When you hear the research about gratitude improving your health, making you feel more connected to others, and lifting your mood - are you skeptical? How are you going to feel better just by making a list? And do those psychologists actually think that this Pollyanna-attitude-thing is going to help when you’re really feeling crappy?

It may sound too good to be true, but I’m here to tell you it’s not.  Gratitude increases happiness and is a great antidote to many things, including anger and bitterness (read this post I wrote to learn more about happiness and gratitude). It’s also a key component of Wise Mind Living.

Here’s how to make a gratitude list so it really works.

Get specific.

It’s not enough to just write, “I’m grateful that my husband is a good guy.” The positive impact you get from gratitude increases when you offer yourself real, specific evidence for why you feel grateful.  “I am grateful that my husband got up with the kids and let me sleep in this morning” is more specific and will have a greater impact on improving your mood. Think about it as building up a case of evidence for feeling good.

Do it every day.

Research shows that the more you do something the more likely it will become a habit. The longer your gratitude list gets, the greater the case you’re building for feeling positive. Over time you will find that having a gratitude practice can actually change your overall perspective on life.

Share it.

The gratitude list itself will help you feel more positive but if you want to increase that feel-good vibe, share your thanks with others. If being grateful that your boss supported and green-lighted your project is on your list, tell her! You’ll feel more connected to other people in your life if you share your thanks with them. This also improves your relationships.

Try to find the good in the bad.

It’s ridiculous to expect that simply focusing on the fact that it’s a bright sunny day will make you feel better when something really bad is going on.  But it will improve your outlook if you try to find the opportunity or the lesson to be learned in a not-so-great situation.  “It sucks that George broke up with me but I’m grateful that I’m not in a relationship with someone who isn’t really into me.  I want to be with someone who thinks that I’m amazing!”

Give these a try the next time you start your gratitude list and let me know how they worked for you.

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© 2014, Erin Olivo, PhD

Macbeth did it over murder. What’s your excuse? 

Sometimes, our hands just won’t come clean no matter how often or how hard we scrub. Assuming you’re not a Danish lord with ambitions for the crown, chances are your guilty conscience is reminding you that you owe a debt. 

But we’re not talking credit cards and bank accounts here. Those are just numbers, after all. We’re talking about the kind of debt that really gets under the skin. The kind that keeps you up nights. The kind that makes you a walking irritability bomb. 

When our consciences kick up a guilt-ridden fuss, it is often in an effort to preserve something that is most precious to us, namely friendship. That’s because the kind of debt we’re talking about is a particular sort of social debt involving what is known as reciprocal altruism. It’s the kind of you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours debt that social animals routinely expect of one another. 

And for good reason. Reciprocal altruism helps us survive, and is likely a key ingredient in the social glue that binds friendships. 

In dolphins and chimps, the outward signs of friendship are unmistakable. Dolphins who know each other well often swim side-by-side with their pectoral fins touching like lovers holding hands. Chimps sharing mutual affection are quite willing to while away much of their time in grooming one another. 

Such bonding behaviors translate into survival benefits when pressing demands, like the need to feed, arise. Friends help friends, after all. Dolphin swim buddies are quick to clean up darting schools of fish by hunting cooperatively, while chimps reward the outstretched arms of empty-handed friends with morsels of meat. 

It ends up that turn-taking is a key aspect of throwing successful dinner parties in the wild. But not everyone garners his fair share during any given meal. Dolphins who drive fish toward waiting companions are likely to miss out on the bulk of the catch, while chimp hunters who make the all-important assist are generally the ones left begging for leftovers. 

Social debts aren’t always paid immediately, however. In fact, studies of animal cooperation have found that the closer a friendship bond is, the longer a debt is likely to be forgiven – within reason, that is – before social consequences come into play. 

Our sense of fair-play tells us that one good turn deserves another. But payback can be a real bear. Sometimes so much so that we shirk obligations to pay our fellows back in kind. 

And that’s precisely where guilt comes into the picture. When we owe socially, we experience a sense of unease, usually mild at first, which grows progressively more intense as time goes by. It’s as if a debt-collecting Guido has come knocking at the door. Gentle reminders gradually turn into leg-breaking threats the longer we fail to ante up.

Our guilt functions as a negative reinforcer, like a ringing telephone or buzzing seatbelt alarm spurring us to action. Eventually, our consciences compel repayment, in one form or another, to those we owe. All in the name of friendship. 

So, you’re walking down the street when you spot a friend who did you a favor, maybe a week ago, maybe a year ago. You might owe big time, or maybe just a little. Do you call out and wave? Or perhaps cross the street and duck down the nearest alley? If you cut and run, one thing is for certain. Your feelings of guilt will see to it that you pay up eventually – or else. 

Copyright © Seth Slater, 2014

Teaser Image: Google Image, justmind.org

I abhor the phrase, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” The very fact that anyone would want to fake anything is intrinsically dishonest and feels bad.

Why not re-imagine the way you want to be with real practices and mental focus with these 7 Habits to Create Real Change Using Aikido & Martial Arts Principles?

1. Suspend disbelief.

Suspend disbelief. This takes some doing. And here’s the thing. Many people can’t imagine the huge leap from where they are to where they want to be. When I first signed up for Aikido, the ancient Japanese martial art, which means, the “Way to Harmonize with the Spirit of the Universe,” the application asked what my goal was in training in Aikido. I wrote down to be a 7^th Dan (7^th Degree black belt). Ha.

To give you a sense of how accomplished a 7^th Dan is when you first get your black belt you are a 1^st Dan. But my only reference point was my Aikido teacher Hans Goto Sensei who is a 7^th Dan. So I imagined that that’s where I’d want to be, in his shoes with his expertise and his grace and equanimity. Not taking into account he had been training since his twenties and I was starting at age 53.

The goal of becoming a 7^th Dan was ignorant wishful thinking based on lack of knowledge or experience. Much like the calls I get from Oprah hopefuls who want to be on her show, yet haven’t done a single local TV appearance, who don’t yet have a following, or are on the brink of bankruptcy, and see her show as their savior.

When I taught seminars about how to get on Oprah, participants would thank me afterward by saying one of two things. “Thank you for helping me understand what it takes to be on the show. I have a lot of work to do before I’m ready.” Or, “I’m ready and I now see what I need to do to package myself properly so Oprah’s producers can see that I’m right for the show.”

Ignorance is only valuable if, when you discover the gap in your awareness, you’re willing to do the work. Because, even if we suspend disbelief the chasm between wish/want and reality is too big.

Yet, can I put that aside for a moment and create a pathway toward that end? Yes. It’s called training. Coupled with imagination, and persistence, the suspension of disbelief can be a powerful tool. Also, it must be accompanied by continuous deliberate action.

In the dojo, on the mat I position myself in front of sensei as close as I can get for two reasons. I want to see and feel what he’s doing as best as I can. And I want to absorb his energy and his teachings, the direct transmission of his wisdom and skill. 

The other way that direct transmission happens is when he throws me. He often says, “You have to feel the technique.” Part of the suspension of disbelief is feeling your way into your future self. I actively imagine that I’m in sensei’s body as he’s warming up, and that we are one so I can take on his technique and his characteristics.

How well is this working you might ask? I’m sad to say that as much as I can imagine it, my body has yet to comply in any measurable or obvious way. I’m inching forward. Not leaping in great bounds.

However, though this is often enormously discouraging, I continue to believe that through ongoing training, coupled with my mental perseverance, improvement will come. I may never become a 7^th Dan, but I can embody and express the teachings of Aikido with the body and spirit that I have and as much as my physical, mental and emotional abilities allow in this given body.

2. Fill your body with Ki (energy).

This is one of the first practices we learn in Aikido. You imagine that your energy extends in five dimensions: Top, bottom, front, back sides, and also out your fingertips. You create a force field around you to anyone who approaches you will feel it. Extending Ki is also used to connect with the person you’re training with so you are linked together energetically.

During class a while ago Hans Goto Sensei mentioned that a Japanese woman came to class one day as a visitor and was not extending ki. As soon as he mentioned it she extended ki instantly and stayed that way throughout the class. He only had to tell her once. When he asked her how she did it she said she had a strict grandmother. Whether it was fear or discipline that motivated her, we can’t know. But, unlike this woman most of us need constant reminding.

Even without a stern octogenarian disciplining you, practice filling your body with ki as you sit in front of the computer, when you have to confront a friend, discipline an employee, or speak at a PTA meeting. Eventually, it will become second nature, and you’ll start to do it automatically. In this way we stay consciously connected to each other in our daily life which will diminish the feeling of separation and make us less likely to need to fake anything.

3. Cop some faith.

Every day when I leave the house to train in Aikido my sweetie says to me, “Don’t hurt anyone and don’t get hurt, and soon you’ll have your long black skirt.” (The “skirt” is the Hakama you receive when you pass your Shodan or black belt test.)

While it’s grand to say to have faith in yourself, our faith often needs a boost. When others have faith in you it sustains your own faith, which can flag with every little discouragement or perceived defeat. Ginny Breeland Sensei, one of my first Aikido teachers, wrote to me, “I happily await the day when you become Shodan because it will occur sooner than you expect – something evident in your open-mindedness and your virtuosity concerning your approach and correctness.” I have this posted up on my bulletin board so I can read it when my faith flags, which is often. 

And it’s not just in martial arts that faith flounders. My sweetie got a staph infection in his knee and spine and had to have emergency surgery. He lost the use of his left arm, dropped thirty-five pounds and went from hugely active life of playing tennis, lifting weights, writing screenplays, and working as a story consultant and script doctor to the film industry, to a person who couldn’t carry a glass of water.

To bolster his spirits I created an image in my mind of him as a healthy, buffed, golden boy. We had watched a funny app about being a body builder and mimicked the pumping iron motion of the cartoon in the app. So whenever I want to reinforce that vision I do the body builder motion. It’s a shortcut to reminding him that I envision him as whole, healthy, healed and happy. 

My dear friend Sherry Richert Belul offered to create a celebration book for him. We gathered photos and stories from his friends and family. It’s a beautiful reminder of how much he is loved—which also helps reinforce the future self when he remembers back when he couldn’t button his own shirt.

Every year at the Oscars as the winners stand on the podium to receive their statue, they mention the fact that there were people close to them who believed in them and their movie when they didn’t believe in themselves. (Often the wives!). We need others who see the future vision of ourselves and hold that in their minds for us to step into when we are ready.

4. Work toward.

One of my favorite sayings is, “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.” Sure, a vision board is great, but you also have to get off your as_. You dream of writing a book? Follow Julia Cameron’s advice and start a morning pages practice. You wake up, you pull out that journal, you scribble some words.

Most of them will be crap. You’ll throw a big bunch of them away. I recall countless writers telling stories about how hard it is to get enough good pages to make a book. Alice Seybold told Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh air that it took her two and a half years to get the voice of Helen, her main character right. To capture Helen she rewrote The Almost Moon three times from three different points of view. She said that this is her process to find the right voice. 

It took Stephan Eirik Clark ten years to write Sweetness #9.

F. Scott Fitzgerald re-wrote The Great Gadsby three times before the manuscript got accepted by Scribners.

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast submits her rejections up to five times, retooling them each time. Her philosophy? There’s a germ of a good idea in there, it just needs to get tweaked until it clicks.

Ann Lamott’s advice to writers? “Write the worst sh_t in America.”

I oblige her every week in my writing group. As I transcribe those pages

from my notebook into my computer I have many moments of despair — because I can see how little of it I’m going to use.

And yet, there in the rubble, are a few good sentences, a scrap of dialog, or a description that will stick. Those are the flecks of gold (not even nuggets yet) that I’m panning for. I have a vision. I’m inching forward. For the Young Adult book I’m laboring over, I’ve created a cover. I’ve begun the design of the website. I write a bit of it in my writing group every week. I’m working toward.

5. Test the power pose.

In her Ted talk, social psychologist, Amy Cuddy recommends putting your hands on your hips in a power pose to shift your perception about yourself and other’s perception of you as well. Cuddy suggests that the pose can, in two minutes, “affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.” And, “Can significant affect how your life unfolds.”

She says, “When you pretend to be powerful, you are also more likely to feel powerful.” I love the concept of this and it has tremendous validity. But poses alone don’t create confidence in and of themselves. Yes, if you physically change your body stance or posture you may feel different internally. But actually internalizing that feeling in real-life situations is something else entirely. You can pose all you want in public or the privacy of your own home, and still come up lacking.

In the Leadership in action courses with Richard Strozzi Heckler your body stances are put to the test – under pressure. I took his Leadership in action 1 in Petaluma and was surprised at some of what my own body revealed. His courses are based in somatics and use principles of Aikido so it’s no surprise at how naked I felt on his mat, as in Aikido. 

Under pressure, in our first reactions to circumstances, we reveal our personalities. For example, in his the course I took Strozzi Heckler had his program participants engage in a simple exercise so they can notice how they respond in a situation that quickly reveals the depth of your poise and equanimity. If you’re approaching someone famous or someone you respect which one of these three things do you do? 

1. Rush at them over-exuberantly, chattering away, and thrust your hand at them, perhaps invading their space. (over extending). 

2. Simp and fawn over them, in essence making yourself submissive or subservient. (under extending).

3. Meet their hand in the middle, give full, present eye contact, while staying grounded and centered and stand on equal footing? (extending the proper amount).

This quickly showed me where I wasn’t extending fully when I felt cramped by the person playing the famous/respected person who came too close to me and made me feel uncomfortable.

The good news? You can modify your behavior on the spot once you’re aware of it. So the next time I repeated this exercise I didn’t allow the “famous person” to invade my space. So it’s an iterative behavioral process to see if you can keep your “pose,” and thus change your brain chemistry consistently, as Cuddy suggests. It’s under pressure we see the measure of how we respond in situations that test our mettle and reveal our fallback response.

