What if luck can be created by effort, and not by accident? Are you content to let others make your luck for you, or are you discovering that you can make your own luck? There are those people you meet who are engaged in life to such a degree, it can feel inspiring or overwhelming. Call it charisma, or personality, or an abundance of energy. Luck shines out of their eyes. But often, the truth is, it took years of hard work to build up that reservoir of luck inside themselves.

Lucky people stand out from the crowd. What is it that sets these people apart from folks on the opposite end of the spectrum, the people who watch life go by, as if they are watching their own lives unfold on a movie screen? Taking action, for one thing. Being an active participant in your own life is one way to find some of the luck lucky people have. You might understand this in an aha moment, or it might be a gradual discovery, but sooner or later you’ll see you’re the one constant factor in making the changes you want to happen in your own life. 

Making your own luck is connected to looking at yourself from a different perspective, stepping outside your comfort zone to try new things, reinventing how you do certain things, and finding the mentors you need to get a more focused look at what your strengths are. Join groups, meet like-minded people, go to events and interact, be more connected to dormant sides of yourself you are intrigued by. Start new projects, and complete projects left undone for months or years. Seek out people whose minds you can change, or who will change your mind in a way that matters. 

Timing is sometimes everything, but if you’re not paying attention to your relationship to time, you may miss out on what’s supposed to happen. Big things might not happen every day, but there’s always one day that matters. If you knock on a door that wouldn’t budge long enough, one day it opens easily, as if the slightest gust of wind was all it took.

Without going for it, whatever your it is, you’ll never know if you could’ve reached it. No, it doesn’t come easy. Sometimes all the luck and serendipity in the world seems to be one connection away. But without reaching out, the person with the answer to your question never speaks up, because you weren’t in front of them.

If you don’t ask for something, no one knows to offer it to you. Accepting that we all have the ability to speak up is what sets people and societies apart from each other. It is also what can lead to having a lucky day and making an impact on the world. Asking. Making a claim on your own place in the world. Daily progress comes from realizing everything is a process, and the more effort you put into changing your relationships, your career, your community, the more things will change.

Change is hard. But it would be an incredibly uninteresting world without it. To get somewhere else, change isn’t just a daily occurrence, it has to be a primary goal. The life choices we make should lead us toward making things happen, not just letting them happen around us.

Preparation leads to better luck. In the sports arena, this is obvious. In other areas of life, the interconnection between spending hours each day working on your own lifelong projects and making your luck may not be as apparent. Sometimes making luck feels like the most difficult things in the world, other times you’ve already worked on the foundation, laid the groundwork, written the back story – and with one door opening, a whole new stage of your life begins.

– Collage Art "Green Machine" by Russell C. Smith.

This piece was written by me and my colleague Galena K. Rhoades, also of the University of Denver.

In our recent report for the National Marriage Project (Before “I Do”: What do Premarital Experiences have to do with Marital Quality Among Today’s Young Adults?), we focused on how relationship history before marriage relates to marital quality. We examined the history of relationships that came before the relationship with the eventual spouse and premarital experiences with the eventual spouse. For example, having more sexual partners, having cohabited with partners other than the spouse, or having children from prior relationships were all associated, on average, with lower marital quality later on. Further, those who had child with their eventual spouse before marriage, reported that their relationship began by hooking up, or who said they slid into living with their eventual spouse (if they cohabited premaritally at all), also reported lower marital quality.

While there is no end to controversy about the implications of such findings, these findings were really not controversial themselves. There is a history of similar findings as well as strong reasons why such variables will be related to marital outcomes—including selection but also the consequential impacts of the actual behaviors.[i]

Wedding Guests: Does the Number Matter?

In the Before I Do report, we presented an analysis that was, to our knowledge, totally new in this field. In our national, longitudinal sample, we had asked those who got married how many people attended their wedding. We didn’t ask this on a lark. We asked because of a strong theory for why those having more attendees at their weddings might have an edge in marriage.

Those who reported having more guests at their wedding reported, on average, higher levels of marital quality—even when we controlled for factors such as education, religiosity, race, and income. While we controlled for individual income, we didn’t have measures of other possibly important variables to control for such as the cost of the weddings, parental wealth and contributions to the wedding, or a straightforward indicator of the size of the couples’ social network. So, caveat emptor. (If you want to read more on the technical issue of included and unmeasured variables, see one of the follow-up pieces we wrote that was posted here at the Institute for Family Studies.)

Here’s some of what we said about this finding in our report. This section describes the strong theory that may explain, at least in part, the association between wedding attendance and marital quality.

There is some reason to believe that having more witnesses at a wedding may actually strengthen marital quality. According to the work of psychologist Charles Kiesler (1971), commitment is strengthened when it is publicly declared because individuals strive to maintain consistency between what they say and what they do.

We try to keep our present attitudes and behaviors in line with our past conduct. The desire for consistency is likely enhanced by public expressions of intention. Social scientist Paul Rosenblatt applied this idea specifically to marriage (Rosenblatt, 1977). He theorized that, early in a marriage, marital stability and commitment would be positively associated with the ceremonial effort and public nature of a couple’s wedding. Rosenblatt specifically suggested that holding a big wedding with many witnesses would lead to a stronger desire—or even need—to follow through on the commitment.

Our findings suggest that he may have been right. Nevertheless, it is also important to keep in mind that because these questions about weddings have received so little attention in prior studies and because only a small percentage of respondents reported not having a wedding, these findings should be tested in other samples.

This is why we asked the question in the first place. Despite the strength of this idea (and its overlap with clear findings in the study of cognitive dissonance), one of the best alternative explanations was that the cost of a wedding might better explain marital outcomes than the number of guests. After all, couples with more economic resources tend to have many advantages in life and marriage. But we did not have the cost of the wedding in our national data set, so we could not analyze it.

Wedding Guests and Wedding Costs

Thanks to a social psychologist Samantha Joel, who is, like us, is interested in relationship decision making, we came across a study that looks at the number of guests people had at their wedding but also other variables such as the cost of weddings. Economists Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon of Emory University examined how expenses related to getting married (the cost of weddings and engagement rings) and a host of other variables—including the number of guests—were associated with the likelihood of divorce.  They examined a different outcome than we did, divorce not marital quality, but you can see the overlap.

Some of what Francis and Mialon found is complex. Overall, while controlling for a host of variables, they found that spending more money on rings and weddings was not associated with more stable marriages. In fact, those who spent the most on their weddings ($20,000 or more) were, on average, at greater risk for divorce. The economists speculate about why this could be, and they further examine factors such as the stress a large debt from an expensive wedding might place on a marriage.

Here’s the part we zeroed in on. In a variety of analyses (some without controls and some with a large number of control variables—including wedding costs), Francis and Mialon found that higher wedding attendance was associated with lower odds of divorce. Although the findings related to costs of weddings and rings had shown complicated patterns, the pattern related to number of guests was always in the same direction and always clear.

We think this one line from Francis and Mialon’s paper best exemplifies their overall findings: “Thus, the evidence suggests that the types of weddings associated with lower likelihood of divorce are those that are relatively inexpensive but are high in attendance.”

Within a few months’ time, the field has gone from no findings (that we know of) related to the wedding attendance to two reports showing consistent results. There are surely many possible explanations, including some we will to try to investigate further in the future, but this second study seems to rule out one explanation we were most concerned about when interpreting our own finding—the cost of the wedding.

Can I get a Witness?  

Some couples planning a life together do not want a wedding or may want one that is very modest with just close friends and family attending. Personal preferences matter a lot in all of this. Surely, what we are talking about here is just one small part of the overall puzzle of how a couple might build a life together. Many other things matter and matter more, but let’s say you are open to some tips on the size and scope of your wedding. Here are some thoughts.

First, don’t break the bank when getting married. Many young adults have debts already, and may do more harm by taking on further debt with an expensive wedding. It is unfortunate that the image so many now have is of lavish, costly weddings. This wild expectation puts weddings out of reach for those with fewer means and adds greater burdens to parents, brides, and grooms for those with more.

Second, it may be worth finding ways to prioritize the network of friends of family you have, and inviting them to be guests at your wedding. The benefits of having more witnesses at your wedding may come from both the psychological consequences of making a very public declaration of commitment (which should increase follow through) and from having more friends and family who see your relationship as something to rally around, root for, and support.

