Psychology Research

Readers’ replies to “Zen, choice and procrastination” were insightful and stimulated further writing and learning on my part. Here are some important distinctions about changing our intentions or failing to act on them. I like the title of Clay Shirky’s book Here comes everybody .  He’s writing about the social effects of Web 2.0 where everyone can be a contributor to, not just a consumer of, Internet content. The blog replies here at Psychology Today are a small example of this – here comes everybody (well, not everybody, but thousands of people have read these blog entries, it’s quite the growing community!). I learn from everyone as I write this blog. It’s much like my teaching. It’s a journey with my students. This blog is a journey in learning with you. Of course I can’t reply to every blog-posting comment (even though I would like to). I also get emails from my own Web site www.procrastination.ca . Again, it’s simply not possible to keep up with replies, but I enjoy hearing your perspective on the issues I discuss – sharing is part of learning. This week, in reply to my posting East meets West: Zen, choice and Procrastination , there were two replies that stimulated my writing. I’m going to provide excerpts of each of these replies below and then add some comments of my own. What these readers replied to was the story of the unfulfilled intention to run. As you may recall from this blog entry , having set the alarm for 5 a.m. to go for a run, when the alarm goes off, you don’t feel like running now, so you go back to sleep instead. The readers’ replies focus on two things: 1) the notion of choice, and 2) the difference between intention-update and intention-failure. Here are excerpts from both readers. You can read their full replies here . Reader 1 (MS): ONLY A ROBOT WOULDN’T SEE OPTIONS OR CHOICE I think you’re right in that there need not be choice involved, BUT ONE HAD TO BE A ROBOT NOT TO SEE IMMEDIATELY THE OPTION JUMPING RIGHT AT YOU to stay in bed and exercise another day. So I would certainly have to make the choice. In this case it’s not so hard to actually make it because RUNNING GIVES ALSO IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION. I always feel better afterwards although I’m not yet fit enough to reach a runner’s high. (emphasis of all uppercase added) Reader 2 (Carl): INTENTION-UPDATE OR INTENTION-FAILURE . . . there’s a difference! It sounds to me as though the “it’s about choice” people are seeing intention revision where you see intention failure. Obviously both phenomena are real and will need to be allowed for in any attempt at describing agency: changing your mind is clearly rational in some cases, and not all cases of going against earlier intentions can honestly be described as rational revision. Both weakness of will and intention-updating exist, the question is how to tell the difference between them . . . the run-don’t run case can’t be a rational case of intention-update because nothing is updated except the intention itself: no new information is gained overnight, we should’ve known for example that we’d likely not want to go for the run , etc etc. Nothing happened that was in anyway novel, we just wantonly decided to go against the earlier intention on the basis of shifting occurant desires. But if we take *that* as being a rational basis for decision-making, then we shouldn’t have been forming intentions in the first place. Rational updating requires new information or a new awareness of earlier error. That’s not present in the case you describe so as described we’re being irrationally inconsistent, plain and simple. Even so there’s a puzzle: the decision/intention-shift/gap being irrational doesn’t itself determine which of the decisions/intentions was the right/best/most rational one to have. I can say I was being irrational to go against the intention, or I can say I was irrational to form *that* intention in the first place (when I should’ve known how little it reflects what I will want when it’s time to carry it out). Either description seems possible: because we often form intentions out of externally derived guilt, wishful thinking or idealism borrowed from others which (if we thought about it) we don’t actually share. We’d need to know more about which intention coheres best with our long-term plans and goals… and therefore have a way to figure out what those are. END OF READER RESPONSES Wow. This is great. This is a discussion! We simply have to address these issues of whether it takes away from our humanity (becoming more like a robot) to exclude choice, and we need to make this crucial distinction between an intention-update (or change) that is rational and an intention-failure that is irrational (and  I have labeled procrastination). Perhaps the most rationale thing we can do is realize that the intention was irrational in the first place. If that’s the case, we have to examine goal setting, and I’ll do that too. I won’t do any of it in this entry, however. It’s long enough (and I write too much for a blog I’m told ☺). So, check in tomorrow where I’ll take on the difference between intention-update and intention-failure.