That said, even after five years training in Aikido I still blink, shrink or jump when training stop/start with a bokken (wooden sword) as my attacker strikes my head stopping an inch away. Even though Hans Goto Sensei reminds me. “Be brave!” My instinct is to leap out of the way. Sometimes it holds. Other times it doesn’t. It’s an ongoing training.

So put your power pose to the test – over and over again so you can shift your response little by little or in one fast, permanent change. Most people need the practice. This is why we role-play realistic situations for media training to prepare for print, radio and TV interviews. I play everyone from Bill O’Reilly to Oprah— rude, hostile, belligerent, invasive, antagonistic, or overly intimate.

Because it’s hard to stand your ground under pressure when someone comes at you with aggressive words, a forceful body, an angry face, while you sweat under the hot lights or in a studio with a microphone thrust in front of you. This is especially daunting because the host holds the power in their (familiar) domain. 

One of my clients was on Geraldo for a TV segment on a particularly sensitive topic. “Off camera” walking the hallways in the studio, Geraldo’s producer asked my client the same question 29 times trying to get him to give a different response. My client held his ground and didn’t waver. 

The sensation of fear or uncomfortable-ness dulls with repetition. We had trained enough so my client didn’t rattle. Typically by the tenth time of me being invasive or aggressive in a role-play it’s not so scary and almost any client can hold his own.

But also, this client had been meditating since he was five, travels the world giving seminars, and worked with me diligently for over a year to prepare for media appearances. So his equanimity came from his depth of training in his work, personally and professionally as well as his direct preparation for press. 

The saying, it takes ten years to become an overnight sensation, applies here. We often don’t see the enormous work it takes behind the scenes to hold up in extreme circumstances.

A simple pose is typically not enough to shift behavior and internal dialog permanently. Put your pose into action over and over again until it becomes second nature.

6. Change a tiny habit and become your best self.

My client, Dr, Kyra Bobinet, Harvard trained, Stanford teacher, and CEO of engagedIN, a design firm that specializes on Behavior Design for the Health & Wellness Industry, explained to me that creating healthy habits is an iterative design process. This means that once you attempt to instill a habit there is typically a point where there are warning signs that it is breaking, and the person is inconsistent in doing the desired behavior. Even though, if you ask them, it’s 100% what they say they want. 

She claims those glitches lie in the unconscious brain, and her team makes the necessary refinements to reboot the positive habit. She cites that 95% of our behavior is being driven by our unconscious mind. (Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal book). Typically what happens next is that your conscious self sets up the plan.  But the unconscious self says, “Who do you think you are?” And they have an argument. In that gap is the answer to shifting behavior and making lasting change.

To make those desired changes “Conscious Self” and “Unconscious Self” need to align. Bobinet’s mentor, behavior design expert and social scientist BJ Fogg, has a system for that, called Tiny Habits.

Fogg says that there are three ways to change a behavior:

Option A. Have an epiphany

Option B. Change your environment (what surrounds you)

Option C. Take baby steps 

But, he says, rule out Option A and focus on the other two. I signed up for his tiny habits program to keep moving forward with my Aikido practice.

My three tiny habits are:

1. Do the Kototama every morning with John Stevens Sensei. This is a toning of sacred words and phrases that refers to the Japanese belief that mystical powers dwell in words and names and that speaking them can influence and effect our circumstances, environment, mind, body and soul.
2. Post an update to our Aikido Facebook page.
3. Transcribe one line from the notes I take in class to capture the brilliance of my teacher Hans Goto Sensei so I won’t forget. (Which I’ll later use as a Facebook post so it does double duty).

NOTE: This isn’t exactly in keeping with Fogg’s methods because his tiny habits are things that literally take only a few seconds to accomplish so that they are so simple that you actually do them and they become ingrained. I modified his approach to suit my goals as I’m accustomed to this type of practice to shift my habits. 

One lapse, though. I keep forgetting to celebrate myself!  Which is an integral part of Fogg’s ingraining process. That’s a practice I think we could all do better. It seems super easy to allow criticism to penetrate our psyche and soul, but not so easy to let in love and help, admiration and appreciation. So don’t forget this vital step.

I’ve been exploring ways to make my sound bite and publicity training programs easier to implement and in my research found a great example of this on the AARP life reimagined website. As soon as you arrive on the homepage this phrase greets you: “A new you, within reach. The life you’ve dreamed of having is actually very possible. To make it real doesn’t require major tasks or grand gestures. It’s about making small and simple steps 
to help you figure out what you really want, and then starting to make that happen.”

On their website I signed up for The Power of Appreciation 7-day course with Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt. I did the first assignment (write a quick note about what you love about your partner) and was immediately rewarded by clicking a button on their site that said, “I did it!” (This would be Fogg’s celebration act after you completed your three habits). My greater reward, came, however from my sweetie — who I sent the appreciation missive to as instructed — who ran into my office beaming, and started kissing me all over.

Starting with tiny habits bridges that gap between faking it and making it, and turns hope for a better you into a true, embodied reality.

7. Notice magic in the midst of life’s tedium

I heard an extended conversation on the radio with Salman Rushdie discussing the book he wrote for his younger son, Milan. He said, “There is a real world which is not like this enchanted world. In Luka and the Fire of Life, Luka’s mother, Soraya is the one with her feet on the ground who keeps mentioning that. She keeps saying that really it’s more important to do your math homework than to be great at a video game. And that in the real world, she says, there are no levels, there are only difficulties.”

“No matter how good you are at the world of magic, at the world of imagination and play, you actually do have to face the difficulties of the real world.  So I think that’s true. But it’s also true, I think, that we are creatures who live by stories. Human beings always have. And it’s very close to the heart of our nature….There’s no doubt the real world exists. “

“That’s, in a way, the given of this book, is that death really exists. And this boy, Luca, realizes that his father, who only has one life, not the thousand and one lives that you can collect in a video game, and spend with great profligacy. The person who matters most to him only has one life, and that life is ebbing away. And he has to try and save it”. 

“So again there, there’s a deliberate attempt in the novel to contrast the world of the game, in which life is cheap and plentiful and can be replenished, with the real world in which life is dear and valuable and there’s only one of it and it can’t be replenished. So that contrast is very much at the heart of the book between the real and the fantastic.”

There is magic in the tedium of our days. In the fact that in this moment we have just one life which is valuable and dear and can’t be replenished.

In casual conversation discussing the meaning of life around his desk in the dojo my teacher Hans Goto Sensei, said, “What if this is all there is? Isn’t it wonderful?”

Ummmn. Kinda. 

During our Aikdio training, as we fumble through a difficult technique, he often says, “It’s all good.” And, “Experiment. Play.” And many of his students repeat his phrases. Perhaps they already believe them. Or, in speaking them aloud over and over again, will come to believe them over time. These words, too, become a sort of Kototama. By intoning them we speak ourselves into new beings.   

While I know that he truly feels like it is all wonderful, I have my doubts.

Is this world really enough, if this is all there is?

I would like to feel that it is. And that’s one reason I keep training in Aikido, to be around my sensei who carries with him this trust.

When I told a friend of mine who went through a tough divorce, and then got dumped by a guy she had high hopes for what Sensei said, she cried. It gave her a smidgen of happiness. 

So inside the place where you’re not happy where you are, where you wish to be more powerful, or positive or just different than you are right now. Instead of faking it ‘til you make it, consider the advice of the late musician Jeff Buckley who said, “Be awake enough to see where you are at any given time and how that is beautiful and has poetry inside even in places you hate."

Often that’s all it is — a bit of poetry inside a moment. A smidgeon. And, day in, day out, that can be enough.

Susan Harrow is a top media coach, PR expert & author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul (HarperCollins). For 24 years she’s worked with clients like rock stars and celebrity chefs to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, as well as entrepreneurs, authors, coaches, consultants, speakers, healers and socially conscious businesses. Dozens of her clients have been on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America etc. She shows her clients and course participants how to double or triple their business with PR by using sound bites effectively. 

Curious about Aikido? Come on in for a free class. 

If you liked this article you might also like this one.

For more from Susan Harrow go here.

Holidays can be great. Many people have a day (or more) off from work, which allows them to spend time with loved ones, and perhaps enjoy the bounty of good food. So for some, holidays are heavenly. But for others, holidays can be downright hellish. They are suddenly spending time with people they don't really get along with, don't have much in common, or no longer enjoy. It seems that the people you spend the holidays with might have a big part in whether your holiday is blissful or dreadful. Though that plays a role, there are probably thing that you can do to make the best, and most meaningful, memories this Thanksgiving, regardless of who you're sharing your stuffing with. 

So how can you turn this holiday, or even holiday season, into a memorable one, for all the right reasons? First, try to empathize with and get to know the people you're with. A lot of times, people feel hurt that their relatives or friends don't know them well or can't relate. Instead of focusing on the negative, try to build some common bridges between you and your guests. Give them another chance and get to know them more. The more you learn, the more you'll realize how much we all have in common. It's our common humanity that unites us; we're all in this together.

Second, try to forgive past offenses. Some people fear the holidays because of previous emotional hurts or grudges. This can impair our relationships. Insofar as it's safe to do so, consider forgiving the people who have offended you in the past. Give them another chance to get to know you and relate with you. Moreover, building empathy helps this process, and facilitates forgiveness. Humility also plays a role: admitting to the ways you've offended them or let the relationship languish will make them more compassionate to forgiving you and restoring the relationship.

Finally, try to keep the bigger picture. Think about all that you have to be grateful for, even if your situations is not ideal. There is likely something that you appreciate in life, whether it's your health, your friends, your work, or even a warm place to go for the holidays. Many people are facing troubles in life, and if we count at leats some of our blessings, it might make us happier and more likely to enjoy the time we've got. Another way to keep the big picture is to try and remember what makes these times so special and meaningful. It's easy to get swept away in commercialism/materialism or bogged down with previous relational quarrels, that we forget what really matters most. Perhaps it's serving others, cultivating our relationships, or making new memories with new friends or additions to the family. Whatever that might be, try to keep a larger perspective, and you might find yourself enjoying this holiday season a little more. In fact, it might just feel like a little piece of heaven.

In the middle of BBC World news is a story about a South Korean pop star turned to bodybuilding. The Korean feminine body ideal, the report reveals, has long been petite and thin, but is now changing toward a more toned physique. Although some people, the star admits, consider her a freak or ponder if she is a transsexual, she believes that the ideal is indeed changing and musculature has become more acceptable on a female body. Also, a cosmetic surgeon who has regularly performed total body liposuction and removal of a calf muscle on young women observes less need for this type of treatment. Although appearance obsessed North Americans also commonly resort to various types of cosmetic surgery, particularly facelifts, a calf muscle removal sounded a bit drastic even to me – how was one to walk after such a surgical procedure? In any case, if the BBC story is to be trusted, Korean women now exercise to build more muscle instead of removing them for sleeker looks. The final shots show the star working with weights in the gym but while defined, she does not have the muscle bulk of the women’s bodybuilders when the sport first entered popular consciousness in late 1980s. Do women continue to feel empowered to build visible muscle in North America?

The First Women’s World Bodybuilding Championships took place in 1979 in Los Angeles previous to which “the only events available for women to enter were quasi-beauty pageants added to the end of men’s competitions” (St. Martin & Gavey, 1996, p. 48). These were organized by the International Federation of BodyBuilding (IFBB, currently, the International Federation of BodyBuilding & Fitness) that is still the major association for competitive bodybuilding events, particularly in North America.

The sport of bodybuilding is unique on its focus on the looks of the body. It differs from, for example, power lifting, from which bodybuilding draws some of its participants. In power lifting the winner is determined based on the amount of weight lifted without any concern for how the lifter’s body looks. In bodybuilding the size of the muscles (not what the muscles can do) determines the winner. While there might be an element of appearance in some other sports, such as figure skating or rhythmic gymnastic, these sports do not have a focus on building muscle size similar to bodybuilding.

Many feminist researchers have mapped the psychological benefits of bodybuilding or “working out with weights to reshape the body” (Bolin, 2003, p. 110) for women. Some argue that developing a muscular body increases women’s self-esteem and confidence, because they feel more powerful, healthier, sexier, and in control of their own bodies (Grogan et al., 2004; Fisher, 1997). Similar to the BBC news report, McGrath and Chanahee-Hill (2009) and Wesely (2001) point to bodybuilding as an act against Western ideals of thinness. Furthermore, the bodybuilder’s own body image shifts toward a more muscular physique (Ian, 2001) that becomes “an expression of the will to self-construct” (Roussel & Griffet, 2000, p. 140). Heywood (1998), a bodybuilder herself, argues that a muscular body gives American women a chance to “to stand out, be above the masses, different, a star” (p. 171). Despite these feelings of personal power and masterfulness, the muscular looks, St. Martin and Gavey (1986) add, has created additional psychological work to the female bodybuilder. This is a result of psychological necessity to work on retaining the femininity of the visibly muscular body.

The ‘femininity versus muscle controversy’ was already a central feature of the 1985 semi-documentary Pumping Iron II: The Women. The film followed three women contestants, Bev Francis, Carla Dunlop, and Rachel McLish in the 1983 Ms Olympia contest. These women represented three different types of body ideals: Francis, a former power lifter from Australia in her first body building competition, had the most muscle mass; McLish, who already had several bodybuilding championships, represented the ‘early’ muscular, but slender and feminine ideal; and Dunlop, the eventual winner, was somewhere between the two others.

While Francis had built the largest muscles, she did not win the competition. Instead, she was told to “get feminine or get out of bodybuilding” (quoted in St. Martin & Gavin, 1996). Considering that the point of a bodybuilding competition is to exhibit “the most developed and best defined muscle mass” (Ian, 2001, p. 151) such a conclusion appeared somewhat contradictory. Several researchers point out that at that point women’s physiques had grown increasingly large and instead of celebrating women’s success, the IFBB formalized ‘femininity’ as part of the judging criteria (Boyle, 2005). For example, the IFBB Professional Guidebook for Athletes, Judges, and Promoters for the 1991 Ms. International stated:

First and foremost [. . .] he/she is judging a women’s bodybuilding competition and is looking for an ideal feminine physique. Therefore, the most important aspect is shape [. . .]in regard to muscular development, it must not be carried to excess where it resembles the massive muscularity of the male physique (Cited in Ian, 2001, p. 78).