Third, for couples who do not have a strong network of friends or family, think about how you might build one. We don’t mean trying to do this just in time for your wedding. We mean doing this over time for your marriage. When it’s possible (and we know it is not always realistic), building a friendship with another couple or getting involved in some community group together might be just the thing to start building a network of support and connection around your marriage.

If you like the idea of a big, expensive wedding, can well afford it, and it won’t cause a lot of additional stress, sure. Knock yourself out. But the power of the thing is far more likely to lie in the connections and the commitment than in the lavishness of the spectacle. Building social capital trumps burning economic capital. Prioritize your social network, not the duck canapés.

For a brief video of Galena Rhoades speaking about the Before "I Do" report findings, click here. 

For a brief video of Scott Stanley speaking about the Before "I Do" report findings, click here. 

[i] We wrote a couple follow-up pieces on those subjects for those interested more in what social scientists argue about, here and here. The latter piece discussed particularly challenging issues about how social scientists approach and interpret their analyses.  

Those of us who don’t hear all that well know that watching the speaker’s lips is essential. Too often what we think we heard (or saw) is not what we heard at all. Only 40 percent of English sounds are visible on the lips.   

This results in some hilarious errors — more fun when the joke’s not on us.

Thanks to Slate’s Browbeat for this lipreading of The Hunger Games. Click here.

I thought it might be nice to have a chuckle on this dreary, cold Tuesday after Thanksgiving!

“One night at a pub I heard the sound of traditional Okinawan folk music, and it was like being hit in the head with a hammer. The impact was like a bolt of lightning!The song told the story of how in life there are things that each of us is born to do. I realized that I had been trying to erase the reality that I was born and raised here on this island. Suddenly listening to the music my hardened heart melted and I was freed.” 

Byron has captivated me with his story since we first met in 1999, two mixed race guys, one an elder researcher, the other a young searcher in the throes of an identity quest. Born and raised in Okinawa by a native woman and her family, his face is marked by the genes of his father, an American whom he never met and whose name remains a mystery. With looks that branded him as an American, associating him with an occupying army and military bases and making him a scapegoat for hostility, Byron's youthful life was full of strife and he had to fight to stay alive and maintain his dignity. He struggled to find himself, even venturing to Los Angeles to become an American rock star.

But when he had his great awakening he put away his electric guitar and devoted himself to the study of the sanshin, a 3-stringed snake skinned instrument. He set out on a road of discovery, immersing himself in the study of Okinawan traditional folk music of the islands. Music led him to language, as he wanted to understand the words of the songs he was singing. But years of neglect have taken their toll and it is a language no longer used in daily life, understood only by the middle aged, spoken only by the elderly. Byron felt anger at the society that did not value its own language, though he understood the history of incorporation into the Japanese nation, subsequent forced assimilation into Japanese language and culture, and self chosen accommodation, that had drastically reduced the use of the language. So he sought out elders and asked them to teach him.

“I have always been asked, ‘What are you?’ To show people who I am, I studied Okinawan language. I have been discriminated my whole life—“You’re not Japanese!” “You’re not Okinawan!” “You’re not American!” I felt like I was always out of place. So to make my own place, I used language. This face tells people that I am a Westerner, and should speak English. And people can't imagine I can speak Okinawan. But the reality is I was born here. I am Okinawan. I strongly wish people could understand my situation. By using Okinawan language maybe they can.”

Byron wanted to tell others, “I am not who I appear to be. Don’t judge me by this appearance; this face is a façade that fools you, it tells you nothing about who I am inside. Yes, there are Okinawans who look like me! And we are not “half,” we are not less, we are whole, just like you.”

Like many identity searchers, he recovered his "surrendered identity," realizing that what he sought was already inside him just waiting to be discovered. Now Byron's life is dedicated to being Okinawan and he is a passionate advocate for saving the language. Seeing the tremendous power in words, Byron diligently studied and mastered a tongue that is a symbol of ethnic pride in the face of assimilation to mainstream Japanese ways. His ability to speak this language loudly proclaims his authenticity. Byron defends his identity through language, wearing it as armor. He no longer has to keep saying, ‘I’m Okinawan!’ he lives it; he embodies it.

He has also become an accomplished sanshin player of the traditional music that elicits the soul of the islands and enables him to touch the hearts and raise the spirits of his fellow Okinawans. He has empowered himself by becoming Okinawan to a degree that puts others to shame. He even fights assimilation by proudly pronouncing his family name in its original form of “Fija,” rather than “Higa,” the way Japanese taught the islanders to say their own name many years ago.

The combination of language and music is compelling and Byron has empowered himself to walk proudly among his community. He was invited to write a regular column in a local newspaper introducing the language, taught on a radio show for several years, and is now an instructor at Okinawa Christian University. Byron’s proficiency in Okinawan and passion to help others appreciate its beauty and tragedy has taken him to other countries as an invited lecturer at universities in Germany and the U.S. Teaching about Okinawa, to both natives and others, and actively campaigning to preserve the language further strengthens Byron’s identity.

“When a language is lost a whole culture is lost! In a culture is dance, songs, pottery, clothing, architecture, food. Our language and culture have been lost through assimilation to Japanese and Western standards. Young people can't speak the language any more. I think it is natural that elementary, junior, high school kids learn Okinawan.”

Byron views his life in ways that offer visions of action instead of victimhood, introducing himself unabashedly as Okinawan, as someone who did not know his father and does not speak English. He puts his life on stage every day, visible on television, radio, weddings, events, and on the street. He has emerged on the national scene in Japan and even internationally with recent coverage in the Washington Post.

“I found out that I am not American despite having American blood and though I have Japanese nationality, I define myself culturally as Okinawan. That can be chosen and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the color of skin. One has to build societies where one can choose one’s culture and then all kinds of discrimination based on skin color and so on will be dissolved.”

Over the years Byron and I have maintained a brotherly relationship, mutually inspired by our desire to fight stigmatization, class prejudice and racism. I continue to tell his story because I believe that the message he received that night in the pub is one we all need to learn. We each are born to do something unique, and discovering that, accepting it, and courageously trying to live it is our challenge. In finding a "hidden wholeness" Byron is healing himself and his community. In his transformation he experiences vulnerability in such a way that he moves beyond himself and his own personal needs, connecting with not only all parts of himself, but also with others. Byron has become a cultural healer, with a felt responsibility to work in ways that bring people in touch with what is valuable, seeing beyond differences, to a deeper vision of common humanity.

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsuis a psychologist who teaches human development and ethnic studies at Stanford University, mentors adult learners at Fielding Graduate University and is President of Nichibei Care. He is the author of When Half is Whole, Multicultural Encounters, and Synergy, Healing and Empowerment.

Follow Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu at Finding Meaning in Life's Struggles,Twitter, Facebook

© 2014 Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu. All rights reserved. Please contact for permission to reprint

Photo by Byron Fija

In R-rated movies, the sex scenes are always dramatic and synchronous - both partners are extremely desirous, highly aroused, and easily orgasmic.  Sex is magical and great for everybody involved. The norm is that both partners are swept away by highly charged, erotic, and amazing sex.

Is that the right model for real life couple sexuality? Clinically, I tell my couples if they have Hollywood type sex once a month, they beat 95% of American couples. They ask if they were truly a loving, sexually free couple shouldn't all of their sexual encounters be mutual and synchronous? Shouldn't both people experience desire, arousal, and orgasm each time? Ideally, yes. Realistically, no. Although sexual experiences which are mutual and synchronous are the most valued, among sexually happy, functional couples this occurs in less than 50% of their sexual encounters.

The Good Enough Sex (GES) model emphasizes that couple sexuality is inherently variable, flexible, and complex with a range of roles, meanings, and outcomes. The essence of couple sexuality is sharing pleasure. The couple can value both synchronous and asynchronous sexual experiences. In a healthy relationship, the majority of sexual encounters are positive, but asynchronous. What that means is that although mutual, synchronous couple sexuality is most highly valued, it is not only normal but healthy that sometimes sex is better for one partner than the other, sometimes sex meets different needs, and other times it is great for one while the other finds it pleasurable. Contrary to media myths, this is not governed by traditional gender roles. For example, in couples over age 50 the sexual experience is often better for the woman than the man.