The striking rise in LinkedIn participation shows a cognitive shift in how people approach their professional lives. LinkedIn , billed as the social network for professionals, grew 193% from September 2007 to 2008 according to Nielsen Online , and the LinkedIn blog reports their global network impressively gains one new member per second. People are doing lots of things in response to job losses in the current economy, so what makes LinkedIn remarkable? Joining this type of network is a trend I expect to continue independent of the job market. Here’s why: Not only does LinkedIn demonstrate the power of social media, it shows the broader reframing of how social media has changed the way people think about accessing information and the world. People have moved from hunting for “jobs” to connecting with people. And for good reason. We know from network theorists, such as Mark Granovetter and his seminal 1973 paper “The Strength of Weak Ties,” and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi , whose user-friendly book, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means* takes a broader look at the development of network theory, why social media networks like LinkedIn have such tremendous reach and power. Granovetter showed that people were more likely to get jobs from friends of friends, rather than immediate friends. The logic is that we know the same people our friends know and therefore if they knew about a career opportunity, we would probably already know about it, too. But your friend’s friends are more likely to know people you don’t know who know about career opportunities you haven’t heard about. Some people are especially good at being parts of several different networks. The people who connect the unconnected are called “weak links.” This does not mean the same thing as “The Weakest Link” of television quiz show fame, the weak link in network theory is where you start to get really powerful information flows because weak links connect previously unconnected people. Because LinkedIn allows you to be your own weak link, connecting to people and potential career opportunities beyond your immediate network, it is an extraordinarily effective resource for career change, industry information, and employment opportunities.  You could, of course, just post your resume to Monster.com, visit a number of other job posting sites, send out your resume to everyone in your Outlook file, or go to the local grocery store and read the bulletin board. However, because LinkedIn focuses on people, it not only expands the scope of your search but creates a network with trust created between connector referrals. Someone who is referred by someone you know (or someone who knows someone you know) is much more likely to be a good fit. This creates a connection that is psychologically more comfortable and conducive to a positive interaction. Call it transitive trust. The reciprocity and shared community of online networks builds a sense of camaraderie and trust between members and provides an element of emotional support. LinkedIn isn’t the only network for professionals, but it has managed to gather critical mass which means you are potentially connected to a vast network of people. Personally, I like that people have figured out how to connect to and help each other. Like the six degrees of separation illustrated in sociologist Stanley Milgram “small world experiment” in 1967, it really does make the world a smaller place. Have you set up your profile yet? —- *These should be required reading for anyone working with or interested in social media applications because they explain why the networks work. A 1983 version where Granovetter reviews studies tested and elaborated on his hypothesis “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited” is available on the web if you Google it. Or if you’re a commuter, exerciser, or aural learner, you can get a downloadable audio file of Barabasi’s Linked in from Audible.com . Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo (2003). Linked – How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. Plume. ISBN 0-452-28439-2. Granovetter, M. (1973). “The Strength of Weak Ties”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, Issue 6, May 1973, pp. 1360-1380. Note: Travers, Jeffrey; Stanley Milgram (December 1969). “An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem”. Sociometry 32 (4): 425-443. Photo Credits: iStockPhoto, Flickr 

A major misconception involving addiction is the idea that certain substances are, all by themselves, addicting. That a drug can captivate an unwary victim is an idea popularized in the 1936 film Reefer Madness. In that movie, it took just a few puffs of marijuana to turn a gentleman into a slobbering dope fiend; his health shattered; his life ruined. While such heavy-handed propaganda might be met with less credulity today, the fact remains that most Americans still believe the basic message – Just Say No or you’ll wind up hooked. What makes this truly odd is that, according to numerous national surveys, most Americans have tried marijuana and didn’t become dope fiends. Indeed, several years ago, a group of US congressmen attempted to come forward, admit their prior pot use and put an end to a draconian system that confiscates property and puts people in prison for years. But the electorate clearly wasn’t ready for any such reappraisal of the drug laws and the movement quickly died. But how is it, you ask, that all those congressmen that were candid about their drug use didn’t get hooked Reefer Madness style? The reason is because addiction depends, first and foremost, upon having an addictive personality. Such