Best of Our Blogs: April 25, 2017

Have you ever untangled a necklace or earbud cord?

It’s incredibly frustrating.

As I unravel the cord or attempt to take apart a twisted chain, I feel a surprising amount of resistance. Here are the voices that flood my thoughts:

“There are a million things I need to do.”

“Why can’t this one thing be easy?”

“I wish this would go faster.”

By the time I’m done, I want to quit, throw the thing away or in such a mood I couldn’t care less that it’s done.

Rushing through worsens the situation. Negative thoughts or in other words NUTS and ANTS (read our top post to see what I mean) adds suffering to my experience.

I’m reminded that it was never about the external things anyway. The obstacles you encounter are simply representations of what’s going on inside.

See if you can use the challenges in your life as opportunities to stretch yourself by practicing mindfulness, and learning patience or acceptance on a smaller scale.

The 10 Lessons of Childhood Emotional Neglect
(Childhood Emotional Neglect) – Are the things you learned as a child hurting your chances for happiness as an adult? Here are the lessons you might have learned and the truth behind it.

10 Things Parents Need to Teach Their Teen
(The Exhausted Woman) – Before your teenager turns 18, you need to read this.

Three Self-Esteem Boosting Tips and Activities
(Psychoeducation in Psychotherapy) – Want to love your self and life more? Try these tips.

Using marijuana to quit heroin? Are you serious?
(Addiction Matters) – Should those struggling with opioid withdrawal consider marijuana to help with withdrawal? There’s one thing you need to know first.

Are You Struggling in Your Adult Life? 4 Common Patterns
(Knotted) – Here’s a true test to see if your childhood is having a negative impact on your life.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/25/best-of-our-blogs-april-25-2017/

How to Love and Support a Woman with Anxiety

Trust me, she’s worth it.

So, you’ve fallen in love with a woman who has anxiety.

You’re one of the lucky ones. You have met a woman who feels deeply. Commercials for dog food make her cry. So does messing up that Pinterest recipe she was so excited to try. She loves fiercely, and, if you are lucky, she will choose to love you. Here is how you love someone with anxiety:

19 Quotes For When Anxiety Feels Completely Overwhelming

Love a Woman with Anxiety Softly.

For a woman with anxiety the world itself is loud, the wrong kind of shirt on her skin can spend the entire day screaming at her, a tough word or look from her boss is like Norwegian death metal.

Be her soft place to fall in a world full of loud uncertainties.

Love Her Consistently.

Games are always awful when you play them during courtship. Games are even worse when you try to play with a woman who has anxiety. She spends every day just trying to keep up with the game that is living a normal life. When you say you’ll call her, call her. When you say you’ll see her, see her. When you tell her that you love her, mean it. She doesn’t want the moon from you, she wants the truth and once you join her in this strange realm you’ll find out just how great it can be.

When the woman with anxiety who you love starts to cry after sex, hugging her knees, her body wracked with sobs, do not ask what’s wrong. Hold her if she’ll let you. Rub her back and talk to her. Don’t try to fix her, just tell her ordinary everyday things and in her own time, she will come back to where you are.

When the woman with anxiety who love wakes up in the middle of the night screaming because she has come face to face with the idea that she’s going to die and there’s nothing she can to do stop, hold her hand. Get her a glass of water. Tell her a joke. Turn on the TV. Sit with her until she can fall back asleep.

Let Her Stay Home.

You love her, you want everyone you know to meet her and love her too, and because she loves you, she’ll do this. She will go to every party, she will shake every hand, she will put herself outside of her comfort zone and not even realize that it’s breaking her up into tiny exhausted pieces. Don’t make her. Tell her to take a night to herself, even if you’d pay in gold nuggets for every second you spend by her side.

3 Ways To Stop Running From Your Anxiety, So You Can Be Happy Again

Love Her as Fiercely as She Loves You.

For a woman with anxiety, every day can be a study of loneliness, waging a war against the millions of hissing voices inside her own head. Wade through the tumult and squeeze her tightly.

Check your impatience at the door, call her out when lack of self-care is making her snippy or mean, push her when she is uncertain, be a sounding board when she needs one and an advisor when she asks for your help.

The reward you get? Her smile. Her devotion. Her wry observations about the way the world works. Her keen insights into the people around her.

Her.

The reward you get is her, and the reward she gets is you, and together you will reap wonderful things.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: How To Love A Woman With Anxiety.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/24/how-to-love-and-support-a-woman-with-anxiety/

The Surprising Reason Why Money Can’t Buy Happiness

Money can’t buy happiness. But why not? After all, money has its advantages. In one study, Nobel Prize winning scientists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Keaton looked at this question. They found that as income increases, life-satisfaction rises too.