The key for healthy asynchronous sexuality is that it's not at the expense of the partner or the relationship. Sexual experiences that are better for one partner are normal and healthy (the classic example is intercourse where the man enjoys himself and the woman is "along for the ride"). Examples of different sexual meanings includes one partner pleasures the other to orgasm, for one partner the focus is on orgasm as a tension reducer -for the other sensual pleasure, or sex to become pregnant for the woman while the man wants to experience feelings of love and attachment.

Healthy couple sexuality accepts both synchronous and asynchronous sexual experiences. The new sexual mantra is desire/pleasure/eroticism/satisfaction, with desire as the most important dimension. When the couple embraces variable, flexible sexuality which celebrates synchronous as well as asynchronous sexual experiences, they can enjoy a strong, resilient sexual desire.

One of my daughters recently asked me for suggestions on types of meat she might enjoy. I was shocked. A vegetarian for nearly 18 years, she has always found meat, well, icky. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised about her new interest in carnivory. After all, as a researcher, I have studied vegetarians who return to meat. But I never figured she would join the ranks of ex-vegetarians, so I asked her to jot down a few words about why she originally gave up the consumption of flesh and why she now feels compelled to change her veggie ways. Here’s what she wrote….

I stopped eating meat when I was 13. I told my mom and dad that my decision was based on animal welfare and the high carbon footprint of meat. But the truth is that while I theoretically cared about animals and the planet, mostly I just wanted to be different. I lived in a small Southern town where it was more common to see the image of Jesus in a piece of toast than encounter a real live vegetarian. So while my motives weren’t entirely pure, giving up meat certainly made me different: Population of Cullowhee, NC: 9,427 meat eaters and 1 vegetarian.

For the next 17 years, I ate grains, produce, legumes, and fake meat products like those Morningstar bacon strips that have a lower nutritional value than cat food. And for the next 17 years, it seemed like I was always hungry no matter how large my bowl of beans and rice. Even worse than constant hunger, I didn't seem to enjoy food the way other people did. Eating was a chore, like folding laundry or paying bills, but even more annoying because if I didn't do it I would die. I was sick of being hungry, I was sick of beans and rice, and so at the age of 31, I have made a decision: I will try and become a meat-eater.

Thanks to a new study by the Humane Research Council, we now know a lot more about the psychology of why so many vegetarians and vegans, like my daughter, give up their all-veggie ways.

 The Methods

The Humane Research Council is a non-profit that uses market research techniques to assess public opinions related to animal issues. Their mission is to provide information animal protection organizations can use to more effectively spread their messages. And for this study, they recruited a group of top flight social scientists to design a survey to examine differences between current and ex-vegetarians and vegans.

The study sample was unique for a couple of reasons. First it was huge – 11,399 adults of all dietary stripes which were recruited from a representative group of Americans maintained by Harris Interactive (part of the company that conducts the highly respected Harris Poll). Second, while not perfectly representative of the American public, it is a much closer representation of the population of the United States than other studies of our collective dietary choices. (While the sample was a bit older, wealthier, more educated, whiter, and more female that the general public, I was more impressed by how diverse it was.)

The Findings:

For anyone interested in the psychology of meat-eating and meat avoidance, the data is a gold mine. Here is a quick overview of some of the more interesting findings

• How Many? - The proportion of true vegetarians and vegans in the United State is surprisingly small. Only about 2% of respondents did not consume any meat – 1.5% were vegetarians and 0.5% were vegans. These finding are generally consistent with other studies.

• Going Back - Five out of six people who give up meat eventually abandon their vegetarian ways.

• Vegans Vs. Vegetarians - Vegans are less like to backslide than vegetarians. While 86% of vegetarians returned to meat, only 70% of vegans did.

• Political views - More than twice as many vegetarians and vegans indicated they were politically liberal rather than said they were conservative.

• Demographics - Compared to current vegetarian/vegans, ex-vegetarians tended to be older, more conservative, and more likely to be traditional Christians. There were no differences in the gender ratios, education, or race/ethnicity of former and current vegetarian/vegans.

• Gender differences - As expected, there were higher proportions of women than men among both present and former meat avoiders. (Nearly every study has found that women are more concerned about animal issues. For a review, see here.)

• Reasons for going veg - Current vegetarians/vegans were considerably more likely than former meat avoiders to say they originally gave up eating meat for reasons of taste, concern for animals, feelings of disgust, social justice, and religious beliefs.

• Health problems - Only 29% of ex-vegetarians/vegans indicated that they experienced specific health-related symptoms while on a no-meat diet.

• Back to veggies? - 37% of ex-vegetarian/vegans indicated that they would be interested in going back to a no-meat diet at some point in the future.

• The purity problem - 43% of ex-vegetarians/vegans said they found it too difficult to be “pure” with their diet.

The Implications: Meat Reduction Is More Effective Than Meat Elimination

The implications of this study are important. Only 2% of Americans do not eat any animal products. (This number has not changed appreciably for 20 years). Further, the fact that five out of six vegetarians go back to eating meat suggests that an all-veggie diet is very hard for most people to maintain over the long haul. Hence, the authors of the report argue that animal protectionists would be better off concentrating their efforts to persuade “the many” to reduce their consumption of flesh than trying to convince “the few” to take the absolutist route and give up meat completely. Sounds right to me.

Post script: In reality, my daughter was not the only vegetarian in her home town when she was a kid. And today she is still a reluctant omnivore. The truth is that she does not like meat very much -- but we did eat a sausage and mushroom pizza for dinner last night.

 *      *      *      *      *      *

The Humane Research Council is one of my go-to sources for accurate information about animal issues. You can access their excellent white papers and subscribe to their research updates at their website. Sign up here. You can read more about findings of the HRC study here.

For other Animals and Us posts on vegetarianism and the psychology of eating meat, click on the links below.

Eating Disorders: The Dark Side of Vegetarisnism
Who’s Lying About Not Eating Meat
Was Hitler a Vegetarian?
Returning To Meat
Why Are There So Few Vegetarians?
Does Loving Pets Make It Easier To Eat Meat?

Picture sources

http://www.zazzle.com/former_vegetarian_zombie_t_shirt_dark-235499172388302199

http://cheezburger.com/7884644864

http://cuntinglinguist.com/2012/07/a-carnivore-ruminates-thoughts-about-balance.html

How can parents, educators, business leaders and policy makers nurture creativity, prepare for inventiveness and stimulate innovation? One compelling answer, we suggest, lies in fostering the invention of imaginary worlds or paracosms, a.k.a. worldplay. Michele’s new book, Inventing Imaginary Worlds: From Childhood Play to Adult Creativity across the Arts and Sciences, lays out the argument. First emerging in middle childhood—and in some cases extending well into maturity—this complex form of make-believe draws lifelong energy from the fruitful combustions of play, imagination and creativity.

In this post and posts to follow, we’ll return to our explorations of all three of these fascinating subjects, with a special focus on worldplay. We first came to the topic as parents of a world-building child—from there, Michele made it her particular concern as a creativity scholar and writer. What do children get out of inventing imaginary worlds? What does society gain from their speculative experience? The more she learned about this complex play, the more we both became convinced of its importance for growing children, problem-exploring adults, and an innovating society.

So what is worldplay, anyway?  In childhood and youth, imaginary world invention occurs as an outcome of the normally developing imagination. It is often associated, at least at first, with physical play in those secret, found and constructed places—like a closet under the stairs or a fort beneath the backyard bushes—that children find especially fascinating during grade school years. For some children, the play develops strong imaginary dimensions, even absent the closet or the fort. In the mind’s eye the imagined place is persistently and consistently recalled as a locus for play alone or with one or two intimate friends.

What makes worldplay complex is that it can accumulate narrative—the adventures, perhaps, of imaginary people. It can generate analogue systems of thought or activity—fictional animals and plants are organized into imagined ecologies, let’s say, or fantasy sports teams go round-robin for the championship. Over time (weeks, months, or years), worldplay evolves into an elaborate make-believe reality. And in many cases, the play provides impetus for the writing of stories and histories, the recording of statistics, the drawing of pictures and maps, or the building of other sorts of cultural artifacts that structure and sustain the play. In other words, worldplay can involve children in making things real as well as imagined—and in ways that boost creative capacity and potential. (See our post, Worldplay: One Cure for Imagination Deficit Disorder.)