people, estimated at perhaps 10%-15% of the population, simply don’t know when to stop. Do you enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner? If so, why not have ten or twenty? Did you ever buy a lottery ticket on your birthday? If so, why not sell your house and buy 100,000? How about going to church on Sunday? Does it make you feel good? If so, why not go every day twice a day? The point here is simple: Too much of a good thing can be bad. And yet people with addictive personalities will get hooked on alcohol and gambling and religion. Believe it or not, being addicted is nothing more than an out-of-control habit. The difference between that 10%-15% and everyone else is the difference between using and abusing. During the Vietnam War, drug use was endemic among troops serving in Southeast Asia. And yet, returning veterans suffered addiction rates that were no higher than those found in the general population. It would be difficult to think of a more perfectly designed experiment to show, once and for all, that dependence is mostly a matter of personality. And yet, when it comes to winning hearts and minds, the War in Vietnam was as nothing when compared to the War on Drugs. Although this second battle has completely failed in reducing illegal drug use, it has succeeded brilliantly in convincing Americans that they need to be saved from themselves. It’s a belief that was sold so well that hardly anyone noticed that Drug Czar Bill Bennett was an addictive personality hooked on both food and gambling. Look At It This Way The problem with the War on Drugs is that it creates far more harm than it eliminates. If drugs can’t be kept out of prisons, how can you possibly keep them out of a mostly free society? The “War” won’t go away because by now it’s become a major industry. It creates jobs on one side of the law and provides the opportunity for huge financial rewards on the other. But, like Prohibition before, making a law that can’t be enforced does little more than erode the public’s respect for the law. When alcohol was illegal, the upper classes had theirs imported while the common folk drank it from bathtubs. No one so inclined went without. And nothing has changed. Bush turned (supposedly) from drugs and alcohol to religion, thus substituting one addiction for another. Clinton told us, with a straight face, that he never inhaled. So here’s a simple question: Would either of these gentlemen be better off today if they had been sentenced to long prison terms? If so, why not provide them with a belated opportunity to serve time? If not, then why should the kid down the street be put away for doing the same thing? Asking such simple questions should make it plain to anyone with any common sense that the truth regarding drugs and addiction is concealed behind so many layers of ignorance and emotion, deception and special interests that it will remain a major problem for a long time to come.      

The Seven Questions project welcomes the perfect guest for Valentine’s Week: Dr. Harville Hendrix, author of the international bestseller Getting the Love You Want and founder of Imago Relationship Therapy. Harville Hendrix (Ph.D. University of Chicago), in partnership with his wife, Helen Lakelly Hunt, Ph.D. created Imago Relationship Therapy and co-founded  Imago Relationships International, an international non-profit organization that offers training, support and promotion of the work of 2000 Imago therapists in 30 countries. Harville lectures, offers therapy intensives and workshops for couples internationally. Harville and Helen have authored nine books on intimate relationships, including Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples , an international bestseller, Keeping the Love You Find: A Personal Guide and Giving the Love that Heals: A Guide for Parents . Their books are published in over 57 languages. Hendrix produced a PBS documentary on relationships, he’s appeared on numerous television shows (seventeen times on Oprah , winning for her the "most socially redemptive" award for daytime talk shows) and radio shows, and has been written up in numerous newspapers and magazines internationally. Now he can add PT Blogs to his resume. So what is this Imago stuff, and why is it so popular? The complete theory is a multifaceted model explaining attraction, conflict and healing within intimate relationships. Imago is Latin for image, as in the composite image of early childhood caregivers. According to  Hendrix , it is "the image of the person who can make me whole again." We find partners who help us complete the unfinished business of childhood. Our adult relationships and struggles feel familiar because they remind us of our primary caretakers. These relationships present us with the opportunity to heal past wounds and find deep relational fulfillment. But it’s an opportunity, not a guarantee. Hendrix writes: Our unconscious need is to have our feelings of aliveness and wholeness restored by someone who reminds us of our caretakers. In other words, we look for someone with the same deficits of care and attention that hurt us in the first place. So when we fall in love, when bells ring and the world seems altogether a better place, our old brain is telling us that we’ve found someone with whom we can finally get our needs met. Unfortunately, since we don’t understand what’s going on, we’re shocked when the awful truth of our beloved surfaces, and our first impulse is to run screaming in the opposite direction. (from Imago website ) Well, this popular theory has millions running to bookstores and thousands of therapists flocking to conferences to become certified Imago therapists. Supporters of the theory and technique tend to be passionate clinicians and clients who’ve experienced its effectiveness. Even Paul’s therapist on In Treatment uses Imago. It’s everywhere. Dr. Hendrix wins the Seven Questions award for Most Succinct Answers ( David D. Burns wins Most Elaborate). I appreciate how Dr. Hendrix boldly states his ultimate goals for therapy (Q4) and doesn’t sugar coat the hardest part of being a therapist (Q5). Enjoy the short and sweet answers from a modern master in the world of couples therapy, and happy Valentine’s Day. Seven Questions for Harville Hendrix: 1. How would you respond to a new client who asks: "What should I talk about?" Since I only see couples, I ask them to describe their dream relationship, what kind of marriage they would have if it were "perfect." 