Notably, there is no ‘masculinity’ requirement for the male contestants. Feminist researchers, many bodybuilders themselves (e.g., Bolin, Heywood, Ian, Lowe, Tajrobekar), point to the contradictions embedded in the requirement to build the ideal feminine bodybuilders’ physique. They observe that building large muscles is still associated with maleness and as St. Martin and Gavey (1996) describe, the very muscular elite women bodybuilders’ bodies become to resemble the male bodybuilders’ bodies. Despite women’s own desire to build as big muscles as possible (e.g., Bolin, 2003; Boyle, 2005; Ian, 2001), there appears to be a continual pressure to balance the masculinizing effects of visible muscle mass by emphasizing the feminine. Various insignias of femininity are added (breast implants, long blond hair, feminine accessories such ear rings, visible make-up, manicured finger nails) to ensure compliance with the judging criteria and resulting competitive success. Anne Bolin, a bodybuilder and anthropologist, also points to differences in the women’s competition poses that ensure ‘feminine appeal’ as opposed to directly showing the muscle size similar to men’s poses.

When women bodybuilders proceeded to push the boundaries of building muscular bodies further, the IFBB continued to de-emphasize the muscle size in favor of symmetry, separation, and musculature (but not the extreme) in women’s competition. In 2005, IFBB introduced ‘the 20% rule’ according to which the female athletes had to decrease the amount of their muscularity by 20% for health and aesthetic reasons.

Some might consider that the professional bodybuilders have ‘gone too far’ in their muscle development that is no longer ‘natural’ and only achievable through drug use. While male bodybuilders might be charged with similar claims, women continue to negotiate the obvious biological possibility of growing a muscled female body and the social and psychological barriers of sporting such a body. These barriers are strong and many argue that women’s professional bodybuilding has been in decline since the early 2000s as it no longer attracted spectatorship. Ian, a professional bodybuilder and a feminist researcher, points out that if the IFBB does not promote women’s bodybuilding it is not going to attract spectators or sponsorship. Women’s bodybuilding, however, is not dead as the IFBB continue to organize their annual Ms. Olympia competitions.

However, there are now several categories of women’s bodybuilding. Already in 1995, ‘fitness competitions’ with lesser emphasis on muscle size were added to Ms. Olympia contests (Ian, 2001) to attract more women and more audience. Since then the IFBB has further negotiated the muscle versus femininity contradiction by adding several categories, all with reduced muscularity requirements and increased focus on ‘presentation’ (Tajrobekar, 2014), to women’s competition. Women can now compete in bikini, figure, fitness, and physique classes in addition to the Ms. Olympia competition. In their official website, the IFBB describes their women's 'disciplines' as women fitness and women's bodyfitness.

These classes have grown in popularity even if the numbers in Ms. Olympia might have declined (Boyle, 2005).

So is women’s bodybuilding an empowering practice that improves women’s self-esteem? Based on the research, not entirely. While women bodybuilders can feel empowered to challenge the thin feminine ideal, many still struggle to get accepted. For example, one participant in McGrath and Chananie-Hill’s (2009, p. 243) study explains:

I am going to keep lifting weights and if I get bigger than I am then I won’t quit lifting just because others think I am getting too big and because society thinks it is gross or because magazines put Photoshop women on their covers for the ideal body type.

The more recent research indicates that many bodybuilders do no want to ‘look too big’ and often attribute a ‘huge’ size to unnatural steroid use. One bodybuilder explained:

I don’t use steroids so I feel like I am still considered feminine but I know there are some people who do not agree with me but I feel like I have stayed plenty feminine. (McGrath & Chananie-Hill, 2009, p. 429)

Like this participant, many believe that they can be feminine and build muscles as long as they are not too big. Another bodybuilder clarifies that ‘too big’ for her is being bigger than men:

If you’re bigger than men, to me, I would never want to look like that, it’s just too big. To me, it’s like stepping over the line between being a women and being a man. (Boyle, 2005, p. 148)

Although this assessment gives women freedom to build musculature of significant size, many bodybuilders still confront negative feedback and misunderstanding. In their study, Aspridis, O’Halloran, and Liamputtong (2014) found that even participants in a figure class with a greater emphasis on feminine presentation and considerable less on musculature faced widespread stigma and isolation.

In categories such as the figure class, the contestants wear high heel shoes to pose in quite sexualized positions and thus, align close to the traditional thin and toned ideal. However, these women do engage in significant training to build their physiques and while their bodies might only slightly deviate from the feminine looks, they are no longer afraid to engage in some resistance training. At the same time, the focus remains on the body’s appearance and while there is some deviation from the beauty pageants, the contestants are judged based on ‘feminine presentation.’ Women’s competitive bodybuilding with its diverse categories might serve as one way of expanding how we define the feminine body ideal, but more work needs to be done to bring more acceptance of women’s abilities to use their strong bodies in diverse ways.

Works cited:

Aspridis, A., O’Halloran, P. & Liamputtong, P. (2014). Female Bodybuilding: Perceived Social and Psychological Effects of Participating in the Figure Class. Women in Physical Activity and Sport Journal, 22, 24-29.

Boyle, L. (2005). Flexing the tensions of female muscularity: How female bodybuilders negotiate femininity in competitive bodybuilding. 
Women's Studies Quarterly, 33, 134-149.

Fisher, L.A. (1997). “Building one’s self up”: Bodybuilding and the construction of identity among professional female bodybuilders. In P.L. Moore (Ed.), Building bodies (pp. 135–161). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.


Grogan, S., Evans, R., Wright, S., & Hunter, G. (2004). Femininity and muscularity: Accounts of seven women body builders. Journal of Gender Studies, 13(1), 49–61.

Heywood, L. (1998). Bodymakers: A cultural anatomy of women’s body building. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.


Ian, M. (2001). The Primitive Subject of Female Bodybuilding: Transgression and Other Postmodern Myths. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 12(3), 69-100.

Lowe, M.R. (1998). Women of steel: Female bodybuilders and the struggle for self-definition. New York, NY: New York University Press.


McGrath, S. A., & Chananie-Hill, R. A. (2009). Big Freaky-Looking Women”: Normalizing Gender Transgression Through Bodybuilding. Sociology of Sport Journal, 26, 235-354.

Roussel, P., & Griffet, J. (2000). The path chosen by female bodybuilders: A tentative interpretation. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 130–150.


St. Martin, L. & Gavey, N. (1996). Women's Bodybuilding: Feminist Resistance and/or Femininity's Recuperation?
 Body & Society, 2, 45-57.

Tajrobehkar, B. (2014). Book review of Strong and Hard Women: An Ethnography of Female Bodybuilding By Tanya Bunsell. Sociology of Sport Journal, 31, 377-380.

Wesely, J.K. (2001). Negotiating gender: Bodybuilding and the natural/unnatural continuum. Sociology of Sport Journal, 18, 162–180.

Shipwrecks ever stir the soul. The intense isolation of being lost at sea is deeply penetrating. As I stare up over morning coffee at a watercolor of the British schooner Walter Miller that was stranded and wrecked in a dense fog on Nauset bar off outer Cape Cod in the late 1800s, I can’t help but think of the hopelessness of the moment.

Cape Cod is a graveyard for shipwrecks. Since the early 1600s, more than 3,000 ships have run aground in the treacherous shoals of the Cape’s Great Outer Beach, from Provincetown to Chatham. Yet, turning despair into hope 121 years ago, the villagers queued up in a fierce nor’easter to shoot a rope line from the beach to the Walter Miller to attach a breeches buoy—a crude rope rescue device with an ancient leather harness—to rescue the crew, pulling them to shore, heave-ho by heave-ho.

I am having breakfast today with one of the modern day Outer Cape villagers, Dr. Barry Conant, my personal physician and a close friend for almost a quarter century. In the roiling waters of Baby Boomers bracing for end times, Barry and I are shipwrecked, feeling the isolation of grounding on the shoals of inveterate disease. There is no breeches buoy for the two of us, no heave-ho from the shore; the rescue rope goes out only so far.

And so we talk casually over scrambled eggs about shipwrecks, the shifting sands of life, and forgotten promises of a generation. However, the elephant in the room is the collective poignancy of the moment. “My goal,” says Barry, “is to feel good about myself on the way out.”

I nod in quiet agreement.

Our regular Saturday breakfasts are akin to an encounter in Tuesdays with Morrie, with both of us in the role of Morrie. Two guys trying to beat the curve, dead men still walking. Barry, at 60, has pancreatic cancer with a 12 percent chance of survival within the next three years; he also has a defibrillator in his chest, an inherited heart condition. Five years ago, at 59, I was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, a disease that stole my maternal grandfather, then my mother. I also have prostate cancer, but have decided to forego treatment. It is my exit strategy; I don’t want my family and friends to carry the burden of caring for me in the end stage of this horrific monster that eats away at my brain, bit-by-bit, day-by-day.

And so, the two of us press on.

Today is a roundtable of future promise, not failures of the past, for which there are many. We are card-carrying members of the once invincible Baby Boomer generation—sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation whose grandparents endured World War I, and whose parents survived the Great Depression and World War II, perhaps the last world conflagration until Armageddon. A record 75 million of us born between 1946 and 1964 who played by the rules, then broke the rules, then made new rules. Our profile is universal. Like the No Where Manof Lennon and McCarthy: “…Isn’t he a bit like you and me.”

The doctor and the patient, we are cut from different cloths, yet we recognize the parallels between us. Ever look between two facing mirrors; one can see a seemingly endless line of images fading into the distance. In principle, it’s called “looking into infinity.” Each mirror reflects the image into the other mirror, bouncing these reflections back and forth into infinity— gateways, some speculate, to parallel universes.

Barry and I today stand at the gateway. Together, we embrace the moment in a reflection of the past, with anticipation of what is to come. “Every day now, I feel that I’m put in a different classroom to learn a particular thing,” Barry says, as we share a third pot of coffee. “That’s what keeps me going—probing the heart beyond rote rules and regulations.” The son of a strict Baptist minister from Long Island, New York, Barry calls himself a reformed believer, now a Unitarian. The father of two, he is an avid fisherman on Cape Cod Bay where at low tide the water flows out for almost a mile with the pull of the moon, exposing soft ripples of mud flats rich, just below the surface, flush with steamers, quahogs and razor clams. Years ago, he sought to catch as many fish as possible. The bigger the trophy the better.

He is different now. The cancer has changed him, softened the drive of this Hemingway prototype of the Old Man and The Sea. He now throws as many fish back as he lugs to his backyard grill overlooking the bay. Live and let live. Barry has the eye of an eagle and the soul of a pastor. He watches intently for the laughing gulls, black gulls, and terns that dive for baitfish, sand eels, and baby herring, known in these parts as bay anchovies. He knows that the bluefish and stripers will chase the bait. Barry says you can fish on the flats for two hours—an hour before low tide and an hour after high tide— without having to worry. The tide, as it is with aging, creeps in deceptively.

Looking out at the horizon, Barry says one cannot discern the tidal flow, and, if caught unaware, the swim back is a long haul in waters where Great Whites have been spotted. “Not a place,” counsels the doctor, “for a guy like you with Alzheimer’s.

“But if you’re careful, and you’re going out in the early evening, the sunsets are indescribably beautiful,” he says. “The sun dips into a watery horizon, and as the candle is extinguished, the light fades up.”

So it is with life, he notes.

Barry and me, the doctor and the patient, we learn from one another, as the roles keep reversing in this conversation.

“I accept that my life today is not a long-term plan,” says Barry. “I think we are all eternal souls that, for the moment, are given mortal and physical bodies to learn and to understand the universe, to be more at peace with what we have been given this day. We are part of a greater whole, but the vast majority does not recognize this, using shortcuts, the tools and tricks of life. Most of us just don’t get deep enough to a place beyond memory.”

I can relate for I am gripped with memory, the loss of it, as I strive to speak and write from the heart, not the head, as I once did. I chase now a freeing spirit, much like a gifted athlete “in the zone,” or a master artist with a brush and a kaleidoscope of colors at the reach. Perseverance separates the artist from the dabbler. As you lose self, one finds self—the dichotomy of two opposites happening at once. The bright guys might call this quantum physics; I call it the journey from the embryo to the soul.

Barry is searching himself, a path perhaps more discernible for those with cancer, Alzheimer’s, AIDS, ALS, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s disease, or any number of vile diseases that attack the soul as well as the body. “It doesn’t matter to me if the cancer comes back,” he tells me, “so long as I am learning. I’m in that place now.” Barry says he tries to ignore fear, rising above it.

I tell him that I am motivated by fear. But today we find each other along this journey, seeking the essence of truth, trying to separate the real from the imagined. A favorite Old Testament scripture, I note, is Isaiah 6:8: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"

Ultimately, whatever direction we are sent, our timelines are in place, the tumblers are clicking. We are grateful for the tick.

And so, I ask Barry what he would do if he knew today was to be his last; could he, as the rock band Nickleback resounds in classic lyrics: “…Say goodbye to yesterday; would you live each moment like your last?”

Barry says he hopes all his regrets would be gone, all his apposite goodbyes delivered to family and friends. Then, he says, he would go fishing on the flats, one last time.

I tell him that I’d walk the beach, a place that has always given me solace. Maybe I’ll see him casting a line.

Barry and I—the doctor and the patient—are standing naked and aground today, working to follow our hearts, and trying to regenerate. Shipwrecks stir the soul.