What does this kind of play have to do with mature creativity? Plenty. Childhood worldplay is almost by definition a touchstone experience remembered for a lifetime. In Inventing Imaginary Worlds Michele traces quantitative connections between childhood play and adult endeavor in groups such as the MacArthur Fellows, selected for creative achievement. She also looks at qualitative connections articulated by individuals assessing the role of early play in their lives.

In the coming months, look for this personal evaluation of worldplay in Secret Country interviews and profiles, posted here and on Michele's worldplay website, inventingimaginaryworlds.com. What you’ll find is that, in many cases, the creative immersion of play repeats itself in the creative immersions of art or science or other exploratory activity. Whether in novels or video games that build upon fictions of people and place, or in humanistic scenarios that probe the past as well as the future, or in scientific experiments and hypotheses that posit alternate and possible realities, worldplay returns on early investment as creative inspiration, creative strategy, and creative capital at tomorrow’s ready.

See our next post: Secret Country Interview: Remembering Galway Kinnell

© 2014 Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein

I've written a number of essays that have centered on the question, "Should animals be killed in the name of, or under the guise of, conservation?" (See also) The basic foundation of the rapidly growing field of compassionate conservation, "First do no harm," maintains that the lives of individual animals matter and that killing in the name of conservation should not be done (see also). 

Just recently this question arose once again when the Canadian Journal of Zoology (CJZ) published a research article by Dave Hervieux, Mark Hebblewhite, Dave Stepnisky, Michelle Bacon, and Stan Boutin titled "Managing wolves (Canis lupus) to recover threatened woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) in Alberta" that presented the outcome of an "experiment" in mass killing in which 890 Canadian wolves suffered and died using aerial gunning, trapping, and poisoning with strychnine. The strychnine also killed other animals who were not part of the study. Minimum "collateral damage" that was deemed acceptable by the researchers and the CJZ included 91 ravens, 36 coyotes, 31 foxes, 8 marten, 6 lynx, 4 weasels, and 4 fisher. (For more on how wolves are highly stressed when hunted please see "Wolves: Hunting Affects Stress, Reproduction, and Sociality.")

Part of the Methods section of this paper reads as follows (references can be found in the link above): "Wolf packs were located from a helicopter and one or more wolves per pack were captured using net-gunning techniques and fit with a VHF radio collar. Using a helicopter, we then subsequently attempted to lethally remove all remaining members of each pack through aerial-shooting throughout the winter (sensu Courchamp et al. 2003; Hayes et al. 2003), with the radio-collared wolves removed at the end of winter. Wolf captures were conducted according to Alberta Wildlife Animal Care Committee class protocol No. 009 (Alberta Sustainable Resource Development 2005)..."

Furthermore, "We also established toxicant bait stations, using strychnine, to augment aerial shooting and to target wolves that could not be found or removed using aerial-shooting. Strychnine is permitted for use in Alberta for the purpose of predator control (authorized by Government of Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency following specific provisions outlined in Alberta Fish and Wildlife Division’s 'Standards'.”

It's important also to note that this mass killing did not work, not that it would even be remotely justified if it did. As stated in the abstract of the research paper, "Although the wolf population reduction program appeared to stabilize the Little Smoky population, it did not lead to population increase [of caribou] ..."

When I told some colleagues and friends about this study they were incredulous and aghast. Cloaked in a lab coat and under the guise of conservation biology, this egregious study raises serious questions about oversight and approval of lethal research involving wild animals. It is hard to imagine any other scientific investigation of a wild mammal being organized around the principle of mass killing. The inhumane methods used to experimentally “euthanize” the wolves are of the type used years ago and widely abandoned as unethical because of their inhumaneness. And, of course, the wolves were not euthanized, which suggests they were killed to end interminable pain and suffering. 

The approach demonstrated in this paper reflects exactly why animal care committees were created to provide oversight on research methods and to avoid research being conducted and published that clearly fails to meet even minimum ethical standards. This research and publication represents the systematic moral failure of the Alberta government, participating universities, the Canadian Journal of Zoology, and individual scientists who carried out the study.

How did this study ever get approved and conducted?

Of course, the main question at hand is, "How did this study ever get approved and conducted?" This question must be aired and discussed openly and widely. One colleague asked me, "How can these researchers sleep at night?" Frankly, I have no idea. I also pondered why a study like this can be approved, conducted, and published in a peer-reviewed journal, yet people get furious, as they should, when a dog is shot, trapped, or poisoned.

I was sickened when I learned about this so-called study, and remain incredulous that it was conducted. Simply put, this reprehensible study sets an unethical, inhumane, and horrific precedent that must be universally opposed. 

This essay was written with Dr. Paul Paquet who works with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. The teaser image can be seen here.

Marc Bekoff's latest books are Jasper's story: Saving moon bears (with Jill Robinson; see also), Ignoring nature no more: The case for compassionate conservation (see also), Why dogs hump and bees get depressed (see also), and Rewilding our hearts: Building pathways of compassion and coexistence. The Jane effect: Celebrating Jane Goodall (edited with Dale Peterson) will be published in 2015. (marcbekoff.com; @MarcBekoff) 

After twenty-three years of practice as a psychologist working with children and teens, I have had a lot of experience seeing their difficulties in speaking with their parents about marijuana. Many teens have bragged to me how they smoke weed unbeknownst to their parents even being aware of it. Others have shared how they've beaten drug tests given by their parents. There is indeed a huge communication gap between teens and their parents when it comes to broaching and exploring the topic of weed.

Sadly, what is often missing between parents and teens in discussing marijuana is the feeling of mutual trust to talk about it.  Bearing this in mind, I'm happy to heartily endorse a book entitled, One Toke: A survival guide for teens by Marc Aronoff. The intent of his book is to explore pertinent issues between teens who smoke marijuana and their parents. One Toke fills this goal and does so in a safe and encouraging manner.

This book is meant to serve as a catalyst for further thought and promote constructive discussion among teens and parents.One Toke is a no nonsense survival guide, covering the nuts and bolts of teen marijuana years from pure pressure to addiction and from marijuana smoking parents to politics.

Given what appears to be the increasing movement toward legalization of marijuana for adults, the presence of this new book could not be more timely for teens who commonly see themselves equal to adults. I like how this book endorses being "smart" for those teens who do unswervingly desire to tryout/smoke marijuana. There is an empahsis on keeping them reasonably safe to open up and talk by exploring boundaries and potential consequences in a non-shaming way. 

I have "tried out" this book in my practice to faciliate talking with teens interested in using weed and with some who are seasoned users, By using the discussion points offered in One Toke, I have had teens open up in more forthcoming ways about why they smoke marijuana and what influences them to do so. I can tell you it is a wonderful resource for parents and teens and the clinicians who work with them.

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: Shutterstock

Brittany (inconsequential details changed, of course), a blond, green-eyed twenty-four-year-old and Elizabeth, a twenty-three-year-old ginger with freckles and a shy smile were each raped within ten days of each other. All indications pointed toward the same assailant. Brittany had been walking to her car after a long evening shift when she was attacked from behind, dragged to a nearby construction site, and brutally assaulted at knife point by a man who called her "Donna". He vowed to love her until he was dead.

Elizabeth had just said goodnight to dinner guests when there was a knock. She assumed a friend had forgotten something, but when she opened the door a man burst in. He had a knife. He raped her on her living room floor, all the while calling her "Donna" and promising never-ending love. 

Police indicate both women were understandably hysterical when they reported the crimes. Each cooperated fully with investigators and underwent identical physical examinations at the same hospital. Both recovered quickly from their physical injuries and each accepted referrals for psychological evaluation and treatment of trauma.

Six months later Elizabeth was re-settled in a new apartment, working full time, and beginning a relationship with the man she eventually married. They had their first child a week after their second wedding anniversary. Their daughter is now in kindergarten and Elizabeth and her husband are deciding whether to get pregnant again now or wait until Elizabeth has at least one full year in her newly promoted position at work.

Brittany returned to her parents' home after the rape. She lives there still, eight years later. She worked a series of entry level jobs, none of them lasting past the probationary period, and has been unemployed for the past three years. She's fired at least four therapists and relies heavily on anti-depressants and anxiety medication. She belongs to several support groups and is an active on-line participant in blogs and websites dedicated to surviving sexual assault. She doesn't date. She's lost contact with her friends. She feels safest in her basement rooms.

