Gould (Part I: 17:32 – 18:40; Part I: 25:33 – 28:19; Part I: 39:46 - 41:17)

• the infamous moment when ice water was dumped on his head at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Symposium in February of 1978 (Part I: 8:10 – 13:08)

• how he came to learn of inclusive fitness theory and its originator, William D. Hamilton (Part II: 43:34 – 47:12)

After we finished, Ed strongly encouraged me to find a publisher and to write the origin story of evolutionary psychology and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES):

Me: “But Ed, unlike you, I haven't written a single book, never mind 32, never mind several New York Times Best Sellers and two Pulitzer Prize winners."

Ed:  "Well, this would be a good one to start with."

On my drive back from Cambridge, MA I reflected on Ed’s suggestion and called friends and fellow evolutionary psychologists David Buss and Geoffrey Miller. They enthusiastically agreed with Ed that Catherine and I should write the story of the founding of HBES and evolutionary psychology using the transcripts of our filmed interviews as the foundation. Since then I've received a Faculty Development Grant from The University of Scranton to write book proposals to Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge University Presses and I’ve applied for a sabbatical for next fall. If all goes as planned, I'll co-write “On the Origin of an Evolution Revolution: The Birth and Rise of an Evolutionary Approach to Human Behavior and Cognition” in the near future. 

In the meantime, I do hope you enjoy this extended interview with one of evolutionary psychology’s great grandfathers, Dr. E. O. Wilson.

Part I of interview with Ed Wilson:

Part II of interview with Ed Wilson:

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Copyright © 2014 Barry X. Kuhle. All rights reserved.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of Psychology Today and the University of Scranton, or me, and certainly not the views of my friends, family, probation officer, gut bacteria, darkest thoughts, and personal mohel.

"Hysteria"--applying both to women's laughter and to our tears--operates on a kind of emotional borderland where extreme moments of both joy and sorrow meet.

And that's why women call our friends in the middle of the night.

You do this because your friend will try to retrieve your sense of perspective by introducing humor.

Your partner left you? Your friend knew right from the start that you should have chosen somebody higher up the food chain.

Your old boyfriend just called to say you should get together again and he has two tickets to Hawaii? Tell him to sell both tickets and use the money to see a doctor, because he’s obviously a very sick man.

Our disappointments can be transformed through our ability to tell the story to someone else. Traditional forms of therapy work on the same principle—tell somebody your troubles, and it’ll help solve them.

The world tells us that it’s all wrong to complain, but that we can secure permission to complain as long as we don’t seem self-pitying and narcissistic. In other words, we get permission to talk about ourselves if we present our pain in such a way that it will not disturb others. “If men complain about their lives,” says my friend PK, “It might be called tragic--the loss of potental, the sense of a life thrown away. But when women complain, they’re not being universal; they're always seen as individual; they’re seen as being merely neurotic women. They're dismissed as either wanting a baby or else they’re menopausal. With men it appears as a crisis of existential conflicts. With women it appears hormonal. That’s how it works.”

In other words, when women complain about our lives, we’d better make it comedic if we want an audience.

Women’s material isn’t seen as being about people—it’s seen as being about women.

“Universal” examples include the “universal” struggle: man against nature, man’s flight from himself, man’s search for truth. The central figure here is "man" and if you change the pronoun, the mechanism behind the so-called "universal" alters considerably.

Joanna Russ writes in her article “What Can a Heroine Do? or Why Women Can’t Write” about the ways in which, when the sex of the protagonists is changed, the plots no longer work, thus proving that the so-called universal plot depends heavily on the sex of the main character.

In the supposedly universal plots we’ve all read in “great” literature (that is, literature by men), changing the sex of the main character changes the paradigm so completely it becomes comic.

Russ’s examples include the following: “1. Two strong women battle for supremacy in the early West. 2. A young girl in Minnesota finds her womanhood by killing a bear. 3. A phosphorescently doomed poetess sponges off her husband and drinks herself to death, thus alienating the community of Philistines and businesswomen who would have continued to give her lecture dates. 4. A young man who unwisely puts his success in business before his personal fulfillment loses his masculinity and ends up as a neurotic, lonely eunuch.”

Russ argued that the sex of the character in a story is never a neutral matter—it always has an implication. She first made the argument, however, in 1972. What I'm asking you now is this: Has anything changed? Do films like "The Hunger Game" trilogy, or the new film based on Cheryl Strayed'"Wild" or, for that matter, Disney's wildly popular "Frozen" illustrate that thing have changed in terms of the power held by center female figure?

--adapted from They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted

Dear Dr. G.,

I am a 15 year old girl and I am so frustrated. Three years ago my mother got remarried. Two years ago my mother and her new husband had a baby boy. Now don't get me wrong the little boy-my half-brother is adorable and all but we are going on vacation again and I know that my mom will make me babysit for my brother (I'll call him Sam) for most of the vacation. Last year we took a Christmas vacation to see relatives and my mother and stepfather kept going out to dinner and other places with my relatives. They left me to watch Sam. I don't want to be selfish and all but I wanted to go out with my cousins.

I don't want to be selfish. My mother says that she really trusts me with Sam but is this fair or am I being a spoiled brat? I really want my mother to be happy. Her marriage to my father was terrible. He cheated on her and didn't give her child support after the divorce. I'm just so confused.

Please help.

A Babysitting Teen

Dear Teen,

I am delighted that you reached out to me. I can understand why you are upset. Your mother and her husband made the decision to have this baby. It is their responsibility to take care of him as well as to make appropriate and fair babysitting arrangements for him. Of course, you might babysit every now and then but it is ABSOLUTELY unfair for your mom and stepfather to expect you to spend the majority of your time on vacation babysitting him.