Elimination outside of the litter box in unwanted locations is the most common cat owner complaint and a major reason that cats are taken to a shelter or rescue center.  Yet contrary to what some pet owners might believe, spite and anger are not the reasons a cat will no longer use their litter box.  Often the answer lies somewhere in their environment. 

Many years ago I saw a case that really brought home the need to look at every aspect of the home environment when evaluating a complaint of non-litter box use.  My patient Princess was a black and white cat who are often called  ”tuxedo Kitties." 

Princess was 8-year-old spayed female cat and had lived with this family her entire life.  However, for at least the past 5-6 years she had not regularly used a litter box for either urination or defecation.  Over the years she had eliminated on carpeted areas necessitating removal of the carpet, on wood floors, behind furniture etc. just about everywhere in the house.   When I read the history form my first question to myself was what prompted them to seek help now?  Further on down the page I saw the answer, Princess was now eliminating on the kitchen counters and the stove, the straw that broke the camels back!

With that information in mind I set about learning more about the environment where Princess lived.  Princess lived in a ranch home with two adults and 4 other cats, two neutered males and two spayed females.  They all had been together for a number of years and were close in age; the youngest female was 5 years old.  While the wife left the home daily to go to work, the husband worked at home so the cats did have human company during the day.  

Next we moved onto where the cats spent their time and how they interacted with each other.  The cats had access to the entire house, including the finished basement/family room.  All the cats could go outside into the fenced yard when the weather allowed, but Princess stayed inside.   Dry food was available all day in the kitchen and once each day cats got their own bowl of wet food, also in the kitchen.  Princess spent over 80% of her time in the living room. In fact she rarely left the couch.  At night the cats were free to roam indoors where ever they pleased.  All the cats seemed to get along except the wife said one of the male cats; Frenchy “intimidated” Princess on a regular basis.  My ears perked up!  “What does this intimidation look like” I asked?  She replied “Well, Frenchy will chase Princess around the house yowling at her and she runs and screams.  At times she may even lose control of her eliminations and soil while she runs.”  She also added that Frenchy will also spray urine on the walls and was being treated with medication for that problem by her veterinarian.

The owners had provided a map of the home so next I wanted to know where the litter boxes were placed in the home.  All litter boxes were in the lower level, the basement.  There were 5 boxes (one per cat as they had been told) and the door to the basement was always open.  In fact the family would go down there to watch television and all the cats except Princess would come down and join them.  They did not recall ever seeing Princess in the basement.  They did scoop out the litter box every week, but rarely emptied out the entire box, nor did they wash it and refill it with new litter on a regular basis.

Next I wanted to examine Princess so I removed her from her carrier.  She looked quite frowzy, her coat was not groomed, she was not clean and her pupils were very dilated.  I thought perhaps this was just a result of being transported to my office so I asked the owner if she always looked this way.   She replied, well yes, we call her “Princess the lump because she never leaves the couch or does anything.”  While they loved her they were not enjoying her not only because of the house soiling, but because she was very limited in her interaction with them.   They were at the end of their rope.

After gathering all the information I reached a diagnosis and we settled on a treatment plan.  Princess was terrified, anxious and unable or unwilling to move around the house, especially to access the litter box. I requested that initially the owner use one of the bedrooms as a place for Princess to live.  Although this might require the door to be closed to keep out Frenchy we agreed that would preferable to living on the couch. In her room she was provided with everything she needed, food, water, litter box, window perch, hiding and sleeping areas.  If the owners were home they could keep the door open as long as there was no fighting, but at night they were asked to close the door.  At the present time we were going to focus on Princess and come back to Frenchy’s urine marking later.

What happened you may ask?  Ten days later I spoke with the family. Princess had used the litter box every day since being in her own room, not one single accident.  The door was open during the day and she would primp, groom and rub her head on the doorway of her room.  She looked happy, sleek and beautiful.  Frenchy did not usually enter or bother her.  And as an added bonus, Frenchy no longer marked with urine! 

This harmony and good use of the litter box lasted for another 2 years until Frenchy unfortunately passed away due to illness.  Princess totally changed, was out in all parts of the house, loving and interactive with the other cats and her human family and never soiled outside the box again.

So what was the answer?  Princess and Frenchy did not get along; he did not wish to see her move about the house.   He would allow her to live on the couch, but go no further, if he caught her he chased her.  And all Princess needed was a toilet that she could reach without running into Frenchy. Once we gave her a space of her own out of the main traffic area, he respected that and she could use the litter box whenever she needed to.

In a multiple cat home be sure to spread the resources out all over the house.  That means multiple locations for food and water bowls, litter boxes, resting and hiding areas.  This allows all cats’ access to the things they need and privacy when they need it and not have to associate with cats that they do not like.   Like I said, sometimes it’s all about location.

I have an allergy to superiority. It’s my Achilles heel. Start talking down to me and patronizing me in a belittling tone and I can feel my blood pressure begin to step up. My nervous system triggers and I have to work hard at quickly assuring it (me) that I am safe and to please calm down because I don’t want to react and get defensive with the person who is (or I feel is) demeaning me (uh, sometimes they’re not…blush). Getting defensive would only exacerbate the situation and I would lose—a chance at learning something, the relationship, and my own sense of inner peace and self-confidence.

The perfect depiction of this situation is when Dr. Bruce Banner feels some sort of threat and begins to transform into the Incredible Hulk. He leaves quite a mess behind and completely ruins his clothes. I can’t afford to purchase new clothes. This post is for anyone that has to deal with people that are difficult and that tend to push our hulk buttons. Don’t let them win. Try these advanced ninja people strategies instead. (A ninja is a specially trained sneaky kind of assassin. These skills are designed to help you secretly shut down that hulk trigger, so that you can leave a confrontation with your dignity in tact. You cool cat.)

It’s about them

The first and most important thing to know is that often when someone is saying something (aka giving unsolicited advice, blaming, attacking), they often are talking about themselves. Before you react, imagine if what they said actually applies to them. Heck, you can even turn it around and ask them if they ever experienced xyz or felt the way they are suggesting you feel.

Can you hear me?

Let’s say you’re dealing with one of those people that actually can’t shut up and has a nasty habit of interrupting you. You can hold up your hand with your index finger (not the middle one) or simply say, “I’m not finished yet, one moment please.” Or you can deepen it and share, “I really hadn’t finished and when you interrupt and change the subject, I feel like you’re not interested in me or what I have to say.” If they are just chomping at the bit, you can listen to them. You could also share that you really want to hear what they are saying yet you can’t focus and truly hear them until you can finish what you were saying.

Being heard without advice

Perhaps you actually just want to share with the person and you don’t want their advice. You can deter your frustration by telling them up front that you’d like to share a story or experience without getting advice. Ask if they can just listen so you can get a few things off your chest. If the situation delves into an area where you think you’ll get disagreement from the other party, finish it with something like, “I’m not asking you to agree with me, but can you understand where I’m coming from?” Yet if you actually want someone’s advice with the freedom to do what you want to do (without upsetting them or feeling obligated to do what they say), try being up front about it with, “I would like your opinion about XYZ, yet really want to discern what I want to do about, so will you give me advice even if I don’t end up following it?”

Ninja power listening

We’ve talked about a few things you can say. The most essential ninja strategy of all is to listen. Really listen. Understand what the person is saying and what they appear to be feeling underneath the words. Then repeat it so they know you really understand them. This single act of acknowledging what the other person says can reduce most of the friction in life. You don’t have to agree with them. In fact good listening isn’t about agreeing at all, only understanding another person’s perspective. Ninja listening is about understanding another’s perspective and then compassionately relaying what you’ve heard them say. When a person feels heard and understood, they can more fully hear you and healthy bonding occurs.

Our enemy

Let go of control. One of the most misunderstood dynamics in a relationship is the concept of control. Maybe it comes from too much sales training. Manipulative communication tactics such as, “the first one to speak loses” is the death nail to successful trust building. Deep down people actually do feel manipulated and can respond defensively or passive aggressively. Maybe not today, yet definitely tomorrow. Relationships are not win-lose. Let go of trying to control the outcome. Drop the analysis, judgment and just listen with an open mind and heart. Oh, and when the other person is speaking, empty your mind of what you want to say and how you want to respond. Good listening and understanding can’t take place when your brain is assessing, controlling, strategizing, and thinking of your own response. You missed the opportunity to connect and the other person can feel it—and then they become more defensive and begin operating from a win/lose communication style because they are literally ‘losing’ from not being heard. 

Ninjas need boundaries too

Now that you’re a dynamite ninja listener, you may discover the world is filled with people that desperately want to be heard (there just aren’t enough ninja listeners in the word), so you get bombarded with people that want to tell you their problems. This is good with family and close friends. Do it when you can with others. Set limits when you can’t. For instance, perhaps a co-worker wants to talk about their problems and you don’t really have time or energy. Plus, you need to keep your job and focus on the tasks you’ve been hired to fulfill. You can simply respond by letting the person know that you’d like to hear more, yet have to get back to work. You can also compassionately say, “It sounds like you’ve been through a lot of pain and hurt with that. I hope you can find somebody to talk to about these things.”

Lasting love is about compatibility

Love relationships have the amazing ability to trigger our hulk reactions—especially when the partners are mismatched. Two keys to a winning partnership are a couple communicates and how they repair after a disagreement. When couples can effectively incorporate ninja listening skills and truly understand and appreciate each other’s viewpoints, they don’t try to change each other and healthy bonding takes place. Even in disagreements, the love and complete acceptance of each other trumps the disagreement and healthy repairs can be made. The problem arises when the two are mismatched (such as they have major differing views/values from each other and/or one or both parties really wants to change the other person). Choose your partner wisely. Determine if you can have great conversations and can listen to each other for hours. Look past the sexual chemistry and security needs and notice if there’s a level of intolerance when you or they are talking. Or do either one of you secretly (or not so secretly) wish the other person would change.

Use your freedom of speech

Don’t be afraid of your feelings and speak your truth as it occurs. One reason people get emotionally hijacked and turn into a hulk is that they are afraid to feel their uncomfortable feelings. They want to get along with others, so they bottle up their feelings. Perhaps they don’t share what movie they want to see, what food they want to eat, what they want to do and keep giving in to the other person’s desires. What generally happens is that, like a ticking time-bomb, all that built up frustration comes out at once. Another scenario is when someone deals with a person that constantly criticizes for a dozen little things like a dripping water faucet. If the receiver of the water torture doesn’t address the drip as it occurs and just muffles any anger, an explosive burst is guaranteed (or an unhealthy implosion in the body). Speak up and voice your feelings before disaster strikes.

Some examples of speaking your truth include:

• “I really don’t want to eat pizza again.”

• “I’m overloaded with work and can really use your help with the children tonight.”

• “I feel hurt when you point out my flaws and I personally beat myself up about these things more than you know. Can you try offering me a bit of kindness and support because I could really use that instead.”

Life is a learning process and no one is perfect. Even the most skilled ninjas miss the mark at times. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just keep trying. It’s a practice and an art. Many times it’s about discovering our personal triggers (Achilles heel) and discreetly calming ourselves down before we react foolishly in the world.

I study resilience all around the world, and the thing I’ve learned most is that what we have inside of us (personal strengths, positive beliefs, hope for the future, etc.) accounts very little for why people survive great adversity. If we can learn anything from the story of Aaron Purmort, who died of a cancerous brain tumor shortly after the birth of his child, it’s that we are stronger when we are loved and well looked after.

Aaron Purmort’s story was recounted stage by stage by his wife, Nora McInerny (the two met online through Twitter and made quite a sensation when they married). This is such a compelling story of a woman’s love for her partner. And that’s why it is also a story about resilience. My own work, and that of many other researchers and therapists, shows us that when we have good relationships, a sense of belonging, experience some personal control (even in a situation of powerlessness, like coping with cancer), and have our basic needs met, we are much more likely to cope well with incredible adversity. In other words, just as we are now realizing that traumatic events during childhood like physical abuse and neglect are related to physical health problems (e.g., heart disease and obesity) during adulthood, so too can we say that the more our social connections and communities facilitate our access to the physical, emotional and psychological supports we need, the more likely we are to be resilient. 

That might sound like a very subjective opinion, but the bulk of the research on resilience shows that under adversity the quality of our environment counts much more to our success than individual qualities. Motivational speakers might pack auditoriums with the message “You can change your life if you change your thinking” but the truth is, our lives are a lot more changeable the better our governments, employers, schools, and families provide us with what we need to do well when we're in crisis.

If I could be even more provocative…let’s not forget that Aaron obviously had health insurance, and all the other comforts that allowed him to weather this terrible situation. Imagine someone who was just as ill but unbelievably stressed by the cost of every IV, every pill, and every night’s stay in a hospital bed. You see, we think of resilience so often as heroic personal strategies, when in fact, it’s us, all of us, who make people resilient. Whether there’s trouble at work, or a major flood, a bully at school, or cancer, we are better able to cope the better our support systems are at meeting our needs as they change.

If you want to be more resilient, build both internal and external resources. You’ll find that the external supports (a job, a friend, a house, and a ride, as Al Condeluci says) that you build around you will make you much better able to cope with stress. Two minutes of meditation, a few yoga moves, or mental gymnastics won’t get you through cancer. A loving wife who notices how special you are, and a good hospital to treat you, will make a far bigger difference to the final outcome and the quality of life you experience getting there.

Bella's intro: The most famous deception researcher in the world is Paul Ekman. You've probably read about him or his work and seen him on TV, either as himself or Tim Roth, the actor who played him on "Lie to Me." Here's something you may not know: A growing list of deception researchers has become increasingly skeptical of Ekman's claims. (I'm one of them, though, as you know, I identify more as a singles researcher than a deception researcher these days.) A reporter took on the challenge of looking into the skepticism, and wrote about his findings in the Chronicle of Higher Education in "The Liar's 'Tell': Is Paul Ekman stretching the truth?". I have been asked repeatedly what I think of the article. Instead of answering, I asked the person who currently really does do the very best and most important research on deception if she would write a critique as a guest post. Fortunately for all of us, she agreed. Here is what Professor Maria Hartwig, from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has to say. It is what the Chronicle article should have said. Many thanks, Maria!