Both women were similarly educated, raised in intact homes of the same socio-economic status, and had access to psychological services within days of their assaults. How does one explain Elizabeth's ability to thrive while Brittany struggles?

The difference is Elizabeth found a way to radically accept what happened to her while Brittany continues to find meaning and make sense of the random savagery of her rape. Brittany's daily involvement with the attack compounds her suffering. Elizabeth's acceptance frees her to live the life she desires and deserves.

Radical acceptance is the key.

To live is to experience pain. At the moment of our birth we are pulled from a warm, dark, safe womb and thrust into a noisy world of bright lights and manhandling. We go on to scraped knees, broken hearts, sprained this, and fractured that. We are disappointed and discounted. We lose opportunities and options. Friends move on and loved ones die. It's all a part of life. As the saying goes, "Pain is necessary".

Ah, but the rest of that old saw is "Suffering is optional". And that is the core of radical acceptance. In a simple calculus, Pain + Nonacceptance = Suffering. Pain + Acceptance = Resolution. 

Hurtful things happen to us. Big and small. Physical and emotional. Self-inflicted or external. In life, pain is non-negotiable. It will happen. We can find a way to accept it and move on, or we can wrap ourselves up in it. We can say we're trying to understand the why's or the reasons. We can struggle to make sense of it. We can re-live it, expound upon it, and allow it to become our rallying cry or even our identity.

And if we do that we will suffer. That bears repeating. If we continue to wrap ourselves in our pain we will suffer...and the suffering will be self-inflicted. Brittany lives with her suffering daily. She's limited her life by not accepting the inesecapable truth that hurtful things happen. She and she alone is causing her suffering.

Lest you think I blame the victim, hear me out. Brittany and Elizabeth's rapist is solely responsible for the heinous act he committed. He raped those women. His prison term is deserved. He is responsible for the pain they experienced from the rape.

And Brittany is responsible for her suffering.

Her rapist has been in prison a long time now. It's everyone's hope he's there for a lot longer. Elizabeth found a way to radically accept she was a random victim of a dangerous man. She can wish the rape hadn't happened to her. Everyone who loves her wishes the same for her. But she doesn't need it not to have happened. She is still Elizabeth; the warm, intelligent, funny, loving woman she was before she answered that door. She can accept, without needing things to be different...that this happened to her. She's found her way to radical acceptance.

Each of us has experienced pain. Each of us has inflicted pain. If we are to move on and find our happiness, we must radically accept what has happened. Our only other alternative is to suffer. And our suffering will be self-inflicted.

Radical acceptance doesn't mean we condone the behavior of those who have hurt us. It doesn't minimize the magnitude of the hurt.  It doesn't mean we agree with their behaviors or that we somehow deserved what happened to us. Radical acceptance doesn't mean the pain we experienced wasn't real or valid. It doesn't mean we'll forget the pain we felt or the pain we caused. It doesn't even mean we forgive the person who caused us pain.

What radical acceptance does mean is we're done. We're laying that burden down. We're going to stop trying to change what happened by getting angry. That never works, does it? Until we invent a time machine to go back and change the past, our only option, if we are to thrive, is to accept and move on. Radical acceptance means we're going to see things the way they are, without needing them to be different. It means we're done wasting time blaming. What happened, happened. It doesn't define us. Radical acceeptance means we're going to focus our attention on the here and now and do what we need to do to live our best possible life.

We're going to lay that burden down.

Think of the pain you've experienced. Pain brought to you or pain you caused someone else. There is no benefit in holding on to your suffering. Let it go. Lay it down. Move your mind from what has happened in the past and focus on today. Today is where you live. Don't waste this precious present by suffering from the past. Let it go. Radically accept.

Start right now.

This article by Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT, originally appeared on her blog, http://darlenelancer.com/blog. Lancer is the author of Codependency For Dummies.

Power exists in all relationships. Having power means to have a sense of control, to have choices and the ability to influence our environment and others. It’s a natural and healthy instinct to exert our power to get our wants and needs met.

When we feel empowered, we can manage our emotions, we believe that we matter and that we can affect outcomes. We have a sense of efficacy in our lives, rather than being under the control of others and circumstances. Instead of reacting, we can act because we have an internal locus-of-control.

Impaired Power

In contrast, many of us may feel powerless and victims of outside forces. We feel like our destiny is out of our hands. That's because some of us voluntarily give up our power to others. We may feel uncomfortable with exercising our own power, and believe that we will alienate others. Instead, we might react to others, defer to their wants and needs, and have trouble making decisions and initiating independent action. We might feel like we’re being mean or raising our voice when we merely state what we want or don’t like.

This impaired sense of power is common among codependents and stems from:

1. A habitual external focus

2.    Shame and low self-esteem–not feeling worthy

3.    Dependence and lack of autonomy–excessive need for a relationship

4.    Lack of assertiveness and deference to others’ decisions

5.    Discomfort with power and a belief that it harms relationships

6.    Fear of rejection and abandonment

7.    Need for others’ love and approval to feel content and happy

8.    Denial of needs, wants, and feelings

9.    Having unreasonable expectations of others

10. Lack of self-responsibility (victim-blame mentality)  

Power Imbalances in Relationships

Many relationships have power imbalances. If we’ve denied our power and don’t express ourselves for any of the above reasons, it’s natural for someone else to fill the vacuum. Often in codependent relationships, one partner--sometimes an addict, narcissist, or abuser--wields power over the other. Usually the acquiescent partner attempts to exert influence in indirect or passive-aggressive ways, such as withholding. Chronic lack of power can lead to depression and physical symptoms.

Shared Power 

Self-worth and autonomy are pre-requisite to sharing power and feeling entitled to express our desires and needs, including needs for respect and reciprocity. In a healthy relationship, power is shared. Both partners take responsibility for themselves and to the relationship. Decisions are made jointly, and they feel safe and valued enough to be vulnerable. They’re able to say what we like and don’t like and what we want and won’t tolerate. Relationships and intimacy require boundaries. Otherwise, risking honest self-expression feels too threatening. Boundaries ensure mutual respect and the happiness of both partners.

Codependents and Power

Codependents generally grow up in families where power was exercised over them in a dominant-submissive pattern. Their needs and feelings were ignored or criticized. When personal power and self-worth isn’t encouraged, we come to believe that power and love can’t coexist. Power gets a bad rep. We’re afraid of our own power and to feel safe and loved learn to accommodate and please others. For girls, this can be reinforced in families where women and girls are viewed as second-class or not encouraged to be assertive, autonomous, educated, and self-supporting.

On the other hand, some children grow up to decide the best way to feel safe and get their needs met is to exercise power over others. This is also presents problems, since it breeds fear and resentment and makes our partner withdraw or behave in passive-aggressive ways.

Many codependents have never learned to be assertive or how to problem-solve. They’re unable to know and assert their wants and needs or make decisions, often even for themselves. They relinquish control over themselves and often defer to others or don’t act at all. Assertiveness is empowering, but requires a foundation of autonomy and self-esteem, both difficult for codependents. However, assertiveness can be learned, and doing so builds self-esteem.

Control is one of the primary symptoms of codependency – control of self and/or others. It becomes confused with power. Instead of taking responsibility for their own happiness, which would be empowering, codependents’ focus is external.

Rather than attend to their needs directly, they try to exercise power over others and control others to make themselves feel okay on the inside. They think, “I’ll change him (or her) to do what I want, and then I’ll be happy.” This behavior is based on the erroneous belief that we can change others. But when our expectations aren’t met, we feel more helpless and powerless.  

How to Become Empowered   

Love and power are not incongruous. In fact, love doesn’t mean giving up oneself, which eventually leads to resentment. Love actually requires the exercise of power.

To claim our power means learning to live consciously, taking responsibility for ourselves and choices, building self-esteem, and asking directly for our needs and wants. As we learn to express ourselves honestly and set boundaries and say no, we create safety and mutual respect, allowing our partner to do the same. 

Becoming more autonomous is also important, not only to build self-esteem, but to assure us that that we can survive on our own. That knowledge makes us less dependent on others’ approval. This allows couples to be less reactive.

