Psychology Research

Here’s the problem: Your circle of competence is small, but the demands of the world are great. How do you make your circle of competence speak to the problem? The answer is akin to how people use myths. Historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith drew on anthropologist Victor Turner’s work in divination to explain how myths are similar to wine. People can make wine from nearly any fruit but typically make wine only from grapes. Yet from that initial reduction in choices (from any fruit to just grapes), there then follows a great expansion in that there are thousands of different kinds of wines, all made from grapes. From "an almost limitless horizon of possibilities that are at hand," said Smith, the field of possible cultural meanings is reduced to the fixed set of meanings that are contained in the myth. In other words, myths are often a small number of stories that people tell again and again. "Then," Smith elaborated, "the most intense ingenuity is exercised to overcome the reduction" when people apply these cultural meanings to deal with a problem. That is, even though there are a small number of stories in the myth, people make these stories speak to an ever-increasing number of different circumstances. People apply ancient sutras to decisions on biotechnology; they ask the Bible to speak to issues of nuclear proliferation. In other words, your circle of competence may be quite small, but by exercising it creatively, you can apply it to many problems. Smith, J. 1993. Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Excerpted from Lasting Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work by Tad Waddington. Find out more at http://www.lastingcontribution.com .   © 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.

Single adults are a growing demographic as people now marry later and divorce more frequently than in previous times. Women owe it to the feminist movement that we now have more freedom to make choices in our love lives, including the choice to remain single. Bella DePaulo has written eloquently and passionately in support of the idea that singlehood is a valid life choice, despite the fact that it still violates cultural norms (see her blog, Living Single, http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single ). Yet there is an undercurrent of self-doubt among many of the single women that I know. Acknowledgement of the desire to be in a good romantic relationship is all well and good, and expression of disappointment with not being in such a relationship is perfectly understandable as well. What disturbs me is how frequently – to the point of being truly generic – single women (and perhaps men, as well) arrive at the question, "what’s wrong with me?" The implication, of course, is that one’s personal flaws must be responsible for one’s present lack of a romantic partner. Why make this attribution rather than one of the other available attributions, such as, "I just haven’t met the right person"? One explanation is that blaming things on oneself provides one with a sense of predictability and control that blaming things on chance or circumstances does not. Nevertheless, the "what’s wrong with me" question strikes me as singularly counterproductive, given that (a) all successful romantic relationships have involved two imperfect people, (b) whatever is "wrong" with a person may or may not be changeable anyway, and (c) if you believe the advice columnists, the route to success in romantic relationships is self-confidence rather than self-doubt (although I have seen virtually no empirical evidence supporting this claim). Women’s self doubt over singlehood reminds me of girls’ and women’s self-doubt over bodily imperfections (especially not being sufficiently thin). Both forms of self-doubt strike me as unfortunate consequences of normative pressures to conform to societal ideals. And both strike me as terrible wastes of perfectly good mental energy.     © 2008 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.

Our struggle with growth is very much about the dramas we engage in trying to come out of our comfort zone. In fact, we’d be better advised to call it our familiar zone, since these areas of habitual thinking and experience, may actually not be comfortable, but they are certainly very familiar. Picture the familiar zone as a circle that circumscribes the known boundaries of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. This is the realm in which you experience your life. Typically, when we seek to change or modify these experiences we become confined by the perimeter of that circle. Beyond it lies the desired goal,the change that we long for. But we become thwarted in getting there because of the disquiet that occurs as we approach the boundary. It’s rather like the invisible fencing that keeps dogs contained within a perimeter. Such outward movement typically provokes fear or anxiety, given that most of us have become creatures of habit. So there is a propensity to avoid the unfamiliar. Yet, therein lies the paradox, for the personal growth and evolution lies beyond the familiar circle. The movement beyond the familiar terrain becomes stalled by our discomfort with the new terrain, evoking more and more distress. This growth process tends to be arduous for most as they vacillate between growth and retreat. I have developed an approach, which expedites facilitating this process, that I call Emergent Thinking (R), yet there is even a more decisive act which sets us free of the familiar. That is what we refer to as crisis. A crisis is an event or circumstance, which we didn’t choose and certainly didn’t want. It often involves loss, pain or struggle. We ordinarily avoid this experience at all costs. Yet, the crisis provides a valuable opportunity. It is as if a tornado has swept in and when we open our eyes, everything has changed. The maelstrom placed us well beyond the bounds of the known. We typically find ourselves wanting desperately to get back inside the comfort of the known. But the crisis precludes that option. There is no going back. And that is where the opportunity lies. Whether we choose to freeze in the panic of loss and focus on retreat or whether we settle in, create a new mindscape and inquire as to the potential of the new territory, is ultimately the question. The former presents anxiety and retreat, the latter evokes growth. I suggest that crisis in most forms–financial, relationship, health, spiritual–all present unique opportunity for personal emergence. The gift that the crisis provides is that it moves us decidedly out of our familiar zone.The crisis is a turning point. In which direction we turn is of our choosing.   © 2008 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.