2. What do clients find most difficult about the therapeutic process? Surrendering their self rejection/hatred and letting themselves be accepted and loved. . 3. What mistakes do therapists make that hinder the therapeutic process? Allowing clients to spend most of their time processing negative feelings about themselves and others and spending too much time exploring the traumas of their childhood. 4. In your opinion, what is the ultimate goal of therapy? To surrender the judgmental mind, achieve sustainable connection with others and become loving of others and oneself. 5. What is the toughest part of being a therapist? Staying awake when clients are disassociating. 6. What is the most enjoyable or rewarding part of being a therapist? Terminating a couple who has achieved sustainable connection and unconditional love for each other. 7. What is one pearl of wisdom you would offer clients about therapy? The healing and wholeness which effective therapy facilitates is in the service of love. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

"I almost die for food, and let me have it!" As You Like It by William Shakespeare How do we lose weight and keep it off? This is a big, big topic, and one that I’ll be covering piece by piece in this blog. So let me first tell you who I am and why this topic is mine. In my professional life I’m a professor of nutrition and a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University and have spent the last 17 years doing research on weight loss and how to make it work for real people in the real world. On a personal level, I was an overweight kid, had a mother who loved us with food, and was 55 pounds overweight in my 30’s after a difficult pregnancy. Researching weight has been my way to bring all the pieces of my life together. Like many people who struggle with control over what they eat, I’ve gained and lost, and gained and lost again, so I know the struggle up close. But I also know how to win on a personal level – I’ve been weight stable for the last 15 years, and with the help of things I’ve learned in my research program have achieved this without giving up the wonderful pleasures of food, comfort food and all the rest. I also love food – I was a chef in a French bistro and worked as a private chef as well, before becoming a researcher – and think that good food, comfort food and all the rest are legitimate, normal pleasures which should not be made hostage to weight control – indeed I believe that we can’t win our personal battle with weight unless we enjoy what we eat and stay satisfied. I’m also the author of the just-published The Instinct Diet, which has been endorsed by more leading obesity scientists than any diet book ever-including researchers who’ve never before been able to agree on the same recommendations. People who struggle with their weight report that the main reasons they give up on a diet are because they miss eating foods they love, they are hungry all or most of the time, and then hit a plateau and can’t get any further. So the central challenge in weight control is this: how do we cut calories while staying satisfied and eating things we enjoy? If we can do this, there is no reason we can’t gain permanent control over our weight! So let’s start with hunger control. I know that most everyone thinks that they have other problems as well, but in my experience really good hunger control 24/7 makes it much easier to deal with just about every other issue (such as emotional eating and craving, which I will cover in a future blog). In psychiatric terms of peeling the onion, hunger control is the outside layer – you can’t uncover other stuff until you get rid of it. And the good news here is that the diet wars of past years really are over. Really! Research studies are showing quite conclusively that there isn’t just one way to deal with hunger, there are at least 4 ways to put together a meal or snack to get satisfied on fewer calories. Eating the right foods isn’t the only way to control hunger (more on this later), but all of the following items are great for hunger control, and if you include 2 or more of these in each meal and each snack you will probably notice a rapid improvement in how satisfied you feel: • High fiber foods (such as high fiber cereals, legumes, green vegetables); • High protein foods (such as lean proteins like chicken breast, white fish, tofu); • High volume foods (such as green salads and vegetable or bean soups); • Low glycemic index carbs (such as legumes, again, and also wheat berries, barley, low carb breads, and non-starchy fruits). What if you don’t like these things? Practice (especially when you are hungry) and some good recipes are the key to growing enjoyment. Here is my favorite after-dinner cure for both hunger and late-night munchies. Think of it as the best diet medicine rather than an indulgent