Science of the SpiritS


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Children of abusers continue to deal with ongoing abuse into adulthood

Lynn Beisner
Role Reboot
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 00:00 UTC
child abuse, adult abuse
Many adult children of abusers continue to deal with ongoing abuse long after we have reached the age of maturity.

The first time I became aware of adult children being abused by their parents was when I went on my fifth date with Ken, a guy I met when I was in Bible college. I was meeting his family for the first time at a bountiful and delicious Sunday dinner his mother prepared.

I was concentrating on getting a forkful of creamed peas into my mouth without disgracing myself when Ken's head snapped back, and I heard the distinct and grotesque sound of bones and flesh colliding. For one second, he just let his head rest where his father's punch had landed it, back and slightly to his left side. And then slowly, Ken steadied himself, wiped at the blood streaming down his face, and let his face fall into a stony mile-long stare.

Ken never looked me in the eye again, not that night, not the next day, not ever. And I understood why. I was now privy to his darkest secret, that as a man pushing 30 he was still a victim of child abuse.

Comment: Child abuse leaves scars that last well into adulthood. The abuse actually causes changes in the brain, setting the stage for major depression, poor health and other psychological problems that can be lifelong. Without treatment intervention, victims who aren't taught how to end the cycle of abuse, continue to allow abusers to run their lives, and often find themselves in relationships with others that recreate the situations of their childhood.

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Family

Balancing assertiveness with being respectful of others' needs

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.
PsychCentral
Tue, 08 Sep 2015 00:00 UTC
assertive, aggressive
Assertiveness lies on a spectrum. On one extreme you'll find passivity. On the other extreme is aggressiveness. According to psychotherapist Ali Miller, MFT, "Passivity often results from the belief that 'my needs don't matter.'" Aggressiveness often results from the belief that 'your needs don't matter.'"

Being assertive marries both beliefs. "Assertiveness is the art of holding everyone's needs with care — including my own — when there is something that I want," said Miller, who has a private practice in Berkeley and San Francisco, Calif., and specializes in helping adults live more authentic, empowered and connected lives.

But when you've spent your entire life being a people-pleaser, this concept can be hard to make sense of and practice. You might get stuck on the part where everyone's needs matter. You might get stuck worrying about everyone else's varied concerns (again) and forget, neglect or dismiss your own (again). Because how do you balance other's needs with your own needs? Isn't it just easier or better to remain quiet?

Miller suggested dropping the label "people-pleaser" because of its negative connotations. "[I]nstead think about it in terms of having a strong need for harmony or contribution or connection or peace."

Comment: See also:

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Cross

Conservative Christianity's salvation scam: We will save you from your sinful self

Valerie Tarico
Raw Story
Mon, 07 Sep 2015 07:24 UTC
peasant women in a church
© www.wikiart.orgBarefoot and sublimated. Just the way God likes us.
Jon Stewart famously said, "Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion."

The painful irony of Stewart's words is obvious to us all. What may be less obvious is the underlying pattern: Offering solutions to problems that religion itself has created is one of the key means by which religion propagates. The Pope's recent limited-time offer of confession and forgiveness for women who have aborted pregnancies perfectly illustrates this pattern.

The Reality of Women's Lives

Few women end a pregnancy on a selfish whim. All around us—all around you—are women (or couples) who have chosen to end pregnancies for reasons that are prudent, compassionate, service-oriented, or self-aware. Sometimes the reason is simply, "I can't do this right now," or "I don't want to, and children should be wanted." Sometimes a woman commits to an education, or to take one step forward out of poverty, or to join the military, or simply to devote her finite energy to the children she already has or to her community or our world. Under most circumstances, these are kinds of decisions that we honor, even if they are difficult and require letting go of one possible future to embrace another.

But choosing to carry forward a new life—or not—is one of the most momentous decisions a person can make, and inevitably some people regret it, just as some people regret smaller decisions like the choice of a college or career or spouse. Each of us is far more likely to feel regretful or even eaten-up about a decision we have made if it violates our own values or if people around us say that it should. And when it comes to parenthood decisions, that creates an opening for religion to create (or at least feed) a problem it can solve.

