Can’t Read Your Mind
YANSS on “The Illusion of Transparency“:
The Misconception: Most of the time people can look at you and tell what you are thinking and feeling.
The Truth: Your subjective experience is not observable, and you overestimate how much you telegraph your inner thoughts and emotions.
PTSD Army
NPR: Reducing The Stigma Of PTSD In Army Culture.
“I remember lying on my cot in my tent in Afghanistan bundled into my sleeping bag, terrified because the dead had come to talk with me…”
Dostoyevsky, Halitosis, and Online Dating Lies
Three from the morning feed…
Brooding Russians: Less distressed than Americans (ScienceDaily)
Bad Breath Troubles? (WebMD)
Relationship Rules
Revisiting the conventional wisdom about getting along.
[A]lthough a lot of modern relationship advice boils down to keeping positive, this isn’t always the best way to go. When things are dreamy, being positive is probably good advice. But this research suggests that rocky relationships can benefit from negative processes.
The Unfun of Parenting
New York looks at parents who hate parenting in All Joy and No Fun.
From the perspective of the species, it’s perfectly unmysterious why people have children. From the perspective of the individual, however, it’s more of a mystery than one might think…
Talk Therapy Psychiatrist
David Carlat talks to NPR about his book, Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry. Article, audio, and excerpt all on the site.
“And this is a good therapist who I often work with. I recommend that you give her a call and set up an appointment. The medication works better when you are also seeing a counselor.”
She looked confused. “Aren’t you my therapist?”
Kids’ Chores
A longish article at WebMD about kids and chores–the what, when, and why.
“A child has to have some responsibilities. Then by the time they go off to college, you don’t have to have a three-hour lecture on the steps of the dormitory.”
Word World
PsychCentral looks at a study about how people think different thoughts when using different languages–Arabic and Hebrew are the testers.
The study found that Arab Israelis’ positive associations with their own people are weaker when they are tested in Hebrew than when they are tested in Arabic.
Mind-Body MD
An interview I did with L.A.-based mind-body doc, David Schechter, MD, is now up at PsychologyToday.com.
When I saw this patient again a few weeks later, her pain had gone from a nine out of ten to a zero to one out of ten. She was making plans for future vacations, hotel beds, school, and other activities she had long denied herself due to pain–all after only two months.