dessert, and enjoy! Chocolate Cereal Dessert ½ cup very high fiber cereal such as Original Fiber One, All Bran Extra Fiber or Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal 1 square (10 grams) chocolate of your choice 1% milk to serve, about 1/3 cup Optional: 2 drops mint essence, or a handful of frozen raspberries Place the chocolate on top of the cereal and microwave until the chocolate just melts, about 30 seconds. Mix the cereal and chocolate together really well. Add the milk and serve (preferably while you put your feet up and relax). Dr. Susan Roberts is professor of nutrition and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University and author of The Instinct Diet . © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing That is in me, that I have never said yet-a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vast- ness and fearful passionless force of non-human things. -Bertrand Russell For centuries, both Western and Eastern religions have tried to convey to us the sacredness of all beings, including inanimate things. Christians, for instance, hold everyday objects in high regard as vessels with which they can serve God, and Jewish mystics have taught that every creation contains sparks of the divine. Hindus are known to take great pleasure in ordinary things, which are viewed as manifestations of Brahma, while Sufi poets are able to find the fingerprints of the Beloved on everything. Despite this broad and holy tradition of all religions, many of us still have a hard time honoring and caring for things. Many of us have too many possessions. We value them little, and treat them shabbily. Our materialism lacks depth. This century is preoccupied with the accumulation of things. Every century has had similar preoccupations, except that they did not have as many choices. Industrial society provided refrigerators, radios, televisions, videocassette recorders, and cars to almost every household. There is nothing inherently wrong with having possessions. It is only when consumption becomes a life philosophy that it undermines seeking higher meaning in life. The philosophy of consumption results in a sense of futility and internal unworthiness. Paul Nystrom, an early student of modern marketing, portrays the industrial civilization as giving rise to a philosophy of futility, a pervasive fatigue, a disappointment with achievements. It finds an outlet in changing everything into the more superficial things of life, in which fads reign. The tired and unappreciated laborer, instead of changing the conditions of work, and often defeated in his or her attempts to do so, seeks an easier route: renewal in temporarily brightening the immediate surroundings with new goods. Ironically, and predictably, the propaganda of consumption turns even alienation into a commodity. In short, it may address itself to the spiritual desolation of modern life but finds itself proposing consumption as the cure. It sings the negation of immortality and the futility of everything holy. The Industrial Workers of the World’s (IWW) union chant is a case in point: Work and pray, Live on hay! You’ll get pie, In the sky, When you die- It’s a lie. T. Byram Karasu is the author of The Art of Serenity   © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

You’ve been working hard on a project on the computer, and it’s time for at treat. You’ve been holding off, waiting for the delicious taste of – here, please fill in the blank. Coffee ice cream? a piece of dark chocolate? a donut? an onion bagel? some fresh strawberries? .         For me, it would be a creamy, sweet-sour lemon tart. You take the first bite. Very yummy! You take the second bite. Still yummy, maybe a little less yummy than the first bite, but never mind. You glance at the computer and something catches your eye. A Hollywood scandal, a political gaff, a weird and wacky video. You click on it, watch, and continue eating. Disappearing food! Suddenly you look down. Where did that treat go? Your fingers are sticky and there’s still a trace of flavor on your tongue, so it must have disappeared down the hatch while you weren’t looking . . . or smelling, or tasting, or enjoying. Disappointment and dissatisfaction set in. "That one just vanished! I’d better have another one." Next the internal critic voice pipes up "What are you thinking? One treat is enough. You know you’re trying to lose weight/eat better/stop grazing/etc." Thus begins the struggle over the simple, biologically natural, pleasurable act of eating. When I tell people that I’ve written a book on Mindful Eating*, and describe what it is, almost everyone will relate some difficulty they have with food, from an embarrassed confession of an addiction to chocolate to the palpable misery of binging and purging. How is it that food and eating have become such a common source of unhappiness? And why has it occurred in a country with an abundance of food? The fundamental reason for our imbalance with food and eating is that we’ve forgotten how to be present as we eat. We eat mindlessly. Food, fat cells and the stomach are not the problem We decided that the problem was in the food, so we’ve used chemical technology to take the calories out, the fat out, and to substitute chemical sweeteners and artificial fats. Food is food. It is neither good nor bad. Then we decided the problem was our fat cells, so we liposuctioned them out. Fat cells are just trying to do their job, which is to store energy for lean times ahead or for famine. For most of our evolutionary history, starvation was one snowstorm or drought away. Our fat cells are there to help us survive! When I lived in Africa I discovered