On the role of money in his dating life, Curb Your Enthusiasm comedian Larry David, quipped, “She’s supposed to like me for myself? I don’t even like me for myself!”

Still, most of us intuitively feel money alone can’t explain happiness. Let’s look at why.

The (Un)happy Thief

Consider a scenario from a study led by Harvard cognitive scientist Jonathan Phillips:

Tom always enjoys his job as a janitor at a local community college. What he likes most about his job is how it gives him a chance to meet the young female students who are attending the community college. Almost every single day Tom feels good and generally experiences a lot of pleasant emotions. In fact, it is very rare that he would ever feel negative emotions like sadness or loneliness. When Tom thinks about his life, he always comes to the same conclusion: he feels highly satisfied with the way he lives.  

The reason Tom feels this way is that every day he goes from locker to locker and steals belongings from the students and re-sells these belongings to buy himself alcohol. Each night as he’s going to sleep, he thinks about the things he will steal the next day.

Researchers presented this story to participants and asked them to rate Tom’s level of happiness. Though Tom is described as having good feelings, people felt he was not happy. Why not?

One answer is that feeling good isn’t enough to be happy. As the researchers put it, “[The] results of this study suggest that the influence of moral value on assessments of happiness is highly robust.” Put differently, most of us think that happiness involves living a moral life.

Is there any relationship between happiness, money, and morality?

Of Mice and Money

One insight involves killing mice. Economists at the University of Bonn ran a series of experiments. They wanted to know if markets would influence people’s willingness to kill a mouse for money.

In the first experiment, they presented participants with a choice. They could take 10 euros and a mouse in a laboratory would be gassed, or turn down the money and the mouse would live. 46% took the money.

In a second experiment, researchers set up a market between two people. One person was given responsibility for the life of the mouse. Another person was given 20 euros. If they reached an agreement on how to divide the money, each would receive a payment and the mouse would be killed. If they could not reach an agreement (if one or both refused to bargain) the mouse would be saved. 72% reached an agreement, thus allowing the mouse to die.

You might feel uneasy reading this. The results suggest that individually, most of us would turn down a cash payment to do something morally questionable (or morally evil, depending on your viewpoint). But in a market environment, our moral standards loosen. Markets normalized treating the life of a mouse as a commodity to be bought and sold.

What Money Can’t Buy

Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel makes this point in his book, What Money Can’t Buy. Sandel claims that while there are many advantages to having a market economy, there are disadvantages to being a market society.

For example, would you want to live in a society in which people tattoo advertisements on their forehead in exchange for money? Maybe. Still, for many of us it seems wrong. You might think a person who would do this is not happy.

Moreover, imagine lots of people in society sold space on their bodies to corporations. We may think it would reduce the overall happiness of society. People would make money, but there is more to happiness than money.

Morals and Happiness

If not money, then what causes happiness? Consider an experiment led by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky about doing kind acts for others. Researchers asked people to do five kind acts one day per week for six weeks. Examples included donating blood, writing a thank-you letter, or visiting an elderly relative. People experienced a significant boost in happiness for doing kind acts for others.

You probably think happiness involves living a good life. A good life includes being a good person, a moral person. Doing good things for others will likely make you happier. If money can’t buy a good life, then money can’t buy happiness.  

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/24/the-surprising-reason-why-money-cant-buy-happiness/

Nurturing Character

Whether we choose to be aware of it or not, or to accept it or not, the reality is that character matters. If there were ever a time when character really counted, especially in our leaders, it's now, in this age of permissiveness, moral relativism, and narcissistic entitlement.

Tags: book, character disturbance, in practice, relationships

from Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life http://counsellingresource.com/features/2017/04/24/nurturing-character/

An Original Approach to Interpreting Dreams

I figured out an original approach to interpreting dreams long ago, but I’ve been unable to publicize it. I’ve published articles about it in the professional literature, but they haven’t attracted any attention. My basic theory about dreams seems to turn people off. It’s “too simple.” It’s “too inflexible.” Also, I haven’t been able to prove it using statistics.

My basic theory is this: dreams follow a consistent emotional pattern. Unless the dream plot is disrupted by an external influence such as noise, every dream begins with what the inner self loves, proceeds in the early-middle section with what is desired, continues in late-middle with what is undesirable, and ends with what is hated.

A man dreamed this: “I went horseback riding. The horse took me through beautiful countryside. When it was time to go back I chose a different path, became lost, and came to some barbed wire which blocked the path. The horse became restless and tried to throw me.”

He loves going horseback riding. He desires riding through beautiful countryside. It would be undesirable if he became lost and came to some barbed wire which blocked the path. He would hate it if the horse tried to throw him.