William James maintained, "Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." People like you and me do not achieve this through mental power, but through knowledge and practice. For example, people could have made gliders hundreds of years earlier than they did, except that inventors, such as Leonardo da Vinci, were obsessed with the flapping wings of birds. Once people separated lift (the wing) from propulsion (the engine), they made rapid progress in airplane technology. In this sense, the airplane was what’s called a "postmature discovery." Where did the breakthrough come from? Johann Bernoulli worked out the mathematics in 1738. If the development of the airplane was a function of Newton-like genius, humanity should have had airplanes soon after. It was not until 1799 that George Cayley successfully built a glider that could carry a person (some unsung ten-year old boy). It took another eighty-five years until someone came up with a usable wing. According to John Anderson’s Introduction to Flight , in 1884 Horatio Phillips made this contribution by experimenting with "every conceivable form and combination of forms" in a wind tunnel. Surprisingly, even some big pure-science breakthroughs are the result of the kind of genius that you and I (can) have. Earth scientist Robert Hazen observed, "Watson and Crick’s brilliant deduction [of the structure of DNA] was arrived at more by inspired guesswork and tinkering with models than by any step-by-step logic." The point is that Watson and Crick contributed by breaking the known rules of the day-not with genius of mind but with persistence of hand. They did so by tinkering and by knowing everything there was to know about the domain—and then learning one more thing. Bronowski grasped, "The hand is more important than the eye." This kind of genius is within the reach of each of us. In their book The Social Life of Information , John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid provided an example: "There’s a story told of a typesetter working on a Greek text at the Oxford University Press who announced he’d found a mistake in the text. As the typesetter couldn’t read Greek, his colleagues and then his superiors dismissed the claim. But the man insisted. So finally an editor came down to the compositing room. At first, she, too, dismissed the idea, but checking more closely, she found there was an error. Asked how he knew, the typesetter said he had been hand-picking letters for Greek texts for most of his professional life and was sure that he’d never made the physical move to pick the two letters in that order before." In short, we can all tinker with our work until we get it right and therein lies genius.   Anderson, J. 1978. Introduction to Flight. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bronowski, J. 1974. The Ascent of Man. London: Little, Brown and Company. Brown, J. and P. Duguid. 2002. The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Hazen, R. 2002. "The Joy of Science." Produced by The Teaching Company. Chantilly, VA. James, W. 1978. The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition , Edited by J. McDermott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.   Excerpted from Lasting Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work by Tad Waddington © 2008 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.