that skinny women there have trouble finding spouses. They aren’t considered good marriage material —- they’ll get sick and die on you! Then we decided that the digestive system was the problem, so we staple the stomach or surgically by-pass the small intestine. The digestive system is just trying to do its job, breaking down food, absorbing nutrients and excreting what’s not needed. (There’s no question that bariatric surgery can be an emergency life-saving measure for some people. It works by forcing people to eat mindfully, causing pain and vomiting if they don’t. It is very expensive, has lots of side effects, and is not a long-term solution for the majority of people or for children with out-of-balance eating.) The problem is not in the food, the fat cells or the stomach and intestines. The problem lies in the mind. It lies in our lack of awareness of the messages coming in from our body, from our very cells and from our heart. Mindful eating helps us learn to hear what our body is telling us about hunger and satisfaction. It helps us become aware of who in the body/heart/mind complex is hungry, and how and what is best to nourish it. Mindful eating is natural, interesting, fun, and cheap. In this blog I’ll explore many aspects of Mindful Eating and Mindless Eating.** I’ll include interesting research on eating, cross cultural observations, and personal stories from our Mindful Eating workshops. I’ll also include Mindful Eating "Homework" at the end of each blog. These are suggestions for how to weave mindful eating into your life. People who take our mindful eating workshops really enjoy doing the homework. Don’t give yourself a grade. Of course you won’t do it perfectly. Just give it a try. What Is Mindfulness? Let’s start with what Mindfulness is. It is deliberately paying attention, being fully aware of what is happening both inside and outside yourself – in your body, heart and mind – and outside yourself, in your environment. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgement. The last sentence is very important. In mindful eating we are not comparing ourselves to anyone else. We are not judging ourselves or others. We are simply witnessing the many sensations and thoughts that come up as we eat. The recipe for mindful eating calls for the warming effect of kindness and the spice of curiosity. What is Mindful Eating? Mindful eating involves paying full attention to the experience of eating and drinking, both inside and outside the body. We pay attention to the colors, smells, textures, flavors, temperatures, and even the sounds (crunch!) of our food. We pay attention to the experience of the body. Where in the body do we feel hunger? Where do we feel satisfaction? What does half-full feel like, or three quarters full? We also pay attention to the mind. While avoiding judgement or criticism, we watch when the mind gets distracted, pulling away from full attention to what we are eating or drinking. We watch the impulses that arise after we’ve taken a few sips or bites: to grab a book, to turn on the TV, to call someone on our cell phone, or to do web search on some interesting subject. We notice the impulse and return to just eating. We notice how eating affects our mood and how our emotions like anxiety influence our eating. Gradually we regain the sense of ease and freedom with eating that we had in childhood. It is our natural birthright. The old habits of eating and not paying attention are not easy to change. Don’t try to make drastic changes. Lasting change takes time, and is built on many small changes. We start simply. Pick your mindful eating homework (1) Try taking the first four sips of a cup of hot tea or coffee with full attention? (2) If you are reading and eating, try alternating these activities, not doing both at once? Read a page, then put the book down and eat a few bites, savoring the tastes, then read another page, and so on. (3) At family meals, you might ask everyone to eat in silence for the first five minutes, thinking about the many people who brought the food to your plates. (4) Try eating one meal a week mindfully, alone and in silence. Be creative. For example, could you eat lunch behind a closed office door, or even alone in our car? Enjoy your meal! Further Reading and listening: * Mindful Eating : A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food, by Jan Chozen Bays, with an introduction by Jon Kabat-Zinn, released February 3, 2009 by Shambhala Publishing. (Includes a CD of 14 mindful eating exercises and meditations.) ** Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, published 2006 by Bantam Books. (A very funny look at very interesting research about how we all eat mindlessly.) © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

In an issue last year in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, we are all reminded of one of the costs of living longer: having more arthritis in our midst. Currently, rheumatic conditions, including arthritis, lupus, and fibromyalgia, affect approximately 46 million adults in the United States. As a society, the cost in treatment and time lost from work totals $128 billion each year. However, as the population ages-and lives longer-it is projected that the number of adults living in the United States with chronic illnesses such as arthritis will increase significantly. In particular, it is felt by many experts that adults in the United States with arthritis will number 67 million by the year 2030; 25 million of these will likely have physical limitations due to this arthritis. It will be extremely important for the healthcare community to use current interventions, and develop new