They’re able to share their feelings, hear each other’s needs, problem-solve, and negotiate without becoming defensive or blaming. Sharing our vulnerability--our feelings, wants, and needs--actually strengthens our true self in an environment of mutuality and trust. Thus, asserting our power permits safety and allows for intimacy and love to flourish. When we feel powerless or unsafe, love and the health of the relationship are threatened.

Darlene Lancer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and expert on relationships and codependency. She’s the author of: Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You and Codependency for Dummies, as well as several ebooks.

Lancer's articles appear in professional journals and Internet mental health websites, including on her own, www.darlenelancer.com and www.whatiscodependency.com, where you can get a free copy of “14 Tips for Letting Go.”Find her on www.youtube.com, Twitter @darlenelancer, and Facebook. You can contact her at info@darlenelancer.com.

If you’re walking through a park and notice a flock of birds picking through the grass looking for worms, you know what’ll happen if you get too close. The birds will take off almost simultaneously and within seconds move as a unit in one direction and then another, far away from you, despite your innocent intentions. Birds, like countless other animals, share a sense of the group that not only alerts them to surprises, but also guides their actions in sync with the group’s pattern.

So here’s a question – Just how different are we from birds?

Actually, let me ask that a different way – If a thousand hipsters start oiling their beards with organic beeswax, how long will it take a million hipsters to do the same?

To be fair, hipsters, and the rest of us, aren’t like birds in a lot of ways, but there is a group-sense inherent in human nature that lines us up favorably with birds and bees and ants and fish, though with us the dynamic is less reactive. Rather than reacting to an immediate cause, our patterns emerge in the form of social conformity. The irony is that we (particularly in Western cultures) pride ourselves on our alleged individuality.

Computational neuroscientists are interested in why this happens in human communities, and they chose hispters as subjects in a recent study.  “Hispter” in this case doesn’t so much describe a particular social group, but those with a general preference for whatever isn’t of the mainstream.

The researchers posit that something they call the “hipster effect” asserts itself in human populations no matter how individualistic we imagine ourselves, because it’s individuality itself that sparks conformity. In other words, trying to be different creates patterns of likeness. Nonconformist fashion becomes group fashion. Atypical ways of communicating become typical of the group.

To test the theory in a way only computational neuroscientists would devise, the researchers created a mathematical model called the “minority game” that combined statistical physics with a bit of predictive neuroscience about how our brains detect and respond to patterns.

Study author Jonathan Touboul, a mathematical neuroscientist at the Collège de France in Paris, says that the model shows something essential about how group members make decisions that ultimately, though not immediately, result in uniformity. "If you take large sets of interacting individuals — whether hipsters, stock traders or any group that decides to go against the majority — by trying to be different, they will ultimately all do the same thing at the same time,” according to Touboul. “The reason for that is the time it takes for an individual to register the decisions of others. You cannot be aware of what other people decide in real time, it takes a little while.”

Call it “sensing the zeitgeist,” or just call it our naturally attuned sense of the group—whatever terminology you prefer, the same thing happens: given enough time, nonconformist decisions lead to group conformity.

Which brings us back to birds, because an important implication from this study is that whether or not individuals think they are acting against the mainstream, they eventually fall in line with prevailing patterns (we humans call them “trends”) – a lot like birds moving in one direction and then another, in near-perfect unison.

Whether that should lead us to despair the plight of our imagined uniqueness is debatable, but it should probably throw some welcomed light on why “alternative” trends are really just patterns of likeness bubbling up in various social groups. All fashion, in fact, is just another social pattern, and as such just another flavor of conformity. We move from one fashion to the next like birds to the next grassy field of worms—until the group signals us to move on…and on…and on….

You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative. His latest book is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Power To Adapt Can Change Your Life.

Chronic pain often leaves a person less able to engage in social activities.  As a result, relationships may change or fall away.  This can cause an additional layer of pain—called social pain.

Social pain is psychological pain that is caused from social disconnection or rejection.  People with chronic pain often experience social disconnection and  painful loss of relationships. 

fMRI research has shown that the pain of social exclusion increases physical pain by activating areas of the brain associated with physical pain. 

This month, the social impacts of pain and social pain proper figure prominently in the popular media.

In the upcoming movie Cake, Jennifer Aniston portrays a woman living with physical and emotional scars, and debilitating chronic pain.  The social aspects of pain figure prominently in the drama.  Chronic pain can lead to disconnection from others, is which then leads to more pain.

Also this month Women’s Health magazine published a feature in which women living with chronic pain tell how pain has impacted their relationships with people in their lives:  family, friends, employers, even strangers.

While social pain is a critical and overlooked aspect of chronic pain here’s how to minimize it.

5 Essential Tips to Reduce Social Pain  (while living with chronic pain)

(1) Communication is Key.  Be sure to let the people you care about that you have chronic pain.  People often show no outward signs of chronic pain so they will not know unless you tell them.

(2) Expect people to forget you have chronic pain.  Even after to tell  friends and family you have chronic pain, they will forget because your pain is not visible.  Have patience with others as their forgetting does not mean they don’t care. Without making chronic pain the main topic of every conversation, you may find ways to gently let people know how you are doing, even if they forget to ask. 

(3) Avoid the dark pitfall of social withdrawal!  “I got tired of cancelling so I quit making plans with friends.”  Don’t fall into this trap.  Fight for your connection with friends and loved ones.  So you made dinner plans and feel completely lousy?  Use the time to catch up with your friend over the phone while you take care of yourself at home.

(4) Let people know you are disappointed. When you must cancel, let your family or friends know you are disappointed and why.  You may worry that you are disappointing others by cancelling plans, but remember that you are disappointed too!  Sharing in the disappointment brings you closer together. After all, you are both in the relationship.  It can also help others feel less rejected by you when the disappointment is mutual and openly discussed.  Then see if you can make a Plan B together.

(5) Make the most of social media to stay connected with loved ones and friends.  Text, email, Skype, Facetime, phone calls are great options to consider.  If you are isolated now, re-establish healthy connections with social media as a first step.

Pain may limit your activities but it need not rob you of social connection. Think of social connection as good pain medicine, and focus on getting your regular, nourishing dose.

Whether you're trying to assert yourself with a dog, children, or in a negotiation, you need to change your voice quality. Margaret Thatcher went to a voice coach to change how she spoke. Now, new research found that simply telling people to imagine they were powerful led them to change their style in the same way Thatcher did.

Lead researcher Sei Jin Ko of San Diego State University, along with Melody Sadler of San Diego State and Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School, designed two studies. In the first, they recorded 161 college students reading a passage aloud and captured their baseline acoustics. The participants were then randomly assigned to a high status or low one in a negotiation exercise.

Students assigned to a "high" rank were told to go into the negotiation imagining that they either had a strong alternative offer, valuable inside information, or high status in the workplace; or asked to recall an experience in which they had power. Low-rank students, on the other hand, were told to imagine they had either a weak offer, no inside information, or low workplace status, or asked to recall an experience in which they lacked power.

The students then read a second passage aloud.

Comparing the first and second recordings, the researchers found that the voices of students assigned high-status tended to go up in pitch, become more monotone (less variable in pitch), and become more variable in loudness than the voices of students assigned low-power roles.

"Amazingly, power affected our participants' voices in almost the exact same way that Thatcher's voice changed after her vocal training," says Galinsky.

In the second experiment, listeners, who had no knowledge of the first experiment, were asked to rank the speakers in the first assignment by how powerful they sounded. It turned out that listeners tended to associate higher pitch, louder voices, and voices that varied in loudness with high-power behaviors.

It's all very interesting, but to me, the real message here is that students were able to sound powerful just by imagining they were so. Go forth, and rule!

Alcohol Abuse during the Holidays

A new study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found a distinction between drinking too much and being alcohol dependent. The researchers say 9 in 10 Americans who drink too much should not be classified as alcoholics, but this does not mean they are not doing real damage to themselves both physically and socially. In recent years binge drinking has been a growing concern, especially among young adults. Researchers say it is important to distinguish between binge drinking and alcoholism, the latter being a chronic disorder.

Binge drinking is defined as four or more drinks on an occasion for women, five or more drinks on an occasion for men. Consuming eight or more drinks a week for women or 15 or more drinks a week for men also falls within the binge drinking definition. It turns out millions of Americans fall into the category of binge drinkers. The study found that nearly 1 in 3 adults is an excessive drinker, and most of them binge drink, usually on multiple occasions.