Have you ever noticed the way quick reflexes depend on a combination of gross and fine motor skills? A toddler is about to knock over a vase. Your gross motor skills send you lurching across the room. By the time you reach the vase your fine motor skills are engaged. Your hand is precisely where it needs to be to stop the vase from crashing to the ground. If your fine motor skills hadn’t kicked in, your gross motor skills would have sent you flying right into the vase or worse, the toddler. There’s a parallel in emotional life worth noting and promoting. Emotions are skills, too, and in a way they also come in gross and fine varieties. Gross emotor skills provide the power surges that rivet our attention on some big problem. But to address the problem, fine emotor skills are better. Gross emotor skills focus us on what to fix. Fine emotor skills guide us on how to fix it. Using gross emotor skills to try to fix things often sends us crashing through to the wrong solutions. Emotions motivate our attention and problem solving abilities. They are our primary source of "the wisdom to know the difference between what we can and can’t change." Positive emotions tell us, "this is working don’t change it." Negative emotions tell us, "this isn’t working, try to fix it." Once we fix it, our emotions signal satisfaction and we respond by turning our attention to other matters. In general, the stronger the negative emotions, the more motivated we are to fix something. When we’re strongly dissatisfied, the desire for satisfaction becomes urgent. But that urgency can actually keep us from the fine-tuned work necessary to find the right way to fix things. Gross emotions can over-motivate. Imagine the over-motivation this way: You’re playing tennis and fail to return the ball because you’re too far over in left-court. It makes you as angry as John McEnroe. You vow never to be fooled again, and gritting your teeth, you position yourself way over in right-court, where you miss another ball, this time because you were too far over in right-court. That makes you more furious. And you go stand way over in left-court again. The solution to these tennis woes is to do that deft little dance in center court. Waiting eagerly but not too eagerly. It’s fine to start out grossly motivated, but once motivated, the followthrough calls for fine emotor skills. Within the past decade there have been three movements within psychology arguing that emotions are good guides. The emotional intelligence movement argues that emotions are at least as important as IQ in determining how well we do in life. Neurobiologist Antonio Demasio’s best seller ‘Descarte’s Error,’ and the movement it spawned argued that emotions are the very currency of rationality. Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, ‘Blink: The power of thinking without thinking,’ argues that our gut (emotional) responses are more accurate than we tend to realize. These various celebrations of our emotions are one side of a perennial debate. The other side is represented by "get over it," psychological movements. Cognitive therapy, for example emphasizes mind over matter solutions. Patients are taught that the best way to overcome distracting emotions is to "think new thoughts." Dr. Laura, the AM Radio geophysicist-turned-therapist instructs her listeners to stop whining, and live by a moral code. Both sides of the debate are half-right and the distinction between gross and fine emotor skills suggests an appropriate synthesis between the two schools of thought – one that doesn’t occur to either side of the debate when it becomes too emotional. Emotions serve and get in the way. Specifically, emotions answer the question, "should I attend to and fix this?" Sometimes emotions answer Yes when the right answer is No. And sometimes they answer No when the right answer is Yes. The margin of error in our emotional system’s answer to that question is the source of much of the pain and cruel insensitivity in the world. The pain we experience when dealing with an incurable backache is a false alarm that the body can’t shut off – a wrong Yes answer to the question, "should I try to fix this?’"Conversely, cruel insensitivity is the same alarm failing to go off when it should, where we don’t attend to the hurt we are causing others, when we could fix it if we tried. Since our attention is finite, concentrating our attention on one thing means not concentrating on others. Emotion therefore induces a kind of tunnel vision. The stronger the emotion, the narrower the focus. One manifestation of this is the passionate advocate who has discovered a wrong in the world and concentrates on it to the exclusion of all other wrongs. Activists who are especially passionate (and naive) often assume that their focus on a particular wrong makes them authorities on the world’s woes even as their passion causes them to ignore mountains of them. In their company we may feel torn, on the one hand admiring their focus and "fix it" attitude, and on the other hand, frustrated at the by their lack of perspective. Without gross emotor skills we may not be sufficiently motivated to fix things. But without fine emotor skills we may not be able to do the delicate work necessary to fix things correctly. We need both gross and fine emotor skills, and we need them well coordinated. © 2008 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.