It is very sweet of you to want your mom to be happy especially in light of her bad experience with your father. On the other hand, it is not your job to ensure your mother's happiness. Remember you are the child and she is the mother.

You must sit down with your mother prior to vacation this year to share your feelings. Tell your mother that you too want to enjoy some time on vacation. Let her know that although you really like your little brother you feel that you are spending too much time babysitting. I hope that your mother will understand this and perhaps make other babysitting arrangements so that you too can have a break. Perhaps your mom can see if your cousins are up to babysitting. Your mother's awareness of her behavior needs to improve. She is not being fair to you.

Good luck talking to your mother and please get back to me before vacation.

Dr. G.

For more aricles like this see my website:

http://drbarbaragreenberg.com/

Although as parents we talk to our kids all the time, it can be challenging to have conversations about things that really matter. These conversations require us to connect with our children on both a cognitive and an emotional level.

We need to talk to children in ways that relate to what they already know. When children are asked general questions about their day their minds often go blank. If instead you ask about some of the specific events that are going on in their lives it can help to trigger memories that will get the conversation going.

What’s even more important than making a cognitive connection is making an emotional one. Discussions about values often come up when children are making choices that parents don’t approve of, such as spending money unwisely or mismanaging their time. The messages that parents convey during these discussions are often interpreted as criticism, which can lead to defensive responses and power struggles.

Asking questions for which only particular answers are acceptable can also stand in the way of making an emotional connection. When parents do this, children often avoid saying what they think because they don’t believe that their parents are really interested in their perspective, or they don’t want to risk getting into trouble for giving the wrong answer.

How can we avoid these emotional roadblocks? The key is to talk about issues in a way that makes it less likely that children will worry about being judged. With your words and your body language you can show that you are interested in their views, that you realize you are not always right, and that you are willing to make them partners in guiding the conversation.

Talking about the problems of someone other than your child is often a great way to discuss values without making the conversation too threatening. If you talk about poor decisions that you have made and what you learned from the experience, your children are more likely to consider what you are saying than if you are pointing out mistakes that they have made. Important questions of values also come up in a range of other places, such as books, movies, and articles about current events, all of which can be used as starting points for a conversation.

Does the age of the child matter when you're having these kinds of conversations? The principles are the same, but the specifics vary. Young children have more limited knowledge and experience so it can be harder to start a conversation in a way that connects to what they already know. They may also need help with working through simpler issues before they are ready to move on to topics that are more complex or sensitive.

Almost as soon as children can talk, parents can begin discussing issues that really matter. If your two-year-old offers to share his toy, you can ask how doing so might benefit the recipient. These types of simple conversations can set the stage for future conversations about how to consider the perspectives of other people.

Conversation Starters

What would you do if your friends told a girl they don't want to spend time with her because they think she’s ugly?

Is it okay to change the rules in the middle of a game?

If you were a parent, how strict would you be?

Is it okay for kids to tease each other about the kinds of music they like?

Check out my free app for iOS, Beyond Small Talk, which offers questions as starting points for meaningful conversations.  

Each year, as the holidays approach, we go into a panic. How will I survive Thanksgiving?  There is the thought of spending time with family, the pressure of creating a perfect holiday meal, and the guilt over the 51 million turkeys that will sacrifice their lives for the occasion. But amidst all of these other pressing concerns, there is one that stands out above the rest in the national panic: How will I stick to my diet? My advice is simple. Don’t.

I believe that diets are to blame for the transformation of Thanksgiving from a day of gratitude to our unofficial national day of overconsumption. It seems that if you leave the Thanksgiving table without your pants busting at the seams, something has gone horribly wrong. We are caught in a metaphorical tug-of-war, the pressure to be thin tugging one arm and the pecan pie yanking on the other. What’s one to do?

I suggest that we eat Thanksgiving foods every day. No, I haven't lost my marbles. Hear me out on this because I think it really makes sense.

What are the foods that we tend to overeat on Thanksgiving? Is it the turkey or green beans? Usually not. These are foods that we eat throughout the year, so when they make their appearance on the Thanksgiving table, they aren’t all that exciting. But when I see the sweet potato casserole with roasted miniature marshmallows on top, my heart skips a beat. Buttery mashed potatoes with gravy, cornbread stuffing, and Aunt Silvia’s famous pumpkin pie? These are the foods that we tend to overeat. And these are the foods that we only get to eat once per year. Coincidence? I think not.

In general, we overeat foods that are restricted to us. When foods aren’t typically available to us (either because we physically don’t have access to them or we deprive ourselves because we are on a diet), we tend to overeat those foods when they are available to us. On Thanksgiving we have double availability; the foods are both physically available and many dieters give themselves permission to eat foods that they typically wouldn’t. Plus, since we only eat these foods once per year, we try to eat as much as we can while we can. Many of us try to eat enough to last us until next Thanksgiving.

What would it be like if we ate stuffing everyday? Well, not if we necessarily ate stuffing everyday, but what if stuffing were available to us everyday? What if stuffing were just another choice for what we could have for dinner? Not only stuffing but candied yams, gravy, pecan pie, and all of our other Thanksgiving favorites. What if these foods were available to us whenever we wanted them? Would we feel such pressure to over consume on Thanksgiving? Or perhaps something really radical would happen—we might actually think about what we want to eat, eat when we feel hungry, and stop eating when we feel satisfied without a sense of struggle. We can do this feeling safe and confident in knowing that these foods are always available to us, if we want more tomorrow-- or even later today—we can.

This magical world of 365 days of Thanksgiving foods is not a fantasy. It exists right here in America. Yes, you can have Thanksgiving foods whenever you want them. Most major grocery stores carry all of the ingredients that you need to make whatever food you desire. You could even eat candied yams in August. 

To learn more about Dr. Conason and mindful eating, please visit www.drconason.com.