The researchers say excessive drinking is responsible for 88,000 deaths in the U.S. each year; 3,700 of those deaths were linked to alcohol dependence. There were also serious health effects from drinking too much in a short time period, such as violence, alcohol poisoning, and car accidents.

Here is some practical advice for the holidays. Think about how much alcohol you will consume before arriving at a party, then stick to your decision. If you find it difficult or uncomfortable to stick to your alcohol consumption plan, that is a red flag of a potentially more serious alcohol issue. If you are the host, offer a wide selection of non-alcohol beverages along with a variety of food to snack on. Never push someone to have a drink. Furthermore, if someone is intoxicated, try to discourage him or her from another drink or trying to drive by offering an alternative. The inconvenience of driving a friend home is better than living with only a memory during the holiday season.

- See more at: http://www.cliffsidemalibu.com/richard-taite/alcohol-abuse-holida...

Proving the Benefits of Meditation

Mindful meditation is a type of meditation (which is an exercise of deep, prolonged concentration) during which any feelings, emotions or thoughts are experienced as and when they arise during the exercise, opposed to after the meditation finishes. This practice teaches us about our unresolved issues that prick us when we are busy, and we may not even know what they are.

According to the latest research, participating in a mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. MRI scans documented how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter.

A study led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital has the evidence to prove the claim that people really do feel better after practicing meditation. Senior study author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology said:

 “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day. This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises. This was all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection.

Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. Although no change was seen in a self-awareness-associated structure called the insula, which had been identified in earlier studies, the authors suggest that longer-term meditation practice might be needed to produce changes in that area. None of these changes was seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.

Mindful meditation has great potential to protect against stress-related disorders also, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The brain’s plasticity is amazing, and we are just beginning to realize the potential of increasing our well-being and quality of life by taking an active role in changing the brain thru meditation exercises.

Mindfulness is a wonderful tool with overall health benefits and most people find it easy to learn, regardless of physical ability or age.  Consider meditation as a supporting therapy for many mental health disorders and discuss the possibilities with your personal health care provider.

http://www.psyn-journal.com/article/S0925-4927(10)00288-X/abstract

http://www.feelguide.com/2014/11/19/harvard-unveils-mri-study-proving-meditation-literally-rebuilds-the-brains-gray-matter-in-8-weeks/

Research shows that most arguments begin with low-grade niggles about leaving sock-fluff on the carpet, unwashed plates next to the sink or flicking TV channels. These situations can quickly escalate into a full-scale row, in which underlying issues get brought into the conversation and both parties end up in The Bad Place. As the vaudeville comedian Jack Benny remarked, ‘My wife and I have been married for 47 years and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce. Murder, yes, but divorce, never.’

There’s nothing unhealthy per se about having an argument but, if we’re repeatedly clashing with someone, it leaves us in an exhausting and destructive cycle of flaring up, repairing the relationship, and getting things back on an even keel before the process happens again.  

So what are the stages of an argument and how can you keep your conversations at ground level?

Stage 1: The Spark.

The spark for a disagreement can take many forms, such as something you’ve said that’s perceived as a criticism or something you haven’t said that was expected.  Either way, there’s a trigger that sets us in opposition to each other, rather than being alongside each other.

What to do? The key in Stage 1 is not to react. Just as a fire can only ignite if there’s a combination of oxygen, heat and fuel, arguments fizzle out if you remove blame. Sometimes it’s enough to say nothing at all, or to simply acknowledge what the other person is saying.

Stage 2: The Lift-Off.

Conversations escalate quickly once accusations are made, leading to counter-accusations and justifications. The speed of the conversation accelerates; we stop listening and the more we interrupt each other, the more the conversation gets inflamed. As the intensity level increases, we experience a stress response known as emotional flooding. The interaction becomes mindless rather than mindful, in the sense that we react first and think second.

What to do? When a conversation escalates, our attention switches. We become more interested in being right about our point of view than in resolving the issue or giving the other person a chance to be heard, and we employ strategies in one-upmanship, in which we attempt to match or supersede the other person’s last comment. But we do still have choices. Try the following:

• During an argument, your breathing moves into your upper chest and becomes shallower. Focus on breathing deeply into your belly, which will help you to stay grounded.
• Consciously slow the pace of the conversation down. The most obvious way to do this is to avoid interrupting, which re-establishes pauses between the speaker and listener.
• When we have an argument, we develop tunnel vision. You can counter this by taking the 2^nd and 3^rd perspective. The 2^nd perspective involves making an effort to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. This doesn’t require you to agree with them – you’re simply recognizing another viewpoint. Taking the 3^rd perspective involves imagining someone who is watching the conversation as an independent observer and who has no personal agenda or vested interest in the outcome. What would they say? Having the presence of mind to consider other perspectives will remind you to hold the truth lightly.

Stage 3: The Spiral.

There’s a scene in Mary Poppins where George Banks attempts to cut short a potential argument by declaring, ‘Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts.’ We tend to follow this principle when we have disagreements, making unsubstantiated claims rather than having rational conversation. It becomes a spiral in which both sides look to reinforce their case. Tactics include:

• Comparisons such as, ‘You’re just like your dad.’
• Gross generalisations such as, ‘You’re only interested in yourself.’ In particular, this includes phrases like ‘you always…’ and ‘you never…’
• Heat-of-the moment threats such as, ‘This relationship is over.’
• Dragging up whatever historical issues come to mind, from flirting at last year’s Christmas party to a comment made 5 years ago.

These tactics are all designed to gain an advantage but, in doing so, we are pouring fuel on the fire.

What to do? In Stage 3, you are throwing caution to the wind. However, it’s not too late to take action. The best way to do this is by pressing the STOP! button. You can say, ‘I want to stop this conversation and come back to it later.’ There’s a good chance the other person will try to pull you back into the disagreement, but you have the right to remove yourself.

Stage 4: The Crescendo.

When an argument is reaching its climax, we want the final word. This could be a last volley of accusations, or a slammed door and dramatic exit. Alternatively we might take the moral high ground by saying, ‘That’s a low blow. I’m not going to stoop to that!’

Such behaviors can seem absurd in retrospect, once the heat of the moment has dissipated, but we get caught up in the moment. Originating in the mid-brain, our emotions prepare us for a fight or flight response and become increasingly intense during a confrontation.

What to do? While we don’t select our feelings, we do choose our response to them. The crucial job is to practice noticing your feelings – however strong and uncomfortable they are – while referencing your commitments and values. We’ve all demonstrated this principle when we’ve felt terrified and done something anyway. In the same way, we can feel intense anger and demonstrate respect towards someone.

Stage 5: The Bad Place.

At the end of an argument, we find ourselves in The Bad Place, meaning that our sense of connection is temporarily lost. More often than not we smoulder and feel wronged, before starting to reflect on what’s happened.

What to do? At times there’s no need to discuss an argument after it’s happened, as long as we can let go of our righteousness and move on. At other times, sitting down to discuss it in a more reflective light allows any residual issues to be resolved. When you do this, having an agreement to listen to each other is a pre-requisite, so you don’t tip back into another row. 

The world’s oldest living couple are Karam and Kartari Chand who have been married for nearly 90 years. Naturally, the question everyone asks is how they’ve managed to keep their relationship intact for so many years. Karam gives his answer in simple terms: ‘Listen to your loved ones’ problems and concerns every day.’ When we remember to do this, we have fewer toxic arguments.

For more in depth information, my new book is ‘Blamestorming: Why Conversations Go Wrong and How to Fix Them,’ published by Watkins.

To subscribe to future blogs, visit www.conversationexpert.com.

Follow me on Twitter@Rob_Kendall

Image by Simon Pearsall

He says it will never happen again. She says it will never happen again. He says it was just “one bad night for the family” that just happened to be caught on video. She says, “He was in such shock that this just happened…”

Domestic violence doesn’t “just happen.” And no matter how drunk they both were that night in Atlantic City, no matter how fierce an argument they were having, that doesn’t excuse the knock-out punch that left Janay unconscious. It doesn’t excuse pro footballer Ray Rice from such a brutal attack on a woman. And it doesn’t let Janay, his then-fiancee and now wife (and mother of their 2-year-old daughter), off the hook for making excuses for his behavior.