"….because I can’t forget no matter how hard I try………." Corporal Cloy Richards , PTSD sufferer. Cannabis has often been proposed to treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and rates of marijuana use are significantly higher in PTSD sufferers. However like all medical marijuana issues it’s controversial and complicated. I will try and explain some of the science behind the issue. The basic rationale is this; a defining feature of PTSD is that sufferers cannot "forget" a traumatic event such as combat or rape. It is well established that cannabis use impairs certain types of memory and may help sufferers "forget". Additionally cannabis often reduces anxiety and promotes sleep, both of which are beneficial for PTSD where elevated general anxiety and sleep disturbances are very common. Cannabis acts upon receptors in the brain called, appropriately enough, cannabinoid receptors. The first and best described of these is called CB1, or cannabinoid receptor-1. CB1 is found throughout the brain. These receptors don’t exist to get people high! What this means is that there are substances produced naturally by the brain, called endocannabinoids, that act at cannabinoid receptors. The best described endocannabinoids are called anandamide and 2-arachidonyl glycerol (2-AG). These endocannabinoids are flighty molecules, they are rapidly synthesized only when required and don’t stick around for long, being swiftly broken down by an enzyme by the name of "fatty acid aminohydrolase", less tongue-twistingly known as FAAH. Endocannabinoids are involved in many biological processes including appetite regulation, pain, anxiety, mood, nausea and blood pressure. All of which are also affected by marijuana. One of the most interesting things these endocannabinoids appear to do, according to research in rats and mice, is stimulate the ability to forget about bad things. The basic research paradigm used is called "fear conditioning" and works on the same principle as Pavlov’s dogs; rodents are played a sound, usually a beep, just before a very slight electric shock. This shock, much like a threat in the wild, causes the animals to freeze in their tracks. Although the shock is mild and brief, the animals obviously don’t like it and learn very quickly that the beep means a shock is coming. After a short time, just the beep (without the shock) causes the animals to freeze and, crucially, causes the production of endocannabinoids in the brain . The relevance of this model to the human condition is obvious. PTSD symptoms are often triggered by exposure to something in the environment that reminds the sufferer of trauma. After a while, rodents, like most people, will learn that the beep no longer means that a shock is coming and will no longer freeze when the beep is played. If animals are treated with a drug that blocks CB1 receptors then they show a profound inability to forget. The same result is found in mice genetically engineered to not have CB1, playing the beep causes them to freeze long after normal animals have learned to forget. Again, the relevance to PTSD is obvious; only some people who experience an extreme trauma will develop PTSD. Could genetic differences in their endocannabinoid system help explain why this is? Perhaps most interestingly, animals given an extra booster of endocannabinoids find it easier to forget. Drugs which inhibit the breakdown of endocannabinoids by blocking FAAH have the same effect , suggesting that medications which stimulate the endocannabinoid system may be beneficial in the treatment of PTSD. Exposure therapy is a commonly used treatment for PTSD; patients are repeatedly re-exposed to those triggers which precipitate their symptoms, much like the rodents and the beep. This tactic is completely at odds with the intuitive response of PTSD sufferers, who will actively avoid these triggers. As I mentioned above, basic research findings indicate that exposure to these triggers causes the brain to produce it’s own cannabinoids, which then help the brain to forget. Perhaps the brains of PTSD sufferers have impaired cannabinoid synthesis, or maybe they break it down more quickly. Thus maybe cannabis treatment would be the most effective when given during exposure therapy? That’s the basic science. Sounds simple right? In fact it should be a no-brainer that cannabis use will be beneficial for PTSD sufferers? Well, as so often occurs in science, it’s not that simple. A major problem is that the cannabinoid system is found in almost all part of the brain and as such is involved in many different biological processes. A sobering example of this is the weight loss drug Acomplia TM from Sanofi-Aventis. The rationale behind this drug is reasonable enough; smoking pot gives people "the munchies", suggesting endocannabinoids promote eating. Blocking the CB1 receptor (with Acomplia TM ) should therefore reduce food intake. Sure enough, it does. But it also makes people depressed and has other psychiatric side effects. These side effects are so severe that Acomplia TM has been withdrawn. Cannabis also has a lot of potential side effects, many of them undesirable; apathy, psychosis, respiratory problems associated with smoking, prenatal toxicity, addiction (although this is controversial). One of the most troubling side effects of cannabis is that high doses can, in some people, trigger bouts of extreme anxiety. Not something any PTSD sufferer would want. Another problem is that THC, the major active ingredient of cannabis, is not the same as the endocannabinoids found normally in the brain (otherwise we’d all be high all the time). It’s not entirely clear that THC has the same "memory-erasing" effects as the brains natural endocannabinoids. In fact some researchers even think that treatment with pure THC may have the opposite effects, delaying an animal’s ability to forget . Nevertheless, a holy grail of "medical marijuana" programs for cancer and pain is the design of drugs which have the beneficial effects of marijuana without these undesirable side effects. Drug design programs based upon this reasoning may themselves eventually have a very beneficial side effect; drugs which can help PTSD patients forget.   © 2008 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.