interventions, focused on decreasing the pain associated with rheumatic disease. Hopefully, healthcare professionals will simultaneously be able to improve function and delay disability associated with moderate to severe arthritis. Interestingly, there may be even higher numbers of patients afflicted with arthritis if the United States does not better control what is increasingly becoming a major obesity epidemic. Society must emphasize the importance of arthritis education, and what individuals can do in order to prevent arthritis, or at least the disability seen with arthritis. The Arthritis Foundation has been very proactive in this regard. Those at high risk for disability, such as the obese or physically inactive, should be aggressively targeted for a multi-specialty intervention. The United States Centers for Disease Control is assisting in the development of an exercise program that focuses on joint protection to allow for the improvement of physical function. If the population at large is successfully encouraged to participate in the preventive measures developed by the various agencies representing the interests of those engaged in the fight against arthritis, then we will hopefully see a reduction in the number of patients with chronic arthritis pain and disability. But those at high risk for chronic pain and disability (for example, the obese) should perhaps be compelled to participate in such programs as dietary intervention and mandatory exercise programs. The cost to self and society is too great for a continued acceptance of the status quo; because it is the status quo which will overwhelm us. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

In my last post I talked about the value of self knowledge in the context of neuro-psychological testing. I said, "There is no downside to testing." Several readers took me to task for that, pointing out that there can be a downside . . . learning that you are officially "different" can be a crushing blow to the psyche. I have thought about that point quite a bit. Frankly, although I acknowledge what people are saying, it does not make a lot of sense to me. Why would increased self knowledge be such a blow? ADD, Asperger’s or autism are neurological differences. They are (generally) stable conditions, not diseases that progress. If you learn you are on the spectrum, it’s not a death sentence. You’re not going to become senile or lose your wits. So why is the knowledge of why you are different so hard to take? I think we grow up with certain notions of what conditions like "autistic" mean. We think, I’m glad that doesn’t apply to me. Then, all of a sudden, we are told it does apply. Our self image takes a hit. I can understand that, but I still believe that knowledge is power. We can’t change our lives for the better unless we understand what needs changing. Therefore, it is necessary to get beyond the shock of a diagnosis and move into understanding what it means, in terms of how we act, live and get along. To me, critical comments like Samwick’s (on my main blog) illustrate the danger of labels, which is rather a different issue that what I originally meant to write about. When I wrote my original post, I thought how much diagnosis meant to me by helping me understand exactly how my mind differed from other minds around me. For example, the simple insight that I miss nonverbal cues was life-changing. I seized upon the specific behavioral issues and set about constructing a better life. It worked. Words cannot express how much better my life is, thanks to the self-knowledge I’ve gained since learning about my Asperger’s. For some other people, it does not work that way because they become sidetracked by preconceived notions about "having a diagnosis." Instead of looking at their own specific issues, they look at broad statistics associated with the diagnosis. They see phrases like, 32% can’t live independently, or 66% never get married and have a family. They become trapped in generalities rather than focusing on specific issues to make their own lives better. They interpret those general statistics as a prediction for their own future, when it’s nothing of the sort. More specifically, they see their future as inexorably tied to every unfavorable broad statistics associated with their diagnosis. IN that sense, some DO see an autism diagnosis as a sentence to some kind of living death. They get swallowed up by diagnosis, forgetting the fact that they’ve lived their lives before and life goes on after. That is the danger of a label. Some people read what’s associated with a label, and make it self-fulfilling. They let go and become the label. That negative outcome can be reinforced by teachers and adults who say or think, He has a diagnosis of autism. We can’t expect too much of him. That is most assuredly not the way I have lived my life. For knowledge to have power in this context, it must be you-specific knowledge. You should not care what 66% of people do in this context. You should care that you have specific and identified strengths and weaknesses. For example, testing might show that you can read subtle emotion in voices, but you can’t pick signals up from faces alone. That’s an example of knowledge you can act on to make your life better. The fact is, you ARE that way. It’s not new, and you’re not getting worse. You are already living your life in context. Understanding can only help. Next, I’d like to address another important point . . . the risk of a wrong diagnosis. People say, What if I get an Asperger diagnosis when I really have ADD? Can’t that be harmful? That actually goes back to my comments on the dangers of labels. To me, the label