Some dreams might seem to end happily, but that “happiness” is opposite to the dreamer’s emotional reality and accordingly is something to be hated.

A woman dreamed in the last half of a dream:

“I recited:

‘I like peanut butter and jelly.

I like peanut butter and jam.

I like peanut butter and mustard.

And I like myself just as I am.’

And then I laughed heartily.”

It’s undesirable to her inner self if she feels complacent about eating the wrong foods and being overweight. She would hate feeling merriment about being overweight. (A deeper meaning to the laughter in the hatred section is that her inner self hates the pain implied by the opposite-to-reality laughter. If her pain were less the dream might show her smiling rather than laughing, but that smile might appear in the nondesire section rather than the dream’s ending; the lesser pain might merely be undesirable rather than something to be hated.)

That single example doesn’t fully address the “happy endings” shown in some dreams.

A woman dreamed: “I am in an empty old hotel. I have inherited it from someone famous — maybe Buffalo Bill. I am standing in the bare room, oak floors, large windows, sunshine, warm breezes. I am in a beautiful, white, floor-length summer gown. I am in the body of an old school friend whom I thought was attractive. Enter a man named Henry — another school chum, but someone I was less fond of, except in the dream he’s tall, sensual, appealing. He takes me in his arms and tells me Black Bart has discovered he can lay claim to the hotel if I am not married. I am upset at the thought of losing the hotel. So Henry asks me to marry him and we go to the justice of the peace and all ends well.”

The dream ending shows the dreamer marrying, for financial reasons, someone she hasn’t liked in the past, and it seems to predict they would live happily ever after. The true message, though, is that she would hate such a forced marriage and it would likely turn out badly. The indirect message is that she should marry for love rather than for money.

Note that the dream presents Henry in the nondesire and hatred sections but also must show him in the desire section for the sake of the plot’s continuity. In order for Henry to appear in her desire section, however, he has to have a desirable aspect, so in that section he becomes physically desirable. As this helps illustrate, the transformations which people undergo in dreams are not random or whimsical but instead occur for essential reasons.

Symbolism occurs for essential reasons, also. Usually, the dream must use a symbol to convey an abstract concept in the dream’s visual medium. A typical instance is when a dream uses an image of food or money to convey amount or quality of love. For example, a girl in a stressful home environment dreamed in the late-middle section that her stepmother said to her, “Here’s your supper,” and handed her a plate with a few bread crumbs on it. The crumbs of bread in the nondesire section symbolized the inadequate amount of love the dreamer was receiving from her stepmother.

Speech by a dream figure can help to reflect the conscious self’s boundaries. Anything spoken by the dreamer’s image reflects an aspect of the conscious self, and words spoken by anyone else might instead present a view which the conscious self opposes (although speech by other dream figures than the dreamer can have a variety of purposes and won’t always reflect a suppressed perspective).

A pregnant woman dreamed this in the desire section: “I was back home from the hospital holding my new baby boy. An unidentified man was looking at my baby. I said something about newborn babies being ugly. The man said, ‘I don’t think he’s ugly.’ I looked down at my son and saw that he had a perfectly shaped head, blue or green eyes, and was extremely beautiful.”

Her image’s words indicate she consciously tended to think of newborns as being ugly. Her inner self didn’t want her to have that view, and created another dream figure to express the differing, corrective view. (The plot in the desire section after that conversation shows that she wanted a beautiful baby.)

Unspoken words can appear in dreams, and at times they might be misspelled. The purpose of that misspelling is to convey that the related situation is, metaphorically, a mistake. As one example, a man spent an evening in a smoke-filled room. That night the unspoken word “aer” appeared in the nondesire section of one of his dreams. The deliberate misspelling was conveying that it was incorrect for him to be in a smoky room.

In some dreams the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. These dreams might seem unusual but nevertheless should be analyzed using the same guidelines as other dreams. As one such example, a man on a business trip dreamed at the beginning of a dream that he was back at home. In the dream ending he realized that he was dreaming and wasn’t at home after all. The dream was showing that he would love being home and hated not being there.

There are other guidelines in my articles which can help you understand additional aspects of dream interpretation. But for now, what you’ve read may help you understand many of your dreams.

Reference:

Gollub, D. (2004). The emotional pattern in dreams. Psychology And Education. 41(3-4), 26-39.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/24/an-original-approach-to-interpreting-dreams/

Will Marriage Make Me Lose My Identity?

“No man is an island” said seventeenth century author John Donne. This is true in marriage. Yet we can and should keep our separate identities after tying the knot.