When you travel for work, you end up on a lot of airplanes. Often, that means some polite conversation with the person sitting next to you. As a psychologist, that conversation is a dangerous one, because eventually I get asked what I do. When I say that I’m a psychologist, people’s initial reaction is that I have somehow been analyzing all of their deepest problems, or perhaps that I have been looking into their soul. They are relieved (and perhaps a little disappointed) when I tell them that I study the way people think. But quickly, they find other questions about thinking that have always puzzled them. One of the most common questions centers on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising. Something about subliminal advertising captures our imagination. The prospect that a flash on a screen could drive us to do something without knowing why seems to scare us. So, it is worth talking a bit about subliminal advertising in the context of the topic of the last post on accessibility. (If you haven’t read the previous post yet, go back and read it first. I’ll wait…) Ok. First of all, subliminal advertising shouldn’t frighten you. There are all sorts of things in the world that affect your decisions, even though you are not aware of them. However, these things that affect your behavior without awareness all do it by changing the accessibility of concepts in your environment. And that is basically how subliminal advertising can affect you. Subliminal means "below the threshold." Basically, subliminal things are items that you sense (with your eyes, nose, mouth, ears, or skin), but you are not aware of. The main influence that subliminally perceived items can have on you is to increase the accessibility of concepts relating to those items. So, think about the classic example of subliminal perception. You are sitting in a dark movie theater, and suddenly a single frame of the movie shows an ice-cold Coca Cola. Movies flash by at 24 frames per second. That is too fast for you to identify anything you have seen in a single frame. What can that ice cold Coke do to you? Well, imagine first that you have never heard of Coca Cola or seen a Coke ad. In that case, the flashed Coke will do nothing to you. You don’t have a concept to activate. If you have heard of Coke (and sadly, most of us have), then it will make the concept of Coke easier to think about. For most of us, most of the time, that will have little effect on our behavior. We often see Coke ads on TV, in magazines and at sporting events. Often, we’re not even that aware of the ads, because we try not to pay attention to them. That means that the situation created by subliminal advertising in a movie actually happens to us all the time. And most of the time, we do not slavishly go out and buy a Coke. When can subliminal advertising affect your behavior? A few things have to happen. First, you must be in a situation where you need to drink already. The flashed ice-cold Coke may then raise the idea of drinking a soda to the level that you notice you need a drink. At that point, you may decide to get a drink. That won’t be driven by the subliminal ad so much as whether you feel like getting up and drinking. If you do, then you’ll order a drink. You might be somewhat more likely to order a soda than usual having decided to get a drink. However, there are so many things in your environment between the subliminal ad and the point where you can get a drink that you probably won’t be much more likely to buy a Coke than you normally are when you decide to get a drink at the theater. So, really, subliminal advertising isn’t so interesting. What is potentially more interesting (at least to me) is why people believe that subliminal advertising could work. But that is a subject for the next post.   © 2008 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.

Anger management works fine for managing ordinary anger, but is not successful when it comes to the self-defeating behaviors of problem anger, the kind that is better measured by objective, behavioral indicators like police reports and reports of those who live and work with the angry person, rather than how he or she answers post-treatment questionnaires. Ordinary anger is a response to frustration and impediments to: • Task performance (the screw repeatedly drops out of the picture hanger before you can tighten it) • Interest or relaxation (someone is talking while you’re trying to read or a lawn mower wakes you up too early) • Enjoyment (someone is reading when you would like to talk). In contrast, problem anger: • Makes you act against your long term best interest (you bang the picture with the screw driver or shout at the talker to shut up and thereby make it harder to concentrate on reading or make someone irritable by interrupting, which lowers the likelihood that you will enjoy your talk) Or • Keeps you from doing what is in your long term best interest (connecting with those you love). Anger management fails with problem anger because it treats it as an extreme or uncontrolled version of ordinary anger. According to the American Psychological Association website , anger management teaches techniques to manage the emotional feelings and physiological arousal of anger. But problem anger is not just a matter of feelings and arousal; it’s set in motion by the drop in self-value that occurs to some people when they are angry. They feel inadequate when the screw won’t turn or devalued when spouses interrupt or unlovable when a loved one doesn’t pay attention. Instead of doing something that will raise self-value (being nice to someone they