 Telling Lies: Fact, Fiction, and Plain Nonsense

 Guest Post by Maria Hartwig, Ph.D.

Recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece on the work of Professor Paul Ekman, "The Liar's 'Tell': Is Paul Ekman stretching the truth?". Ekman is a famous emotion researcher whose work on deciphering clues to the mind based on the expressions of the human face has had a wide impact on the scientific study of emotion, as well as on popular culture. Few psychologists have had a tv-show on a major network based on their life’s work, like Ekman did (“Lie To Me”, running on Fox for three season). He has been a consultant to various government entities, perhaps most famously through his involvement with the nation-wide aviation security program entitled SPOT (Screening Passengers Through Observation Techniques).

I applaud the Chronicle’s ambition to examine Paul Ekman work. However, the article in the Chronicle adopts an unnecessarily ambivalent stance to the scientific status of Paul Ekman’s work on lie detection. The subheading of the article “Is Paul Ekman stretching the truth?”. The answer to this question is yes. In order to understand why there is little need for ambivalence about the claims Ekman is making, it may be helpful to take a closer look at some of the basic premises of Ekman’s views, as well as assertions made in the Chronicle piece. I will articulate the core ideas that Ekman is promoting, and then compare these to the findings from the scientific literature on deception detection. I will then offer some possible explanations as to why Ekman’s story is so compelling, despite the vast body of literature that shows that it is not scientifically tenable.

The Claims vs. the Scientific Findings

Claim 1: Lying is an emotionally charged enterprise, and may leave behavioral traces

As the Chronicle piece makes clear, Ekman’s work originated in the study of emotion. It is uncontroversial to state that humans experience and display emotions, and that the face is a particularly rich source of emotional expression. The problem with linking emotions to deception lies in making clear exactly what it is that a person might feel when they are telling lies. If you ask the average person, they often reply that liars feel negative emotions, such as nervousness, anxiety, and fear of failing to act convincingly. In fact, this appears to be a near universal belief. It is true that people may feel such emotions when they are lying. But it is crucial to recognize that truth tellers might experience similar feelings. How would you feel if the police suspected you of a crime that you did not commit? What emotional experiences would you have while truthfully denying your guilt in the context of a police interrogation? It seems reasonable that you might experience a host of negative emotions - perhaps nervousness, anxiety and fear, in addition to anger about being wrongfully suspected. We do not need to invoke criminal investigations to understand the general logic behind this reasoning. Anyone who has been in a social situation where his or her truthfulness is questioned knows that it can be an unpleasant and stressful experience, even if one is telling the truth. Bella DePaulo has articulated a scientific theory called the self-presentational perspective on deception that emphasizes these similarities between lying and truth telling. The basic premise of the theory can be summarized in a relatively simple fashion. While lying is different from truth telling in the sense that liars’ claim to honesty is bogus, the behaviors may be similar in important respects: Liars and truth tellers share the goal of being perceived as honest. Consequently, to the extent that they care about being believed, both liars and truth tellers might invest effort in presenting themselves as honest, and might experience negative emotions at the prospect of failing to reach this goal. In short, the emotional approach to lying is simplistic and fails to recognize the emotional processes that may be experienced by truth tellers.

Claim 2: Lies can be detected through behavioral observation

Ekman has stated numerous times in the media that lies can be detected with impressive degrees of accuracy. In the Chronicle article, he claims the following: "The face is the most powerful indicator of deception. […] But it only gets you to 70-percent accuracy. That’s not a useful figure. In order to get over 90 percent you need to involve gesture, voice, and nuance of the content of speech.” Before examining the merit of these claims, let me briefly explain some of the basic features of the deception literature. Deception scholars use a variety of methods. Most often, they induce people to lie or tell the truth in laboratory situations. Sometimes, they study the characteristics of lying in non-experimental, real life situations – for example, when a person is lying or telling the truth during a police interrogation. At times, deception researchers compile meta-analyses. These are statistical summaries of an entire body of scientific work. Meta-analyses can be very informative, because they provide a condensed picture of a vast body of work. Charles F. Bond, Jr. and Bella DePaulo conducted a meta-analysis of over 200 samples examining human lie detection accuracy. They found an average accuracy rate of 54% - only slightly higher than what one would expect from guessing. Importantly, this accuracy rate varied very little from study to study. In other words, it is unusual to find studies where people perform much different from a near-chance hit rate. The assertion that observing the face alone yields a 70% accuracy rate, and that considering other indicators can yield accuracy rates over 90% is clearly not supported by the scientific literature.

Ekman appears unimpressed by this meta-analysis. In the Chronicle article, he argues that the lie-catchers in the meta-analysis had received no training in behavioral cues, and that comparing the 54% accuracy rate with what trained experts can do amounts to comparing apples to oranges. Actually, this is simply not true. The meta-analysis included studies where people with training and presumed expertise in lie detection (e.g., professionals such as law enforcement officers) made judgments. Bond and DePaulo carried out a statistical comparison of the hit rates obtained by people with and without expertise. Their results showed that experts did not outperform non-experts. In other words, both lay people and trained experts achieve a hit rate only marginally higher than chance, and there is no evidence that experts perform any better than lay people.

Perhaps what Ekman means when he complains that lie-catchers in the accumulated literature had received no training in behavioral cues is that they had not received his particular program of training. That is, perhaps he means that it is his training method, not general on-the-job training or professional expertise, that generates accuracy rates over 90%. It is true that the meta-analysis on lie detection accuracy did not examine the performance of people who had received Ekman’s training. The explanation for this is simple: To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single published study in which Ekman has tested the effectiveness of his training. Based on the available literature, which shows that the effects of training programs are small to moderate, accuracy rates over 90% as a function of training seem plainly implausible.

Claim 3: Lies are easier to detect when the stakes are high

Ekman has long argued that one of the main findings from lie detection research - that people obtain hit rates just slightly above chance - is a laboratory artifact. More specifically, he claims that stakes of the laboratory are not sufficiently high to generate strong emotion, which in turn may result in what he calls leakage. Simply put, his view is that lies that have serious consequences and involve strong emotions are easier to detect. Let us see what the literature on lie detection shows about this claim. First, the meta-analysis on lie detection accuracy discussed earlier compared studies where liars and truth tellers were motivated to be believed compared to when they were not. The studies in which people were motivated included people telling serious lies about crimes. If Ekman is right, accuracy rates should be higher in the body of studies where people were more motivated to be believed. This is not what the comparison showed. Actually, accuracy rates were similar across these two conditions – just slightly above what could be expected from guessing. However, the analyses showed that both liars and truth tellers who are motivated to be believed appear more deceptive. As suggested earlier, it may be that when the consequences of failing to convince are serious, both liars and truth tellers experience distress, which makes them look suspicious.

Second, a more recent meta-analysis focused on the question of whether laboratory research generates results that do not apply to real-life settings. In this analysis, we were interested in how detectable lies were across different settings – for example, whether lies were more obvious when liars were motivated, when the statement involved strong emotion, and when they were told by people other than college students. The results showed no evidence that there was more leakage of signs of deception when the circumstances were more similar to real-life, high-stake settings. It seems that Ekman’s claim that laboratory settings are artificial is baseless – instead, the findings are robust and translate to different contexts and situations.

Perhaps the reader wonders how it is possible that lies that involve strong emotion and considerable consequences are not easier to detect than lies told in more trivial circumstances. In some ways, this insults our intuition. It seems very plausible to think that a serious lie will be accompanied by more effort and distress than a trivial lie. In all likelihood, the latter is true. But it is important to realize that accurate lie detection in high-stake situations means not simply being able spot distress told by a liar, but also being able to distinguish this distress from that displayed by an innocent person. This is not an easy task. Imagine that two professional athletes who have both been accused of doping appear on national television. Imagine further that they are both proclaiming that they are innocent, but one of them is lying and the other is telling the truth. It is not hard to imagine that both athletes might experience some form of distress in this situation. Lie-catchers who watch these two statements face the very difficult task of deciding whether the signs of affect they see are indications of deception, or of an innocent person’s apprehension of the situation they are in. As I have discussed in some depth, the scientific literature clearly shows that people do not perform well at this task. The reason seems to be that contrary to Ekman’s claim, liars and truth tellers do not display very different behaviors, even when the stakes are considerable.

The Lure of Fiction about Deception

The notion that lies might be evident in behavior is part of our cultural mythology. Perhaps the most iconic depiction of this notion is found in the tale of Pinocchio, whose nose grew when he was telling a lie. It would be very convenient if Pinocchio’s nose was not mere fiction – if we could tell when others lied to us, we would not be betrayed in our private or professional lives. Moreover, if there was a metaphorical Pinocchio’s nose, many of the fundamental problems faced by the legal system would be moot. Guilty people would always be convicted, and innocent people would always be acquitted (unfortunately, it is increasingly clear that this is not the case).

People seem to believe in the existence of a sort of Pinocchio’s nose. That is, there seems to be a pervasive, pan-cultural belief that lies ‘show’, particularly in signs of discomfort and stress. Yet, I have argued here that research does not support this belief. How can it be that so many people are misguided about the psychology of deception? This is a complicated question for sure. Ekman’s response seems to be that half a century of research is wrong. I favor a different explanation. I believe that the reason that Ekman’s story is so compelling is precisely because it fits with common sense. More specifically, I think we want to believe that liars betray themselves. It is disturbing to think that people can lie to us and get away with it. Conversely, it is unpleasant to think that innocent people might face consequences for actions they did not commit. Social psychologists have found that people have a belief in a just world– a profound faith in the fairness of the world. According to this belief, people get the outcomes they deserve. That is, bad things happen to people who do bad things. Of course, inspecting the world from a rational perspective, it is not hard to generate examples that show that the world can be a very unfair place. Atrocities may go unpunished, while innocent people may suffer terribly due to no fault of their own. Why would people believe that the world is fair, when it is so easy to provide evidence that it is not? It seems that people cling to the belief in a just world because it provides some degree of psychological comfort. It might be difficult to face existence in a capricious world. Believing that justice will be done might be a way to cope with the uncertainties of life. Hence, it may be that people believe that lies show because it fits with a general view of how the world works – that it is a place where people face consequences for bad actions.

Concluding remarks

At the end of the Chronicle article, Ekman is asked what it feels like to continue to face criticism about his life’s work. He states that he does not pay attention to it anymore. This strikes me as a peculiar attitude toward concerns raised by a number of highly reputable scholars in his own field. More remarkably, Ekman describes an anecdote in which an unnamed critic of his work told him that he or she loves his work, but attacks it simply because it is a way to advance his or her career. It thus appears that Ekman believes that his critics’ motivations are dubious and that their criticism is intellectually disingenuous. Unsurprisingly, I do not share this belief. I believe the reason why Ekman’s work has long been under attack is because deception scholars genuinely care about the facts derived from their domain, and because they dislike the propagation of myths. The concern about the validity of Ekman’s claims does not come from a few vocal critics. Instead, some of the most prolific researchers in the area of deception have questioned the evidence supporting Ekman’s assertions. There is consensus in the literature that nonverbal behaviors are unreliable signs of deception, and to my knowledge, no other deception researcher claims that accuracy rates over 90% are possible based on training in observational techniques.

In summary, Ekman’s claim that the face is the most powerful indicator of deception is not only stretching the truth; it is fictional. The truth is that the face is a highly ambiguous canvas, and interpreting the expressions displayed in the human face is a treacherous enterprise. To the extent that there are traces of deception, they are most likely to be found in the accounts spun by liars—that is, the cues are in what people say – their words, not their nonverbal cues. Moreover, the claim that people can reliably obtain lie detection accuracy rates over 90% has simply never been demonstrated. To the contrary, there are hundreds of studies on human lie detection ability showing that such hit rates are in all likelihood out of reach, especially on the basis of sheer observation of behavior. If Ekman wants to silence his persistent critics, he needs to subject his claims about outlandish accuracy rates in lie detection to the standard process of scientific peer review. Until then, his claims should be met with the skepticism they deserve. The truth is that lie detection is a very difficult task. This may not be a pleasant truth to accept, but then again, not all truths are.

About the Author

Maria Hartwig is an Associate Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. She conducts research on the psychology of deception, particularly in the context of interviews and interrogations. Her research on interviewing to detect deception has attracted the attention of law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the United States and Europe. In 2011, she testified before the United States Congress about behavioral science and airport security.

Postscript from Bella: Thanks again, Maria! And to readers: In her post, Professor Hartwig linked to numerous journal articles. I discussed many of the relevant points in other blog posts and books; you can find the links in "Here's what I know about lying and detecting lies." Plus, one more side note: "Telling Lies" was the name of the very first paper I ever published on deception. My advisor and co-author, Robert Rosenthal, loved the title because of its three meanings. A few years later, Ekman used it as the title of one of his books. Somehow, it just seemed perfect to use it again as the title of this post.

It’s not always fair to use labels to describe people, but sometimes, they just fit.  See how many of these Evil Eleven work at your organization.  They can try your patience, kill your morale, and even put you at risk of harm, if you don’t use your experience, intuition, and wits to outmaneuver them.  

THE BULLY

Behaviors: Uses verbal or physical intimidation, by being overly-aggressive in meetings and conversations.  They use their rank, status, size, or tone to demean others. Men and women can be bullies, as bosses or co-workers.

Reasons: Lots of behind-the-scenes reasons, often from a horrible childhood. Their poor self-esteem masks their fears. Plus, it’s worked for them before. 

Ways to Cope: Gather specific examples for your boss or for HR.  Stand up for yourself early and often. Don’t get steamrolled or become fearful in their presence.