Comment: The concept of life, the conception of life, the conception of life-giving...layers of conscious experience wo-manifesting, but sullied in the eyes of the church since a victimizing religion manifests only...sinners and itself. How "good" is a foundation built upon shame and degradation? Do unto others: What is the moral culpability of the seducer, be it man or church? ...perhaps man made god in his own image.

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Butterfly

Tips for decelerating racing thoughts and calming your mind

Margarita Tartakovsky, MS
Psych Central
Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:00 UTC
racing thoughts
Yesterday, I shared some suggestions from Sarahjoy Marsh's book Hunger, Hope & Healing for decelerating racing thoughts and calming our minds and bodies. Because racing thoughts can steal our enjoyment. They can follow us into bed and onto the couch. They can boost our anxiety and sink our mood.

Today, I'm sharing other suggestions, because there are so many great tools out there. Most of the below tips are meditations or based on mindfulness, as these are powerful in creating calm and helping us refocus.
  • Listen to this "leaves on the stream" meditation. I love what the speaker says about the meditation's purpose: "to notice a shift of looking from your thoughts to looking at your thoughts." Because we don't need to control or change our thoughts. We can simply observe them as they come and go naturally.
  • Think of your racing thoughts as a movie you're watching.

Comment: Another excellent technique that can assist you with calming and focusing your mind is the Éiriú Eolas meditation program. It will help you to have improved overall health, a stronger immune system, better impulse control and will also help to heal emotional wounds; anything that may hinder or prevent you from leading a healthy and fulfilling life. The technique can be learned free of charge here.

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Alarm Clock

The decline of play in preschoolers — and the rise in sensory issues

Valerie Strauss
The Washington Post
Tue, 01 Sep 2015 22:30 UTC
child
© iStock
Here is a new post from pediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, author of a number of popular posts on this blog, including Why so many kids can't sit still in school today, as well as The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class and How schools ruined recess. Hanscom is the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England.

By Angela Hanscom

I still recall the days of preschool for my oldest daughter. I remember wanting to desperately enrich her life in any way possible - to give her an edge before she even got to formal schooling. I put her in a preschool that was academic in nature - the focus on pre-reading, writing, and math skills. At home, I bought her special puzzles, set up organized play dates with children her age, read to her every night, signed her up for music lessons, put her in dance, and drove her to local museums. My friends and I even did "enrichment classes" with our kids to practice sorting, coloring, counting, numbers, letters, and yes....even to practice sitting! We thought this would help prepare them for kindergarten.

Like many other American parents, I had an obsession: academic success for my child. Only, I was going about it completely wrong. Yes, my daughter would later go on to test above average with her academic skills, but she was missing important life skills. Skills that should have been in place and nurtured during the preschool years. My wake-up call was when the preschool teacher came up to me and said, "Your daughter is doing well academically. In fact, I'd say she exceeds expectations in these areas. But she is having trouble with basic social skills like sharing and taking turns." Not only that, but my daughter was also having trouble controlling her emotions, developed anxiety and sensory issues, and had trouble simply playing by herself!
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Bulb

Practicing different skills in quick succession can lead to massive gains in learning

Jeremy Dean
PsyBlog
Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:00 UTC
learning
Despite multiple studies showing the benefits, many people don't know this learning trick.

Mixing up your learning can lead to massive gains, a new study of academic performance reveals.

For years now 'interleaving' has been a secret largely confined to researchers.

Interleaving means practising or learning different skills in quick succession.

When interleaving, tennis players might practice forehands, backhands and volleys altogether.

Interleaving for musicians could mean practising scales, arpeggios and chords all in the same session.

It's quite a different method to how people normally learn.

Comment: From Obsessive practice isn't the key to success - Here's why:
While practicing is vital to learning and memory, studies have shown that practice is far more effective when it's broken into separate periods of training that are spaced out. The rapid gains produced by massed practice are often evident, but the rapid forgetting that follows is not. Practice that's spaced out, interleaved with other learning, and varied produces better mastery, longer retention, and more versatility. But these benefits come at a price: when practice is spaced, interleaved, and varied, it requires more effort. What you don't sense in the moment is that this added effort is making the learning stronger.