love, for example, or finding a better screw driver), they blame their lowered self-value on someone else, which makes them want to devalue in return: "Look at that jerk!" "I’m tired of telling you this…" "What kind of person would say that?" "I don’t have time for you." Due to the high contagion of these kinds of feelings, you don’t have to express them to do damage – we communicate negativity all the time without saying a word. In addition to ruining your health, problem anger inevitably damages social relationships, whether you express it or not, unless you happen to work or live with Mother Theresa. The formula for problem anger is: Anger (irritability, attitude, etc.) + Lowered self-value + Blame Another failing of anger management is that it relies on conscious control of an unconscious motivation. Problem anger is habitual — habits run on automatic pilot, processed in the brain much faster than conscious awareness. You are never aware of most of your resentment or anger; by the time you know you’re resentful or angry, it’s already in an advanced state. Anger management fails with problem anger for the same reason that diets don’t work. By the time you know you’re hungry, you’re already highly motivated to have a hot fudge sundae and unlikely to think of eating a celery stick instead. Priming the Pump In most cases, you’re primed for bouts of problem anger long before an obnoxious event happens. For example, suppose you’re driving down the road at a baseline level of anger, that is, with no attitude of entitlement, resentment, superiority, pettiness, sarcasm, victim identity, or enmity of any kind. Suddenly an obnoxious event occurs, like someone flipping you the finger and shouting something about your mother as they speed by your car. If you’re at baseline to begin with, that might get you about 30% aroused, which is no big deal. Your response will likely get no worse than sarcasm – you might think, "What a jerk." That kind of anger dissipates in a few minutes and is forgotten about completely within a couple of hours – you’re not likely to remember it ever happened. But if you get into the car resentful about something at home or at work, you’re already about 30% aroused at the start. So that same obnoxious event hits you at a higher level of arousal and pushes you to a 60 or 70 percent level, which is where you begin to get aggressive – you’ll shout out or want to tailgate that sucker – with a hair-trigger mechanism for escalation, should there be any negative response to your aggression. Add caffeine, nicotine, anxiety, or a startle response to the mix, and the adrenaline can easily go through the roof. This kind of anger will stay with you in various degrees for the whole day, and you’ll get pissed every time you think of the incident. The roller coaster of problem anger The jolt of energy you get at any level of anger works like an amphetamine or "speed." You get a big spike of energy and confidence, and then you crash. When you get angry, you get depressed, once all the adrenalin washes out of your blood stream. And that’s just the physiological response to the amphetamine effect. If you do something while you’re resentful or angry that you’re ashamed of, your depressive mood will get worse. Anger Junkies An addictive trap is sprung when the energy surge of anger is used frequently. You get angry and feel energetic and confident, only to crash with little energy and creeping self-doubt. (Maybe I shouldn’t have grounded my kid till he’s 42?) You get angry again to feel energetic and confident, only to crash yet again into low energy and self-doubt. In no time at all, anger will seem necessary to escape depressed mood, even though it inevitably means more depression. In other words, the brain will look for excuses to get angry and turn you into an anger junkie. You may be an anger junkie if you use anger: • For energy or motivation (can’t get going or keep going without some degree of anger). This often takes the form of getting mildly angry to do a job you don’t like to do, like your taxes or raking the leaves. The anger gives you the energy to get through the task, even though you won’t do it as efficiently. Anger is a good motivator, but a poor regulator. • For pain-relief (it hurts when you’re not angry). • For confidence, a stronger sense of self – you only feel certain when angry. • To ease anxiety, especially in new or uncertain situations. If you get irritable when things depart from the norm or critical in new social situations, you are using anger as an anxiety-reducer. • To militate out of depressed mood. This can put you on one wicked roller-coaster ride. Pretty soon you’ll have only two feeling-states: one of the many forms of anger, such as grouchiness, irritability, or resentment on the one hand, and depression, lethargy, or weariness on the other. Effective Treatment Treatment for problem anger cannot merely reduce the emotional feelings or arousal of anger; it must restore a state of self-value that is more stable than whatever lowered it, which will replace the habit of blaming with a motivation to improve. And it has to do it fast. To end the roller-coaster ride of problem anger you must build a conditioned response that works unconsciously, as fast as the anger, which is thousands of times faster than you can say, "I feel angry." The technique I have used, HEALS, conditions core value (that which instantly raises self-value) to occur automatically with the first physiological signs of anger. With practice — 12 times a day for six weeks — clients automatically convert resentment and anger into focused interest or compassion.

