Mid-Life Crisis
A history, from Scientific American:
[Season’s of a Man’s Life author] Levinson felt that midlife crises were actually more common than not and appeared like clockwork between the ages of 40 to 45. For Levinson, such crises were characterized primarily by a stark, painful “de-illusionment” process stemming from the individual’s unavoidable comparison between his youthful dreams and his sobering present reality. For most men, life moves so swiftly that, by the time you look back at what’s happened, you realize you’ve already suffered an irreparable loss of chance and opportunity. This life review causes depression, anxiety, and “manic flight,” a sort of desperate, now-or-never fumbling to experience the pleasures one has long denied oneself and an escape from stagnation.
(via MindHacks)
West Meets East
Ronald Siegel wrote this long article about mindfulness and psychotherapy for the clinician-readers of Psychotherapy Networker. Doesn’t mean you can’t give it a look. A sample:
[M]indfulness is the opposite of experiential avoidance…It allows us to feel the urge to have an alcohol drink arise and pass rather than heading to the bottle, to get on the airplane and feel the fear rather than stay grounded, to be with the tight muscles and violent imagery of anger rather than shut down in depression, and to feel hurt rather than escape into delusion…[M]indfulness practices can help us loosen our preoccupation with ourselves.
Guided Meditations
Another source of free guided mindfulness meditations emerges: Spotify. Here are a few collections that showed up in a search there. Plenty more where these came from. Enjoy.
Judith Day – Introduction To Mindfulness Meditation
Jon Kabat-Zinn – Mindfulness Meditation For Pain Relief
Elisha Goldstein Ph.D. – Mindful Solutions For Stress, Anxiety, And Depression
Jack Kornfield – Guided Meditations For Difficult Times
Decision Fatigue
The NYT Magazine asks, Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?
It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts…
Echoing this TED talk from Barry Schwartz:
Grounding the Helicopter
Toward a less hovering approach to parenting: How to Land Your Kid in Therapy (The Atlantic).
[A]ll of this worry about creating low self-esteem might actually perpetuate it. No wonder my patient Lizzie told me she felt “less amazing” than her parents had always said she was. Given how “amazing” her parents made her out to be, how could she possibly live up to that? Instead of acknowledging their daughter’s flaws, her parents, hoping to make her feel secure, denied them. “I’m bad at math,” Lizzie said she once told them, when she noticed that the math homework was consistently more challenging for her than for many of her classmates. “You’re not bad at math,” her parents responded. “You just have a different learning style. We’ll get you a tutor to help translate the information into a format you naturally understand.”
Relationship Health
Extra motivation for figuring out how to get along better?: The way you relate to your partner can affect your long-term mental and physical health, study shows (Science Daily).
“We already know from prior research that people in stable, happy marriages experience better overall health than do those in more conflicted relationships,” said Professor Hicks. “We can now further conclude from our current research that individuals who are in insecure relationships are more vulnerable to longer-term health risks from conflict than are others.”
Better Sex Through Therapy?
Study Links Empathy, Self-Esteem, and Autonomy with Increased Sexual Enjoyment (jhsph.edu):
Sexual pleasure among young adults (ages 18-26) is linked to healthy psychological and social development, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Depression, OCD, Zombie Prevention, and Creativity
Variety pack from the feed:
10 Things You Should Know About Male Depression (Psych Central)
Zombie Prevention: Your Child’s Sleep (NYT)
Obsessive Fears Arise in Response to Compulsions in OCD (Psych Central)
The Creative Power of Thinking Outside Yourself (PsyBlog)
A Psychopath Walks Into A Room. Can You Tell? (NPR)
Peace is Every Step
From the recommended reading list, Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, a short, simple call to mindfulness, personal and political. In the book, some nice suggestions about mindfulness practice, including these lines to silently try out during mindfulness meditation:
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Worth a shot for the many who find themselves distracted when attempting silent focus on breathing. There’s also this suggestion for developing mindfulness regarding uncomfortable emotion (in this case anger):
Breathing in, I know that anger is here.
Breathing out, I know that the anger is me.
Breathing in, I know that anger is unpleasant.
Breathing out, I know this feeling will pass.
Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out, I am strong enough to take care of this anger.
Substitute “anxiety” or “sadness” or whatever you’re going through for “anger.” Too much to remember? Just try “Breathing in, I am _________. Breathing out, I am ___________.” You may find just slowing down and acknowledging what you’re feeling (and not wanting to feel) helps more than any distraction.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness is Buddhist mindfulness–for a secularized (and, for better or worse, less eco/non-violence-focused) substitute, try Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are.
Breathing in, you’re done reading this post.