We should also accept that none of us is totally self-sufficient. We depend on car mechanics, airplane pilots, farmers, friends, accountants, therapists, and others. Certainly, in a good marriage we rely on our marriage partner. We respect each other’s individuality and also connect as romantic partners and as lifetime teammates.   

When I was single and dating, I feared that marriage could cause me to lose my identity. My friend Amy set me straight. “I think of my marriage as a three-stranded braid,” she said. “One strand is me, a separate person. Another is Michael. The third strand is our relationship.” I took this to mean that marriage can be a union of individuals who are both independent and interdependent.

Until recently, roles of men and women were fixed and interdependent. Usually the husband earned the money (or bought home the kill). His wife cooked and kept the home fires burning. Today, in many good marriages, spouses are interdependent in different ways. Either partner can be the “provider” or homemaker. Often both jobs are shared.

So when you and a dating partner are seriously thinking about marrying, it’s time to talk about how the two of you want to function as a team. Sound each other out about whatever is important to each of you. A few examples: How you deal with money concerns? Household responsibilities, such as cooking, shopping, cleaning, laundry, and gardening? Child care? Diaper changing?  Except for who currently gets to bear children, just about everything is negotiable.

The more you think through what you will rely on each other for in advance, the more realistic will be your expectations after marriage. You and your future spouse can customize your interdependence in ways that honor your needs and preferences as individuals.  

 

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/23/will-marriage-make-me-lose-my-identity/

The Importance of Finding Your Happy Place

We all need a place we can go to in our minds for comfort and to feel calm.  My relaxation theory is that if we visit that place in our heads, we’ll feel better.  Some people imagine an ocean beach, with calm waves returning to the shore and warm breezes blowing in their hair and the smell of salt in the air.  Some people contemplate their family home where they grew up, maybe their childhood bedroom.  For some, that is their happy place.  I’ve always had luck with imagining myself out in the woods in a rustic environment with no one around for many miles surrounded by trees of all kinds their leaves dripping in cool water.

Where did I first get this wooded vision, this quiet and wonderful utopia in my mind’s eye?  Well, when I was 23, I went to Norway to study at The University of Oslo.  I became friends with a sweet guy named Arthur, who took me to his family cabin.  The place was primitive, but beautiful; it was without electricity and running water.  We had to light candles to see in the night.  There was a loft, where Arthur and I slept, and his sister and her husband slept downstairs.  We ate fresh shrimp and drank wine and relieved ourselves in a nearby wooden outhouse.  The cabin was built on a little lake in the mountains.  In the morning, we bathed in the freezing cold water.

This place, this quiet, clean spot became my happy place to which I mentally travelled when I needed to unwind.  All through graduate school, when I became stressed, I’d “go” to this place, and it would relax me.  Then, when I got my first job, I used this vision to relieve tension.  I remembered the cabin in Norway for stress relief around the time I married and we adopted our child.

This went on for decades until the vision lost its power, its efficacy.

Then, for many years, I didn’t have a “happy” place to escape to.  Luckily, I found other ways to handle the difficulties of life (and they came in a prescription bottle.)

Well, I’m glad to say that I’ve found another happy place.

Last weekend, my husband, son and I went camping in a pine cabin in southern Ohio.

In a word, the place was perfect.  There was not a soul around for miles.  We had privacy; we had clean, fresh air; we had the pitch black of night, and we had each other.

The weather was cool, as it had been in Norway. And it was rainy and “drippy.”  The leaves shone in cold water that plopped down on us when we least expected it.

We warmed ourselves with a fire and covered up with homemade granny quilts.  Both nights we were there, I made fresh salmon in the little stove.  We gorged on fresh fruit — grapes and apples.

But this cabin did have modern conveniences — electricity, a full, modern bathroom and running water.  It even had a hot tub.  We loved to sit in the hot water and have the cold mist of the afternoon circle around our heads.

Oh my God, it was paradise.

And now I have a new place I can go to in my mind’s eye when life gets rough.  I’ve already gone to this place mentally several times this past week.  And let me tell you, the visualization works.

If you’ve never tried it, try it.  Imagine a place where you felt completely at ease and happy, where all tension melted away.  

If you can’t imagine a place such as this, perhaps, you have to take yourself to a haven where these wonderful things can happen.

Perhaps, you need a vacation.

It doesn’t have to be a two-week luxury experience.  Sometimes the short weekend getaways pack the biggest punch because they’re concentrated experiences.

At this point in my life, I’m realizing that I respond to nature, to the woods.

If you haven’t taken advantage of being in nature lately, do it.  You’ll get the benefit of truly enjoying yourself while you’re there and the benefit of being able to go there in your mind’s eye for many years into the future.

Nature; it’s a wonderful thing.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/04/23/the-importance-of-finding-your-happy-place/