A recent Center for Disease Control [CDC] study reviewed the effectiveness of art therapy and play therapy in trauma intervention with children. According to the authors, neither has been proven to work for children with posttraumatic stress disorder. But are these therapies effective -that’s the real question. Because I have used art and play therapies in trauma intervention with children, adults, and families for more than two decades, a recently published study examining these and other interventions caught my interest. In brief, the CDC team concludes that out of seven therapies [play therapy, art therapy, drug intervention, psychological debriefing, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and two others] examined, only cognitive-behavioral therapy [CBT] was effective [see original study from the American Journal of Preventative Medicine at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18692745 ]. Not an earthshaking conclusion, since most of the currently accepted evidence-based protocols for trauma intervention use CBT as the core approach. Of course, professionals in art therapy and play therapy have been more than a little irritated by the release of this study. As an art therapist, yes, I admit I felt a little twinge of infuriation, too. As a researcher and proponent of outcome studies in these fields, I must also say that art and play therapists need to be more proactive about demonstrating efficacy for their methods. However, the CDC team did miss a number of important aspects in their analysis. Surprisingly, they overlooked both the presence of art and play therapies within the very CBT interventions they cited – even when CBT is the identified intervention, it is often delivered within an art or play activity with an intended therapeutic goal. In fact, many art therapists and play therapists use methods such as CBT, and stress reduction, mindfulness, and narrative therapy, too, to enhance the methods they use in treatment. But more disappointing to me as a trauma worker, in an effort to make comparisons the CDC team lost sight of the very essence of what art and play therapies actually offer children who are traumatized. The conclusions of CDC study bring about more questions than answers on many fronts. For example, the authors inaccurately define art therapy’s role in trauma intervention with children, based on the examination of single journal article that proposed trauma is stored in memory as an image. Yes, trauma memories can be stored as images, but it does not necessarily follow that art brings forth traumatic memories as images alone. Art – and play for that matter-are experiences that include images, movement, sound, taste, smell, and other sensations. As I have noted in previous posts, art also provides a more universal purpose in trauma work. While some proponents of art therapy believe that processing actual trauma memories via drawing or other creative activities helps to resolve trauma symptoms over time, it is more than the image itself that helps in reparation. We store much of what we experience during trauma as implicit memory, a sensory memory of the event. When most people, including children, draw a memory related to trauma, they generally do not draw an accurate or photographic image of the trauma event. What they really draw, paint, or create, [or in the case of play therapy, enact] are sensory memories of the trauma. Sometimes these creations involve a narrative of the trauma, but more often they convey the "feeling" [implicit memory] of the events experienced. Getting out the sensory memories of trauma is where the real action is [along with a skilled professional who facilitates the experience]; it’s not in making an accurate image of the trauma narrative. I hope someday we’ll read a CDC study explaining exactly how art and play therapies effect change in children who have been traumatized. As trauma expert Bruce Perry notes, art and play have decades of proven efficacy simply by their use within all cultures throughout history. Even so, we may not find that these sensory methods alone consistently repair trauma reactions in all children via standard research methods. But the creative process, whether making drawings or engaging in play, offers something else we ought to be measuring in child clients. Art and play therapies help to move individuals from a state of victimization to one of empowerment; that may be where the measurable effect resides and where the proof will be ultimately found. **And I also look forward to seeing some of you at the 39th Annual Conference of the American Art Therapy Association next week in Cleveland, Ohio, from November 19th-23, 2008! © 2008 Cathy Malchiodi http://www.cathymalchiodi.com  