THE IDEA KILLER

Behaviors: These types use lots of sarcasm, especially during meetings.  The trouble with them is their internal monologues become external. 

Reasons: They’re burned out, frustrated with their peers or bosses.  They won’t admit they have poor job status and no ability to advance.  It’s a learned behavior from their family and peers. 

Ways to Cope: If you’re the boss, use coaching with examples to tell them to stop these public displays of their disgruntled nature. If you’re a co-worker, ignore them or use peer pressure to get them to be quiet by saying other people have the right to their opinions without being criticized.

THE SMART SLACKER

Behaviors: Knows how to work hard; just doesn’t want to. Missing on Duty or Retired on Duty. Works only when it helps him or her.  The worst is when they teach other employees to slack.

Reasons: Burned out, dissatisfied, topped out, not enough job challenges, wants to retire but can’t afford to.  Frustrated, misses the “good old days,” with “better” bosses, co-workers, policies, or an easy-slack culture.

Ways to Cope: If you’re a boss, coach them and use their “legacy employee” status to remind them of their responsibilities. If you’re a co-worker, provide your boss with specific examples where they aren’t pulling their weight.  If it gets rough, ignore them and focus on your own success. 

THE HARASSER

Behaviors: Uses physical, verbal, sexual, or racially harassing jokes, comments, gestures, or behaviors. They create a hostile work environment using intimidation, power, fear, humiliation, and embarrassment.

Reasons: Learned behavior; past behaviors that have worked; their need to keep people one-down to them.  They’re either stupidly unaware or don’t care about gender, cultural, or diversity differences.

Ways to Cope: You have the right to work in a harassment-free environment and your organization has a legal duty to protect you and enforce harassment prevention policies. Don’t be afraid to report examples to your boss or HR; don’t give up your personal power.   

THE TATTLETALE

Behaviors: This one runs to “mom or dad” (the boss) for small things; loves to drop hints about co-workers not doing their jobs to management; ruins any fun in the office.  Creates bad feelings everywhere they go.

Reasons: Secretly envious or jealous; may use this as a strategy to get ahead of others or promote, but it’s more about not feeling good about themselves.  

Ways to Cope: These people are surprised when they get the silent treatment from co-workers or don’t get asked out with the group for drinks after work.  Watch what you say around them but be professional and don’t retaliate.   

THE PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE

Behaviors: Kings and Queens of behind-the-scenes manipulations, guilt, and diversion.  They act wounded when you call them out for missing deadlines, not doing their work and blaming others.  Master manipulators who redirect blame.

Reasons: Learned during childhood to exert control over situations where they felt no power.

Ways to Cope: Realize when you leave them after they whine and complain about how and why they can’t finish their work, if you feel bad about it or it seems like your fault, they won. Don’t rise to their bait. 

THE CHAMPION

Behaviors: Loves to point out all the injustices, problems, and conflicts in the workplace. Runs to the boss or HR, often with petty complaints about others that really have no merit.

Reasons: They define themselves as entitled whistleblowers and defenders of what’s right. 

Ways to Cope:  If you’re the boss, focus on their poor work performance and not their constant complaints that you’re allowing things to fall apart. Use progressive discipline and performance improvement plans. If you’re a co-worker, tell them to mind their own business, do their job, and leave you alone to do yours.

THE GOSSIP

Behaviors: Talks about everyone else to everyone else, whether they want to hear it or not. Can create cliques, team conflicts, and the silent treatment among co-workers.  Great at ruining marriages, relationships, and friendships. 

Reasons: Bored, not enough to work to do, angry at certain people and uses gossip to sabotage personal or marital relationships

Ways to Cope: Watch what you say around them. Set little traps to see if what you told them gets back to the person you mentioned.  If you’re a boss, coach them into compliance.

THE SUBSTANCE ABUSER 

Behaviors: Attendance problems, accidents, conflicts with co-workers and bosses, appearance and health concerns. Worst case: Theft issues, arrests.

Reasons: Starts with home or health problems and escalates to at-work drug or alcohol use.

Ways to Cope: Keep your money and property away from these people.  Workplace alcoholics miss work; workplace dopers steal from their employer and co-workers.  If you’re a boss, use your company’s “reasonable suspicion” testing process and response policies.

THE PSYCHOPATH

Behaviors: Lying, hurting, and manipulating people for their own benefit.  No empathy for others. Smooth like a snake and just as dangerous. 

Reasons: They were born this way and they’re nearly impossible to treat with therapy or manage at work.

Ways to Cope: Limit your interactions, don’t give out too many personal details about your life, and keep your guard up.

THE NARCISSIST 

Behaviors: The world revolves around them and their egos are on display at all times. They are overly-sensitive to being slighted, ignored, or not praised. They see themselves as superior.

Reasons: Hard to know, harder to treat with therapy or coaching. It’s often a defense mechanism for their self-esteem and insecurities.  They don’t feel worthy.  

Ways to Cope: Give them praise when they deserve it and feedback when they need it.  Be aware of how they feel wounded if you don’t gush over every little thing they do.  Don’t let them talk down to you. 

Dr. Steve Albrecht, PHR, CPP, BCC, is a San Diego-based author, trainer, and consultant.  He focuses on high-risk HR problems, employee threat assessments, and workplace and school violence issues.  In 1994, he co-wrote Ticking Bombs, one of the first books on workplace violence.  He holds a doctorate in Business Administration, an M.A. in Security Management, a B.S. in Psychology, and a B.A. in English.  He worked for the San Diego Police Department for 15 years and has written 16 books on business, HR, and criminal justice subjects.  He hosts a weekly radio show, “Crime Time with Steve Albrecht.” You can find episodes on his web site at  www.DrSteveAlbrecht.com and follow him on Twitter @DrSteveAlbrecht

I'm amazed at how many people just don't get this: It is hard to open your ears and your heart if your mouth is wide-open and flapping away. As I describe in my relationship book, Why Can't You Read My MInd?, here's an important piece of advice for you: If you put your own agenda aside, talk less, and listen more, you will be more empathetic. In turn, your partner will more likely listen to you.  

By you saying less, your partner will be feel that you are more available and open to her. This all may sound ridiculously obvious but is it really that easy?  The answer is, "No." It is not so easy because our ego mind takes over when we speak solely from our own agenda. Unfortunately, we tend to lack empathy when we are trying to prove our own point. Ironically our partners then just shut down and stop listening, instead saying to themselves, "This conversation is pointless." 

Aside from literally biting your tongue, one way to help you say less is to first ask yourself what your statement is constructively going to accomplish. Being mindful of the true value of what you're going to say will help you be more conscious in choosing how to relate to your partner. In many cases with couples, I have seen that saying less paves the way to be heard more. 

Dr. Jeffrey Bernstein is a psychologist with over 23 years of experience specializing in child, adolescent, couples, and family therapy. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the State University of New York at Albany and completed his post-doctoral internship at the University of Pennsylvania Counseling Center. He has appeared on the Today Show, Court TV as an expert advisor, CBS Eyewitness News Philadelphia, 10! Philadelphia—NBC, and public radio. Dr. Bernstein has authored four books, including the highly popular 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child (Perseus Books, 2006), 10 Days to a Less Distracted Child (Perseus Books 2007), Why Can't You Read My Mind? , and Liking the Child You Love, Perseus Books 2009). 

Image credit: Pixabay

A little over six months ago a student walked into my office and proposed a thesis project that transformed my entire lab. His idea was pretty simple—we know that gratitude interventions increase happiness and health, but what are the other benefits? Does increased gratitude improve our relations at work? Can gratitude change the internal monologue we have with ourselves every day?

Because I lead a positive psychology lab, these types of honors projects are rather typical. And so, we started the process of developing his ideas, selecting the research papers he would read, discussing hypotheses during our meetings, and coordinating the team who would put the project up online. This doesn’t sound very transformative yet, I know, but changing the way people interact with each other doesn’t happen overnight.

Let’s start where we started. We began looking through our massive datasets to learn as much as we can about how grateful people are different from the rest of us. Here is what we learned:

#1Grateful people are very, very happy. While this has been verified numerous times, I was a bit overwhelmed by the fact that grateful people were the most satisfied with their lives, experienced the most daily vitality and purpose as well as the least daily negativity, had the highest scores on psychological well-being, and even reported the highest levels of love, joy, compassion, and awe.

#2 Grateful people are very close to their friends and family. There are three fundamental psychological needs which must be satisfied for us to flourish. Grateful people had the highest scores on relatedness satisfaction—they like interacting with people and others get along with them. Given how important good social relations are to our happiness, it is of little wonder they are some of the happiest people in our database.

#3 Grateful people aspire to have meaningful relationships. Relative to more extrinsic goals (like wealth, fame, and popularity), grateful people place importance on pursuing meaningful relationships and making contributions to their community. Grateful people even define "the good life" as contributing to others’ happiness.

Now, these are just a sampling of the many correlates of gratitude, but there was an amazingly consistent connection between gratitude, being close with friends and family, and happiness. However, the real transformation began after developed our gratitude intervention and started testing the functionality as a lab.

Because the intervention we developed is an automated online study (people complete a nightly gratitude journal--see below), we all took part. Every night we would all complete our gratitude journals.

First, my thesis student sent me a quick email thanking me for all my work as an adviser. Then, when my student presented his thesis topic, he thanked the coder on the project for all his countless hours of work. My coder and I were genuinely touched by his simple expression of gratitude. Next, my coder asked our senior data analyst for some help and sent him a thank you email when he fixed a problem. Yesterday after we finally worked out all the bugs in our code everyone acknowledged at least one team member and thanked them for their effort. Finally, a student not related to the project wrote an email to me and another student yesterday to thank us for all the help we had provided her over the last few years.

It was as if gratitude was spreading through our lab—it seemed that everyone was thanking everyone else. And, as you would expect, it seemed that the lab was authentically happier after we started testing our gratitude intervention. I have been so encouraged by what has happened, I am thinking of continuing to test interventions just to see how much more we can transform.

I am pretty excited about our gratitude intervention and some of the benefits you can experience if you take part. If you go to BeyondThePurchase.Org you can find our two-week gratitude intervention. First, immediately after completing the pre-intervention survey we will tell you how often and how intensely you have recently experienced both positive and negative feelings. Next, every night after you complete our brief gratitude journal, we will tell you how grateful you have felt today—we also have a graphic displaying how grateful you have felt each day of the intervention so you can see how much grateful you are. Finally, after the intervention we will provide you personalized feedback about how much your gratitude has changed over the last two weeks.     

The following is my rebuttal to Michael Karson's recent post, ‘The Gift of Anger’. This post was just one of a plethora of pro-anger posts assembled recently under the collection, 'Benefits of Anger'—and by no means the most objectionable. I chose it because it was clear, concise and limited itself to four points, to which I shall attempt four rejoinders. I note that Dr Karson follows each of his four 'benefits' of anger with a caveat or downside (usually the extreme case), and that his piece is therefore more nuanced than might come across below.

1. “Anger tells us when an injustice is being perpetrated.”

Correction: Anger tells us when we believe an injustice is being perpetrated.

Aye, there’s the rub! The other guy usually believes an equal and opposite injustice has been perpetrated. You think it’s unjust that I came home late without calling. But I think it’s unjust that I should be nagged and held to account. He thinks it’s unjust that the toilet seat should be left down; she thinks it’s unjust that the toilet seat should be left up. Those guys think it’s unjust for a given strip of land to be governed by the other guys; the other guys think it’s unjust to have to keep fighting to defend it. Indeed, as Karson himself writes: “[w]ar fury is whipped up with tales and images of injustice.”

War (and conflict generally) is certainly a ‘gift’ [read scourge] of anger...

“Without anger, social justice would be an entirely academic concern.”

Correction: Without anger, social justice would be an entirely academic concern among individuals whose only motivation for social change was anger. For the rest of us, there would still be compassionate attempts to aid those in need, enthusiastic projects to better the world, the natural and inevitable spread of education and enlightenment, and ambitious political endeavours. 

2. Anger incites us to fight for dominance.

Does it? Hmm. Yes and no. Humans, as hierarchical social primates, are exquisitely attuned to their place in the ‘pecking order’, and naturally power-hungry, angry or not. Anger arises, as with ‘injustice’, when one man believes he deserves a higher rank than another— with the other man usually thinking the opposite. Anger was once highly relevant to such disputes, as physical strength and prowess were how status/ranking was decided, and anger provided a boost (and a bluff) in that regard. These days, however, when status has more to do with social or financial success, anger is a handicap more than anything else. (See my previous post, 'Is Zero Anger Optimal? Yes (With Footnotes)'). In any case, existentially speaking, one can argue that getting wrapped up in status, power, ambition and such things (even successfully) can lead to a joyless, stressful, and ultimately empty life.

“[A]nger is often the source of the solution to problems posed by anger.” Agreed— though I’d word it slightly differently: Anger is often the proposed solution to problems whose source was anger in the first place. But yes, perpetual cycles of violence are another gift of anger.

3. “Anger tells us our personal space is getting violated and motivates us to protect it.”

 Correction: If and when you view an impingement on your personal space as a ‘violation’ you will experience anger.

In fact if you construe anything as a violation (i.e. of a ‘right’), then you’ll experience anger. Michael Karson’s own subjective account of a man’s knee touching his on a plane is illustrative. He reports feeling disappointed right off the bat that it is a man, not a woman, sitting next to him (based on prior experiences presumably). He typecasts all such men as ‘dogs who take what they can’, and misogynists (!) And he believes, apparently, that immediate physical countering is the only way to deal with them (“You’ve got to bang their knee with yours, and claim half the armrest the first time they give an inch.”) Such views will provoke anger, that is undoubtedly true—and potentially spark a nasty interaction on a flight. An alternative, non-anger-engendering, view might be that the man sitting next to you on a plane whose leg overfloweth is a person like you, who may or may not realise what he’s doing, who may or may not be happy to budge a little if asked, and who may or may not be a misogynist.