does not matter. What matters are the specific insights into your own behaviors and identification of your personal strengths and weaknesses. There is no hazard to learning those things. I agree that diagnostic errors can be harmful, but that too is another subject. Don’t focus on the label. Focus on the behavioral insights. Ask yourself, does the result make sense? If it does, you are the way to improvement. If it doesn’t make sense, question the tester. Perhaps the results don’t mean what he thought. In the end, it is the specific behavioral insights that allow you to make a better life, not a broad brush label. People are not labels. Our personalities are made of countless eccentricities and aberrations, and it’s those I seek to understand. The power is in the details. There is no power in a broad brush label. Finally, there is another danger of diagnosis. That is with your medical record. What if you receive an autism diagnosis and it’s entered into your "official" record because you had the testing done by a professional who’s paid by a health insurer? It’s possible that you could be rated unfavorably for insurance, or even denied insurance later in life. What to do about that? The only answer I know is to pay for testing on your own, and make your own decision where the results are released. I would have some concerns about having any diagnostic information in my medical record because the evidence indicates insurers sometimes try and use those records against us for their own advantage. So the issue of "downsides to the diagnosis" is not as clear-cut as I originally portrayed. I apologize to those who felt my original post was misleading or incomplete. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. 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Reading groups are a great activity whether you are an undergraduate looking for ways to pad your CV and get good letters of recommendation, or a graduate student wanting to be more involved in your program. Seeking out groups that read, discuss and critique peer-reviewed articles is also a great way to immerse yourself in the literature of your field. In this post I will discuss three of the reading groups that I have participated in, as well as suggest some ways to choose and participate in these types of reading groups. The first reading group I was involved in at my current institution was called the Biological Basis of Behavior (BBoB) , a multi-domain (Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Philosophy, and more) discussion group sponsored by the Behavioral Neuroscience division of the psychology department. The discussion leader sends out an article 1-2 weeks before the group meets, and discussants email in comments and questions about the article. Every three weeks during the 1 hour meeting the leader begins by summarizing the paper, and then attempts to address the comments of the group. There is a mix of mainly faculty, some graduate students and a few undergraduates present. The discussion leaders are generally faculty in the fall and graduate students in the spring. The most advantageous aspect of BBoB is the option to e-mail in comments, this allows students to contribute even if they don’t have enough personality to compete with faculty in the actual meeting. It is also refreshing to see what papers students choose to present in the spring, and is a great opportunity for graduate students to advertise their interests to faculty. The disadvantage is the high proportion of faculty to students, which means that discussions can sometime revolve around minutiae of interest only to the most invested of readers, and domination of the discussion by faculty. Of course it is also worthwhile to hear faculty debate amongst themselves, and often quite entertaining. The second reading group I have been attending is the Animal Behavior Discussion Group (ABDG), sponsored by the biology department. This group is similar to BBoB, except that it meets every week, and has a much smaller faculty presence. While not always directly pertinent for my own studies, this discussion group has provided lots of valuable information on the perspectives of a field of science that is distinct but related to my own discipline. The big student presence means that discussions tend to focus on the methods and topics of the paper being presented, and often revolve around understanding the unique features and flaws of the science as published. It is also advantageous to network with students and faculty in related fields as they may be good choices for collaborators on future work. The last reading group I’ve been involved with is a grant writing group that hasn’t created an acronym yet. The goal of the group is to get students and faculty to help each other read and write grant proposals in an effort to secure more funding for the individuals and the institution. While this group has met irregularly and infrequently I have to say it has certainly been the most valuable. The grant writing process is both arcane and arduous, and having some guidance from those that have been through it has proven invaluable. So I would highly recommend any sort of skill-building group that can help you get an edge when entering unfamiliar territory. While this post has been entirely biased by my personal experiences, I’m hoping that it will help you recognize the advantages of getting involved in reading groups at your school. It’s a great way to become known by your professors and to learn about the recent events in psychology. If your school doesn’t have a reading group, check nearby schools, or start your own! © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.