Psychology Today initially entitled my blog "Beginner’s Mind." What does that title mean? Did Psych Today mean that at that time, I was a beginning blogger for them, so don’t expect too much? You know – set a low bar and then I’ll look better. That could be one meaning, but there’s a better one. I didn’t come up with the phrase "Beginner’s Mind;" nor did Psych Today. It’s an old Zen term made popular by Shunryu Suzuki. When we experience something for the first time, we enjoy the novelty. See a great movie for the first time and it almost seems worth the nine-dollar movie ticket and the dollar-a-kernel popcorn. See the movie ten times and you’d pay 90 bucks not to have to see it for the eleventh time. Why is that so? What keeps us from enjoying something as much the tenth time as we did the first? The answer lies in the running commentary in our minds. For instance, most of the time we don’t simply taste a hamburger. As you eat your food, you might have thoughts comparing the food to other food ("It’s not as good as the hamburger I had last week."), or you might think about something besides the food ("Work’s been so busy lately."). There’s certainly nothing wrong with thoughts. Without your thoughts, you wouldn’t be able to use your computer, do your job, or understand what you are reading. However, the non-stop commentary keeps you from fully enjoying your life. Continuing our example, when people eat, they seldom just experience the taste, texture, and aroma of the food. In summary, you likely spend much more time thinking about food than tasting it. Even if you ate the best cookie in the world, you might only taste the first bite. After that it’s: "That was great… I should get more of these cookies… but then again, it will ruin my diet… I wonder how many calories per cookie." Before you know it, the bag is empty and you only really enjoyed the first bite of the first cookie. When we have a beginner’s mind we enjoy the tenth bite of the cookie just as much as the first. We appreciate walking barefoot on a grassy lawn with the exuberance of a young child, enjoying each step. Another word for "beginner’s mind" is "mindfulness." If you’ve read much psychology lately, you’ve probably run across the term mindfulness. In a way, it’s the ultimate in psychology retro fashion. You know, for a while Freud was so in, then it was Jung, then Gestalt was in style… and now, psychology is going back to a concept thousands of years old! Somehow I think this trend is a keeper. Mindfulness is non-judgmentally paying attention to your current experience. In addition to the quality of enjoying an experience with the curiosity and interest of a beginner, there is also an affectionate quality of mindfulness. There is the sense of welcoming all emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations. We aren’t welcoming them to stay for all eternity, but just for this moment. By doing so, we don’t get depressed about being depressed or stressed about being stressed. In addition to beginner’s mind, other descriptive terms and metaphors can help us understand mindfulness a little better. Since the experience of mindfulness is hard to put into words, it can be helpful to have other ways of talking about it. See if any of these descriptions speak to you: · Non-clinging and non-grasping. That is, enjoying life as it comes without always trying to have events be a little (or a lot) different. · Resting in awareness. As one learns to be mindful he may learn to non-judgmentally focus on various aspects of experience including sound, breath, and physical sensation. Eventually, one can develop the skill of focusing on and resting awareness itself. When doing so, even in the midst of chaos, there can be a sense of ease. · Metaphors. Some have used the metaphor of a body of water such as a lake. Typically people experience life as if they were on the surface of a lake, being buffeted by the winds, waves, and storms of their emotions, physical sensations, and thoughts. When one learns to rest in awareness, there is an identification not just with the commotion on the surface, but also with the depth of the lake which is undisturbed by winds and weather. · Some people view mindfulness in terms of their experience with God. They might increase their ability to be mindful by thanking God for whatever is in the present moment, and thereby deepen their appreciation of what is in front of them. Others increase mindfulness by seeing God in all things (and people). In this way they increase their sense of awe. · Love. I’m not talking about obsessive clingy infatuation sometimes described as love. I am talking about the deep feeling of looking into another’s eyes with unconditional acceptance. · Sense of being one with all. Mindfulness has been described as a feeling of no longer being separate from the rest of life. Just like describing the feeling of balancing on a bicycle, mindfulness can be hard to describe. One or more than one of these descriptions may currently ring true for you. If none of them speak to you, be patient. Each time you let go of the thoughts of how life should be and enjoy it just as it is, you strengthen important connections in your brain. Each time you look at this moment with curiosity and interest you also build those vital brain connections. Ultimately, you can increase mindfulness the same way you get to Carnegie Hall: "Practice, practice, practice…" Practice both in the midst of meditation and also in the midst of life! More hints about meeting the challenges of living in the present . By the way, my blog title was later changed to Stress Remedy giving me the opportunity to blog about all aspects of stress reduction. It also reminds people about my website www.stressremedy.com which includes links to find mindfulness retreats, classes, and my book and CD set  Take the Stress Out of Your Life .