Domestic violence is a huge problem. Statistics say that one in four women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime; my own work in the field would suggest one in three. Those numbers tell only part of the story: more than 4 million women are physically assaulted and raped by their partners; one in three homicide victims are murdered by current or former partners; more than 60% of incidents happen at home. So most domestic violence is hidden from public view.

Fortunately, the elevators at a casino in Atlantic City come equipped with security videos. It’s really hard to hide the image of a 200-pound pro football player who can bench press 400 pounds delivering such a hard left hook to his fiancee’s face that she hits her head on the elevator wall and is knocked unconscious. And a second video shows Ray dragging Janey’s unconcious body out of the elevator and leaving her lying there, like some old sack of potatoes. There is no denial possible. This is domestic violence.

Now Janay seems more upset about what happened to her husband’s career than what happened that night to her. At first Ray was suspended from the Baltimore Ravens NFL team for two games. Two games! When the video of the actual punch was seen, he was then indefinitely suspended from the NFL. Now he’s won an appeal and received the go-ahead from an arbitrator to be signed again, if a team will have him. And knowing the sports culture, where Ray’s value as a player is more important than his wife’s value as a person, he will probably wind up on another team.

But meanwhile, what of Janay? What are the chances that that “one bad night” will happen again? Unfortunately, pretty high. I would suggest that Janay and Ray are likely trapped in the cycle of abuse. And that her responses are the common ones by women who have been abused. Why did she feel the need to apologize, to express her regret for “the role that I played in the incident?” She says there is “no way” it will happen again. How can she be so sure of that? Are they getting counseling? Therapy? Is he learning about anger management? Has he learned enough about himself and domestic violence to significantly alter the potential for another assault when the next argument heats up? His sound bites do not demonstrate any wisdom, just a fierce desire to be a better man, but no real steps being taken to make it happen.

Right now they are both embarrassed by the whole incident. Hey, she says, doesn’t everybody make mistakes? They don’t want to be judged for a simple mistake. But how realistic is it to think that this type of aggressive acting-out is a one-time only “mistake?”

Had it not happened on camera, had it not been an NFL Bowl winner throwing the punch, we would never have heard about it. Janay Rice would not have become the latest face of domestic violence. So yes, they are embarrassed. So yes, they are fighting to get Ray back doing what he does best—using his aggression on the football field.

As for Janay, I hope she keeps her word when she says, “I’m not going to sit there in silence and let something happen to me…there’s no way.” I wish for that to be true, but I’m not holding my breath.

December 3, 2014

There has been no respite this holiday season.  Driving to meet my longtime friend for lunch, the radio brought me unsettling news, news that reminded me of the truth of the “Four Sights” that spurred to Buddha on his quest to understand suffering.  Birth, old age, sickness and death were the facts of life in his day and ours, each with their accompaniment of miseries.  On my drive south from San Francisco to Palo Alto, the injustices and sufferings of life were inescapable.

The first story detailed how employers discriminated against pregnant women.  A UPS driver was denied accommodations for her condition.  Other workers were summarily fired when bosses learned they were pregnant.  Injustice is our birth-attendant.  We are midwived into a world of wrongs.

Next came news of the stay of execution of Scott Panetti.  Twenty-two years ago, Panetti was convicted of murder.  He was clearly mentally ill, and to this day doesn’t seem to understand the nature of his crime or sentence.  He acted as his own defense in his case, which by the account on the radio, was extraordinarily bizarre and disorganized.  Jurors reported that they would have likely not given him the death penalty if he had been defended by a regular lawyer.  Instead, they felt threatened by exposure to his disturbing courtroom behavior.  There are huge ethical questions about the death penalty, particularly for those mentally ill or developmentally disabled.  Throughout life, we are subject to illness, and our communities can fall short of compassion for us in our troubled state.  Injustice thus follows us throughout our days.

Next, there was the disturbing news about the death of Eric Garner.  This summer, Garner, an African American and asthma sufferer, died after a police officer put him in a chokehold.  Chokeholds are against official NYPD policy.  Despite a coroner’s report that indicated the cause of death as “homicide”, a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict the (White) police officer.  We are all subject to death – but many of us are at peril of unjust death at the hands of those entrusted to protect us.  From Ferguson to Cleveland to New York City, we have disturbing evidence of an unconscionable environment for Black men in this country.

From overseas, there came news of the surrender of some protest leaders in Hong Kong, on the heels of a brutal crackdown by police.  Suffrage, the right to vote and be heard, is vital to a democratic and just society.  Millions of Hong Kongers and our fellow citizens of the world cannot even exercise this basic right.  Injustice rules their day, and thus our own.

As I lunched with my friend, we spoke of anger, injustice, self-centeredness, relationship and compassion – all themes we both struggled with as human beings and as caring, responsible psychiatrists and citizens.  We shared news of difficulties in our lives; we soothed each other with shared presence and attention.  I found myself admiring of her, deeply grateful for her companionship over many years.

In my e-book about Anger (99 cents on Kindle and iBooks, all proceeds to domestic violence nonprofits), I write that anger at injustice is understandable and justifiable.  But the resolution of anger and injustice lies in relationship and responsibility.  We have to work at responsibility for ourselves and responsibility for others.  It is a creative act requiring what seems to be an endangered art to this observer – conversation.  Conversation takes time – and these days, it seems like more and more of us claim we are "too busy" to meet.  We try to satisfy our communal urges with social media and texting – but it’s not enough.  We have to commit ourselves to relationship.  Anger is ultimately the call of a crisis of disconnection and abandonment.  There can be no justice without compassion and connection.  We have to learn to think outside the box of our skulls.

Perhaps this is the ultimate predicament before us.  How do we deal with the fragmentation of our lives?  When society is fragmented, the powerful are pitted against the powerless.  Injustice, inequity and even violence result.  Our task must be to journey towards interdependence and union through understanding and compassion.

The Buddha’s answer to overcoming the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death was in part to cultivate the awareness that we are not independently existing, separate individuals – but are interdependent, composite beings.

My modern translation of this message is that despite all the pressures to “look out for number one” – we are incapable of existing without others.  We all depend on each other to thrive – employers, employees, students, mothers, fathers, children, brothers and sisters.

We must attend to each other, look into each others eyes across the same level table, or injustice will sit at the head: controlling us, denying us, and imprisoning us, from birth to death.

© 2014 Ravi Chandra, M.D. All rights reserved.  Subscribe by RSS above.  Sign up for a quarterly e-newsletter to be the first to find out about my upcoming book on the psychology of social networks through a Buddhist lens, Facebuddha:  Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks, at www.RaviChandraMD.com.  Facebook page: SanghaFrancisco-The Pacific Heart. Twitter @going2peace. Thanks for your shares on Facebook, etc.!  

A distinguished psychologist colleague, Dr. Robert Gordon, recently presented a very informative TED talk, entitled, The Power of the Apology. This post provides a brief summary of his powerful message.

Most people apologize to get something instead of to give something. According to Dr. Gordon, seventy percent of our brains function outside of our awareness. Most of our flaws are out of our awareness as well. In short, we can really be clueless about how we impact others, especially those whom we love. Our brains are not wired for lasting intimacy and we, therefore, require emotional maturity to make our relationships last.  

Given that loving relationships are messy by nature, the power of the apology plays a huge role in relationship maintenance and harmony. The three parts of a healthy apology are the following:

1) Acknowledgement - Being able to see how your actions impact others is key to making a sincere apology. The acknowledgement part of the apology needs to start with "I", For example, "I am sorry for being late tonight."

2) Remorse and Empathy  - Remorse is truly feeling bad for what you've done. Empathy is about being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes and know how she or he feels. The remorse and empathy components of the apology would sound like, for example: "Lisa, I am so sorry I said that to you. I don't like myself for becoming that reactive and I know from when my brother was harsh and judgmental with me, just how much that can hurt."

3) Restitution - This means taking action to provide an act or service to make up for the transgression. So, for example, consider the husband who is short and abrupt with his wife when she is excited to share with him about her first day on her new job. The husband can provide restitution by offering to listen better after first preparing her a cup of tea and by doing some extra house work while she relaxes a bit. 

Two other points offered by Dr. Gordon are that apologies need to be dose effective (depending on the situation, don't give one too small and don't go over the top) and time appropriate (the sooner, the better).

Image credit: Shutterstock

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. You can follow Dr. Jeff on Twitter.