Air-rage is, however, yes, another ‘gift’ of anger.

4. “Anger tells you that […] a once reliably reinforced behavior is not garnering success. [… Without anger], you will sit in traffic mindlessly instead of considering alternate routes.”

Correction: Your eyes and ears tell you that a behaviour is no longer garnering success. Without anger, you will either sit in traffic mindlessly [sounds pretty Zen actually] OR consider alternate routes, depending on your goals/needs. If you’re not in a hurry, you may choose to take the time to enjoy a whole extra movement of a Beethoven symphony. If you are in a hurry, you will be sufficiently motivated by fear or desire to work out an alternate route without additionally needing to feel outraged at the ineptitude of city planners, or peeved at the injustice of your personal fate.

But yes, once again: road rage is another ‘gift of anger’. 

Montaigne, the French writer, was baffled that people would refer to anger as a 'weapon', "for we move other weapons but this moveth us". I'm just as baffled that people would refer to anger as a 'gift', for we give other gifts away, which are received happily; but this gives us away, and is received unhappily. If anger is a gift, it's a whole gift set: with road rage, air rage, narcissistic rage, war, and perpetual cycles of violence all included, to mention only Karson's special selection.

If anger is a gift, pray don't re-gift. 

Today is Thanksgiving and the phrases, I'm grateful" and  "Be grateful" are going to be expressed over and over by millions of people. That is a really good thing!

I so happy that I have seen more and more written over the past few years about the benefits of gratitude. 

They include:

• Increased happiness
• More optimism
• Better health
• Better sleep
• Improved self-esteem
• Deeper relationships
• Less envy
• More resilience

There is no doubt about it:  Gratitude is good for you in many ways and on many levels! 

I have transformed my life by practicing gratitude. That's right. It truly is a practice. I'm not perfect at being grateful. Some days I run leaner on gratitude than others. But I am grateful to be a work in progress!

Unfortunately, I see many people who "find gratitude" then become quickly get discouraged, claiming that it does not work because they can't hold onto it. For many years I thought that about myself, too. But happily, and I am quite grateful for this, I found three ways to make my gratitude drift away a lot less and stick around much more. Here are my suggestions:

1)  Keep a gratitude journal or a gratitude jar. I used to keep a handwritten gratitude journal. Then I switched to using one of many gratitude apps that are available. After about three years of using the journals (handwritten and app forms) I switched to making and using a gratitude jar, which I keep on my desk. These activities will increase your sense accountability and will help you internalize gratitude as part of your daily life.

2) Establish what I call, "gratitude landmarks".  For example, when I leave the gym and walk past the front desk, I remind myself of things I am grateful for. The front desk has become a programmed stimulus for me to think about all that I am thankful for in my life. Billboards on your morning commute or objects and areas in your home can reliably serve you up gratitude in the same manner

3) Pass gratitude on to others. The more I share how much gratitude benefits me, the more people reinforce me for having an attitude of gratitude. This helps me to see myself as a person who serves gratitude to others--and maintaining this identity keeps me in my own place of gratitude too.

Sources:

http://happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude/

http://www.webmd.com/women/features/gratitute-health-boost

http://www.webmd.com/women/features/gratitute-health-boost

Dr. Jeffrey Bernstein is a psychologist with over 23 years of experience specializing in child, adolescent, couples, and family therapy. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the State University of New York at Albany and completed his post-doctoral internship at the University of Pennsylvania Counseling Center. He has appeared on the Today Show, Court TV as an expert advisor, CBS Eyewitness News Philadelphia, 10! Philadelphia—NBC, and public radio. Dr. Bernstein has authored four books, including the highly popular 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child (Perseus Books, 2006), 10 Days to a Less Distracted Child (Perseus Books 2007), and Why Can't You Read My Mind?  You can follow Dr. Jeff on Twitter.

Image credit: Bigstock

The biggest shopping season of the year is upon us. And no matter how well you shop or how much you like shopping, you, like the rest of us, are more likely than not to start the New Year with a couple holiday shopping regrets. There are just too many options and too many price promotions in today’s hyper-competitive retail environment, so everyone will be shopping with at least a touch of “bargain brain.” That means that whether it’s the wrong gift or the wrong price, it’ll be harder than ever to get it right this season.

One solution is resignation. Approach the holiday shopping season knowing that at least once you’ll miss the lowest price or see something later that would have made a better gift. Frankly, that’s not a bad strategy — it preserves time and saves energy that might be better used socializing.

However, if you’re a perfectionist, optimist or just have extra shopping fortitude, here are a few things you should know to lessen the likelihood of making the the most common bargain-brained errors of this particular holiday shopping season.

Most of the shoppers I interviewed this year said that with few exceptions, if it wasn’t on sale, they weren’t buying it. Retailers have gotten the message. To compensate, the “regular” price of many products has been inflated to leave room for discounting. Therefore, as you’ve likely already seen, it’s a deal-a-minute holiday out there this year. Promotional sales are ubiquitous and with our smartphones always at hand, communication will feel more relentless that ever. News of “unmissable” “unbelievable” “never before” sales will be coming at you from all directions: advertising, catalogs, emails, texts, through your social media feeds and all other sources of digital communication.

Therefore, clarity about the pitfalls of bargains will be crucial. Sales cause FOMO (fear of missing out) fever and feel like exciting opportunities to get more for less. Fear and excitement muddle thinking. Add in the emotional pressure and competitive fuel of crowds and it’s understandable how so many end up making regrettable purchasing decisions this time of year. Information about how this season’s holiday sales work can help you keep your cool.

Early in the season most sales will be “promotional” — that is, planned long in advance of the holidays to lure early shoppers and generate excitement. Until we’re days away from Christmas you’re unlikely to see deep clearance prices. Through Black Friday, discounts will be between 20-40% and on Black Friday the average discounts will be in the 40-55% range except for a few loss-leaders, otherwise known as door-busters. Keep in mind that even Black Friday discounts are planned price reductions — in other words, the retailer was always prepared to sell the item at that price or even purchased the item (sometimes a cheaper version of a more elite product) as a lure for Black Friday shoppers.

The only time you need to get all FOMOish is for limited supply “door buster” offerings or if retailers start to panic that their competitors will blink first and they’ll get caught holding the bag (full of merchandise that they’ll eventually have to dump at clearance prices, and often without profit). That’s far less likely to happen this year than in previous years as retailers have adjusted to the economy and increased shopper sophistication.

Even in the face of a jaw-dropping bargain, stay focused on how much you really want the item rather than on discount. During frenzied moments people can easily lose focus on what they’re buying and end up with gifts in search of a recipient rather than a thoughtfully chosen gift for someone on your list. Jenny, a busy working mother, for example, has a “gift drawer” stuffed with cashmere scarfs. “I got them online during a flash sale a couple of years ago and I’m still working though that stash. It’s almost embarrassing because I honestly can’t remember who I’ve given one to in previous years.”

Also keep in mind that when we’re emotionally charged while shopping we’re also more prone to impulse purchases. Whether online or in store, tempting add-on items (especially those stocking stuffers and knick knacks that can hammer your holiday budget) will be especially prevalent this year. The solution is to breathe deeply and take an extra moment to consider what you’re really buying. Know that once you’ve decided to open your wallet, purse or smartphone app to pay — you’re more vulnerable.

Another problem with the swift and steady stream of promotions we’ll be wading through this year is managing the complexity of offerings. Neil, an engineer by profession who is used to tackling complexity, says even he’s confused. “I have a coupon for $50 off if I spend $200 so that’s a 25% discount but what if I find something for $150 for my wife? Then I’d probably end up spending more to get the discount which blows the discount. Or I can wait for Black Friday but maybe what I want won’t be included in the sale.” Stay calm, use your phone’s calculator and don’t spend in order to save.

In my research I’ve found that consumers that are heavily bargain-focused actually spend more total money shopping than others. Why? They spend more time shopping, which means they see and therefore often want and buy more merchandise. Also, because their focus is on how much their saving, they more easily lose track of what they’re spending. And most deadly of all, bargain shoppers often mentally considered the money they’ve “saved” as “earned” money and that means it gets spent pretty easily. Consider what Angie said in a recent interview, “I got these pants I needed on sale, so I treated myself to the matching top. It was full price, but that’s okay because I saved all that money getting the pants on sale.” Get the irony? In no universe is spending money actually saving money. But it can feel like that.

There’s one more potential pitfall to bargains. They often come with strings attached. The most problematic being a no-return policy, short return windows or returns that only qualify for a merchandise credit. Take it from Carly, an avid online shopper: Unless you’ve seen and considered the product before, losing the ability to return merchandise can be costly. “I spent half my Christmas budget on clearance blow-out merchandise at Vente-Privee and while a few of the items were perfect and I got them for a steal, at least half were ungiftable and totally wrong. I’m stuck with them, so it’s not really a bargain in the end.” Keep in mind that bargain pricing also sometimes negates other promotional offerings, such as free shipping.

If you find yourself succumbing to “bargain brain,” remember that the antidote is always the same: mental calmness, laser focus on the value and cost of a product rather than simply the reduced price of a tempting sale “opportunity,” and staying loyal to your gift list and budget.

Photo credit: Martin Abegglen/Wikimedia Commons

I have found it alarming that in this information age where there is so much accessible nutrtion and exercise information, that child and adult obesity rates have soared. At the end of the day, no matter how much we tell people to "get a little more active and watch what you eat", this just does not really help. Nor does it seem to help when someone or some program gives them answers on eating "dos and don'ts", when they have not first asked themselves, why they want to lose weight and what they are truly willing to do to succeed.

I developed a weight loss strategy based on one simple word: LOSE. That's right L-O-S-E. is what am sharing with you today in hopes that it will inspire you or anyone you know to begin asking empowering questions instead of searching for answers.

My coaching for weight loss is all about helping my clients discover "whys and hows" for themselves. I am not saying commercial weight loss programs across the board are not valuable. What I am saying, however, is that true self-awareness must come from asking ourselves powerful questions and answering them for ourselves.

Make no mistake, my weight loss coaching model is not a silver bullet, lose body fat while you sleep, and wake up twenty years younger, and twenty pounds lighter fantasy gimmicky plan. Rather, these questions represent a sample of the many motivating questions I use with my coaching clients. They are designed to help you capture the mindset you need to make healthy decisions and do healthy behaviors.

I suggest seeing a physician and nutritionist for questions about your physical health or dietary issues. You may also want to seek out a qualified mental health professional if you suspect you are suffering from any significant mental health concerns or eating disorders.

That all said, to employ my LOSE approach, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions below if you have a problem losing eight and a strong tendency to emotionally overeat.

The L in L-O-S-E stands for letting go. What thoughts and behaviors do you need to let go of the most to stop overeating and abusing food?

The O represents options for accountability. How can you start to become more accountable to yourself in your relationship with food?

The S is about setting goals. What small and larger weight goals can you set for yourself to capture your own motivation?

The E represents engaging in new thoughts and behaviors. What new thoughts and behaviors can you "own" to help you reach your goals.

As an example, I will share how a twenty-nine year old weight loss coaching client of mine, Julie (not her real name), used these questions to help her lose twenty pounds in six weeks. Our coaching sessions went from weekly to now once a month and she has kept her weight in a manageable range for sixteen months and counting.

Amongst some other conflicts, Julie realized that she had to let go of her guilt of emotionally "leaving behind" her best friend and boyfriend who she tended to overeat with. Of course, she could remain in these relationships, and she did, but she had to Let go of her need to conform and participate in their spontaneous food feasts.

Next, Julie became aware of Options when I questioned her about what she wanted to do differently. The first option she pursued was to download a food management App on her smartphone and use it to become more mindful of her daily food choices. She also started requesting a takeout container right away when she went to a restaurant with her boyfriend or friend. This helped her to not be a victim to restaurant "portion distortion." She also optioned to "retire" from the need to justify to her boyfriend and friend about why or what she was doing concerning her becoming more accountable to herself about her eating.

Julie Set attainable goals for her weight loss. Most exciting, she also set a goal to call me when she hit her first inevitable weight loss plateau rather than sabotage any further progress as she had in the past.

Julie engaged her health conscious friends, engaged in joining a yoga class, and engaged me as her coach to help her stay consistent in two essential skills all along the way: self-soothing and problem-solving.

Dr. Jeffrey Bernstein is a psychologist with over 23 years of experience specializing in child, adolescent, couples, and family therapy. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the State University of New York at Albany and completed his post-doctoral internship at the University of Pennsylvania Counseling Center. He has appeared on the Today Show, Court TV as an expert advisor, CBS Eyewitness News Philadelphia, 10! Philadelphia—NBC, and public radio. Dr. Bernstein has authored four books, including the highly popular 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child (Perseus Books, 2006), 10 Days to a Less Distracted Child (Perseus Books 2007), Why Can't You Read My Mind? , and Liking Perseus Books 2009).

image credit: Pixabay

“I used to be a captive of my symptoms. Now I investigate them.” So spoke a man suffering for decades from schizophrenia to a roomful of people, some also former mental patients and some not. He was sharing with them where he’d gotten to with his self-directed research and was clearly eager for their questions and comments. As the man spoke of what he was learning about his symptoms, including the voices he heard, another man was at a blackboard drawing illustrations of what was being said. At one point, another came forward to act out with the speaker what it had felt like to be “captured.” A few other presenters followed him with their reports and the audience once again provided plenty of questions and comments that could expand their research. 

This unusual meeting took place at Bethel House, an extraordinary community for people with schizophrenia (and other diagnoses) in a remote fishing village on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. While Bethel House has been virtually unknown to those outside of Japan, this could all be changing, thanks to Yale University anthropologist Karen Nakamura. Her book, A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan, and film, Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan,provide an inside view of life in Bethel, its history, philosophy, members’ triumphs and struggles, and their continuous work to create community.