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Cloud Grey

Feeling sadness may actually change how we perceive color


Association for Psychological Science
Thu, 03 Sep 2015 00:00 UTC
depression
The world might seem a little grayer than usual when we're down in the dumps and we often talk about "feeling blue" — new research suggests that the associations we make between emotion and color go beyond mere metaphor. The results of two studies indicate that feeling sadness may actually change how we perceive color. Specifically, researchers found that participants who were induced to feel sad were less accurate in identifying colors on the blue-yellow axis than those who were led to feel amused or emotionally neutral.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"Our results show that mood and emotion can affect how we see the world around us," says psychology researcher Christopher Thorstenson of the University of Rochester, first author on the research. "Our work advances the study of perception by showing that sadness specifically impairs basic visual processes that are involved in perceiving color."

Previous studies have shown that emotion can influence various visual processes, and some work has even indicated a link between depressed mood and reduced sensitivity to visual contrast. Because contrast sensitivity is a basic visual process involved in color perception, Thorstenson and co-authors Adam Pazda and Andrew Elliot wondered whether there might be a specific link between sadness and our ability to perceive color.
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House

Homemaking together: Restoring the family ecosystem

Leah Gibson
On Being
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 15:30 UTC
Image
© Sarah Horrigan
Today's parents have high expectations for themselves and for their children. They have an image of where they want their families to be, but daily hassles make that image hard to reach. Anytime we get caught in the gap between reality and the ideal, we are easy targets for frustration and guilt.

Often, then, parents conclude that they or their children are flawed. They aren't. Well, they are. We all are flawed. That is the nature of being human, but our flaws aren't the source of most common parenting struggles. The struggles arise because many of our conventionally held beliefs throw hurdles and obstacles in our way.
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Health

Change your thoughts, change your health

Aunna Pourang
Collective Evolution
Wed, 02 Sep 2015 18:09 UTC
Image
Many people expect a doctor and a pill to cure them of their ailments, ailments that are often preventable and aren't always effectively treated with a pill. This type of mentality typically stems from a lack of knowledge about the tremendous healing capabilities of our bodies and minds. The key to being healthy is to work with this innate wisdom, which requires maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but more so, emotional and psychological well being.

If we believe we aren't going to feel better, we limit any possible solutions for becoming well. If we are caught up in a victim mentality and expect someone or something else to "fix" us, then we will never the take the necessary steps to improve our life. Constantly identifying with disease creates blinders to the blessings and positive aspects of health that exist in one's life. Most healthy people I know are happy, and the ones that are not as healthy, usually have a relatively better quality of life when they have a positive attitude.
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Eye 1

First impressions made faster than eye blink

Caroline Leopold
Digital Journal
Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:37 UTC
close up eye
© Wikimedia Commons
People make snap judgments — a quality wired into the eye and brain. Studies show that first impressions are quick to form and hard to change.

People are capable of making judgments faster than a blink of an eye — and researchers have found looks matter. This goes beyond physical attractiveness. People make judgments on nonvisual choices like picking a bottle of wine or a political candidate.

People make snap judgments about whether a person is competent, trustworthy, or fit for a job or second date. They aren't trying to act like snobs, but people are hard-wired to interpret visual information at amazing speed.

Dr. Mary Potter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that research participants could see and interpret images in only 80 milliseconds, which is much faster than previously believed. People can see and make judgments roughly four times faster than a blink of an eye, which takes 300 to 400 milliseconds.

This makes the eye and brain connection especially effective at looking at something and almost instantly recognizing it. A longer look doesn't seem to change people's original impressions. Princeton researchers Janine Todorov and Alexander Willis asked participants to make quick judgments on 66 faces.

They results published in Psychological Science found that when participants were allowed to take longer to make an evaluation, they didn't change their minds. Instead, their confidence with the original impression increased.
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