RAINing Mindfulness
The Tara Brach spells out RAIN (the mindfulness acronym):Irish Times
R is for Recognise. Just recognise that you have the emotion, that you’re very anxious for instance.
A is for Allow. Allow the anxiety to be present, accept that it’s there. No need to get into a fight with yourself over it.
I is for Investigate. Notice how the anxiety manifests itself physically, emotionally and in your thoughts. Perhaps your chest feels tight, your thoughts might be, “This is bad” or “I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this” and your emotion might be fear.
N is for Non-identify. Notice that there is more to you than these thoughts, feelings or physical experiences. You might say, for instance, “This is not all of me” or “There is more to me than this”.
Some like “A is for Accept.” Easy to accept/allow either.
Tourette’s Therapy
From the Los Angeles Times: Behavioral therapy effective in treating Tourette syndrome:
The therapy, called comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics, has several elements. The key component, habit reversal training, helps patients become more aware of the urge to tic, then teaches them to engage in a voluntary behavior — rhythmic breathing, perhaps — that competes with the tic.
The Exercise Gene
A European twin study finds the desire to exercise runs in the family–deep:
Using complicated statistical formulas, the scientists concluded that differences in exercise behavior were about 60 percent attributable to genes. In other words, your parents influence your decision about whether to be active, not just by signing you up for soccer camp when you’re a kid but also by bequeathing you a genetic urge to work out — or not.
Workplace Misery in Review
Job satisfaction is down, stress is up. A psychologist points the finger at…workplace reviews:
Annual reviews not only create a high level of stress for workers, he argues, but end up making everybody — bosses and subordinates — less effective at their jobs. He says reviews are so subjective — so dependent on the worker’s relationship with the boss — as to be meaningless.
Imagining Food
From PsychCentral: Food Cravings, Explained:
Results of one study showed that the strength of participants’ cravings was linked to how vividly they imagined the food. […] Studies have shown that when subjects are imagining something, they have a hard time completing various cognitive tasks. In one experiment, volunteers who were craving chocolate recalled fewer words and took longer to solve math problems than volunteers who were not craving chocolate.
Enemies Good for Kids?
Enemies can be good for a child’s growth, say researchers.
Almost everyone picks up a tormentor or two while growing up, and until lately psychological researchers have ignored such relationships — assuming them to be little more than the opposite of friendship.
Yet new research suggests that as threatening as they may feel, antagonistic relationships can often enhance social and emotional development more than they impede it.
Military Mental Health
In the military, mental health hospitalizations continue to rise.
Last year was the first in which hospitalizations for mental disorders outpaced those for injuries or pregnancies in the 15 years of tracking by the Pentagon’s Medical Surveillance Monthly report.
Testosterone and Sleep
From ScienceDaily: Could Dwindling Testosterone Levels Decrease Sleep?
In young men, deep sleep represents 10 to 20 percent of total sleep. By age 50, it decreases to five to seven percent. For men over 60, it can disappear altogether.
Sound familiar…?
Moms Soothing
Guess you don’t know for absolutely sure until you study it: Mother’s Voice Calms Stress.
Once stressed, one third of the girls were comforted in person by their mothers – specifically with hugs, an arm around the shoulders and the like. One third were left to watch an emotionally neutral 75-minute video. The rest were handed a telephone. It was mom on the line, and the effect was dramatic.
“The children who got to interact with their mothers had virtually the same hormonal response, whether they interacted in person or over the phone,” Seltzer says.
The girls’ levels of oxytocin, often called the “love hormone” and strongly associated with emotional bonding, rose significantly and the stress-marking cortisol washed away.
Journaling and Chronic Pain
A new page on the TMS Wiki details various approaches to journaling. They’re up there to help people with chronic pain, but journaling can be a big help to just about anyone. Among the approaches on the page: List Making, Spider Writing, Free Writing, Unsent Letters, and Dialogue.
Several workbooks, which’ll help you through the writing process are listed. Two chronic pain-specific, journaling-heavy titles: Unlearn Your Pain (Dr. Howard Schubiner) and The MindBody Workbook (Dr. David Schechter).