Bethel House began in 1984 to help people discharged from psychiatric wards live in the community. This meant providing work for members. An early business was the packaging and selling of seaweed and noodles, which continues to benefit Bethel House and Urakawa, the village in which Bethel House is located. Members also work in the Bethel House café, lecture around the country, and sell books and videos about their lives, T-shirts, calendars, and similar gifts.

I recently had the good fortune to visit Bethel House. I was impressed by the ways members use all of who they are to create productive, social, and responsible ways of living together. Even though they accept their diagnoses and symptoms (they believe they are ill), they are in no way defined by them. Instead, they use their “craziness” (their voices, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, etc.) to help each other. I witnessed a caring of each other and a giving of themselves—whatever they have to give—often with great humor. And I experienced a playfulness, a performativity and a theatricality at Bethel House, which I believe contributes to the emotional, social and economic development of its members and staff.

In fact, theatricality is one of the ways Bethel House got well known in Japan. Each year, it hosts a festival, which includes the Hallucinations and Delusions Grand Prix—a competition that recognizes the hallucination or delusion that 's socialized the most and brings the most members together. The festival has become a destination for thousands of Japanese annually.

I learned of Bethel House in 2012 when I was invited to Japan as a guest faculty to give some lectures and workshops. My hosts from the Japanese Society of Developmental Psychology and various universities weren’t able to fit a visit to Bethel House into my itinerary. But we vowed that the next time I was in Japan, we’d schedule a visit. And we did—earlier this month.

After flying from Kobe to Sapporo, my host, Professor Takashi Ito from Hokkaido University, five young women students, and I drove 3+ hours along the Pacific Ocean coast to Urawaka. After checking in to our rooms at a village inn, we met people from Bethel House for a traditional Japanese meal at a local restaurant. We began to learn about the life of Bethel House as we each shared our keen interest in their community. It was my involvement with social therapy, a community-based therapeutic approach focused on people’s development—no matter their material and psychological limitations—that drew me to Bethel House. From what I had read, we seemed to have something in common.

We observed and participated in Bethel meetings, including the self-directed research meeting, met formally and informally with different members and staff, had lunch in the Bethel House café in the village, and were interviewed for their magazine. After bidding farewell to our new friends, we drove back to Sapporo.

If you’re interested in non-medicalized approaches to mental illness or just want to learn more about this unique community, check out Karen Nakamura’s work for yourself.

Individuals with eating disorders and their families often struggle during the holiday season. Fear of food, fat, self-condemnation, relational stress, anxiety and depression often are themes in households. Families brace themselves to deal with the awful and debilitating behaviors of their loved one as they try to maintain their compassion, empathy and non-reactive voice in their communications.

On this Thanksgiving and through this Holiday season I wish to give thanks to having the privilege of being invited in to the intimate lives of my patients and their families and what meaning these relationships have meant in my life.

When people seek therapy they typically are often coming to uncover the truth about themselves – to understand their motivations, their feelings, their relationships, and their behaviors - what makes them tick. People with eating disorders also come to understand what meaning food has had in their life and how to move toward healthier relationships with people that are based on honesty, trust, respect and empathy. They come also to learn to let go and learn how to enjoy life without the nagging voice of food and body image obsession, self-doubt and self-reproach looming overhead.

I am grateful that I have the unique opportunity to participate in this process.

So, what do I get out of the deal?

Personally, my work with my patients reminds me of all that is whole and real in life and of the good in people. Patients come for the truth. The therapeutic processes are based on rigorous honesty from the patient and the trust of the therapist to be non-judgmental, kind and clinically smart. The trust and containment of the therapeutic process and safety of the proverbial “room” therapy provides creates a separate, but real world for connection and relationship to develop.

The relationship between patient and therapist have a few components– patient and therapist are committed to “use” their relationship to explore the significant and historic relationships in the patient’s life (transferential relationship.) Patient and therapist are also “aligned” together to utilize the therapist’s expertise in clinical theory and judgment. So, the patient and therapist are in the “lab” together observing and responding to the information, perspective and feelings the patient reveals. In addition, there is the relationship that develops between two people who spend time together on a regular basis. It is this relationship between patient and therapist of which I write and reflect on today. For some patients, it is the most honest relationship they will ever have.

The kindness and caring is real. The trust is real. The fact that patients can get angry with me for a mistake (i.e. responding less than sensitively, forgetting something) perceived mistake on my part or that their anger is really a manifestation of an earlier hurt from another relationship, all happens in real time in the context of the relationship.

Over time and with these relational ingredients, growth occurs. Patients are able to build solid and lasting relationships outside of therapy. They let go of old patterns and ways of behaving and relating that have negatively affected them. They have more fun. They take more risks. They laugh more. They learn that loss is a necessary part of being close to someone. They find gratitude for life and the people in them, for however long the relationships last.

I am lucky and grateful this holiday season to have a professional life that is ideal in many ways. Yes, there is a lot of sadness, hurt, pain, loss, trauma, anger, self-destructive behavior, dysfunctional relationships or relationships that are wonderfully functional that require appreciation that therapists deal with on a regular basis. I do not minimize this. However, in spite of, or perhaps because of the readiness of both the patient and therapist to deal with pain comes the capacity for truth and connectedness. It is this connectedness for which I am grateful. This is a wonderful way to go through life.

Simply put, I wish for everyone to know the simplicity and ease that comes with a relationship where it is safe to explore feelings and where both parties are able to accept and acknowledge their responsibility and commitment to preserving the relationship, on the one hand, and allowing for growth on the other. BTW: You don’t have to be a therapist and patient to have this.

Happy Holidays.

My very best,

Judy Scheel

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “oppression” as “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control.”   However, this does not mean that those so subject are aware of their unjust treatment or control.  This is an aspect of oppression that is largely missed in popular culture when we consider whether we or others are being oppressed.  Indeed, when living day to day in concert with the constraints of a given cultural milieu, we seldom consider whether we are actually being oppressed.  Instead, we tend to think that one who wants to live according to the constraints of her culture is making a free choice.

In contrast, the usual scenario we think of when we think of oppression is that of someone who is captured, confined, tortured, or otherwise unjustly treated or controlled against his or her protests and pleas for freedom.  Those who organize rebellions, or who would do so if they could, are thought to be oppressed.  The internal resistance against Apartheid in South Africa was viewed as a mark of oppression; while those who acquiesce in their cultural restrictions and taboos, and think none the worst of it, are typically considered free agents.

In U.S. history, one prominent example of the latter sort of “forced” oppression is that described by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in 1848, in their influential book, The Communist Manifesto.  Therein, Marx and Engels advanced their polemic against the power of capitalism to enslave the working class using the technology of mass production:

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist.  Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. …  Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machines, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.  The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

In this image of wage slavery, the popular conception of exploitation is clearly illustrated wherein the masses of laborers are bound to an assembly line for an excessive amount of hours per day, under abominable working conditions, and given meager compensation.  Indeed, Marx and Engel predicted that such egregious treatment of workers by rich capitalists would inevitably “produce its own gravediggers,” that is, explode into a bloody revolution.

Marx and Engel’s insight about the capacity of technology to oppress is one that should not be overlooked.  While technology may itself be neutral, its deployment in this or that way, unconstrained by common sense and ethics, can be a means of exploitation and oppression.  This should become abundantly clear in what I will say here.  However, the dynamics of oppression is more complex than this popular model admits.  Oppression is not necessarily obvious to those who are being oppressed; nor does it necessarily involve dissatisfaction or a tendency to rebel.  This is because enculturation can be subtle, systematic, and not ordinarily called into question. 

In 1861, in his seminal essay titled, “The Subjection of Women,” John Stuart Mill wrote about one such subtle form of enculturation:

All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. … All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favorite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds.

Here is a different concept of oppression in contrast to the Marxian one, that of “willing” rather than “forced” slavery.  Indeed, a significant number of women living in the United States today (those who have what social workers call a “victim mentality”) still believe they are lucky to be under the control of men who treat them abusively or like possessions.  

Willful oppression can take many and sundry subtle forms, some of which even liberal thinkers like Marx and Mill did not foresee.  Marx thought that oppression largely involved the consciousness of being forced into living an undesirable life.  Mill identified willful oppression, but focused on gender-specific oppression, that of the subjection of women by men. But what of willful oppression of the masses, across cultural divides, spanning the “developed” or industrialized world?  Is this sort of ubiquitous, willful oppression possible?

Currently, a large percentage of people living in the industrialized “free” world are also members of a global commons in cyberspace. While the servers of this global online community are located inside national borders, the virtual space that this equipment generates transcends any of these geographical boundaries.  Nevertheless, the participants of this online global culture have, for the most part, accepted, and assumed, the terms of going online.  These terms have been dictated largely by Internet gatekeepers such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, working in cooperation with governmental agencies, in particular, the United State’s National Security Agency (NSA) and Great Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). 

Most of us, by now, accept and assume that all of our personal messages, including telephone and email messages, will be filtered and stored in giant government data bases.  Some of us, perhaps a large majority, accept this suspension of privacy because we think it makes us safer from terrorist attacks. Others assume that, whatever the government does must be right.  Still others are simply unaware or in disbelief that any abridgement of privacy actually exists or poses a serious threat to civil liberties or personal freedom. Of course, there are also some who do not think privacy is even important in the first place.  But all these views involve largely unexamined assumptions.  This is unfortunate since, as Socrates starkly expressed, “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and in our high tech milieu, this may be truer today than it was in ancient Athens.

Mill urged us to examine our assumptions about the willful oppression of one sector of our society, namely those who are female.  True, we have not yet cast off these chains (there still isn't pay equity, and the number of women still is not equally represented in higher management—including the office of U.S. President--and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) positions).  However, there has been substantial progress toward liberation as a result of affirmative action and related conscious attempts to eliminate oppressive social practices.  Without such conscious awareness and effort to challenge cultural assumptions, such progress would have been nil.  It is no different, in principle, with respect to our assumptions about privacy in cyberspace.  Unless we actively examine the assumptions governing our freedom (or loss thereof) in cyberspace, we are likely to fall deeper and deeper into a systematic regimen of quietly creeping, ever expanding oppression.   So, as the technology becomes more and more able to oppress, will we be just as complacent with future, successive encroachments on our privacy?

According to Intel Corporation, in the next decade, the new Bluetooth connection to the internet will be through Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs), which will connect your brain via electrodes directly to the internet.  In this environment, your thoughts, not merely the words you type on a keyboard or handheld device, or your voice over a wireless connection, will be online.  Your deepest thoughts and most personal secrets will be open to inspection.  In this brave new world, government will have the ability (and the authority) to, quite literally, read your mind. This sort of threat, more than even terrorism, devours the very core of what it means to be human! Will you be as willing to have a cookie implanted in your brain as you are, presently, to have one implanted in your computer?

Oppression can not only be subtle; it can also be gradual.  It can develop over time, in progressive installments, not all at once.  The most likely scenario is that we will not wake up one morning and discover that we no longer have any freedom of thought and expression.  More likely, we will never come to realize just how oppressed we really have become. 

Do you know how far the government has already gone down this slippery slope toward oppressing your freedom of thought and expression? How much research has been spent in developing more powerful forms of surveillance technologies?  How little time and money government has invested in trying to protect your privacy from unjust encroachment?  What evidence there is that the current surveillance system is really helping to stop terrorism?  What the rate of false positives generated by this system really is?  What business interests, in particular, are driving the development of surveillance technologies? How much do you actually know, based on evidence, not just government propaganda, about these and other things? How much are you just assuming?

In my latest book, Technology of Oppression: Preserving Freedom and Dignity in an Age of Mass Warrantless Surveillance, I have attempted to carefully trace the history of surveillance, beginning in the late 1960s with the emergence of satellite technologies, and the mounting changes from analog data transmission along copper lines to digital data transmission along fiber optic cables, as well as the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA's) newly emerging, patented, BCI technologies.  I have discussed the incredible progress that has been made in the power of “deep packet” analysis, from the early Narus technologies deployed during the George W. Bush administration to the profoundly greater data processing capabilities of some of the latest technologies. I have carefully examined the evidence regarding the ability of the latest technology to detect terrorist plots with respect to the government’s telephone metadata programs as well as its “upstream programs” such as PRISM, as well as some of its less known (and non-legally regulated) programs such as MUSCULAR.  I have examined the algorithms used for calculating the rate of false positives generated by such technologies. I have compared the success of these programs with that of conventional investigations.  I have examined the pertinent iterations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in connection with the legality of current government data collections as well as the progress of the FIS Court's success in legal oversight (or the lack thereof).  Toward ameliorating problems inherent in the present system of surveillance, I have proposed ways for attaining greater transparency about government control of cyberspace, including establishing a global internet forum in which the people of the world can receive information and provide input into the policies that shape their freedom in cyberspace.  Toward this end, I have done preliminary work in drafting a set of model rules for regulating network surveillance, which consists of proposed legal and technological constraints on the infrastructure currently being deployed.  In brief, I have begun the process of carefully examining many commonplace assumptions about the control of cyberspace instead of just passively accepting them.

This is the second book I have written on this subject.  In the aftermath of the Edward Snowden leaks, I discussed the idea of updating my first book with its publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, but, instead, my editor invited me to write a new book.  I have worked with parsing technologies for many years, not just as an ethicist but also as an inventor of patented technology aimed at protecting privacy in electronic communications.  Given my background, I perceived a moral duty to write this new book.  For me personally, it was an opportunity to examine my own assumptions about the current system of surveillance and its potential for oppression. I have tried to do my civic duty.  Indeed, all of us should carefully educate ourselves and to examine our assumptions, if we have not already done so.

Unless we change our idea about what oppression is and can be; and, unless we take a rational, cautious, evidence-driven inventory of our assumptions, collectively as a global community, and individually as citizens, we may never come to know just how oppressed we really are, and may soon be.